Catch your breath everyone, we’ve reached the closing point of the US politics blog for the day, and indeed the week.

It was an uncomfortable day for Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader caught on audio (twice) with comments uncomplimentary to the former president Donald Trump in the wake of the 6 January Capitol insurrection. Trump’s response, when it comes, could be central to McCarthy’s survival in his role.

Join us again on Monday for what promises to be another lively week, especially as the US House and Senate return to business after the Easter recess and the 6 January House inquiry picks up steam.

You can follow developments in the Ukraine conflict on our 24-hour blog here.

Here’s what else we were watching in the US today:

• Joe Biden had thoughts on the McCarthy tapes during an Earth Day address in Seattle, where he promoted his administration’s “green agenda” and signed an executive order protecting national forests.
• Biden said “the far right have taken over” the Republican party after lawmakers in Florida backed governor Ron DeSantis’s push to punish Disney for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
• Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three separate states, according to a Washington Post report.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Georgia congresswoman, took the stand in Atlanta in a hearing about the attempt to bar her from Congress over her support for the January 6 riot.

Florida’s Ron DeSantis has closed out an eventful week by signing two of his flagship “culture war” laws into effect, one abolishing Disney’s half-century old right to self-governance, and another outlawing companies from espousing what he calls “woke” ideology over race.

At a signing ceremony Friday afternoon in Tallahassee, the Republican governor and likely candidate for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination blasted corporations such as Google and Disney that he insists are teaching employees to believe Americans are inherently racist.

“Under this law, that is a violation of your civil rights,” DeSantis told the vastly white, completely unmasked crowd to cheers, referring to the “anti-critical race theory” legislation.

The new Disney law, and DeSantis’s congressional map gerrymandering boundaries to reduce Black voting power and increase Florida’s Republican representation in Washington DC, were rushed through by lawmakers in a special session called by the governor this week.

Read more:

JD Vance, the one-time never-Trumper who converted just in time to win the former president’s endorsement for Ohio’s contentious Republican US Senate primary, has been explaining his case to New York magazine’s Intelligencer.

“I think there are so many reasons I was wrong about Trump, but I’m happy that I was wrong about Trump,” Vance said in a phone interview (he once said Donald Trump could be “America’s Hitler”).

“Something our voters respond to on the campaign trail is being told the truth. ‘Yeah I had one beef six years ago and I have a different view today, this is why it changed’, is a hell of lot better than trying to pretend that you didn’t say something you said.”

Vance, the bestselling author of the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, faces an uphill battle in a crowded race. According to the RealClearPolitics.com average a week ago, Josh Mandel held a 1.7-point lead over Mike Gibbons, with Vance in third. Polling day is 3 May.

Vance, however, is optimistic that he can win with Trump’s support. “Like some others, JD Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades,” Trump said. “He is our best chance for victory.”

Towards the end of his climate address, Biden veered off script to take a shot at Republicans, and the tape scandal engulfing the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy today.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This ain’t your father’s Republican party. All you got to do is look at what’s being played out this morning, the tape that was released…

This is the Maga [make America great again] party now. You got the senator from Texas and others, these guys are a different breed of cat. They’re not like those I served with for so many years, and the people who know better are afraid to act better because they know they’ll be primaried.

They come to me and say: ‘Joe, I want to be with you on such and such but I can’t because I’ll be primaried, I’ll lose my race’. Folks, this has got to start to change.

Biden ended the address with a call to nations to end deforestation, then he signed the executive order.

Biden also celebrated the US return to the Paris climate agreement that Trump rejected:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We convened last year with 40 leaders around the globe, reasserting America’s leadership on climate after four years of an administration denying there was a crisis, denying there was any need to do anything about it.

Last year the US deployed the most solar wind and battery storage in American history, we made record investments in energy in rural America. We’re investing in technology so you can heat and cool your home when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

And by the way, windmills don’t cause cancer [another dig at Trump].

As for clean vehicles, Biden admitted: “I have a 1968 Corvette that does nothing but pollute the air. I don’t drive it very much.”

He said he would be first in the queue for an electric Corvette, and praised the American automobile industry for its commitment to sell at least 50% electric vehicles (EV) by 2030 – “I didn’t make it, they made it,” Biden said – and touted their $100bn investment in EV standards.

There will be 500,000 charging stations, and fleets of electric school buses to eliminate diesel vehicles “which pollute the air and pollute the lungs”, he added.

The answer to solving the climate crisis, Joe Biden says, lies with youth:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A new generation of Americans [is] helping us lead the way against the threat of climate change. And every time I get a bit down I just turn on the television or take a look at all the young people.

This young generation is not going to put up with a lot of this stuff. They are really, really energized. Whether it’s basic human rights or it’s the environment, they’re just not stopping. And from day one of my administration we’ve stood with them.

Without giving specific details, Biden said that every vehicle in the US military “is going to be climate friendly”. And then he turned to his so-called green agenda, and plans to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}My view on this crisis is as an opportunity to do things we wanted to do, and only now have become so apparent.

One of the things I’m proudest of in our administration before I got into my ‘green agenda’, I got all the unions together. Starting with the IBEW electrical workers, they endorsed it and every union is stepped up because they figured it out.

They’re the ones who can help us transition like never before. It’s not going to cost them jobs. It’s going to increase jobs. The IBEW is going to be building 50,000 electric [vehicle] charging stations all across America.

Joe Biden, in an Earth Day address in Washington state, has said the climate crisis is now so obvious that world must take immediate action to help solve it.

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re at one of those moments in world history, and in American history, where we’ve reached the point that the crisis on the environment has become so obvious, with the notable exception of the former president, that we we really have an opportunity to do things we couldn’t have done five or 10 years ago.

The president was speaking in Seattle, where he signing an executive order intended to safeguard the nation’s natural forests, and strengthen reforestation. The loss of the world’s forests, he said, is contributing to the climate emergency.

“All around the country there used to be a hell of lot more forests like this,” he said, showing trees behind him, and calling forests “our natural wonders”.

“But we’re doing everything we can.”

The dig at Donald Trump was possibly a reference to the former president’s much ridiculed stance on forestation, and his assertion that wildfires could be eliminated by raking up fallen leaves.

Here’s the White House fact sheet about Biden’s executive order and efforts to combat global deforestation.

And here’s a special Earth Day look back at the president and the climate crisis:

Black community groups and voting rights advocates have filed a lawsuit seeking to block Florida’s new congressional map that they say eliminates minority representation in large areas of the state.

Republican lawmakers on Thursday gave a rubber stamp to the “racist” redistricting map drawn up by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, even though it was their responsibility to come up with one.

The newly-approved map, which critics say is among the most gerrymandered in the country, severely curtails Black voting power in Florida and puts Republicans on course to win 20 of the state’s 28 congressional districts, four more than present.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Black Voters Matter, Equal Ground Education Fund, League of Women Voters of Florida, Florida Rising Together and individual voters, according to the Democracy Docket.

Read more:

Here’s where we stand midway through an extraordinary Friday in US politics:

• Kevin McCarthy said Donald Trump recognized ‘some responsibility’ for the 6 January Capitol attack, according to an audio recording of the House minority leader talking to Republicans shortly after the insurrection
• In an earlier scoop also by the New York Times regarding another audio clip, McCarthy appeared to be caught in a lie, having denied saying he would suggest to Trump that he should resign.
• Joe Biden says “the far right have taken over” the Republican party after lawmakers in Florida backed governor Ron DeSantis’s push to punish Disney for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
• Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was simultaneously registered to vote in three separate states, according to a Washington Post report.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Georgia congresswoman, took the stand in Atlanta in a hearing about the attempt to bar her from Congress over her support for the January 6 riot.

Stick with us, there’s plenty more to come, including Joe Biden talking shortly about Earth Day at an event in Washington state.

Bad news for Joe Biden in a new Gallup poll, which puts his approval rating at 41.3% and notes: “From a historical perspective, Biden’s fifth quarter average is lower than that of any prior elected president, except Donald Trump.

Trump, need I remind anyone, became a one-term president when Biden beat him in 2020. Not that Trump will admit defeat. (Although he will, sort of.)

“Trump averaged 39.1% during his fifth quarter,” Gallup adds. “Although their fifth-quarter average approval ratings were at least five percentage points higher than Biden’s, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama join Trump and Biden in averaging less than majority approval at this stage of their presidencies.”

Gallup also says the signs are not good for Biden mounting the sort of climb in the ratings which could help Democrats in the midterm elections in November, “not only because of the historical record for second-year presidents, but because his approval ratings have been stuck in the low 40s for eight months.

“Even if they improve, they would have to do so by at least 10 points to be in the 50% range historically associated with the president’s party avoiding big seat losses.”

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump spoke to Kevin McCarthy on Thursday night after the release by the New York Times of a tape of the House Republican leader saying he told Trump to resign over January 6.

The Post also says the conversation went well, with Trump “not upset about McCarthy’s remarks and … glad the Republican leader didn’t follow through, which Trump saw as a sign of his continued grip on the Republican party”.

Speculation about McCarthy’s future, and his chances of becoming House speaker if Republicans take the chamber in November, has been rife since the release of the Times report and the tape it was based on.

Of course, the Times has today reported a second tape, on which McCarthy says Trump acknowledged responsibility for January 6 and the deadly attack on the US Capitol.

Trump has not commented publicly. Yet.

For Joe Biden, the vote by Florida Republicans on Thursday to strip Disney of its self-governing powers was a step too far.

“Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse,” the president exclaimed at a fundraiser in Oregon, in apparent disbelief that Governor Ron DeSantis’s culture wars had reached the gates of the Magic Kingdom.

The move, Biden asserted, reflected his belief that the “far right has taken over the party”.

By voting to penalise Florida’s largest private employer, lawmakers followed DeSantis’s wishes in securing revenge on a company he brands as “woke” for its opposition to his “don’t say gay” law.

DeSantis is a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. He has pushed his legislature on several right-wing laws in recent weeks, including a 15-week abortion ban, stripping Black voters of congressional representation and preventing discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity issues in schools.

“This is not your father’s Republican party,” Biden said at the fundraiser.

“It’s not even conservative in a traditional sense of conservatism. It’s mean, it’s ugly. Look at what’s happening in Florida: Christ, they’re going after Mickey Mouse.”

According to the Washington Post, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, was “until last week … simultaneously registered to vote in three different states — North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina — according to state records”.

Meadows is already under investigation for being registered to vote from an address in North Carolina at which he never lived.

The Post says “the overlap lasted about three weeks, and it might have continued if revelations about Meadows’s voting record had not attracted scrutiny in North Carolina.

“Meadows is still registered in Virginia and South Carolina.”

In short, this is all distinctly awkward for a man who remains at the heart of Trump’s efforts to convince supporters voter fraud was a huge part of the 2020 elections, as Peter Stone details here.

The Post said a spokesman for Meadows declined to comment. You can read the Post piece on Meadows here.

The New York Times is out with another scoop involving Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy and an audio recording.

Yesterday the Times reported a call on 10 January, in which McCarthy said he thought Trump should resign over the January 6 Capitol riot. McCarthy denied it, whereupon the two Times reporters involved released the tape.

The Times now says that on 11 January the House minority leader told Republican lawmakers Trump acknowledged some responsibility for the attack on Congress.

McCarthy is quoted as saying:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Let me be very clear to all of you, and I have been very clear to the president: he bears responsibilities for his words and actions … No if, ands or buts.

“I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? … Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and he’d need to acknowledge that.”

Trump has not publicly admitted responsibility for the deadly attack, to which a bipartisan Senate committee linked seven deaths and over which around 800 people have been charged.

Trump has not yet commented on McCarthy’s taped comments in the 10 January call. He did not comment immediately on the new report from the Times.

Most observers think McCarthy’s future – and his ambitions to be House speaker should Republicans take control in the midterm elections this year – depends on which way Trump jumps in response to the minority leader’s current (and evidently growing) woes.