Biden vows to veto Republican plans that threaten economic ‘chaos’ – as it happened

It’s slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s where things stand:

• Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her. Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name…He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added.

• In an address in Springfield, Virginia on Thursday, president Joe Biden hit back against Republican fiscal policies and vowed to not let a national debt default happen. “They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that…Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.

• Biden also reaffirmed his administration’s fight against global warming by “finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes.”

• San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released. In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.

• Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning. “I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position.

• The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records. The request comes amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.

• Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.

• Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.

• The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.

That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up today’s US politics blog. Thank you for following along. We’ll be back on Friday.

Former transportation secretary Elaine Chao has spoken out against former president Donald Trump who has repeatedly issued racist remarks towards her.

Chao, who is Asian American, told Politico, “When I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name… Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation.”

“He doesn’t seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans,” she added.

Earlier this week, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Does Coco Chow have anything to do with Joe Biden’s Classified Documents being sent and stored in Chinatown?” he wrote. “Her husband, the Old Broken Crow, is VERY close to Biden, the Democrats, and, of course, China,” he added.

Trump has also previously referred to Chao, who is married to Mitch McConnell, as “China’s loving wife.”

“We have more work to do but we’re on the right track… I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today…and nothing is beyond our capacity if we work together,” said Biden in his closing remarks.

“Unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years,” said Biden since taking office two years ago.

“We created nearly 11 million jobs, including 750,000 manufacturing jobs…the unemployment rate is near record lowest for Black and Hispanic workers and the lowest ever recorded for people with disabilities,” he added.

“If you don’t think we have a climate crisis, come travel with me around the country,” says Biden, adding, “We have enormous drought, now we have these super storms in the west…folks, there is a thing called global warming and it’s real but we can do something about it.”

“Families are going to save more than $1,000 on tax credits on these [energy efficient] vehicles when they purchase one, and energy efficient appliances like refrigerators and washing machines…and we’re paying for all of this by finally making sure the biggest corporations just begin to pay a little bit. The days are over where corporations pay zero in federal taxes,” he added.

“They’re threatening to have us default on the American debt, the debt that has been accumulated for over 230 years … we’ve never ever done that,” Biden said, referring to fiscal policies proposed by Republicans.

“Why in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we made for the chaos they’re suggesting? I don’t get it … I will not let that happen, not on my watch,” he said.

“I will veto everything they send,” he added.

“We’re moving in the right direction, now we have to protect those gains…from the MAGA Republicans… This ain’t your father’s Republican party… They want to pass legislation to do the following things…they want to raise your gas prices…cut taxes of your billionaires…and they want to impose a 30% national sales tax on food…clothing…house, cars… They want to eliminate the income tax system,” Biden said.

“We’ve achieved a lot…economic growth is up, stronger than experts expected…jobs are the highest in American history and wages are up. In the past six months, inflation has gone down each month,” Biden said in his address at Springfield, Virginia.

San Francisco superior court judge Stephen Murphy has ordered footage of the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be released.

In addition to home surveillance footage, Murphy ordered the public release of police body camera footage, 911 audio calls, as well as audio from police interviews with David DePape, the suspect who broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home last October in attempts to kidnap the former speaker.

Unable to find Nancy Pelosi, the alleged perpetrator instead beat her 82-year old husband with a hammer.

Murphy’s decision comes amid calls from numerous news agencies that seek the release of the footage and evidence.

“You don’t eliminate the public right of access just because of concerns about conspiracy theories,” said Thomas Burke, a lawyer who represented the Associated Press and other media organizations in their attempt to gain access to the footage, the AP reports.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for a change in leadership of the Republican National Committee in an interview on Thursday morning.

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“I think we need a change, and I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said about getting the RNC outside of DC – why would you want to have your headquarters in the most Democrat city in America?,” DeSantis said on the Charlie Kirk Show, referring to the lawyer who is currently the foremost challenger of RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s position.

He added:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“We’ve had three substandard election cycles in a row – ’18, ’20, and ’22 – and I would say of all three of those, ’22 was probably the worst given the political environment of a very unpopular President in Biden.”

DeSantis’s comments come amid growing concerns from some RNC members that McDaniel has not done enough to push back against Donald Trump from forming a third political party if he does not secure the Republican presidential nomination during the next election cycle.

Hello again, US politics live blog readers. It’s been a lively day in the news from Washington so far and there’ll be more to come. Joe Biden is due to leave the White House shortly en route to a union office in Springfield, Virginia, where he’s scheduled to give a speech at 2.45pm ET on the economy (and what he sees as Republican plans to block his economic agenda).

Here’s where things stand:

• The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents check to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records, amid the ongoing but increasingly surreal scandal tangling up Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence.

• Hard right congresswoman and conspiracy-booster Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, has “no chance” of being stated-2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential choice, despite aspiring to it, a source tells Guardian US.

• Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s owner, is reportedly ready to allow Trump to post on the platforms his ongoing attacks on the results of the 2020 presidential election, where he lost to Joe Biden but claims he really won. But if Trump posts misinformation about upcoming elections, including the 2024 presidential, it will take some unspecified action to restrict his messaging. Meta has reinstated Trump to the platforms after a two-year ban, but he hasn’t posted yet.

• The decision to allow Trump back onto Facebook and Instagram is infuriating many, including some civil rights groups (though not the ACLU) and Democratic politicians. The move has been called dangerous by some.

At a press briefing with the US attorney general Merrick Garland earlier, FBI director Christopher Wray warned, amid the scandal of classified documents turning up in the possession of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that people with access to such material should be more “conscious of the rules.”

“Obviously I can’t comment on any specific investigation, but we have had, for quite a number of years, any number of mishandling investigations,” Wray told reporters at the briefing that was chiefly called to talk about the Department of Justice seizing a website used by a ransomware outfit.

“That is, unfortunately, a regular part of our counterintelligence division, counterintelligence programs work,” Wray added. “And people need to be conscious of the rules for classified information and appropriate handling of it. Those rules are there for a reason,” Wray said.

It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this point. But, again, there is a vast difference between what appears to be a careless oversight by Joe Biden, followed by an infuriating and outrageous information blackout before the public were told, and the case of Trump, who refused to hand over boxes of classified and secret documents to the government after leaving the White House and had to be raided by the FBI last summer.

The National Archives has officially requested that former US presidents and their vice presidents do a sweep or a re-sweep, if they’ve checked before, to establish whether they have any classified documents or other presidential records among their personal records, amid the rumbling scandal, CNN reports.

The call comes as Donald Trump is being investigated by a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DoJ) for withholding many boxes of material, including top secret documents, Joe Biden is being investigated by a separate special counsel after it was discovered that there were a few classified documents outstanding from his time as vice president, which he’s handed over, and that Mike Pence had some documents, too.

The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent federal agency within the executive branch. The agency sent a letter today to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents from, according to CNN, the last six administrations covered by the Presidential Records Act (PRA).

“The letter, which was reviewed by CNN, requests that they check their files to ensure that material thought to be personal does not “inadvertently” contain presidential records that are required by law to be turned over to the Archives,” the cable news channel reports.

The report continues: “The Archives sent the letter to representatives for former Presidents Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and former Vice Presidents Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Dan Quayle.

Representatives for the four former presidents have all so far told CNN they do not have any classified records in their possession.”

Here again, FYI, is the Guardian’s great explainer on the fundamental differences between the Trump and Biden cases.

Obama, Dubya, Clinton, Cheney, Gore, Quayle (and president Jimmy Carter, aged 98, who hasn’t been mentioned in this latest sweep), are still alive.

NBC News made a splash on Wednesday with a report that said Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president in 2024.

Greene, from Georgia, is a far-right controversialist and conspiracy theorist who was barred from House committees by Democrats but is now suddenly strongly allied with Republican leaders, after supporting Kevin McCarthy through his 15-vote ordeal to be elected speaker.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist, now a far-right media figure (and accused fraudster), told NBC Greene saw herself “on the short list for Trump’s VP”.

An unnamed source “who has advised Greene said her ‘whole vision is to be vice president’.”

So the Guardian asked its own anonymous source, a veteran Trumpworld insider, if there was any chance Trump would pick Greene.

The source said: “No chance. She might want it but it’s not real.”

So there’s that.

There’s also this, an interview with Robert Draper of the New York Times about his fascinating book about Republican dysfunction and, in particular, the rise of Marjorie Taylor Greene:

The Guardian’s David Smith earlier this month ran through some of Trump’s options in the veepstakes, including Taylor Greene. You can read it here.