Hungary’s far-right PM Viktor Orbán speaks at CPAC summit – as it happened

The Senate will meet this weekend to begin considering Democrats’ marquee spending plan to fight climate change and lower healthcare costs, which is the culmination of more than a year of fitful negotiations. Meanwhile in Texas, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban pitched his far-right vision of America and Europe’s future to an audience of conservatives.

Here’s a rundown of what else happened today:

• The justice department has filed charges against four current and former Louisville police officers over the death of Breonna Taylor.
• A court in Russia sentenced American women’s basketball star Brittney Griner to nine years in prison after finding her guilty of drug smuggling. President Joe Biden said Griner is “wrongfully detained”.
• Alex Jones’s defamation trial continued after yesterday’s shock revelation that his attorneys shared Jones’ phone data with lawyers for the people suing him.
• The White House declared monkeypox a public health emergency as the virus spread across the United States.
• House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited South Korea, as China expressed its rage at her stop in Taiwan by launching military exercises.
• New York Democratic House representative Carolyn Maloney continues to do damage control after suggesting Biden won’t stand for a second term, although she apparently hasn’t completely backed down from the comment.

It looks like the Senate will convene this weekend to vote on Democrats’ plan to fight climate change, lower healthcare costs and tweak the tax code, CNN reports:

The bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, has no support from Republicans, and will require the votes of every Democrat to pass the evenly divided Senate. The House of Representatives, where the party has a slim majority, will then need to approve it before it goes to Joe Biden for his signature.

Orban wrapped up his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference by declaring, “We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels”, and saying the two capitals “will define the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization”.

After defeating Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, “Now the West is at war with itself,” Orban said. “We have seen what kind of future the globalist ruling class has to offer. But we have a different future in mind. The globalists can all go to hell, I have come to Texas.”

A who’s who of American conservatives will appear at CPAC over the next two days, before Donald Trump makes the event’s closing remarks on Saturday evening.

Orban didn’t mention Joe Biden directly, but appealed to the audience of conservatives for “strong leaders” – by which he presumably was not referring to the Democrats in control of the White House and Congress.

He cited the impacts of the war in Ukraine on Hungary, which he notes has received one million refugees.

“In my view, the globalist leaders’ strategy escalates and prolongs war and decreases the chance of peace. Without American-Russian talks there will never be peace in Ukraine. More and more people will die and suffer and our economies will come to the brink of collapse,” Orban said.

“We in the neighborhood of Ukraine are desperately in need of strong leaders who are capable of negotiating a peace deal. Mayday, mayday, please help us. We need a strong America, with a strong leader.”

Texas is a major crossing point for undocumented immigrants entering the United States, which Republicans have said is a “crisis” that president Joe Biden deserves blame for.

Orban must realize this. He’s giving examples of “how to fight back by our own rules” and detailing to the conservative audience his own hardline policies against migrants, particularly from Syria.

“We were the first ones in Europe who said no illegal migration and stop the invasion of illegal migrants,” he said. “We believe that stopping illegal migration is necessary to protect our nation.”

Orban went on to attack American liberals, saying they tried to stop his speech and calling for unity between conservatives in the United States and in Hungary.

“They hate me and slandered me and my country as they hate you and slander you and America’s transformation. We all know how this works. Progressive liberals didn’t want me to be here because they knew what I will tell you,” Orban said.

“I’m here to tell you that we should unite our forces… because we Hungarians know how to defeat the enemies of freedom on the political battlefield.”

Orban appears to be responding to the recent news of a top adviser resigning and accusing him of using “pure Nazi” rhetoric by arguing that his administration is misunderstood.

Hungary “introduced a zero-tolerance policy on racism and antisemitism. So accusing us is fake news, and those who make these claims are certainly idiots. They are the industrial fake news corporation,” Orban said.

Orban has opened his speech in Texas by saying that “Hungary is the Lone Star state of Europe”.

He described Hungary as “under the siege of progressives, liberals day by day”, and noted that he was “the only anti-migration political leader on our continent”, which was greeted with applause.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is minutes away from starting his speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, held this year in Texas.

According to its agenda, Orbán will give a talk titled “How We Fight”. The leader has faced intensifying criticism for his far-right rhetoric, and last month, one of his longtime advisers resigned in protest over what she called his “pure Nazi” speech.

Arizona Republican Rusty Bowers has lost his primary and won’t return to his post as speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives after defying Donald Trump’s efforts to meddle in the state’s election results. As Martin Pengelly reports, Bowers has no regrets about how it ended:

Rusty Bowers, the Arizona Republican who defied Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the state then testified to the House January 6 committee, has no regrets despite losing his bid for a state senate seat.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” he told the Associated Press. “I’d do it 50 times in a row.”

Term limits meant Bowers could not mount another house run. On Tuesday he was trounced in a primary by David Farnsworth, a Trump-endorsed former state senator.

Trump was the first Republican to lose a presidential race in Arizona since Bill Clinton won there in 1996. Clinton was re-elected anyway. Trump wasn’t.

After departing Taiwan following a visit that enraged China, House speaker Nancy Pelosi went to South Korea, where she visited the demilitarized zone separating it from North Korea.

Beijing has meanwhile started a series of live-fire drills in the waters around Taiwan, underscoring its fury over Pelosi’s trip to an island it considers a breakaway province. The Guardian has is keeping a live blog covering the ongoing spike in tensions: