Evelyn Reynolds

The House will hold a vote on Tuesday afternoon on removing Kevin McCarthy from the speaker’s chair, with hard-right members prepared to oust the Republican leader just nine months after he was elected.Congressman Matt Gaetz introduced a motion to vacate on Monday night, as the hard-right lawmaker from Florida continued to rail against McCarthy for collaborating with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown over the weekend.McCarthy and his allies had tried to quash Gaetz’s rebellion by introducing a procedural motion to table, or kill, the proposal earlier on Tuesday. That motion failed in a vote of 208 to 218, teeing up the final vote on removing McCarthy. Eleven House Republicans voted against the motion to table.The House math is difficult for McCarthy. With such a narrow majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes and keep his gavel, assuming every House Democrat votes against the speaker. When the House held the vote on the motion to table on Tuesday, five Democrats and two Republicans were recorded as absent. But with 207 Democrats voting in unison against the motion to table, Gaetz had more than enough votes to advance his motion to vacate.House Democratic leaders revealed shortly before the procedural vote on Tuesday that they were urging caucus members to vote “yes” on the motion to vacate the chair. After meeting with members on Tuesday morning, the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said his caucus was “unified in our commitment to put people over politics”.“House Democrats remain willing to find common ground on an enlightened path forward. Unfortunately, our extreme Republican colleagues have shown no willingness to do the same,” Jeffries said in a “Dear Colleague” letter. “Given their unwillingness to break from [Make America Great Again] extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican Motion to Vacate the Chair.”Speaking to reporters after a meeting with his conference on Tuesday morning, McCarthy appeared somewhat resigned to his fate, even as he said he was “confident” he could hang on.“If five Republicans go with Democrats, then I’m out,” McCarthy acknowledged.A reporter said: “That looks likely.”McCarthy replied: “Probably so.”If the motion to vacate is successful, McCarthy will have an opportunity to choose a temporary speaker until an election is held. In January, the House required 15 rounds of voting to elect McCarthy as speaker, and a second election could prove even more prolonged and contentious.Even as he stared down the potential end of his speakership, McCarthy expressed no regret about working with Democrats to keep the government open. The stopgap bill passed by the House on Saturday will keep the government funded through 17 November, averting a shutdown that could have forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without pay.“At the end of the day, keeping the government open and paying our troops was the right decision. I stand by that decision,” McCarthy said. “If I have to lose my job over it, so be it, but I’m going to fight for the American public, and I’ll continue to fight.”Although it appears Gaetz has the votes to remove McCarthy, some other hard-right Republicans who opposed McCarthy when he ran for the speakership in January were more cautious about ousting him.Congressman Ralph Norman, a hard-right Republican of South Carolina who initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid, urged his colleagues to focus their attention on passing full-year funding bills.“I have been profoundly disappointed in several elements of Speaker McCarthy’s leadership, but now is not the time to pursue a Motion to Vacate,” Norman said on X. “Instead, Congress desperately needs to devote its full attention to passing these appropriations bills within the next 43 days.”But another 10 or so hard-right lawmakers lined up in support of the motion to vacate, likely sealing McCarthy’s fate. Despite the grim state of affairs, McCarthy’s allies took to the House floor to defend his reputation.“The overwhelming majority of my party supports the speaker that we elected. We’re proud of the leadership he’s shown,” said congressman Tom Cole, a Republican of Oklahoma. “There’s a second group – a small group. Honestly, they’re willing to plunge this body into chaos and this country into uncertainty for reasons that only they really understand. I certainly don’t.”Stepping up to the mic, Gaetz rejected Cole’s argument, instead insisting that the current state of the House represented an unacceptable status quo.“My friend from Oklahoma says that my colleagues and I who don’t support Kevin McCarthy would plunge the House and the country into chaos,” Gaetz said. “Chaos is speaker McCarthy. Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word.” More

There’s reason to feel a bit more secure about the strength of American democracy, notwithstanding Donald Trump’s escalating threats.For one thing, a large bipartisan coalition in both chambers of Congress has beat back the House Maga Republicans’ attempt to shut down the government.This was a major defeat for Trump, who had called a shutdown “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other patriots”.Americans should also feel encouraged by the tenacity of judges and prosecutors in holding Trump accountable, notwithstanding his threats.Ever since his first indictment, Trump has attacked with increasing ferocity the judges and prosecutors who have tried to hold him accountable – calling them “deranged”, “thugs”, “hacks”, “corrupt”, “biased”, “disgraceful”, “radical”, “un-American” and worse.To their credit, judges and prosecutors have not wavered.They have set strict timetables for Trump’s criminal trials. They have refused Trump’s many motions and appeals. They have ruled against Trump in the civil lawsuits against him and meted out tough penalties.Last Tuesday, Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used to secure financing.As punishment, Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded.Trump lashed out: “The widespread, radical attack against me, my family, and my supporters has now devolved to new, un-American depths, at the hands of a DERANGED New York State Judge, doing the bidding of a completely biased and corrupt ‘Prosecutor,’ Letitia James,” Trump wrote.As Trump’s attacks on judges and prosecutors have worsened, prosecutors and judges have responded forcefully.On Friday, the Colorado district judge Sarah B Wallace, overseeing the first significant lawsuit to bar Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot – on grounds that the 14th amendment explicitly bars from office anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution and has taken part in an insurrection – issued a protective order prohibiting parties in the case from making threatening or intimidating statements.Judge Wallace said the order was necessary to protect the safety of those involved – including herself and her staff.Meanwhile, Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the justice department’s prosecutions of Trump, has requested a gag order against Trump. Smith linked Trump’s ominous rhetoric to threats against prosecutors, judges and potential witnesses.“The defendant continues these attacks on individuals precisely because he knows that in doing so, he is able to roil the public and marshal and prompt his supporters,” Smith said in the court filing.One day after he posted “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING FOR YOU!” a woman called the chambers of the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been assigned to the election fraud case against Trump, and said that if Trump is not re-elected next year, “we are coming to kill you”. The woman was later charged with making the call.The top prosecutors on the four criminal cases against Trump – two brought by the justice department and one each in Georgia and New York – now require round-the-clock protection.Smith himself – whom Trump has described as “a thug” and “deranged” – has been a target of violent threats. His office is spending $8m to $10m on protective details for him, his family and senior staff members, according to officials.Since its agents carried out the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the FBI has seen the number of threats against its personnel and facilities surge more than 300%.A Trump supporter wearing tactical gear and armed with an AR-15 tried to breach the FBI field office in Cincinnati. He failed, fled and later died in a shootout with law enforcement.Trump is escalating his threats and provocations. Even if one or two of his followers act on them, the result would be tragic.Merrick B Garland, the attorney general, recently told Congress that Trump’s demonization of judges and prosecutors threatened the rule of law. “Singling out individual career public servants who are just doing their jobs is dangerous – particularly at a time of increased threats to the safety of public servants and their families,” Garland said.Garland then added: “We will not be intimidated. We will do our jobs free from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”America owes a great debt of gratitude to the judges, prosecutors, grand jurors and prospective jurors who refuse to be intimidated by Trump’s threats, and who will not back down from defending our democracy.While the mainstream media continues to treat Trump as a politician rather than a peril, normalizing his dangerous threats, the nation’s judges and prosecutors are protecting the rule of law.They – along with Saturday’s bipartisan majority vote in Congress against Maga extremists – give some hope that the fever of Trumpism may be starting to break.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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The blue and yellow flag still flies high over Britain’s town squares and public buildings, signalling our unwavering and enduring solidarity with Ukraine’s war effort.Well, in theory, anyway. For you can feel the fatigue descending now, like heavy autumn mist pooling in the bottom of a valley; a sort of strange public torpor, quietly smothering the high emotion of the early days of the war. Having leapt too quickly at the assumption that Kyiv couldn’t possibly hold out against the mighty Russian army, British public opinion then swung wildly towards what has turned out to be an equally unrealistic idea, namely that plucky Ukraine could somehow achieve a David v Goliath victory over the rusting superpower within the year. We could put up with one winter of rocketing gas bills, surely, if that was the price to be paid for peace in Europe. Only now it’s the second winter of not daring to turn on the central heating, and the stories emerging from the frontline are no longer of Ukrainian farmers cheerfully towing away stranded tanks with their tractors, but of a grinding war of attrition that could last up to a decade.This is the most dangerous of moments for Ukraine, whose soldiers are locked into a critical military offensive and whose civilians face another brutal winter of Russia trying to freeze them into submission by attacking their power infrastructure. But it’s western, not Ukrainian, resolve that shows the most worrying signs of faltering, with Republicans in Congress balking at signing off Joe Biden’s military aid package, and victory in last week’s Slovakian elections for a pro-Russian populist promising to end support for Ukraine. Here in Britain, meanwhile, a prime minister keen to give President Zelenskiy anything he wanted has been succeeded by an unsentimental economic hawk better known for watching every penny, under enormous political pressure to deliver tax cuts.It’s almost certainly not a coincidence, then, that former British defence secretary Ben Wallace chose the morning of the current chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s party conference speech – and the closing stages of behind-the-scenes negotiations over Hunt’s crucial autumn statement – to reveal that he had asked Rishi Sunak for another £2.3bn for Ukraine just before he resigned this summer. In war, Wallace wrote, “the most precious commodity of all is hope”, and it was Britain’s duty to keep those hopes of victory alive by stumping up.British politicians have been privately worrying about how to shore up support in Washington for the war since at least early spring, amid rising resistance on the Republican right and suspicions that Donald Trump will turn off the tap if he wins the next presidential election. “We’re giving away so much equipment, we don’t have ammunition for ourselves right now,” Trump told potential voters in New Hampshire in May, when asked if he would continue aid to Ukraine. But now similar views are filtering through the political undergrowth in Britain, too. Nigel Farage asked viewers of his GB News show earlier this year whether Britain had now given “too much” to the country and risked leaving itself defenceless, even though the whole point of arming Ukraine is to avoid Nato members having to defend themselves against whatever a victorious Russia might choose to do next.While the likes of Russell Brand peddle conspiracy theories about Ukraine, Nato and the IMF, in rightwing populist circles the idea that we can’t afford to keep supporting Ukraine is building up a powerful head of steam. “When it’s been five minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid,” Elon Musk posted on his social media site X (nee Twitter) on Monday over a Photoshopped image that appeared to ridicule the Ukrainian leader.The idea that charity ought to begin at home, long used as a battering ram against spending on overseas aid, is now being deployed as an argument against military aid even though western military support for Ukraine is anything but charity: if anything, it’s guilt money. Ukraine’s allies have an existential interest in halting Russian aggression in Europe but they don’t want to risk their own troops’ lives, so instead they have been persuaded to get out the chequebook – both for weapons and to absorb the effects on their own economies of oil and gas price rises. That was the unwritten deal, but Wallace is not alone in seemingly fearing that it may start to unravel as times grow tougher. Conservative party members love a bit of patriotic tub-thumping on defence at conference. But if they had to choose between tax cuts at home and supporting someone else’s war overseas – well, would you bet Europe’s future on the outcome?“We have a chance to help finish this,” Wallace wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “The Russian army is cracking.” But only, perhaps, if western politics doesn’t crack first.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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Congressman Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican of Florida, introduced a motion to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker on Monday, expressing outrage over the Republican leader’s successful efforts to avoid a government shutdown this weekend.“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen: Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House, or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats,” Gaetz told reporters after he filed the motion. “I’m at peace with either result because the American people deserve to know who governs them.”McCarthy responded minutes later on social media: “Bring it on.”The announcement comes two days after the House passed a stopgap spending bill to extend government funding through 17 November, averting a shutdown that could have forced hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay. Both the House and the Senate passed the bill, known as a continuing resolution, with overwhelming bipartisan majorities before Joe Biden signed the bill late on Saturday evening.But Gaetz had warned that he would move to oust McCarthy if the speaker collaborated with Democrats to keep the government open and he followed through with that threat on Monday evening. Now that Gaetz has introduced a motion to vacate the chair, House leadership will have to schedule a vote on the matter within two legislative days.Moments after his much-anticipated move on the House floor, Gaetz held an impromptu press conference in which he acknowledged that his effort might fail – at least on the first try.“I think that’s the likely outcome,” Gaetz said. But in leaving open the prospect of repeated moves to get McCarthy fired, Gaetz predicted that support could grow and the initial vote on evicting McCarthy would be “the floor and not the ceiling”.McCarthy’s allies are expected to deploy some procedural tactics to derail Gaetz’s motion, but if those efforts fail, it will take only a simple majority of voting members present to remove the speaker.Because of House Republicans’ narrow majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose five votes within his conference and still hold the speakership, assuming every House member participates in the vote. Despite that tricky math, McCarthy has struck a defiant tone in recent days, insisting he has the votes to keep his gavel.“I’ll survive,” McCarthy told CBS News on Sunday. “So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get over with it and let’s start governing.”Previewing his motion in a House floor speech on Monday afternoon, Gaetz accused McCarthy of cutting “a secret side deal” with Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers. The stopgap spending measure passed by Congress did not include additional money for Ukraine, but Biden said on Saturday that he did “fully expect the speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine” and soon pass a supplemental funding bill to address that omission.“It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden ‘feeble’ while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation,” Gaetz said in his floor speech. “Members of the Republican party might vote differently on a motion to vacate if they heard what the speaker had to share with us about his secret side deal with Joe Biden on Ukraine.”Speaking to reporters after the floor speech, Gaetz indicated he would keep pushing motions to vacate until McCarthy is removed.“It took Speaker McCarthy 15 votes to become the speaker, so until I get to 14 or 15, I don’t think I’m being any more dilatory than he was,” Gaetz said.It remains unclear how many Republicans will join Gaetz in pushing for McCarthy’s ouster, but at least one other hard-right lawmaker, Eli Crane of Arizona, has indicated he will support the motion.In the hours leading up to Gaetz’s announcement, however, House Republican leaders lined up in support of McCarthy.“We have a lot of work to do. Now is not the time for distractions,” Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, said on Monday. “I’m committed to continuing to work with [McCarthy] and our entire leadership team on reducing spending, securing our border, and fighting for hardworking Americans.”Asked who he would support as a replacement for McCarthy, Gaetz said: “I think very highly of Steve Scalise. I would vote for Steve Scalise” as well as many other Republicans.Scalise currently serves as House majority leader, the No 2 job in the chamber.McCarthy’s fate may come down to attendance numbers and House Democrats’ strategy. Absences could potentially lower the threshold of a simple majority needed for McCarthy to keep his gavel, as some House members will be looking to travel to California in the coming days for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s funeral. Feinstein will lie in state at San Francisco city hall on Wednesday before funeral services will be held on Thursday.Several House Democrats late on Monday said they would await direction from party leader Hakeem Jeffries.Jeffries has not said so far if his caucus would join rightwing Republicans to help topple McCarthy or if Democrats might support him in exchange for political or legislative favors.Some centrist Democrats have also indicated they would vote “present” on a motion to vacate, which would similarly lower the threshold of a simple majority. Asked on Monday whether he would strike a deal with Democrats to save his speakership, McCarthy offered a vague response about protecting the integrity of the House.“I think this is about the institution,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s too important.” More

From 27m agoDonald Trump, speaking after leaving the courtroom during the first day of his fraud trial, accused New York attorney general Letitia James of being a “disgrace” who “should focus on all of the violent crime and murders going on” in the state rather than on him.The former president insisted he has done “nothing wrong” and that the lawsuit was part of an effort to interfere with the 2024 election, NBC reported.He also complained that his time spent at trial was keeping him off the campaign trail.
I’ve been sitting in a courthouse all day long instead of being in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or a lot of other places I could be at. This is a horrible situation for our country.
Congressman Jamaal Bowman attempted to distance himself from a memo released by his office that referred to some Republican extremists as Nazis.In a memo obtained by Politico, Bowman’s office suggested several talking points his Democratic colleagues could use to defend him amid a GOP push to punish the New York congressman after he set off a House fire alarm during Saturday’s spending vote.One suggested response from Bowman’s office to questions about the incident:
I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.
Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bowman condemned the use of the word “Nazi”, calling it “inappropriate”.Donald Trump, speaking after leaving the courtroom during the first day of his fraud trial, accused New York attorney general Letitia James of being a “disgrace” who “should focus on all of the violent crime and murders going on” in the state rather than on him.The former president insisted he has done “nothing wrong” and that the lawsuit was part of an effort to interfere with the 2024 election, NBC reported.He also complained that his time spent at trial was keeping him off the campaign trail.
I’ve been sitting in a courthouse all day long instead of being in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or a lot of other places I could be at. This is a horrible situation for our country.
New York City public hospitals will now offer abortion care via telehealth, placing them among the first public health systems in the US to do so.The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Monday that abortion pill prescriptions would now be available by telephone or online, adding that such access can happen from “the comfort of your home”.As a result of the move, New York City residents will now be able to connect with health practitioners for those prescriptions, building on previous legislations to protect abortions rights in New York.“If you are clinically eligible, that provider will be able to prescribe abortion medication that would be delivered to your New York City address within days,” Adams said during Monday’s announcement.“We will not stand idly by as these attacks continue and the far-rights seeks to strip our citizens of their basic rights,” Adams added, referring to abortion restrictions being legislated across the country.Abortion rights organizations celebrated Monday’s announcement as an essential step to protect reproductive rights.The first day of Donald Trump’s fraud trial has concluded, with proceedings expected to resume tomorrow morning.Judge Arthur Engoron heard testimony from the first witness in the trial, Trump’s former longtime accountant Donald Bender.A federal judge has scheduled the trial of US senator Bob Menendez and his wife on bribery and corruption charges to begin 6 May 2024.The New Jersey Democratic senator has pleaded not guilty and resisted calls for his resignation after he was indicted on charges of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessmen.Under the indictment unsealed last month, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of using his seat in the Senate, as chair of the foreign relations committee, to benefit the government of Egypt.Prosecutors described how the large sums of cash were found at Menendez’s New Jersey home, as well as actual gold bars. A Mercedes-Benz car is also at issue. Three businessmen have also been charged.Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has named Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and former labor leader, to fill the Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday.The appointment fulfills Newsom’s pledge to appoint a Black woman to the Senate, while shirking calls to name Barbara Lee, a Black Bay Area congresswoman who is already running for the position in 2024.Butler, 44, will be the only Black woman serving in the US senate, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the chamber. She currently leads Emily’s List, a national political organization dedicated to electing Democratic women who support reproductive rights. She has also served as a strategist and adviser to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign and was a former labor leader of SEIU California, the state’s largest union, representing more than 700,000 workers.Butler currently lives in Maryland, according to her Emily’s List biography, but she owns a house in California and will re-register to vote in the state before taking office, according to the Newsom administration. She could be sworn in as early as Tuesday evening when the Senate returns to session.Democrats control the Senate 51-49, though Feinstein’s seat is vacant. The quick appointment by Newsom will give the Democratic caucus more wiggle room on close votes, including nominations that Republicans uniformly oppose.At the opening of Donald Trump and his family’s civil fraud trial today, an attorney for New York state said the defendants gained more than $100m by inflating the value of their properties, Reuters reports.The gains came through lower insurance premiums and better loan conditions, and in his opening statement, Kevin Wallace, an attorney for New York attorney general Letitia James, said the former president was “materially inaccurate” when he would describe his business to insurers and lenders.“This isn’t business as usual, and this isn’t how sophisticated parties deal with each other,” Wallace said. “These are not victimless crimes.”However, Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise denied any wrongdoing.“It is one of the most highly successful brands in the world, and he has made a fortune literally being right about real estate investments,” Kise said in his opening statement. “There was no intent to defraud, there was no illegality, there was no default, there was no breach, there was no reliance from the banks, there were no unjust profits, and there were no victims.”Kise also said that Trump’s valuations of his properties were understood to be estimates, and that just because people disagree with them does not mean they are fraudulent.But as evidence for his case, Wallace played from a deposition with Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, where he said he was told “to attain the number that Mr. Trump wanted.”Note: We first reported the figure as $1bn, citing Reuters. We have since corrected the figure to $100m.Axios reports that congressman Jamaal Bowman’s office is encouraging his fellow Democrats to step up and defend him after he pulled a fire alarm on Saturday:Meanwhile, the Capitol police says they are investigating the incident, and released a statement recounting what happened. It reads, in part:
At approximately 12:05 p.m. on Saturday, September 30, a fire alarm sounded inside the Cannon Building. USCP officers evacuated people from the building, floor by floor, while DC Fire & EMS responded. The fire alarm only sounded in the Cannon Building, so that was the only building that was evacuated.
On security video, a man was seen trying to exit the door in the Cannon Building and then pulling the fire alarm that prompted the evacuation. USCP officers had previously placed signs with clear language that explained the door was secured and marked as an emergency exit only.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. the DC Fire Marshal determined there was not a fire and the building was safe.
The USCP will continue to keep the public updated on the status of the investigation.
Some House Republicans have already made up their mind, and will try to expel Bowman, Axios reports. However, expelling a House member requires the approval of two-thirds of the chamber, and has not been done since 2002:As lawmakers scrambled over the weekend in their surprisingly successful effort to avert a government shutdown, the show was almost disrupted when Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled the fire alarm in a House office building. There have been some new developments in that episode, but before we get into it, here’s a recap of what happened, from the Guardian’s Maya Yang:The New York Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman denied that he pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol office building to delay a vote on the stopgap measure that ultimately stopped a government shutdown.In a statement on Saturday evening, the New Yorker said he mistakenly thought the alarm, which prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated, would open a door.“Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door,” said Bowman.“I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused.”He dismissed accusations from Republicans that he pulled the alarm in an attempt to delay the vote.“I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying to urgently get a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open,” he said.An update on Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, which has resumed in New York City.As the Messenger reports, the first witness to take the stand in the damages phase of the trial is Trump’s former accountant:Trump and his three children were named by their attorneys as witnesses, but that does not necessarily mean they will speak to the court.Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial isn’t the only court news happening today. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports, the supreme court is starting a new term today, giving its conservative majority another opportunity to hand down decisions that could have major impacts on American life: The US supreme court will gather on Monday at the start of a new judicial term that has the potential to catastrophically disrupt the functioning of government, expand the assault on reproductive rights and unleash yet more gun violence on an already reeling America.When the nine justices convene on Monday morning it will mark the start of the third full term in which the 6-3 rightwing supermajority created by Donald Trump is in command. Explosive rulings delivered over the past two terms have demonstrated the conservatives’ newfound muscle, stripping millions of Americans of fundamental rights from abortion to affirmative action.Three significant cases before the court this term cut to the core of the functioning of the US government itself. According to the co-hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, at stake is no less than “the future of government as we know it”.On Tuesday the court will hear oral arguments in a case that poses the greatest threat to consumer protections for decades. Stephen Vladeck, an authority on constitutional law at the University of Texas law school, said that although CFPB v CFSA is technical in its framing, it has the potential to “bring down much of the American financial system”.Donald Trump, speaking in front of cameras during the break, said he attended the civil fraud trial against him so he could “watch this witch-hunt myself”.He slammed the “disgraceful trial” put forward by the “corrupt” New York attorney general, Letitia James, accusing her of wasting time when there are “murderers and killers that are all over New York killing people”. He added:
We’re going to be here for months with a judge that already made up his mind. It’s ridiculous. He’s a Democrat judge a and operative and it’s ridiculous.
“Other than that, things went very well,” Trump added.The former president also attacked Manhattan supreme court judge Arthur Engoron, who he said should be disbarred for “interfering with an election”.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about Matt Gaetz’s comments on the House floor accusing Speaker Kevin McCarthy of making a secret side deal on Ukraine aid with Joe Biden.Speaking to reporters, she replied:
What we know is that there is bipartisan support for this deal. Speaker McCarthy was on the air multiple times yesterday saying that he wants to continue support for Ukraine, to get the weapons that they need. So we are going to hold him to that.
As we reported earlier, Donald Trump’s civil fraud case is being tried without a jury reportedly because the former president’s attorneys seemingly did not pay too close of attention to their paperwork.“Nobody asked for” a jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron noted during Monday’s trial. According to the Messenger:
Earlier this year, New York Attorney Letitia James filed a form with a checkmark next to the field: “Trial without a jury.”
Trump’s legal team didn’t file a corresponding form, and the former president may have regretted his lawyer’s inaction ever since.
In brief remarks as he arrived at the courthouse, Donald Trump claimed his financial statements were “phenomenal”, even though a judge last week determined he and his family had committed fraud over the course of a decade.Here’s a clip:The damages phase of Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial opened in New York City, which the former president attended in person. Though he blasted the case as politically motivated and insisted that his financial statements were “phenomenal”, despite already being found liable for fraud, he and his children are facing severe financial consequences, and could lose control of properties such as Trump Tower. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, Republican insurgent leader Matt Gaetz held off on formally attempting to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. Gaetz demanded answers from his fellow Republican, accusing him of cutting a side deal with Joe Biden. We’ll see if he gets them.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Gaetz said he delayed formally introducing his motion to vacate because not enough lawmakers were in town yet.
Trump’s legal team did not ask for a jury to determine damages in the ex-president’s civil fraud trial, meaning the decision will be left to judge Arthur Engoron.
New York attorney general Letitia James said “no one is above the law” just before Trump’s fraud trial was about to get under way. More

Trump arrived at a New York court just a few miles south of Trump Tower on Monday for the first day of a fraud trial that could end up with the former US president and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, and has already threatened to end his business career in the city where it started. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has accused Trump of using false and misleading financial statements from 2011 to 2021 to make himself and his businesses wealthier, helping him broker deals and obtain financing. Based on her office’s three-year investigation, James is arguing that Trump owes at least $250m for committing fraud More

New York City public hospitals will now offer abortion care via telehealth, placing them among the first public health systems in the US to do so.The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced on Monday that abortion pill prescriptions would now be available by telephone or online, adding that such access can happen from “the comfort of your home”.As a result of the move, New York City residents will now be able to connect with health practitioners for those prescriptions, building on previous legislations to protect abortions rights in New York.“If you are clinically eligible, that provider will be able to prescribe abortion medication that would be delivered to your New York City address within days,” Adams said during Monday’s announcement.“We will not stand idly by as these attacks continue and the far-rights seeks to strip our citizens of their basic rights,” Adams added, referring to abortion restrictions being legislated across the country.Abortion rights organizations celebrated Monday’s announcement as an essential step to protect reproductive rights.“Today marks a historic win for abortion access in New York City,” said Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York.“When we make abortion care more accessible, we empower individuals to make the best decisions for themselves, their families and their futures,” Stark added.The expanded access to abortion care comes after the supreme court’s elimination last year of the federal abortion rights established by Roe v Wade.Since then, at least 20 states have passed restrictions on abortions, the New York Times reports.Fourteen states, mainly in the south, have enacted total bans on the medical procedure.US courts have also limited access to abortion medication. In August, a US appeals court ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone should be regulated according to rules set prior to 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn August 2022, Adams signed legislation protecting the right to abortions in New York City after the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.The measures signed by Adams – six in total – also made abortion medication free at all of New York’s department of health and mental hygiene clinics.The New York state legislature has also passed legislation protecting medical professionals in the state who provide abortion pills to patients in places where the procedure is banned, the New York Times reported.Other Democratic-led cities and states have passed similar measures protecting reproductive rights.In January, the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, signed legislation expanding abortion access by allowing more practitioners to provide the medical procedure and mandating that agencies in the state cover the procedure, the television news outlet WTTW reported. More

Congressman Matt Gaetz continued to attack Kevin McCarthy on Monday over the House Republican speaker’s successful efforts to avoid a government shutdown, even as other hard-right lawmakers came to McCarthy’s defense.Speaking on the House floor on Monday, Gaetz railed against McCarthy, accusing the speaker of cutting “a secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine. The stopgap spending measure passed by Congress on Saturday, which extended government funding through November 17, did not include additional money for Ukraine, but members of both parties have called for a supplemental bill to address that omission. Biden said on Saturday that he did “fully expect the speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine” and soon pass a supplemental funding bill.“It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden ‘feeble’ while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation,” Gaetz said in his floor speech. “It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference.”Gaetz had vowed on Sunday that he would soon introduce a motion to remove McCarthy as speaker, but he declined to outline a specific timeline for that effort in his floor speech. Calling on McCarthy to reveal the details of his alleged “secret deal” with Biden, Gaetz suggested the motion could be introduced as early as Monday.“There may be other votes coming today or later this week that could be implicated by the answers to these questions,” Gaetz said. “Members of the Republican party might vote differently on a motion to vacate if they heard what the speaker had to share with us about his secret side deal with Joe Biden on Ukraine. I’ll be listening. Stay tuned.”Speaking to reporters after the floor speech, Gaetz reiterated his plans to introduce a motion to vacate the chair at some point this week, and he indicated he would keep pushing the issue until McCarthy is removed.“It took Speaker McCarthy 15 votes to become the speaker, so until I get to 14 or 15, I don’t think I’m being any more dilatory than he was,” Gaetz said.Gaetz’s threats come after McCarthy was forced to rely on Democratic votes to advance the stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution. Gaetz had threatened that he would move to oust McCarthy if he collaborated with Democrats to keep the government open, and he now appears ready to make good on that threat.Any single House member can force a vote on vacating the chair, and the motion requires only a simple majority for approval. Because of House Republicans’ narrow majority, McCarthy can only afford to lose five votes within his conference and still hold the speakership, assuming every House member participates in the vote.Despite that tricky math, McCarthy has responded to Gaetz’s threats with defiance, insisting he has the votes to keep his gavel.“I’ll survive,” McCarthy told CBS News on Sunday. “So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get over with it and let’s start governing.”Some of McCarthy’s allies have rallied to his defense, accusing Gaetz of jeopardizing House Republicans’ majority and empowering the Democratic minority. In a floor speech delivered just before Gaetz stepped up to the podium, Congressman Tom McClintock, a Republican of California, noted that the removal of the speaker would grind the House to a halt.“The immediate effect will be to paralyze the House indefinitely because no other business can be taken up until a replacement is elected … I cannot conceive of a more counterproductive and self-destructive course than that,” McClintock said. “I implore my Republican colleagues to look past their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views and to make a wise decision when it’s needed most at this critical moment in the life of our country.”McCarthy has also received some support from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Republican of Georgia who has become one of the speaker’s most surprising allies since his election in January.In a 20-post thread shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, Greene argued that Gaetz’s proposed motion to remove McCarthy as speaker “gives the upper hand to the Democrats”.“I agree with Matt Gaetz that things must change,” Greene said, “but I don’t agree that a motion to vacate will effectively create the changes needed to solve the intentional systemic failure that create the annual never ending [continuing resolutions] and Christmas omnibus mega spending packages.”Even as she rallied around McCarthy, Greene simultaneously admonished her Republicans colleagues who have reportedly discussed expelling Gaetz, who is at the center of an ongoing ethics committee investigation involving allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations.“A Republican-led effort to expel Matt Gaetz absolutely will not be tolerated by Republicans across the country,” Greene said. “I can guarantee you that.” More