From 54m ago
Joe Biden was accompanied by his sister Valerie Biden Owen, his son Hunter Biden, and recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy II. The president was greeted by Rishi Sunak.
Some background, from The Guardian’s Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll:
The US president was due to be met at Belfast international airport by Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night for the start of a visit expected to mix delicate political choreography with economic announcements and events linked to Biden’s Irish and Catholic heritage.
Speaking to reporters before taking off in Air Force One, Biden said he wanted to safeguard the Good Friday agreement, which was signed 25 years ago this week, and support Sunak’s post-Brexit deal for the region. Asked what his priorities for the trip were, he said: “Make sure the Irish accords and Windsor agreements stay in place. Keep the peace and that’s the main thing. It looks like we’re going to keep our fingers crossed.”
Heavy security on both sides of the border preceded the US entourage, which will include the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and a recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy III.
Dozens of police and US secret service vehicles sealed off rain-drenched streets around central Belfast on Tuesday. Manhole covers were lifted and checked and sniffer dogs inspected hotel rooms as part of a £7m security operation – bolstered by 300 extra police from the British mainland.
In Derry, police recovered four suspected pipe bombs from a cemetery where republicans had staged an Easter Monday commemoration that led to petrol bomb attacks on police. The discovery was a “sinister and worrying development”, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland assistant chief constable, Bobby Singleton, with the Police Federation for Northern Ireland saying it was a clear statement of intent to cause harm to police officers.
Read more:
Joe Biden will meet with Northern Ireland political party leaders tomorrow, but is not expected to hold a news conference in Ireland.
Here’s a recap of today’s news:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling. He will probably reiterate the GOP’s demand that the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Speaking of Bragg, he filed a lawsuit against House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan to get him to stop messing with his prosecution of the former president.
Montana might be about to outlaw abortion after the second trimester of pregnancy.
Joe Biden was accompanied by his sister Valerie Biden Owen, his son Hunter Biden, and recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy II. The president was greeted by Rishi Sunak.
Some background, from The Guardian’s Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll:
The US president was due to be met at Belfast international airport by Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night for the start of a visit expected to mix delicate political choreography with economic announcements and events linked to Biden’s Irish and Catholic heritage.
Speaking to reporters before taking off in Air Force One, Biden said he wanted to safeguard the Good Friday agreement, which was signed 25 years ago this week, and support Sunak’s post-Brexit deal for the region. Asked what his priorities for the trip were, he said: “Make sure the Irish accords and Windsor agreements stay in place. Keep the peace and that’s the main thing. It looks like we’re going to keep our fingers crossed.”
Heavy security on both sides of the border preceded the US entourage, which will include the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and a recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy III.
Dozens of police and US secret service vehicles sealed off rain-drenched streets around central Belfast on Tuesday. Manhole covers were lifted and checked and sniffer dogs inspected hotel rooms as part of a £7m security operation – bolstered by 300 extra police from the British mainland.
In Derry, police recovered four suspected pipe bombs from a cemetery where republicans had staged an Easter Monday commemoration that led to petrol bomb attacks on police. The discovery was a “sinister and worrying development”, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland assistant chief constable, Bobby Singleton, with the Police Federation for Northern Ireland saying it was a clear statement of intent to cause harm to police officers.
Read more:
In about 20 minutes, Air Force One is expected to touch down in Belfast, Northern Ireland where Joe Biden will begin his five-day trip to the island. While he has no public events scheduled this evening, tomorrow he will meet with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and deliver a speech at Ulster University, before departing for Dublin.
Keep it turned to this blog, where the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh will be covering Biden’s Belfast arrival as it happens. Until then, here’s a recap of what’s happened today so far:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling. He will probably reiterate the GOP’s demand that the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Speaking of Bragg, he filed a lawsuit against House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan to get him to stop messing with his prosecution of the former president.
Montana might be about to outlaw abortion after the second trimester of pregnancy.
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has asked that the chamber’s lawmakers be briefed on the leaked Pentagon documents concerning US assessments of the war in Ukraine.
“Majority Leader Schumer has requested a classified briefing for all senators on the leaked classified US documents on the war in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the senator told the Guardian’s US politics live blog.
Among the revelations from the documents is that Washington is concerned about Kyiv’s military strength ahead of a counteroffensive against Russia’s forces, which expected to start soon. Read more about that below:
Here’s what Republican House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan has to say about the lawsuit the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg filed against him:
The president he’s referring to here is, of course, Donald Trump.
The family of Evan Gershkovich, the American Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia on espionage charges, has released a statement after Joe Biden called them today.
Read it here:
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has filed a lawsuit against Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, to stop his efforts aimed at publicizing details of his office’s prosecution of Donald Trump, the New York Times reports.
Jordan is one of Trump’s top allies in Congress, and together with other Republicans has demanded documents and testimony from Bragg, who late last month indicted the former president on charges of falsifying business records. Last week, Jordan subpoenaed Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Bragg’s office who wrote a book about why he thinks Trump should face charges. The subpoena requires Pomerantz sit for a deposition before the judiciary committee, which has played a major role in the House GOP’s campaign of investigations against the Biden administration.
Accusing Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on Bragg’s prosecution, and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the Manhattan prosecutor, the lawsuit filed in federal court asks a judge to halt the subpoena to Pomerantz, and any future summons.
The Times reports that Pomerantz “has shown no indication that he is willing to testify voluntarily”, but declined to comment on Bragg’s lawsuit.
A bill to restrict abortions in Montana will become law – at least temporarily – if the governor signs it, a judge has ruled, and the Associated Press reports.
The latest ruling denies a request by abortion rights advocates to preemptively block legislation that would ban the abortion method most commonly used in the second trimester.
District court judge Kathy Seeley said the request by Planned Parenthood of Montana was made before the bill became law, so there is nothing to block.
Montana’s legislature approved the bill on Friday. It would ban dilation and evacuation abortions, which are typically used later than 15 weeks into a pregnancy. The ban will take effect immediately if Republican governor Greg Gianforte signs it.
Planned Parenthood argued the law is unconstitutional based on a 1999 Montana supreme court ruling that found that the state constitution’s right to privacy includes the right to have a pre-viability abortion from a provider of the patient’s choice.
The organization asked the court to freeze the law preemptively to make sure patients wouldn’t be prevented from getting care while the court considered the case.
Rightwinger Stephen Miller, a senior aide in Donald Trump’s White House, was spotted this morning in Washington DC, “entering the area where the grand jury tied to special counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation meets,” NBC reports.
Miller and his attorney reportedly would not tell reporters why they were there.
The US court of appeals for the DC circuit last week denied Trump’s emergency motion to block several senior aides being called to testify, including Miller, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, NBC adds.
A year ago, Miller testified to the House of Representatives select committee investigating the insurrection on 6 January 2021, by extremist supporters of Trump who were seeking to keep the then president in office by preventing the official certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Sources told the Guardian at the time that Miller was testifying about the extent to which Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the US Capitol, inciting an insurrection (for which he was later impeached in an unprecedented move by the House to impeach a US president for a second time, although, once again he was later acquitted by the US Senate).
Miller was a senior adviser to the-then president Trump and director of speechwriting, known for his hard-right anti-immigration beliefs.
Democratic House representative Jennifer Wexton has announced she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease:
Wexton, who represents Virginia’s suburbs near Washington DC, was among the Democrats considered vulnerable in last November’s midterm election, though she ended up being re-elected with more than 53% of the vote.
Congress is finally getting the access it has demanded to the classified documents taken from Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence, though the materials will only be viewed in secret and by the chamber’s top leaders. Meanwhile, Democrats have made an important decision: Chicago will be the host city for their convention next year. Still no definitive word from Biden on his re-election plans, though yesterday he made it plain as can be by saying, “I plan on running.”
Here’s what else has happened so far today:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling, where he’ll likely demand the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for the GOP’s support in raising it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Shifting to the realm of less public Republican activities, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports on an intensifying conservative effort to undermine voter rolls nationwide:
An influential conservative group that has filed numerous lawsuits to force states to clean up their voter rolls, has joined Donald Trump and other election denial groups in attacking the most robust tool that accurately improves those voter rolls.
Judicial Watch, whose leader Tom Fitton urged Trump in 2020 to claim victory before all the votes were tallied, released a flawed report alleging potential violations of federal law by the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a bipartisan consortium of over two dozen states that exchange voter registration data to ensure election security.
Fitton’s attack on Eric is part of a growing campaign by Trump-allied election denialist groups and Trump to urge member states to leave the consortium, prompting scathing criticism from voting rights advocates and election experts including some GOP officials.
Meanwhile, Punchbowl News reports today that a group of Democrats will take part in the House judiciary committee hearing in New York City, reversing their non-participation in some of the field visits organized recently by the committee’s GOP chair Jim Jordan.
The committee’s ranking member, New York representative Jerry Nadler, and other Democrats are expected to hold a press conference with city officials around the time of the hearing, Punchbowl reports. The event will be part of their counter-attack to the argument Jordan and other Republicans are expected to make, which is that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is focused less on fighting crime, and more on prosecuting Donald Trump.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
