From 4h ago
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hardline Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy.
On Thursday, at least 19 Republicans, including Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, whom Scalise is reported to have flipped yesterday, appears to have indicated they won’t vote for him. Luna told CNN’s Annie Grayer:
Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now, again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party.
House GOP officials are continuing to meet behind closed doors to decide on the House speaker nomination.
“I’m not cutting any deals, I want to meet in front of all our members, answer every question,” Steve Scalise said following a closed-door meeting with GOP officials.
“The good news is our support continues to grow. We’re continuing to work to narrow the gap and that’s going on and we’re going to continue the meetings. There are some other members that want to meet as a group, individually,” Scalise said.
“I’ve asked that we convene those groups as well as members who expressed individual concerns on the floor so that we can deal with those before we go to the floor…. I took every question that everybody brought and we’re going to continue to go through this process as we grow our support,” he added.
The Illinois governor JB Pritzker has denounced Donald Trump’s praise for Hezbollah, saying:
No true friend of Israel, the Jewish people, or of peace would praise Hezbollah just days after what President Biden and Jewish leaders have called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Right now is the time to stand with Israel as they confront unimaginable loss and the ongoing threat from terrorists seeking to harm their people.
Donald Trump’s comments are disgusting, dangerous, and underscore a simple fact: he is unfit to lead our country and would make the United States and our allies around the world less safe.
On Wednesday, Trump called the Iran-aligned and pro-Hamas militant group Hezbollah “very smart” amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, prompting widespread criticism, including from the White House.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman has called on the Senate to expel New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez.
After Menendez was charged by federal authorities on Thursday with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, Fetterman said:
Senator Menendez should not be a US senator. He should have been gone long ago. It is time for every one of my colleagues in the Senate to join me in expelling senator Menendez.
He added:
We cannot have an alleged foreign agent in the United States Senate. This is not a close call.
It appears that Republicans have left today’s closed-door meeting unhappy as they continue to decide on the House speakership nomination.
Alabama’s Republican representative Mike Rogers is reported to have left the meeting unsatisfied, saying that eight Republicans were “traitors”, a word NBC’s Sahil Kapur said he used four times.
Other Republicans said Steve Scalise repeatedly refused to disclose what his plans were, with one telling Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman: “Just rambled and didn’t directly answer questions. No plan. Didn’t unify or inspire the conference.”
The conflict-of-interest hearing on Stanley Woodward, the lawyer for Donald Trump’s valet Walt Nauta, in the classified documents case has been postponed.
US district judge Aileen Cannon admonished prosecutors after they suggested Woodward should be precluded from making a closing argument to a jury, based on his prior defense of a trial witness.
Cannon appeared furious, saying that prosecutors had suggested an “absolute bar” at the last minute – at the hearing itself – and had no case law authority from the southern district of Florida or eleventh circuit.
“We cannot proceed with this Garcia hearing,” she said, referring to the name of a hearing that addresses conflict of interest.
Here are the latest developments in the Donald Trump classified documents case in Fort Pierce, Florida, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:
Trump co-defendant and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira told a judge he wants to keep his lead lawyer, John Irving – who is being paid by Trump’s PAC.
De Oliveira was asked whether he understood Irving’s potential conflicts arising from his prior representation of three people the special counsel could call as trial witnesses, and he said he would move forward with Irving anyway.
De Oliveira, who did not complete high school and told the judge he could read English better than he could write, struggled to explicate the exact nature of the potential conflicts in his own words, though he affirmed repeatedly when the judge walked him through questions.
The defendant’s grasp of English has been an issue that the former Trump lawyers discussed among themselves previously – they had wondered whether he even understood the questions from the FBI during the interviews where he’s alleged to have lied.
Judge Aileen Cannon will run through the potential conflicts for Trump’s other co-defendant and valet, Walt Nauta.
If the morning has been frantic for Steve Scalise and his supporters, as he tries to garner the Republican votes needed to become speaker of the House, for readers it’s been tense.
The Louisiana congressman is, so far, getting nowhere fast amid deep divisions among the House GOP conference.
Meanwhile, there’s court action involving Donald Trump. And overshadowing everything is the terrible conflict between Israel and Hamas in southern Israel and Gaza. We’re bringing you the main US developments in relation to the war here, but detailed live coverage is in our global blog, which is currently running around the clock and can be read here.
Here’s where things stand:
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hard-line Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy. His prospects at this moment look grim.
Texas Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who is chair of the House foreign affairs committee and on Sunday said the GOP conference was in a state of “civil war”, said today that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been further charged by federal prosecutors, this time with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said that his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
A federal judge was expected on Thursday to weigh whether the lawyers for Donald Trump’s two co-defendants charged with trying to obstruct the US justice department from retrieving classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago club had conflicts of interest and should be ordered off the case.
And, where we started today: Louisiana congressman and House majority leader Steve Scalise has a fierce battle on his hands among warring House Republicans as he tries to scramble enough support from his own party to be elected speaker.
Buckle in: House Republicans are going to be in turmoil and deadlock for a while longer.
Donald Trump has demanded an apology from Forbes magazine after it removed him again from its list of the 400 richest people in the US.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
“I hereby demand a full apology from the failing Forbes magazine,” the former president wrote on Wednesday on Truth Social, the reportedly struggling social media platform he set up after being expelled from mainstream platforms over the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Forbes released its Trump-free list last week, saying the his net worth was down $600m from a year before. Trump has been on the list since the 1990s, other than in 2021.
In response, Trump complained about “really dumb writers assigned to hit me hard” and bragged about huge leads in Republican presidential polling he holds despite facing 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats.
In that post from Monday, Trump concluded: “So much for Forbes!”
For the full story, click here:
According to Arkansas’ Republican representative Steve Womack, there are at least six hard no’s against Steve Scalise, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.
“Based on what I’ve heard, I don’t [think] there’s going to be a vote this week,” Womack said, adding that the six hard no’s are the only people who spoke up during the GOP closed-door meeting today.
“There are a lot of reasons for various members to be objecting to what the play call is for House Republicans. And the play call is Steve Scalise,” Sherman reports Womack as having said.
New York’s Republican representative George Santos said he will not vote for Steve Scalise as speaker, telling C-Span that he isn’t voting for someone “who lacks fundamental leadership skills”.
It’s never Scalise. We’re going to have to find someone else in leadership that comes forward that’s going to be a compromise candidate.
If you’re in leadership … you talk to everybody. I’ve reached out numerous times to congressman Scalise and me reaching out and asking him for his guidance in leadership and him not reaching back out, that’s a dereliction of his duty as a leader so I’m not voting for him,.
The conservative political advocacy group Faith and Freedom Coalition has issued a statement announcing its support for Steve Scalise’s House speakership.
The group called Scalise “a solid champion for life, the family, religious liberty, and sound fiscal policy throughout his public life,” and went on to describe him as an “unapologetic defender of conservative principles from the moment he arrived in Congress.”
“We are grateful to our friend Jim Jordan for agreeing to nominate Speaker-designate Scalise as a gesture of unity. Now that Republicans have chosen a speaker-designate, it is time for the House to get back to work,” it said.
“Republicans need to unite behind Rep. Scalise so they can address the critical issues facing American families and our longtime allies. We strongly urge Republicans to vote posthaste to make Steve Scalise the next House speaker,” the group added.
Steve Scalise appears to be struggling to convince several hardline Republican holdouts to throw their support behind him for his House speaker candidacy.
On Thursday, at least 19 Republicans, including Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, whom Scalise is reported to have flipped yesterday, appears to have indicated they won’t vote for him. Luna told CNN’s Annie Grayer:
Yesterday when I talked to him, I wanted to see where he was at. But right now, again going back to the unification needed in the conference, we didn’t have that in that room right now. We need someone who can unify the party.
House GOP officials are continuing to meet behind closed doors to decide on the House speaker nomination.
Texas’s Republican representative Michael McCaul said that the House speaker nomination process is a “dangerous game that we’re playing”.
Speaking to C-Span on Thursday, McCaul said:
It just proves our adversaries right that democracy doesn’t work. Our adversaries are watching us and Israel is watching us. They need our help. I have my resolution condemning Hamas, supporting Israel. We can’t even vote on that until we put a speaker in the chair.
He went on to add:
If we don’t have a speaker, we can’t assist Israel in this great time of need … We need to stop playing games and politics with this and vote a speaker in.
New Jersey’s Democratic senator Bob Menendez has been charged by federal prosecutors with being an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.
“The new charge was included in a revised indictment filed against the Democratic senator for New Jersey in federal court in Manhattan. His trial on corruption charges will begin in May,” Reuters reported on Thursday.
Last month, Menendez and his wife were charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting various gifts including gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the Egyptian government.
Since then, Menendez has faced resignation calls from across the aisle. Following revelations of the charges, the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “disturbed” by them and said that Menendez “fell way, way below the standard”.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said his mother called him to say that the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer had upset her by telling her friends that Kushner would go to jail.
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
“My poor mom, I told her to stop, you know, reading whatever. I said, ‘I promise you, we didn’t do anything wrong, it’s good,’” Kushner told the Lex Fridman podcast. “But you know, she’d call me [to] say … ‘Our friends on the Upper East Side were talking with Chuck Schumer, who says Jared’s going to jail.’”
Schumer, the senior senator from New York, was the Democratic minority leader in the US Senate during the presidency of Donald Trump, Kushner’s father-in-law and White House boss. Since 2021, Schumer has been the majority leader.
Married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, Kushner became his father-in-law’s chief adviser on the campaign trail and then in the White House.
Trump’s first two years in power were dogged by investigations and speculation over his links to Russia and interference by Moscow in the 2016 US election.
Kushner’s interactions with high-placed Russians were placed under the national spotlight.
For the full story, click here:
At the closed-door GOP meeting today, Steve Scalise is planning to deliver additional details on policy, Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman reports.
Scalise is said to also reiterate that he has not made any side deals with individual Republicans.
Texas’s Democratic representative Veronica Escobar announced that she would “welcome any Republican willing to join House Democrats to put our country ahead of petty politics.”
Escobar, who represents the Texas’s 16th district, added in a tweet on Wednesday:
“We don’t have time for this. The American people and the global stage are looking to us for leadership…
With just over half of his party supporting him for Speaker, the only way [Steve] Scalise will win is by making concessions to the extremists and holdouts.”
Florida’s Republican representative Matt Gaetz is joining Marjorie Taylor Greene in her calls to move the House speaker discussions onto the House floor.
I agree with MTG. Let’s do the messy work of governing and leadership selection in front of the people,” Gaetz tweeted on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Gaetz filed a motion to remove former House speaker Kevin McCarthy from office.
Gaetz’s motion came just days after McCarthy worked alongside House Democrats to pass a bipartisan bill at the eleventh hour that narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
