Ohio toxic train derailment to face congressional scrutiny – as it happened

The Ohio train derailment found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers said they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street from the Capitol at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Here’s what else happened today:

• TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.

• Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.

• Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• Marianne Williamson is back, becoming the first Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for the presidential nomination.

• Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who recently won re-election in one of America’s toughest House districts, is jumping into the Michigan Senate race.

Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic House lawmaker from Michigan who won re-election last year in one of the most hotly contested races of the cycle, announced she will stand for the state’s open Senate seat in 2024.

“I’m running for Senate because I believe that we need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder, and never forgets that we are public servants,” Slotkin wrote in an email to supporters. She would replace Debbie Stabenow, Michigan’s Democratic senator who has opted not to seek another term.

A former CIA analyst who worked in the defense department under Barack Obama, Slotkin banked heavily on her support of abortion rights in her successful run for election last November.

John Fetterman’s office has released an update on the senator’s health after the Pennsylvania Democrat earlier this month checked himself into a hospital to be treated for clinical depression.

“There’s no real news to report except that John is doing well, working with the wonderful doctors, and remains on a path to recovery,” his communications director, Joe Calvello, said in a statement.

“He is visiting with staff and family daily, and his staff are keeping him updated on Senate business and news,” Calvello said.

“We understand the intense interest in John’s status and especially appreciate the flood of well-wishes. However, as we have said this will be a weeks-long process and while we will be sure to keep folks updated as it progresses, this is all there is to give by way of an update.”

At today’s White House press briefing, national security council spokesperson John Kirby downplayed the energy department’s report into Covid-19’s origins, noting it represents the opinion of just one part of the US government:

There was more intelligence-related news this weekend, when the department of energy weighed in on the origins of Covid-19 and found it probably emerged from a laboratory, but could not say for sure. The conclusion will no doubt fuel the ongoing dispute over the pandemic’s origins and the extent to which China deserves blame. The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Amy Hawkins took a closer look at what exactly the report says:

What has the US energy department said about the origin of the Covid outbreak?

According to the Wall Street Journal, an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report has concluded that the coronavirus behind the recent pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons programme.

Does this report mean it is more likely Covid came from a lab?

Not necessarily. The report’s conclusion runs counter to that from several scientific studies as well as reports by a number of other US intelligence agencies. What’s more, experts are unable to scrutinise the evidence the US energy department report is based on.

The top Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees will receive a briefing tomorrow on the classified documents found in Donald Trump’s, Joe Biden’s and Mike Pence’s possessions.

That’s the word from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:

The Gang of Eight is an informal term for top lawmakers who are occasionally given classified briefings by the intelligence community. The group today encompasses speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and the chamber’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell, as well as the leaders of the chambers’ intelligence committees: Republican chair Michael Turner and Democratic ranking member Jim Himes in the House, and Democratic chair Mark Warner and Republican ranking member Marco Rubio in the Senate.

Lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, have demanded a briefing from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines ever since the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal became public last year. Their calls only grew louder as more documents turned up in Biden’s and Pence’s possession in the months that followed.

The FBI recently arrested a Virginia man on allegations that he participated in the deadly US Capitol attack more than two years ago after matching a photo of the shoes he wore at the Capitol that day with a photo of him wearing the same shoes while doing a Crossfit workout, NBC News reporter Ryan J Reilly tweeted Monday.

Jeffrey Etter, of Portsmouth, faces charges of illegally entering a restricted federal building as well as engaging in disorderly conduct at the Capitol, according to court documents filed on 22 February. There was no telling on Monday how long it might take for the case against him to be resolved.

As of Monday, at least 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, which a bipartisan congressional report linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of officers who were traumatized after securing control of the building, according to officials. More than 475 of those have pleaded guilty, and a smaller number have been convicted at trial.

Supporters of Donald Trump who were trying to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race staged the attack. Trump, who told his supporters to “fight like hell” on the day they targeted the Capitol, has not been among those charged in connection with the attack.

The bestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson has announced that she is again running for president in 2024, becoming the first Democrat to sign up to challenge incumbent Joe Biden for the party’s nomination next year.

Williamson, 70, ran in the 2020 race which saw Biden oust Donald Trump as president, bringing what the Associated Press described as “quirky spiritualism” to the campaign. In a Facebook post over the weekend that alluded to Trump’s White House victory in 2016 without mentioning him or how it was the Republican’s first time holding elected office, she argued that it was foolish “for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency”.

“I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation,” Williamson added in the post. “I’m running for president to help … bring forth a new beginning.”

Williamson is sure to face the steepest of odds trying to win her party’s nomination over the sitting president. She is scheduled to kick off her campaign in Washington DC on Saturday.

Biden hasn’t formally declared himself a candidate for re-election. But first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet on Friday that the president would seek office again, telling the AP in an interview that there is “pretty much” nothing left to do but set the time and place for the announcement.

In a separate interview with CNN published on Monday, Jill Biden was asked if there was any chance her husband wouldn’t run. “Not in my book,” Jill Biden said.

Jill Biden added that she was “all for it, of course”, when asked if she supported her 80-year-old husband’s search for a second term in the White House.

The Ohio train derailment has found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers say they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal to a ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.

• Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.

• Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After the East Palestine train derailment, Democrats have accused Donald Trump of laying the groundwork for the accident by deregulating the freight rail and chemicals industries during his presidency.

But a Washington Post fact check of some of those arguments shows they don’t hold water, at least based on the information currently available. “From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident,” the piece concludes.

However, there does seem to be some difference of opinion on whether electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes could have made a difference in the crash. Barack Obama’s administration promulgated a rule that would have required this more sophisticated braking system on all “high hazard” trains. Trump put that rule on hold when he took office in 2017, and Joe Biden hasn’t reinstated it. Indeed, his chair of the National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy has said it would not have made a difference even if it had been in place.

However, there’s this, from the Post’s fact check: “Cynthia Quarterman, who helped write the rule as administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration during the Obama administration, told The Fact Checker that if the rule had not been delayed and then shelved, she believes ECP brakes might have been widely adopted by industry and could have ended up on this train.”

Last week, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin announced he was pulling out of New Start, its last major nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.

Perhaps he spoke too soon. CNN reports that the state department says Russia was still complying with the treaty as recently as today:

Want to help Ukraine? Adopt an orphan. That’s the message from the leader of one non-profit, as the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:

Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their support for the encroached country by volunteering to fight for it while others have called on politicians to equip the defenders with munitions and weapons.

Randi Thompson is calling on Americans to ponder another way: aiding efforts to place Ukrainian children orphaned by the Russian invasion in new families within their country.

Thompson is the president, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based non-profit Kidsave, which is dedicated to connecting older children in institutionalized care around the world with families to adopt them. The group had worked in Ukraine for six years before the invasion by Russian forces on 24 February 2022 made a bad situation worse.

Officials estimate there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war there started – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization.

Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans.