Biden dismisses concerns about his age: ‘It doesn’t register with me’ – as it happened

House Republicans began debate on their bill to raise the debt limit while cutting government spending, prompting a furious response from the White House and vows from Democrats that they’ll have nothing to do with the effort. In Florida, governor Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney is heading to the courts, which GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley used to level an unexpected barb at DeSantis.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Joe Biden addressed concerns about his age in a White House press conference held the day after announcing his re-election bid.

• Republicans in Montana’s House of Representatives may vote to censure or expel the state’s sole transgender lawmaker.

• West Virginia’s Republican governor Jim Justice is expected to announce his campaign for Senate, potentially pitting him against conservative Democrat Joe Manchin.

• “Donald Trump raped me”, advice columnist E Jean Carroll said in the second day of the trial of her civil lawsuit against the former president.

• Joining the presidential race today was Republican Asa Hutchinson, a rare Trump critic who also tangled with Bill Clinton once upon a time.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden met with the justice department today, amid reports that the president’s son could soon face charges over tax evasion and lying on gun purchase documentation, CNN reports.

House Republicans have fixated on the younger Biden in an attempt to paint the president as corrupt, though their investigation has yet to turn up much. However the US attorney in Delaware is said to be nearing a decision over whether to bring charges against Biden, which could add a wrinkle to Joe Biden’s re-election effort.

Here’s the latest on the case, from CNN:

Hunter Biden’s longtime attorney Chris Clark, along with several other attorneys, were spotted by CNN heading into Justice Department headquarters early Wednesday. When reached afterward, Clark declined to comment.

In attendance at the meeting were officials from the Justice Department’s tax division and the Delaware US attorney’s office, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The tax division is led by a career DOJ lawyer as there still isn’t a Senate-confirmed appointee.

David Weiss, the Trump-appointed Delaware US Attorney, has been overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden.

The Hunter Biden legal team had reached out to Justice officials in recent weeks, asking for an update on the case, according to one source familiar with the meeting.

After prosecutors narrowed down the possible charges Hunter Biden could face last year, there haven’t been any public developments. According to sources familiar with the investigation, prosecutors are still weighing whether to bring two misdemeanor charges for failure to file taxes, one count of felony tax evasion related to the overreporting of expenses, and a false statement charge regarding a gun purchase.

In an interview with CNN, House financial services committee chair Patrick McHenry shared a little bit of the Republican strategy for passing a debt limit increase with cuts Joe Biden won’t accept:

Disney’s lawsuit against Florida governor Ron DeSantis is only hours old, but the biggest winner thus far could be Nikki Haley.

She’s on the campaign trail for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, a contest DeSantis is expected to soon join. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, had him in her crosshairs when asked on Fox News about DeSantis’s squabble with the entertainment giant.

Here’s what she said:

A reminder: polls have repeatedly shown Donald Trump well and away the favorite for the nomination, over both Haley and DeSantis.

Let’s take a metaphorical trip down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to see how things are going in the House of Representatives.

In a party line vote, Republicans have succeeded in beginning debate on their debt ceiling proposal, which they call the Limit, Save, Grow Act and which Democrats are dissing as the Default on America Act. In addition to raising the debt limit, the measure would cut spending by about $4.8tn through 2033, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office:

However, it’s still possible that enough GOP lawmakers refuse to vote for the bill’s final passage that Kevin McCarthy and his deputies run into trouble. Several remain opposed or on the fence, as CNN reported just now:

McCarthy’s quest to get them on board will be an issue to watch in the hours and maybe even days to come.

That’s not all the House GOP has going on. Tomorrow, majority leader Steve Scalise along with the chairs of the judiciary and homeland security committees will unveil a “border security package” that they intend to put up for a vote in May, according to Scalise’s office. That will be another piece of legislation to watch.

As Joe Biden was wrapping up his press conference with South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol at the White House, a reporter asked him about the bill House Republicans are promoting to raise the debt limit while blocking a number of his administration’s priorities.

“They haven’t figured out the debt limit yet,” Biden replied. “Happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.”

That’s GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy he’s referring to, of course. Biden has refused to negotiate with him over raising the limit, saying cuts to the federal budget are a separate issue from increasing the government’s borrowing authority to pay for programs Congress has already approved. But McCarthy wants to trade one for the other, and economists predict a default could happen in June if a deal is not reached.

Joe Biden said he was not concerned about running for a second term despite being the oldest president ever to do it, a day after officially kicking off his re-election bid.

“With regard to age … I guess how old I am. I can’t even say the number. It doesn’t register with me,” Biden said at a joint press conference with visiting South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol at the White House.

Now 80 years old, Biden was the oldest person ever elected president, and would set another record if he wins a second term in the November 2024 vote. While Donald Trump, who remains the most popular candidate among Republicans, is a similar age at 76, Biden’s foes have questioned whether his age would hold him back in a second term.

Americans are “gonna see a race, and they’re going to judge whether or not I have it or don’t have it,” Biden said of those concerns. “I respect them taking a hard look at it. I take a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run, and I feel good, I feel excited about the prospects and I think we’re on the verge of really turning the corner in a way we haven’t a long time.”

It’s been a busy morning on the legal front for Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and other prominent figures on the far right of the Republican party. Reuters has the following report about sentencing in the cases of two associates of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, in a case regarding fraudulent fundraising …

Brian Kolfage, a US air force veteran and former associate of the Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon, was sentenced on Wednesday to more than four years in prison after admitting to conspiring to defraud donors to a campaign to build a wall along the US-Mexican border, as promised by the former president.

Bannon, 69 and a former campaign chair and White House strategist for Trump, was also charged in the case but received a presidential pardon in the final hours of Trump’s term.

Bannon remains a prominent presence in far-right media and politics. In September, he was indicted in New York state court in Manhattan on money laundering and conspiracy charges over the planned wall. He pleaded not guilty. Trump’s pardon of Bannon covered federal crimes but not alleged state crimes.

Kolfage, 41, lost his legs and right hand in a rocket attack in Iraq. In the federal case, he pleaded guilty last year to misappropriating funds meant for the We Build the Wall campaign.

On Wednesday a US district judge, Analisa Torres, announced the 51-month sentence at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.

Andrew Badolato, 58, another former Bannon associate, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.

“The fraud perpetrated by Mr Kolfage and Mr Badolato went well beyond ripping off individual donors,” Torres said. “They hurt us all by eroding the public’s faith in the political process.“

READ ON:

The advice columnist E Jean Carroll told a New York jury this morning that Donald Trump raped her, leaving her unable to again have a romantic relationship, then “shattered my reputation” by denying the attack.

Carroll testified in her civil lawsuit seeking damages for battery after Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in a New York department store changing room in 1996 and for defamation after he accused her of lying and perpetrating a hoax when she went public with her accusations in a book.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try and get my life back,” she told the jury.

Trump denies the accusations.

Before Carroll testified, Judge Lewis Kaplan warned that Trump may have crossed the line into jury tampering after the former president posted an attack on Carroll on his social media site, Truth Social, calling her accusations a “made up SCAM” and a “witch hunt”.

Kaplan called Trump’s post “entirely inappropriate” and warned that they could become “a potential source of liability” for him.

READ ON:

Here’s another thing about Asa Hutchinson, mentioned earlier for having launched his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in Bentonville, Arkansas, this morning, and for being a relatively rare Trump critic within Republican ranks.

Hutchinson has had a long career in Republican politics and in public service, including stints leading the Drug Enforcement Agency and working at the Department of Homeland Security.

But he was also once a congressman from Arkansas and in that role he played a key, not to say controversial part in the impeachment of another former governor of the Natural state, William Jefferson Clinton, for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern.

Many observers link the jagged divisions of the Clinton era, in which House Republicans waged political war on the White House, to the far worse divides of today.

A decade after Clinton’s acquittal, Hutchinson told the Associated Press: “I knew it wasn’t good politics for Arkansas, being the president’s home state. [But] I could actually help our country go through a difficult time, and so I accepted that responsibility reluctantly.”

He has repeated that line, for instance telling Politico in 2014, as he ran for governor: “Anybody who observed me at that time knows I was just trying to help the country through a difficult time.”

Not everyone buys it. Back then, the then Democratic mayor of Little Rock, Mark Stodola, a Clinton supporter, told Politico: “There’s no love lost, that’s for sure. There’s a substantial number of people who believe Asa did not have to go do that extra step by being part of the impeachment team, that the piling on was gratuitous coming from Arkansas.”

Worth thinking about, perhaps, as Hutchinson seeks to convince Republicans he can now, as he said earlier, “bring out the best of America”.

The former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has formally launched his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination – a contest in which he currently polls around 0% – at an event in his hometown, Bentonville.

Harking back to the outset of his career 30 years ago, he said: “I ran as a conservative Republican when being a Republican was like having a career-ending handicap. And now, I bring that same vigour to fight another battle, and that battle is for the future of our country and the soul of our party.”

Hutchinson has been unusually willing to criticise Donald Trump – which may in part explain his vanishingly small presence in polling which shows the former president with consistent leads.

Today, Hutchinson took a veiled shot at Trump, fuming over his supposed persecution by federal authorities, when he said: “There are a few misguided leaders who say we should defund law enforcement, we should defund the FBI. I am here today in support of our law enforcement heroes.”

Hutchinson also said he was “confident we will survive through the destructive policies of the Biden administration, but the time for change is now. It is time to bring out the best of America.”

Critics have focused on what some would call a destructive policy championed by Hutchinson, namely restrictions on abortion rights including a draconian law he signed while governor in Little Rock.

On a recent episode of his Axe Files podcast, the former Obama adviser David Axelrod said: “You signed one of the, if not the toughest abortion law in the country, basically outlawing abortion apart from the the cases where the health of the mother and the life of the mother was involved.

“You speak so eloquently about government’s role and the need to have a light hand on regulatory issues. There are a lot of women in this country who would say this is completely antithetical to that philosophy, government telling me what I should do with my own body in the most intimate decision that a person has to make.

“Do you understand that concern?”

Hutchinson said: “I do. I do. And it’s tough. It’s a tough issue all around. My historic position, my current position is that the unborn represent life and deserve protection. And there’s three exceptions that I’ve always acknowledged, which is that when the life of the mother is at stake and in cases of rape and incest.”

Axelrod said: “Although that’s not in the law that you sign.”

Hutchinson said: “That’s right.”

It got awkward, and fascinating, from there. Democrats think abortion rights will be a winning issue in 2024. Listening here, you can perhaps see why.

House Republicans are moving to vote on their bill to raise the debt limit while cutting government spending, prompting a furious response from the White House and vows from Democrats that they’ll have nothing to do with the effort. In Florida, governor Ron DeSantis’s feud with Disney is heading to the courts.

Here’s what else is happening today so far:

• Republicans in Montana’s House of Representatives may vote to censure or expel the state’s sole transgender lawmaker.

• West Virginia’s Republican governor Jim Justice is expected to announce his campaign for Senate, potentially pitting him against conservative Democrat Joe Manchin.

• Donald Trump’s civil trial over a rape allegation continues in New York City.

Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been at loggerheads with Disney for months, and now their dispute is heading to court, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:

Disney has sued Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida and presumed challenger for the Republican presidential nomination.

The entertainment giant wants a court to overturn state efforts to exert control over the Walt Disney World theme parks in Orlando.

DeSantis moved against self-governing powers long granted to Disney after it opposed his so-called “don’t say gay” laws, concerning the teaching of gender and LGBTQ+ issues in Florida schools.

In response, Disney passed covenants keeping such powers out of the hands of a board appointed by DeSantis.

The governor said he would fight back, and joked with reporters about perhaps building a new state prison close to the Disney World park.

Speaking of Senate news, Mitch McConnell is certainly looking forward to next year, when Democrats will have to defend a number of seats held by their lawmakers representing conservative states.

Perhaps the most difficult for Democrats to hang on to will be West Virginia’s, which is currently held by Joe Manchin. He’s cast himself as a conservative Democrat, and derailed progressive priorities such as stronger measures to fight climate change. Yesterday, he threatened to vote to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden’s marquee legislation to combat rising temperatures and cut prescription drug prices, which the senator personally played a role in crafting.

We’ll see if that is enough to convince voters in the strikingly Republican state to give him another six years – should he ask for it, since Manchin has not said whether he will run again. But if he does, he may have to go up against the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice.

Justice, together with his dog, Babydog, has a “special announcement” scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The Washington Post says that will be the start of his Senate campaign.

Manchin, too, was once governor of West Virginia, but unlike Justice stuck with the Democratic party. Justice, however, switched to the GOP in 2017, in an event presided over by Donald Trump.