Rubio rejects DeSantis opposition to Ukraine aid as Republican split grows – as it happened

Florida governor Ron DeSantis ruffled some feathers in the Republican party by saying he would oppose further military aid to Ukraine ahead of his widely expected presidential run, and referring to Russia’s invasion as a “territorial dispute”. His comments were rejected by Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio but indicate the widening divide in the GOP over continued American aid to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Republican House oversight committee chair James Comer appeared on Fox News to give an update on his committee’s investigation into Joe Biden and his family’s business practices – but was greeted with skepticism.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Two more years for George Santos? The Republican congressman and admitted liar has filed the initial paperwork to stand for re-election.

• DeSantis did not always oppose aid to Ukraine, it turns out.

• Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren wants answers from Silicon Valley Bank’s former CEO about his advocacy for financial sector deregulation and the role it played in the bank’s collapse.

• Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, decried “isolationists” (who could he be referring to?) after a Russian plane crashed into an American drone.

• The Senate will on Thursday begin the process of repealing the legal authorization for the invasion of Iraq.

Joe Biden yesterday infuriated environmental groups by approving a massive oil drilling project in a protected area of Alaska, despite promising to fight climate change as president. Here’s the Guardian’s Oliver Milman with a look at why the project is so dangerous for the climate, and the reasons Biden may have decided to okay it:

Joe Biden continues to confound on the climate crisis. Hailed as America’s first “climate president”, Biden signed sweeping, landmark legislation to tackle global heating last year and has warned that rising temperatures are an “existential threat to humanity”. And yet, on Monday, his administration decided to approve one of the largest oil drilling projects staged in the US in decades.

The green light given to the Willow development on the remote tundra of Alaska’s northern Arctic coast, swatting aside the protests of millions of online petitioners, progressives in Congress and even Al Gore, will have global reverberations.

There are more than 600m barrels of oil available to be dislodged by ConocoPhillips over the next 30 years, effectively adding the emissions of the entire country of Belgium, via just one project, to further heat the atmosphere.

The scale of Willow is vast, with more than 200 oilwells, several new pipelines, a central processing plant, an airport and a gravel mine set to enable the extraction of oil long beyond the time scientists say that wealthy countries should have kicked the habit, in order to avoid disastrous global heating.

Bloomberg Government reports that the Senate will this week begin the process of repealing the legal authorization for the Iraq war passed more than two decades ago.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 allowed America and its allies to invade Iraq and topple its leader Saddam Hussein, a conflict that many in Washington now regard as a mistake. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says the first vote on undoing the resolution will come Thursday:

After an American drone was downed over the Black Sea following a collision with a Russian plane, the top Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee has warned against downplaying the threat posed by Moscow.

“This incident should serve as a wake-up call to isolationists in the United States that it is in our national interest to treat Putin as the threat he truly is,” Roger Wicker said in a statement, according to NBC News:

Democratic senator Sherrod Brown knows his Republican colleagues well. Politicians on the right have plenty of theories as to why the Silicon Valley Bank collapse happened, but few are mentioning a lack of regulation.

Here’s GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy drawing a line between the Biden administration’s policies, inflation, the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes to stop the price growth and the bank’s collapse:

Writing in the Daily Mail, former vice-president Mike Pence blamed the right’s familiar boogeymen, such as “California’s donor class,” “woke projects fighting climate change” and “left-wing priorities”. Here’s more from Pence:

But SVB is not solely responsible for misallocating its resources on left-wing priorities; the Biden administration actively encouraged them to do so. Rather than ensuring the strength of our banking system, Biden ordered bank regulators to push an environmental agenda. At the time of SVB’s collapse, the Federal Reserve was rolling out its latest climate-risk guidelines.

Keep in mind that Pence is apparently planning to run for president.

Patrick McHenry is the Republican chair of the House financial services committee, and in an interview with Punchbowl News yesterday, he took a more measured view of the Biden administration’s actions. “They currently have the tools, and they‘ve used them appropriately to resolve two banks,” McHenry said. “They acted swiftly and boldly, and I’ve told them more than once that bold action I will absolutely support if it is in the interest of the financial system and in the interest of the American people.”

As you might expect, the downfall of Silicon Valley Bank has become the subject of a partisan blame game in Washington.

Progressives such as Democratic House lawmaker Ro Khanna, whose district includes SVB’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, blamed a bill passed in 2018 with Republican and some Democratic support for weakening regulations that could have prevented the bank’s collapse.

Here he is, talking to MSNBC:

Many Democrats now say they’d like to see those regulations restored. But Sherrod Brown, the Democratic leader of the Senate banking committee, has a reality check for them.

“I’m less hopeful that Congress will do that because I’ve seen the influence of the bank lobby and Wall Street, and in the end, Ohio workers always pay for this when they get their way,” Brown, who represents the midwestern state, told Bloomberg Television.

“Republicans aren’t going to move anything,” he added in a separate interview. Instead, he’s calling on the Federal Reserve to stop increasing interest rates and to act unilaterally to increase scrutiny of financial institutions.

Washington’s efforts to protect the US financial system from bank failures may have just become more complicated, after data indicated inflation slowed but remained high last month. The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani explains why these numbers matter:

Price rises slowed again in February as the annual rate of inflation eased but the report has been overshadowed by a banking crisis ahead of next week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve.

Prices in February were 6% higher than a year ago, down from an annual rate of 6.4% in January and significantly lower than the 9.1% peak of inflation seen in June. Between January and February, prices rose 0.4% as prices increased in sectors including housing and food.

While February saw the continuation of a downward trend in the 12-month inflation rate, the core prices – which excludes volatile food and energy prices – increased by 0.5% in February compared with a 0.4% monthly gain in January.

Joe Biden will today announce an executive order cracking down on illegal firearms sales, which has been cheered by gun control groups. The Guardian’s David Smith has more on the effort:

Joe Biden will announce on Tuesday that he is ordering the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to crack down on gun sellers who break the law, “moving the US as close to universal background checks as possible”, the White House said.

The president will speak in Monterey Park, California, meeting victims’ families and community members devastated by a mass shooting that claimed 11 lives and injured nine other people in January.

Opinion polls show that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans support universal background checks that would reveal whether a person is a convicted criminal or domestic abuser before allowing them to buy a gun. But with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, there is little hope of Congress heeding Biden’s pleas to pass legislation.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis ruffled some feathers in the Republican party by saying he would oppose further military aid to Ukraine ahead of his widely expected presidential run, and referring to Russia’s invasion as a “territorial dispute”. His comments were rejected by Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio but indicate the growing divide in the GOP over American aid to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Republican House oversight committee chair James Comer appeared on Fox News to give an update on his committee’s investigation into Joe Biden and his family’s business practices – but was met with skepticism.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Two more years for George Santos? The Republican congressman and admitted liar has filed the initial paperwork to stand for re-election.

• DeSantis did not always oppose aid to Ukraine.

• Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren wants answers from Silicon Valley Bank’s former CEO about his advocacy for financial sector deregulation and what role it played in the bank’s collapse.

George Santos has also taken a page out of Nikki Haley’s book and is proposing legislation that would force the president to take a mental competency test.

Haley, Donald Trump’s former UN ambassador who is running for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year, has proposed making anyone over 75 pass a mental competency test in order to serve in the White House. Trump and Joe Biden are both over that age.

Santos is more direct: his legislation would force the current president to take a test, by the start of next year.

“Regardless of political affiliation, this should be a common sense and bipartisan agreement that when a man or a woman becomes President, they submit to an annual cognitive evaluation,” Santos, an admitted fabulist, said in a statement.

“Physical examination results are publicly released throughout their time in office, and a thorough cognitive assessment should also be included, and failure to comply will result in no federal funds being obligated or expended for official travel.”

George Santos, the Republican congressman who has admitted to telling many lies in his successful run for office last year, filed paperwork that would allow him to stand for a second term representing his district, the New York Times reports.

The lawmaker’s filing of a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission does not mean Santos will necessarily run again, according to the Times, but does let him raise money for campaign expenses. Ever since Santos’s fabrications were revealed by the newspaper shortly after his election victory in a Democratic-leaning New York district, the congressman has faced calls to resign from his own constituents and lawmakers from both parties.

He’s resisted those calls, but is also at the center of several investigations, including a House ethics committee inquiry and a sexual harassment allegation.