It was a lively day in Washington with developments on several fronts this afternoon.
Former Vice-president, Mike Pence, will not fight a judge’s order compelling him to appear before a special grand jury hearing testimony in the justice department’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
King Charles invited Biden to the United Kingdom for an official state visit and the US president accepted, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. She offered no timeline for when the visit would take place.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed the repeal of a dormant 1931 law that the banned abortion and criminalized providers who performed them.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in California today, becoming the most senior US figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on US soil since 1979, despite threats of retaliation from China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own.
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has weighed in to say he does not agree with the criminal charges brought against former president Donald Trump in the US, calling the case political, Reuters reports.
Reflecting on his day in court, Trump said he sees a silver lining.
“As much as I can enjoy a day like Tuesday,” the former president wrote, denouncing liberals as “Radical Left Lunatics” and insisting there was “no crime” committed, “it was an unbelievable experience, perhaps the Best Day in History for somebody who had just suffered Unjustifiable Indictment!”
In a burst of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump shared polling, promoted by conservative outlets, that showed him stretching his lead over the nominal Republican presidential field.
While Trump’s arraignment have appeared to rally Republican voters to his side, polling also shows that a majority of Americans agree with indictment, suggesting his legal woes could hinder him with the broader electorate.
He added: “My Poll Numbers have never been better, almost $10 Million was raised for the Campaign and, the day was capped off with a very important Speech. If we don’t stop the Radical Left, America is DEAD!”
Nevada senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat, will seek re-election, an expected but nevertheless welcome announcement for the party facing a tough electoral map in 2024.
The Silver State has proved to be one of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds. In 2022, Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto narrowly eked out a victory against her Republican opponent, while the state’s Democratic governor lost re-election to the Trump-backed Joe Lombardo.
Next year Senate Democrats are defending seats in a handful of states Trump won as well as a number of swing states. This comes after they expanded their narrow majority to 51 in 2022 by flipping a seat Pennsylvania.
Rosen’s launch video emphasizes her biography, her support for the infrastructure law and legislation reducing the cost of prescription drug prices, and her focus on issues like abortion access and climate change.
Republican-led legislatures around the country are considering – and passing – new laws to control the lives of trans youth – from the care they can seek, to the sports’ team they can play on and the school bathrooms they can use.
On Wednesday, Indiana’s Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, signed into law a measure banning all gender-affirming care for minors, after telling reporters the bill sent to his desk was “clear as mud”. With his signature, Indiana joins at least 12 other states that have enacted similar bans or restrictions on such care.
Opponents of such legislation say the care, which includes hormone therapy and puberty blockers endorsed by top medical associations, are safe, largely reversible and can be life-saving for trans youth.
Republican lawmakers in Kansas, meanwhile, overrode the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning transgender athletes from participating in girl’s and women’s sports from kindergarten through college, per the Associated Press.
It follows a measure approved by Kansas lawmakers on Tuesday that critics say is among the most restrictive in the nation. The bill, which Kelly is expected to veto, would prevent trans people from using public restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities that do not align with the gender on their birth certificate. It would also prevent them from changing their name or gender on their driver’s license.
Former Vice-president, Mike Pence, will not fight a judge’s order compelling him to appear before a special grand jury hearing testimony in the justice department’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Vice-president Pence will not appeal the judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena as required by law,” a spokesman for Pence said.
“The court’s landmark and historic ruling affirmed for the first time in history that the speech or debate clause extends to the vice-president,” the spokesperson said. “Having vindicated that principle of the constitution, VP Pence will not appeal the judge’s ruling and will comply with the subpoena.”
The president and the first lady are “very much looking forward” to welcoming LSU Tigers basketball team to the White House after they defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes to win their first NCAA championship, Jean-Pierre said.
But it appears unclear whether the team, or its star player, Angel Reese, is planning to attend after a verbal flap by the first lady, who attended the championship game, suggested both teams be invited to the White House.
Traditionally, only the champions are invited. Reese called the remark a “JOKE” on Twitter. The White House attempted to walk back the comment, saying Jill Biden’s comments were “intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes”.
“She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.”
But in a podcast interview, according to CNN, Reese told the hosts that she did not accept Biden’s “apology”. “You can’t go back on certain things that you say … They can have that spotlight. We’ll go to the Obamas.’ We’ll go see Michelle. We’ll see Barack,” the star said.
Jean-Pierre said King Charles invited Biden to the United Kingdom for an official state visit and he accepted. The king extended the invitation during a recent call with the president, which Jean Pierre described as “very friendly”. She offered no timeline for when the visit would take place.
Biden is not planning to attend King Charles’ coronation next month in keeping with past precedent. The US delegation will be lead instead by the first lady, Jill Biden.
Pressed repeatedly on why Biden wasn’t attending, Jean-Pierre insisted that the British people should not see the decision as a “snub.”
“I will leave it at that,” she said. “It is not a snub.”
On whether he would meet with the king during his visit to the UK and Ireland next week, Jean-Pierre said to stay tuned.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is at the podium this afternoon answering reporters’ questions on a range of subjects. Here’s a quick rat-a-tat.
She declined to offer a timeline of when the White House would release a comprehensive strategy for combatting antisemitism, as Biden announced in a CNN op-ed this morning.
She would not comment on Trump’s arraignment, citing the White House’s position that it does not comment on ongoing legal cases. However, she did in general terms say that the White House and the president condemns “any type of attacks on any judge or our judicial system”.
Biden was briefed by senior advisers about the charges against Trump, Jean-Pierre said, insisting his focus was not on the former president. “He’s not focused on this indictment,” she said.
On McCarthy’s meeting with the Taiwanese president, Jean Pierre said: “There is no reason for Beijing to turn this transit into something that is used as a pretext to overreact … We just do not see, there should not be a reason, for the PCR to overreact here.”
She would not say whether Biden planned to take family members with him on what he views as a return to his ancestral home. She said he would use his family’s history and Irish roots to tell a broader story about Irish immigrants influence on the nation.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed the repeal of a 1931 law that the banned abortion and criminalized providers who performed them.
A backlash to the supreme court’s to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion helped power Whitmer and a slate of Democratic candidates to victory in last year’s midterm elections.
Voters overwhelmingly approved a citizen-led initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution, which rendered the 1931 law unconstitutional. However, if at some point in the future, voters were to gather enough signatures to amend the state’s constitution and overturn abortion right, the 1931 ban would then have been enforceable.
Whitmer’s signature eliminated that possibility entirely, erasing the nearly-century old law completely.
Testifying before a federal grand jury, former top Trump administration officials Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli said they repeatedly informed the then-president that he could not seize voting machines as part of his efforts to cling to power in the wake of his defeat in 2020, according to new reporting by CNN.
Citing three people familiar with the proceedings, CNN reported that Wolf and Cuccinelli were to describe discussions within the administration related to seizing voting machines when they appeared before the grand jury earlier this year.
One of the sources told CNN that Cuccinelli testified to the grand jury that he “made clear at all times” that the Department of Homeland Security did not have the authority to seize voting machines.
That line of questioning goes to the heart of [special counsel Jack] Smith’s challenge in any criminal case he might bring — to prove that Trump and his allies pursued their efforts despite knowing their fraud claims were false or their gambits weren’t lawful. To bring any potential criminal charges, prosecutors would have to overcome Trump’s public claim that he believed then and now that fraud really did cost him the election, per CNN.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen in California today, becoming the most senior US figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on US soil since 1979, despite threats of retaliation from China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own, Reuters reports.
McCarthy, a Republican who through his House position is number three in the US leadership hierarchy, welcomed Tsai on Wednesday morning at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, near Los Angeles.
China staged war games around Taiwan last August following the visit to Taipei of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Taiwan’s defense ministry said a Chinese aircraft carrier group was in the waters off the island’s southeast coast ahead of the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy in California.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said there was nothing new about a Taiwanese president transiting through the United States and Beijing should not use it as an excuse to take any action or ratchet up tensions.
Supporters waving Taiwan flags and pro-Taiwan and Hong Kong banners chanted “Jiayou Taiwan” – the equivalent of “Go Taiwan.”
Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.A meeting in California is seen as a potentially less provocative alternative to McCarthy visiting Taiwan, something he has said he hopes to do.
Even the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has now weighed in to say he does not agree with the criminal charges brought against former president Donald Trump in the US, calling the case political, Reuters reports.
Supposedly legal issues should not be used for electoral, political purposes. That’s why I don’t agree with what they are doing to ex-president Trump,” Lopez Obrador said at a news conference this morning.
That’s a heck of a lot more than current US president Joe Biden has said on the matter, as he and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre continue to rebuff requests for comment by political journalists on Trump’s legal crisis.
Trump is the first sitting or former US president to face criminal charges, as he pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts related to business fraud, allegedly to cover up election finance fraud, in New York on Tuesday afternoon.
Leftist populist “Amlo” compared Trump’s case to the December ousting of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, who was removed from office and arrested after trying to dissolve congress.
It should be the people who decide,” said López Obrador, who added that he could not say whether Trump was guilty or not.
Here’s where things stand today
Donald Trump continues to lash out at his opponents – real and perceived – the morning after his historic arraignment. In a pair of social media posts, he attacked the investigations against him, accused Democrats of “weaponizing” federal law enforcement agencies and called on Congressional Republicans to “defund” the DOJ and FBI.
Janet Protasiewicz won her race for the Wisconsin’s supreme court, beating out a conservative candidate who had advised Republicans on legal efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state through the use of “fake electors”. Her win will flip the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, in an election which democracy observers have called the most consequential one of the year, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake.
Progressive Cook county board commissioner Brandon Johnson won the election for Chicago mayor on Tuesday evening after pulling ahead of his opponent Paul Vallas on Tuesday.
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced that it had reached a tentative $144.5m settlement with victims and relatives of those killed in the 2017 mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Still to come: House speaker Kevin McCarthy and a bipartisan contingent of lawmakers will sit down with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen today in California, a carefully choreographed encounter that comes amid rising tensions between the US and China.
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced that it had reached a tentative $144.5m settlement with victims and relatives of those killed in the 2017 mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Dozens of worshipers were killed or injured when gunman Devin Kelley opened fire during a Sunday service at First Baptist church of Sutherland Springs. The gunman, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, had served in the Air Force. Twenty-six people, including a pregnant woman, were killed and 22 others were injured.
After the shooting, dozens of victims and their relatives sued the US air force, alleging that it failed to report the gunman’s history of violence, including an assault conviction, to the FBI’s national background check system. That conviction, they argued, should have prevented the former airman from being able to purchase the guns he used in the assault.
A judge had previously ruled that the air force was “60% liable” for the attack as a result of its failure to report the conviction.
“No words or amount of money can diminish the immense tragedy of the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs,” said associate attorney general Vanita Gupta in the press release. “Today’s announcement brings the litigation to a close, ending a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime.”
The DoJ said the settlement was still subject to court approvals.
In an op-ed published by CNN, Joe Biden marked the start of Passover by imploring Americans and democratic citizens around the world to speak out against rising antisemitism.
He said the White House would soon release the “first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism”, which he said would outline actions the federal government will take based on outreach to more than a thousand “Jewish community stakeholders, faith and civil rights leaders, state and local officials and more.”
During his time in office, the president noted, the White House hosted the first High Holiday reception and lit the first permanent White House Hanukah menorah in our nation’s history.
Here’s a bit more of Biden’s passover message:
To the Jewish community, I want you to know that I see your fear, your hurt and your concern that this venom is being normalized. I decided to run for President after I saw it in Charlottesville, when neo-Nazis marched from the shadows spewing the same antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany in the 1930s,” Biden wrote.
“Rest assured that I am committed to the safety of the Jewish people. I stand with you. America stands with you. Under my presidency, we continue to condemn antisemitism at every turn. Failure to call out hate is complicity. Silence is complicity. And we will not be silent.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
