US Politics

Rishi Sunak: Good morning, Mr President.Joe Biden: Er … good morning … er … I’m sorry, who are you?Sunak: It’s…Biden: No, don’t tell me … It’s on the tip of my tongue. I’m sure I recognise you. I never forget a face. You’re that guy who bought me that coffee in Belfast when I was over in Ireland.Sunak: That’s right, your excellency. We also met in San Diego and HiroshimaBiden: Are you stalking me?Sunak: No. I’m just a bit needy. We have a special relationship, remember?Biden: Do we? News to me … No. It’s no good. You’ll have to jog my memory.Sunak: I’m the prime minister of the United Kingdom …Biden: Of course you are. Good to see you again, Rashi Sanook.Sunak: It’s Rishi. Rishi Sunak.Biden: Whatever. So what brings you over to Washington?Sunak: I’m not sure really. A combination of things. Nothing’s going well at home. My polls are rubbish, I can’t do anything about inflation, hospital waiting lists are up, you know the kind of thing …Biden: Not really.Sunak: Anyway, I just fancied a break. Plus I had loads of free air miles after my brilliant ‘Take Your Helicopter to Work’ scheme. And I wanted to catch a ball game. Go, Nationals! High five!Biden: Glad, you’re having a nice time.Sunak: So, what have you been up to since I last saw you, your highness?Biden: Not a lot … Just a $1tn infrastructure act, fixing a two-year debt ceiling deal, fighting off the Republican crazies and a host of other minor stuff …Sunak: Gosh!Biden: So how about you? What have you been doing?Sunak: I’ve been rushed off my feet … I don’t really know where to start, but here goes. First and foremost, I have been working on my five priorities. To halve inflation, grow the economy-Biden: Sure. But what have you actually been doing?Sunak: As I said, I have been working on my five priorities for the British people which I have promised to deliver on. Let me tell you what my five priorities are. They are the five priorities on which I want the British people to judge me-Biden: So, you haven’t really been doing that much.Sunak: As I said, my five priorities-Biden: But what else?Sunak: Apart from my five priorities? Well, let me see … I’m taking the Covid inquiry my government set up to court because it keeps asking for information that I want to keep secret. And I’m just about to OK Boris Johnson’s honours list.Biden: So a disgraced prime minister still gets to do the honours?Sunak: Sure.Biden: You Brits crack me up. What else shall we talk about?Sunak: How about a US-UK trade deal? Back in 2016 I and the Vote Leave team promised that an improved trade deal would be a Brexit bonus.Biden: No.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunak: What do you mean, ‘no’?Biden: I mean it’s not happening. There is no trade deal to be had any time soon. The UK is just not that big a deal for us since you left the EU.Sunak: Not even a little deal? We’ll take the chlorinated chicken …Biden: No. Not a chance. Maybe in five or 10 years. If then.Sunak: OK. I get the message. But can we at least say that we agreed not to talk about a trade deal? Or maybe we could just sign something vague and meaningless.Biden: If you like …Sunak: It would look good for my end-of-visit communique to the British media. Make it look like we had in fact talked about a trade deal a bit. Even though we haven’t. By the way, have I told you about my five priorities?Biden: I don’t have a lot of time, is there anything else you want to say?Sunak: There is. I want to talk about artificial intelligence.Biden: What about it?Sunak: That I’m very worried about it. Apart from AI that is obviously beneficial. Did I mention my five priorities?Biden: Sounds like you could do with an AI upgrade yourself. Unless you really are a halfwit. But what are you suggesting?Sunak: Well, seeing as I’m a world leader in AI …Biden: Since when? You had scarcely mentioned it until a few AI experts raised their concerns a few weeks ago.Sunak: But I am the expert! I had read something about it on my MBA at Stanford. Did you know I had an MBA from the States?Biden: You may have mentioned it before …Sunak: So here’s the thing. Because I know more about AI than anyone else and also have a lot of spare time on my hands, I am proposing the UK takes a leading role in regulating the industry.Biden: But you know that since you left the EU, the UK is no longer a member of the US-EU council that regulates AI-related policies …Sunak: Really? Never mind. What I mostly want is a PR exercise. We won’t actually regulate anything. We’ll just have a conference to talk about regulating AI. It will all be pointless as by the time anything happens, AI will have evolved to take over the world. So we’ll all just meet a few times, have a nice jolly and then forget about it. But we need the US to come. We’ll pay your air fares and hotels. It’s just that without you no one else will come. So please say you will.Biden: If we must …Sunak: Just a couple more things: Ukraine. Can we agree that we are both still committed?Biden: You didn’t need to come to Washington for that…Sunak: And, my green card … Is there any chance it can be renewed? I might need it again in a year or so.Biden: Is that the time? Must be getting on. More

A leading US ethics expert said the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who this week launched a presidential campaign aimed at taking down Donald Trump, owes the American public an explanation of why and how he secured a pardon for a powerful New Jersey Republican, issued on Trump’s last day in the White House.“We just don’t know the answer to that,” Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), said. “And I think we should.”Trump is the clear Republican frontrunner to face Joe Biden next year. But Christie says Trump is not fit to return to the White House, given his scandal-plagued time in office and his incitement of the January 6 Capitol attack.Christie has said he has not spoken to Trump since before 6 January 2021, the day Trump sent supporters to the Capitol in a deadly attempt to stop the certification of his defeat by Biden.But 14 days after the attack, on Trump’s last day in power, a 143-strong list of pardons and commutations included a name supported by Christie.Alongside Trump allies Steve Bannon and Ken Kurson, and the rapper Lil Wayne, was George Gilmore, a lawyer and Republican party chair in Ocean county, New Jersey.Gilmore was indicted on federal tax charges in January 2020. He denied wrongdoing, his attorney claiming his lavish spending on collectibles was evidence of a hoarding disorder. Nonetheless, Gilmore was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and three years of supervised release, a conviction upheld on appeal that December.Gilmore avoided prison time. Announcing his pardon, the White House saluted his “important civic contributions over his career in New Jersey”. It also listed his supporters. The first two named were Christie and Bill Stepien.Stepien managed Trump’s re-election campaign. Before that, he worked in New Jersey for Christie, including when Christie narrowly won in 2009 and during his landslide re-election in 2013.By the time Christie left office, though, he and Stepien were under the shadow of the Bridgegate scandal, concerning political payback against a Democratic mayor.Notably, Christie ran for president in 2016 but failed to make an impact. Swiftly endorsing Trump, he stuck with him even after being fired from Trump’s transition, which Christie says was due to bad blood with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. Stepien, Politico said, saw his own career threatened by Bridgegate but “kept a lifeline of income from the [Republican] super pac GOPAC, thanks to Gilmore’s help. That connection helped secure Gilmore the Trump pardon.”Stepien also worked in the Trump White House. He is now a founding partner of a consultancy, National Public Affairs, whose website features Trump allies including Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator; Harriet Hageman, who defeated Liz Cheney in 2022 for her Wyoming House seat; and Ronny Jackson, a White House doctor turned Texas congressman.In February, Politico described Gilmore’s own political resurrection, including a return as Ocean county Republican chair made possible, the site said, because Gilmore “had … a key connection to Trump world”.Stepien told Politico that Gilmore would once again play a key role in elections in New Jersey: “One out of every seven votes will come out of Ocean county in the next statewide primary. So if you’re not spending time trying to build a relationship with George and his team, I have to question your strategy.”Christie, who became an analyst for ABC and wrote two books, has made his political strategy clear: he is going to take the game to Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBookbinder said: “I think it’s a good thing that Christie is calling out Donald Trump on his role in inciting an insurrection and on his undercutting of democracy. For that to be coming from people who were insiders is powerful.“That said, I think Chris Christie needs to answer for his [having been] someone who was close to Trump when Trump’s abuses were very much apparent, really from the beginning, and from before Donald Trump became president, and in carrying through to the end of the presidency.“We don’t know when Christie made [or supported the pardon] request [for Gilmore]. It certainly may be that all contacts were before January 6, when Christie at least says that he cut off Trump completely. But we just don’t know the answer to that,” he added.“And I think we should, because to the extent that he is saying he was outraged by Trump’s anti-democratic abuses and had nothing to do with them, that would not be consistent with continuing to ask for favours that might seem to go around the normal pardon process. And that’s something that I think it’s appropriate for the public to have answers to.”The pardon power, Bookbinder said, is “meant to be broad, as a check on runaway prosecutorial power”. Pardons and acts of clemency as a president leaves office are common.But Trump’s pardons proved as controversial as his presidency, amid reports of aides including Rudy Giuliani seeking to profit and with those pardoned including the likes of Bannon and Roger Stone, who might otherwise have testified against Trump.Pointing to the need to lessen abuse of the pardon power, Bookbinder said: “You can’t see Donald Trump as an existential threat to democracy, which I believe he is, while also still having dealings with him and his circle. You can’t do both at once.“And so it is reasonable to ask Chris Christie if that’s what he is doing, or if that’s what he has been doing – [if he has] a good answer to that. We should, at least, have a right to know that answer.”A Christie spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. More

In the scramble before the end of Texas’s legislative session last week, a must-pass bill was amended to impose new costs upon renewable energy. This came amid a barrage of anti-solar and wind power measures pushed forward by Republicans to reshape a state that has become the US’s powerhouse of clean energy.But the conservative lawmakers had help.Sections of the bill that impose new burdens upon clean energy providers were directly crafted and edited by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (or TPPF), a conservative group that has led the backlash to renewables and to make what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, according to a copy of the draft language seen by the Guardian.Several dozen edits were made to the bill’s amendments by Brent Bennett, a TPPF policy staffer, the document shows, and Texas lawmakers subsequently passed parts of this language along with the key TPPF desires – to impose new transmission costs on renewables and require them to source fossil fuel “backup” power when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.The passage of the bill, which funds the ongoing operation of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, was the flagship victory for TPPF even as a raft of other Republican bills that would have “shut down the renewable energy industry in Texas”, as energy analyst Doug Lewin put it, faltered.The burgeoning influence of TPPF, an organization substantially funded by fossil fuel interests and publicly lauded by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, is the catalyst to a rightwing attempt to crimp the stunning progress of renewable energy in the state, which now produces more than a quarter of all wind-powered electricity in the US.The group’s agenda is now extending far beyond Texas, bankrolling efforts to halt offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts and to prop up coal power on native American land in Arizona while spearheading efforts to crack down on sustainable finance in energy-producing states like West Virginia.“We are very influential, we are meeting with policymakers to share recommendations and we’re having success around the country,” said Jason Isaac, a former state representative and now director of TPPF’s energy initiatives. Isaac said that TPFF regularly helped craft “certain aspects” of bills in Texas related to the state’s electricity grid or environmental, social, and corporate governance (or ESG) issues.“I think conservatives are slowly but surely moving away from variable generation and towards reliable generation,” he said of the group’s quest against renewables. Isaac claimed renewables have been unfairly propped up by a “cult-like fascination” among politicians who have pursued what he called a “dangerous and deadly” agenda to reduce planet-heating emissions.The aggressive push against renewables in Texas has alarmed environmentalists who fret it will undermine the state’s nation-leading wind industry and threaten the revenues solar and wind generates for local communities and farmers. More broadly, the template used by TPPF in Texas could hobble efforts by Joe Biden’s administration to tackle the climate crisis.“We are seeing a rush of these bills attempting to wind the clock back on renewables and TPPF really are at the point of the spear on this,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “They are transparent advocates for the fossil fuel industry and I think they pose an incredible threat to renewables. TPPF have gained incredible traction, they really are shifting the narrative in Texas.“They’ve won over the top politicians in the state, which is very dangerous. Texas is going to be critical if the US going to get to net zero emissions, so we should take this threat seriously.”TPPF’s impact can now be found thousands of miles from its base in Austin, Texas, with the group filing a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of six east coast fishing businesses – collectively called Nantucket Residents Against Turbines – targeting a major windfarm currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. Slated to come online by the end of the year, Vineyard Wind will be the first major offshore wind project to be built off the US east coast.The lawsuit claimed federal agencies did not sufficiently analyze how the project, which is set to deliver enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, would affect wildlife – specifically the endangered North Atlantic right whale – and thereby violated the Endangered Species Act and slew of other environmental policies.Meghan Lapp, a seafood dealer and longtime offshore wind critic who was a plaintiff in the suit, told Reuters in 2021 that TPPF got involved in the suit at her request. As it announced its involvement in the case, the thinktank also took the unusual step of releasing a trailer called “A Heavy Wind”.The case was ultimately unsuccessful after a federal judge dismissed it last month, but the idea that wind turbines kill whales has been seized upon by conservatives, especially since December, when dozens of whales began washing up on the Atlantic coast in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) calls an “unusual mortality event”.Noaa has said there is no evidence that offshore wind power is killing off whales, with fishing practices, boat strikes and the climate crisis among the primary dangers to marine mammals, but congressional Republicans have called on the White House to pause offshore wind development, while Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, aired a critical series of segments called “The Biden Whale Extinction”.The assault on renewables by TPPF and its Republican allies has stunned conservatives who remain supportive of the longstanding bipartisan enthusiasm for clean energy.The reversal has been particularly stark for Texas which, blessed with the capacious, flat terrain and amenable climate for abundant wind and solar energy, was championed as a bastion for renewables by previous Republican governors George W Bush and Rick Perry, even as they embraced the ubiquitous oil industry.More than 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources last year, with the state now producing more wind and solar than the next three states – California, Iowa and Oklahoma – combined. This imperious status now seems uncertain.“I don’t recognize the state sometimes any more from our elected leaders. It’s like we are in a twilight zone where up is down and day is night,” said Matt Welch, state director of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation.“I fear we’re losing our lead in the nation and the world as the source for clean energy advancement. It’s just amazing we’ve rolled up the welcome mat and told wind and solar operators they’re just not welcome here any more.”The Texas Public Policy Foundation was founded in 1989 by James R Leininger, a San Antonio-based physician who made his fortune selling hospital beds, and initially focused on the issue of charter schools before branching out into other topics such as energy. The thinktank is a member of the State Policy Network, a network of far-right non-profits across the country that fight climate-focused legislation.In 2021, the most recent year for which records are available, donations for the thinktank totaled $25.6m. Publicly available data shows that – like many State Policy Network affiliates – its largest known funder is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who made his fortune from fossil fuels. Entities tied to Koch have contributed at least $8.8m to the group since 2012, according to an analysis by researcher Connor Gibson.Tax filings show that the group has received donations from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, but, as a non-profit, the full extent of TPPF’s fossil fuel funding is unknown.Issac said, however, it has been “many years” since large oil firms such as Exxon have donated to TPPF as these companies now ostensibly support decarbonization and environmentally responsible corporate governance, which conflicts with the foundation. He insisted that the foundation is committed to “free enterprise and individual liberty” and the eradication of “market distorting” subsidies, not just for renewables but also fossil fuels.But Welch said that Republican lawmakers, backed by TPPF, have ditched any ideological consistency by heaping onerous restrictions on renewable energy development on private property, in some cases attempting to impose requirements absent from oil and gas drilling, and trying to slash subsidies for the industry at the same time as offering state support for the buildout of new gas plants.One proposed bill that didn’t get sufficient backing in the latest Texas legislative session would have placed stringent new rules for wind and solar projects, including written permissions from neighboring property owners and setbacks of up to half a mile from the edge of a property for wind turbines. Another would have cut all subsidies for renewable energy.“On a Tuesday these lawmakers will be adamantly for private property rights, but on a Thursday they will want to stop the growth of renewable energy even though it’s on somebody’s private land,” Welch said, adding that TPPF was once full of “mini Milton Friedmans for years until recently, and now all of a sudden they throw that out the window.“It’s been a shocker. It’s so hypocritical,” he said. “I used to be an acolyte of TPPF but they are now driven by oil and gas billionaires who want to stop alternative forms of energy to benefit their own bottom line. They’ve sold their soul to the almighty dollar.”Renewable energy remains broadly popular with the Texas public for delivering cheap, clean power along with an injection of cash for entities such as school districts, but affection has somewhat curdled among some of the state’s Republican leadership. A devastating winter storm in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and led to several hundred deaths, was a major accelerant of this trend.In the days following the crippling event, known as winter storm Uri, Abbott and other leading Republicans pushed the blame for the power blackouts upon renewable energy, with misleading pictures of frozen wind turbines from Europe quickly circulating social media as the supposed cause of the grid’s breakdown.Subsequent studies have made clear the primary cause of the blackouts were frozen gas pipelines and a lack of infrastructure resiliency to extreme weather, rather than renewables per se, but the perception of faulty wind and solar has stuck, eagerly fanned by TPPF.“I still believe [renewables] deserve a lot of the blame,” said Isaac. “The storm was helpful in educating people who just assumed when they flip a switch the lights come on that there are issues with grid reliability, that solar panels covered in snow don’t produce electricity.”Isaac said the foundation accepts that the climate is changing but disputes that this is harmful to people, claiming that the benefits of burning of fossil fuels “far outweighs” any negatives, including deadly air pollution, which he asserts isn’t an issue for the US and its “near natural” air quality. Scientists have, in fact, found that the climate crisis poses huge and growing risks to humanity, with airborne pollutants from burning coal, oil and gas linked to an array of different health problems.While the most severe of the anti-renewables bills pushed forward in Texas didn’t pass the legislature this year, Isaac said that TPPF remains undaunted and will continue to agitate against what he called “the false panacea of variable power”. Supporters of clean energy said they expect further battles ahead to prevent Texas’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound.“With the growth trajectory of renewable energy, TPPF can either get on the train or lay down in front of the tracks,” said Welch. “I suspect they won’t rest on their laurels. They’re going to come for renewables again and again and again.” More

The US House of Representatives has been forced to postpone all votes until next week – paralyzed by a revolt against its Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, by ultra-conservative members of his own party.The standoff between McCarthy and a hardline faction of his own Republican majority has forced the chamber into a holding pattern that looks likely to persist until at least Monday.Members of the House Freedom Caucus have been upset over the bipartisan debt ceiling bill that McCarthy recently brokered with the Democratic president, Joe Biden, as well as claims that some hardliners had been threatened over their opposition to the deal.“You’ve got a small group of people who are pissed off that are keeping the House of Representatives from functioning,” said Republican representative Steve Womack.“This is insane. This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave, and frankly, I think there will be a political cost to it.”The hardliners were among the 71 Republicans who opposed debt ceiling legislation that passed the House last week. They say McCarthy did not cut spending deeply enough and retaliated against at least one of their members. McCarthy and other House Republican leaders dismissed the retaliation claims.They also accuse McCarthy of violating the terms of an agreement that allowed him to secure the speaker’s gavel in January, though it was not clear which aspects they believe were not honored.House action came to a sudden halt midday on Tuesday when the band of conservatives refused to support a routine procedural vote to set the rules schedule for the day’s debate. It was the first time in some 20 years a routine rules vote was defeated.Days of closed-door negotiations have not yielded a resolution, but McCarthy said he was confident they would sort out their differences. “We’re going to come back on Monday, work through it and be back up for the American public.”McCarthy oversees a narrow House Republican majority of 222-213, meaning that he can lose only four votes from his own party on any measure that faces uniform opposition from Democrats.Along with an attempt by Republicans to pass a bill preventing the banning of gas stoves, the dispute also has delayed bills that would increase congressional scrutiny of regulations and expand the scope of judicial review of federal agencies.As a result of the revolt against McCarthy, routine votes could not be taken, and the pair of pro-gas stove bills important to GOP activists stalled out. Some lawmakers asked if they could simply go home.McCarthy brushed off the disruption as healthy political debate, part of his “risk taker” way of being a leader — not too different, he said, from the 15-vote spectacle it took in January for him to finally convince his colleagues to elect him as speaker. With a paper-thin GOP majority, any few Republicans have outsized sway.But the aftermath of the debt ceiling deal is coming into focus. The McCarthy-Biden compromise set overall federal budget caps — holding spending flat for 2024, and with a 1% growth for 2025 — and Congress still needs to pass appropriations bills to fund the various federal agencies at the agreed-to amounts. That is typically done by 1 October. After Biden signed the debt deal into law last weekend, lawmakers have been fast at work on the agency-spending bills ahead of votes this summer to meet the deadline.Not only did the conservatives object to the deal with Biden as insufficient, they claim it violated the terms of an agreement they had reached with McCarthy to roll back spending even further, to 2022 levels, to make him speaker.“There was an agreement in January,” Ken Buck, a Republican representative from Colorado, told reporters after he left the speaker’s office on Wednesday morning. “And it was violated in the debt-ceiling bill.”If Congress fails to pass the spending bills by fall it risks a federal government shutdown – an outcome conservatives have forced multiple times before, starting in the Clinton era when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich led the House into a budget standoff, and again in 2013 when conservatives shut down the government as they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.The longest federal shutdown in history was during the Trump era when Congress refused his demands for money to build the border wall between the US and Mexico.With Reuters and the Associated Press More

Two national US media organizations and Louisiana state prosecutors have joined efforts to secure the public release of sealed information that would provide a more complete account of a retired Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who has been previously accused of molesting several children.In papers filed late Wednesday at New Orleans’s federal courthouse, the Guardian and the Associated Press contend that there is a legitimate public interest in the contents of the documents dealing with Lawrence Hecker despite archdiocesan claims that the information could be disparaging to the organization.The Guardian and AP argue that the records were improperly labeled as confidential after the church filed its pending, three-year-old bankruptcy case and are seeking to remove that designation, supporting arguments first advanced by Aaron Hebert, who in 2019 filed a lawsuit accusing Hecker of molesting him decades earlier, when the plaintiff was a child.The archdiocese is the only entity which has opposed efforts by Hebert and his lawyers to unseal the Hecker-related records. Church attorneys have argued that neither the Guardian nor the AP have a right to become involved because the archdiocese’s 2020 bankruptcy filing for the most part indefinitely halted litigation against it.“The archdiocese has consistently hid behind its bankruptcy case to keep the public from learning facts about abuse perpetrated at the hands of its priests,” said attorney Lori Mince, who is representing the Guardian and the AP. “We do not believe the law allows this.”Wednesday’s filings by Mince and her associates note how similar arguments by the archdiocese failed last year when the church argued that an audit detailing possible financial crimes by a priest accused of abuse in a separate lawsuit should be shielded from public view.The abuse lawsuit against the priest named in the audit was later voluntarily dismissed, as was a defamation case that the cleric had filed.The church’s opposition to unsealing records related to Hecker comes even as New Orleans’s district attorney, Jason Williams, filed a legal brief Tuesday which urged federal judge Jane Triche Milazzo to publicly release the documents in question.Hebert, who on Wednesday agreed to reveal his identity for the first time, and his lawyers have long maintained that the retired cleric committed crimes for which he can still be punished because they were severe enough that there is no deadline by which he needs to be charged. Williams’s brief said unsealing documents involving Hecker would allow “the appropriate authorities to investigate any criminal activity”.“The continued sealing of the documents in this case serves as a major impediment to a proper investigation,” said Williams’s brief, which was filed within hours of the Guardian asking a DA’s spokesperson whether his office intended to take a position on the Hecker records-related dispute.Williams separately provided the Guardian with a statement on Wednesday which mentioned how the records being sought included a sworn civil deposition Hecker made while facing questioning “concerning the commission of a crime”.That, Williams said, “should not be withheld from a prosecutorial authority merely because reputations may be harmed”.As New Orleans television station WWL reported, Williams’s filing was the first move from local law enforcement aimed at exposing records that the archdiocese has long fought to keep hidden, though some facts about the accusations against Hecker and the church’s reactions to them have been previously publicized by the media and archdiocesan officials themselves.The lawsuit at the heart of the battle over access to Hecker’s records not only accuses him of abuse. But it also accuses his supervisors of not immediately reporting him to law enforcement despite knowing he was an abuser.Hebert’s legal team asserts Hecker was treated in a similar manner to how Boston’s Catholic archdiocese handled its abusive clerics before a 2002 scandal engulfed it and prompted the worldwide church to implement transparency policies, among other reforms.Court filings from Hecker have denied Hebert’s claims. Yet an attorney for New Orleans’s archdiocese at one point disclosed in open court that church officials had known as far back as the 1980s that Hecker was accused of child molestation, and they have paid out multiple civil financial settlements in cases involving claims against him.Despite that history, the church allowed Hecker to work in the archdiocese until he retired in 2002. And despite transparency reforms that the church implemented the year he retired, it wasn’t until 2018 that the archdiocese publicly acknowledged that it believed Hecker to be a child molester.The archdiocese provided Hecker with retirement benefits until after it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2020, when it was faced with a mound of clerical abuse lawsuits. The bankruptcy indefinitely paused lawsuits against Hecker and other accused clergy abusers, though attorneys for the 2019 plaintiff gained permission to depose Hecker.Motions from Hebert, Williams, the Guardian and the AP now in front of Milazzo seek the release of the contents of that potentially explosive deposition – taken in late December 2020 – along with documents referenced during it to provide a fuller understanding of the case.Milazzo is scheduled to hear arguments on 15 June at a courthouse where several other judges have recused themselves from handling litigation involving abuse and the archdiocese because of links shared by the region’s legal establishment and the Catholic church.Hecker acknowledged last year that FBI agents had met with him amid a broader investigation into alleged sex abuse by Catholic church personnel in New Orleans. But he hasn’t been charged.Hebert on Wednesday said the public deserves to know everything Hecker, who is in his 90s, has done. “I want justice to be done,” Hebert said. “When everything comes out, it will be a better day for all of us.” More

Federal prosecutors formally informed Donald Trump’s lawyers last week that the former US president is a target of the criminal investigation examining his retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice, according to two people briefed on the matter.The move dramatically raises the stakes for Trump as the investigation appears to near its conclusion after taking evidence before a grand jury in Washington and a previously unknown grand jury in Florida that was impaneled last month.Trump’s lawyers were notified before they met on Monday with the special counsel Jack Smith leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the senior career official in the deputy attorney general’s office and made the case that prosecutors should not indict the former president in the matter.Trump has reportedly said he had not been personally informed by the justice department that he was a target when asked directly by a New York Times reporter, but demurred when asked whether his legal team had been told about the designation.The development, earlier reported by conservative outlet Just the News, comes as prosecutors have evidence of criminal conduct occurring at Mar-a-Lago and decided that any indictments should be charged in the southern district of Florida, where the resort is located, rather than in Washington.To that end, prosecutors last month started issuing subpoenas to multiple Trump aides that compelled them to testify before a new grand jury in Florida, impaneled around the time that the grand jury in Washington stopped taking new evidence, two people familiar with the matter said.On Wednesday, former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich testified before the Florida grand jury and was asked in part about a statement that Trump drafted in early 2022 that said he had given “everything” back after he returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.The statement was never issued, Budowich is understood to have confirmed. Several aides to Trump were against releasing the statement because they were not confident that the assertion was accurate, a person close to the former president said.What charges might emanate from the Florida grand jury remains unclear.But prosecutors would most probably prefer to bring charges in Washington, where the judges at the US district court are more familiar with handling national security cases – though Florida also has a robust national security section – and the jury pool skews more Democratic.The impaneling of grand juries has to do with where prosecutors believe a crime was committed. And the most straightforward reason for the Florida grand jury is that prosecutors have developed evidence of criminal activity at Mar-a-Lago, which is in the southern district of Florida.In this investigation, prosecutors considering charges against Trump for retaining national security material may have concluded from the evidence that he was still president when classified documents were moved to Mar-a-Lago, meaning his “unlawful possession” only started in Florida.Similarly, if prosecutors have also developed evidence that Trump knew he had retained national security documents after he left office at Mar-a-Lago, for instance by waving them around or showing people, that could present hurdles to charging Espionage Act violations in Washington.The venue for an obstruction of justice charge is more difficult to deduce, meanwhile, because the courts have provided little guidance about how it should be applied under section 1519 of the US criminal code, which prosecutors listed on the affidavit for Mar-a-Lago search warrant.Generally, other obstruction statutes hold that the venue depends on where the impeded proceeding was taking place. In the Trump documents investigation, the subpoena last year demanding the return of classified documents was issued in Washington.The US court of appeals for the DC circuit, however, has ruled in previous cases that the correct venue is where acts of obstruction took place. If prosecutors are considering obstruction charges for Trump’s steps to conceal classified documents after the subpoena, Florida could be the venue. More

From 4h agoMike Pence directly addressed the rivalry between him and Donald Trump, saying on January 6, his then-boss asked him to “choose between him and the constitution.”“January 6 was a tragic day in the life of our nation,” Pence began. “As I’ve said many times, on that fateful day, president Trump’s words were reckless. They endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol. But the American people deserve to know that on that day, president Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution. Now, voters will be faced with the same choice: I chose the constitution and I always will.”Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, after kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. Pence accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and of asking him to violate the constitution, as the former vice-president sought to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think.Here’s what else happened today:
North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo.
Trump said he has not been told he is being indicted, after days of reports that prosecutors are nearing the end of their investigation into his possession of classified documents.
Major East Coast cities including Washington DC and New York City are grappling with an influx of wildfire smoke that has drifted down from Canada, rendering the air quality hazardous for some groups.
Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures following reports that he’d accepted gifts and travel from a Republican megadonor.
Ron DeSantis isn’t letting the wide gap between his second place and Trump’s lead in the polls phase him.
Donald Trump says he has not been told he is being indicted, despite reports in recent days that prosecutors are nearing the conclusion of their investigation into the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort last year.Here’s what the former president wrote on his Truth social account:
No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI, starting with the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, the “No Collusion” Mueller Report, Impeachment HOAX #1, Impeachment HOAX #2, the PERFECT Ukraine phone call, and various other SCAMS & WITCH HUNTS. A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!
Earlier this week, attorneys for the former president met at justice department headquarters in Washington DC with top officials, including Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to handle the investigation into the classified documents, as well as Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the plot to overturn the 2020 election result.Such meetings typically take place before charging decisions are announced in federal investigations. Today, an aide to the former president, Taylor Budowich, said he had spoken to a grand jury investigating Trump.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has reported the Budowich was among those summoned by federal prosecutors to appear before a new grand jury convened in Florida, which is focusing on Trump’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice. It remains unclear what that grand jury’s empaneling implies for the status of the overall investigation, but you can read more about it here:Ron DeSantis doesn’t appear to be too worried about trailing Donald Trump in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and claims to be “really excited” about the enthusiasm he believes he has generated.Florida’s governor, who entered the race with a glitch-ridden launch event on Twitter last month, has just been speaking at a immigration roundtable in Arizona, and was asked by a reporter about his numbers.“Did you just see the Iowa polls that just came out?” DeSantis said, presumably referring to his own internal polling, reported by the New York Post, that purportedly shows him gaining ground on the former president in the state.“We can talk about polls all day long. You’ve seen some some great stuff. When you run in these things, you run and you persuade people. I mean, that’s the whole point of it. Like you don’t do a poll a year out and say that that’s how the election runs out.“If that were the case, you know, I wouldn’t have been elected in the first place as governor, and even my reelection I had people saying we were going to win by a couple of percentage points. We won by 20.“So we’re really excited about the enthusiasm we’ve generated. I think you’re gonna see a lot of really good stuff over the ensuing weeks and months.”The latest polling by Real Clear Politics for the Republican nomination has Trump at 53% and DeSantis at 22.The academic and public intellectual Cornel West could pose a threat to Joe Biden’s hold on the White House, the former Trump strategist Kellyanne Conway said – not because West’s People’s Party candidacy has a chance of winning the race but because it could draw young voters and voters of colour away from the Democratic president.“Even if you don’t become president, you, as a third-party candidate spoiler, can decide who is the president,” Conway told Fox News.Conway gave the example of Ross Perot, the millionaire businessman whose third-party run is widely held to have cost George HW Bush dear in 1992, when he was turfed out of the White House by Bill Clinton.Other third-party candidates who have had an impact on presidential races include Ralph Nader, widely held to have damaged Al Gore in the knife-edge 2000 election against George W Bush.In 2016, when Conway managed Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, both the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, and the Green candidate, Jill Stein, made an impact at the polls in states that decided the contest.Conway continued: “It’s important also … that if you play to win and you’re Cornel West, and you are still not satisfied with the trajectory of the Democratic party being progressive enough for you under a Biden-Harris administration, then you’re going to run to the left of them.”West, Conway said, is “going to make a play for people who feel forgotten, who feel abandoned by this Democratic party, who feel like nobody’s listening to them and including them.“It’s part of how Trump won in 2016, but I think he could do it from the left.“I know him. He’s a super-smart guy. He’s very committed to the principles and policies that he thinks more Americans want to hear.”The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has asked for extra time to file his financial disclosures, records keenly awaited amid the ongoing scandal concerning his links to, and extensive gifts from, the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.Crow and another conservative on the court, Samuel Alito, asked for 90 more days to file their annual financial disclosures, the Washington Post reported.The Post added: “Both requests were confirmed by the Administrative Office of the US Courts on Wednesday, the same day that disclosure reports filed by their court colleagues were posted on the court system’s website.”As the Post also said, the supreme court “is under increasing pressure from Democratic lawmakers and transparency advocates to strengthen disclosure rules and adopt ethics guidelines specific to the justices after news reports revealed Thomas’s undisclosed real estate deals and private jet travel, and raised questions about the recusal practices of both conservative and liberal justices”.Crow is the subject of attempts by Senate Democrats to obtain details of gifts given to Thomas.Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judgs but in practise govern themselves. Thomas and Crow deny wrongdoing. Thomas has said he did not declare extensive and costly gifts from Crow because he was advised he did not have to.In a statement after news of Thomas’s request for an extension, Kyle Herrig, president of the pressure group Accountable.US, said: “Justice Thomas and his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow can’t dodge accountability forever. It was their decades-long improper relationship that sparked the supreme court corruption crisis in the first place.“What more is Thomas trying to hide? Are his gifts and connections so extensive that he needs more time to account for them all? Chief Justice [John] Roberts needs to act immediately to clean up his court.”Further reading:Mike Pence is now officially on the presidential campaign trail, kicking off his bid for the White House with a speech in Iowa where he unsurprisingly attacked Joe Biden, but also went directly at Donald Trump. He accused his former running mate of drifting away from conservative values and asking him to violate the constitution in an attempt to carve a place out for himself in the crowded Republican field. In the months to come, we’ll find out what voters think.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
North Dakota governor Doug Burgum started his own campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a speech in Fargo.
An aide to Trump confirmed he had spoken to a grand jury that the Guardian reports has been empaneled in Florida to look into the former president’s handling of national security matters and potential obstruction of justice.
It’s really smoky on the East Coast. Also, a volcano is erupting in Hawaii, and you can watch it happen live.
A major Pac supporting Donald Trump has responded to Mike Pence’s campaign announcement with a statement that dismisses both him and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.“Mike Pence’s entrance into the race caps off another bad week for Ron DeSantis’ faltering campaign, but the question most GOP voters are asking themselves about Pence’s candidacy is ‘Why?’” Make America Great Again Inc spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.As Pence’s speech wrapped up, he accused Donald Trump and Joe Biden of being too mean to lead.“Joe Biden promised to restore decency and civility if he was elected president. He broke that promise on day one. He’s continually vilified those of us that disagree with him, and even vilified members of his own party,” Pence said.‘Our politics are more divided than ever before, but I’m not convinced our country is as divided as our politics. Most Americans treat each other with kindness and respect even when we disagree. We know how to be good neighbors. That’s not too much to ask our leaders to do the same. But sadly, it’s clear that neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump share this belief.”Pence is taking both Joe Biden and Donald Trump to task over their approach to managing the US government’s debt and spending, and their support for Ukraine.“Joe Biden’s policy is insolvency,” Pence said, after recounting the looming challenges the massive government Social Security and Medicare problems face. “But you deserve to know, my fellow Republicans, that Donald Trump’s position on entitlement reform is the same. Both of them refuse to even talk about the issue taken to the American people.”He then turned to both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the possibility of war with China.“America is the leader of the free world. We’re the arsenal of democracy … Donald Trump and others who would seek the presidency would walk away from our traditional role on the world stage,” Pence said.“President Trump, he described Vladimir Putin as a ‘genius’ at the outset of the invasion and another candidate for the Republican nomination described the invasion of Ukraine as a quote, territorial dispute,” he continued in a reference to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a competitor for the Republican nomination.“I know the difference between a genius, I know the difference between a territorial dispute and a war of aggression. The war in Ukraine is not our war but freedom is our fight and America must always stand for freedom, and when I’m your president, we will.”One more broadside at Trump: “What President Trump and others are forgetting is that our administration succeeded not because we compromised or abandoned conservative principles, but because we acted,” Pence said.Pence hasn’t held back on criticizing Joe Biden.Earlier in the speech, he decried his “disastrous presidency”, and promised to, if elected, lower taxes, “give the American people freedom from excessive federal regulations” and end Biden’s “trillion-dollar spending spree that’s driving inflation”.But Pence also needs to get through a crowded Republican primary field that includes Donald Trump if he wants to appear on the general election ballot, and the former vice-president has spent a considerable portion of his speech criticizing his ex-boss.“You know, when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to govern as a conservative. Together, we did just that. Today, he makes no such promise,” Pence said.“After leaving the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn. Sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for a half-a-century, long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now he treats it is an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v Wade,” he continued.“Mr. President, I will always stand for the sanctity of life, and I will not rest and I will not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the land,” Pence said.What he did not say: whether he would sign a federal law banning abortion.As Pence continues his speech, his strategy for taking on Donald Trump has become clear.The former vice-president is touting the Trump administration’s accomplishments, while simultaneously portraying his former running mate as straying from true conservative principles.“I’ll always be grateful for what president Trump did for this country. I’ve often prayed for him over the past few years. And I prayed for him again today. I had hoped he would come around, see that he had been misled about my role that day,” Pence said, referring to January 6.“The Republican party must be the party of the constitution of the United States. We’ve had enough of the Democrats in the radical left repeatedly trampling on our constitution, threatening to pack the court, to dismantle the God given rights that are enshrined,” Pence continued, saying the GOP must protect the “right to life” as well as keep firearms freely available.And then he again turned to Trump.“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again,” Pence said. “Our liberties have been bought at too high a price.” More

Mike Pence officially announced he is running for the Republican presidential nomination in a video posted early Wednesday and formally addressed a crowd of supporters in Ankeny, Iowa, on Wednesday afternoon.In his speech, the former Indiana governor chastised Donald Trump for his “reckless” actions on 6 January 2021, took swipes at Joe Biden and singled out “enemies of freedom” around the world, including a three-second frame of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and China’s president, Xi Jinping, in the video.“I’ve long believed that to whom much is given much will be required,” Pence told the audience, referencing the Bible. “That’s why today, before God and my family, I’m announcing that I’m running for president of the United States of America.”The event, which took place at Des Moines Area Community College, began with a prayer. After a few short speeches by Pence allies, including his brother, the candidate stepped onto the stage with his wife, who introduced him.“We knew that Iowa was the place to start our engines for the great American comeback,” said Pence, who has been campaigning in the state in recent weeks.“I’m a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” Pence said, repeating a frequently used phrase.Pence touted his record in Congress and as Indiana governor, during which he supported legislation against abortion and expanded government spending, and repeated ideas from his campaign video released hours earlier including addressing inflation, the national debt and issues at the US-Mexico border.He also hearkened his time as vice-president, touting some of the policies that he and Trump pushed forth in their term.“I was proud to stand by President Donald Trump every day,” Pence said.But Pence broke from Trump on 6 January 2021 when Congress met to certify Biden’s 2020 win by saying he did not have authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted. That had infuriated some Trump supporters, with a small group calling to “hang Mike Pence” as rioters stormed the US Capitol.“The American people deserve to know that on that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution. Now, voters will be faced with the same choice,” said Pence on Wednesday.“And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again,” he said later.Pence, like others vying for Republican ticket, also doubled down on his call for abortion restrictions, and pushed his conservative agenda.“Timeless American values are under assault as never before,” said Pence in the announcement video, in which he quoted former presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.His candidacy marks a rare instance of a former vice-president contending for the nomination against a former president with whom he shared a ticket.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is leading the polls among GOP voters, with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, now trailing about 30 percentage points behind him. Pence has consistently polled third, in the single digits.But while the Trump campaign openly questioned why Pence would run, the latter focused on what he said was a belief in freedom and the American people.“Every time our nation has produced leadership that has called upon this country to do hard things, the American people have always risen to the challenge,” Pence said. “And we will again. We just need government as good as our people to do it.”Eight Republican candidates have officially joined the race alongside DeSantis and Trump, with the latest being North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, who announced his candidacy in a Wall Street Journal piece on Wednesday. The former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie officially joined the race in a New Hampshire town hall on Tuesday.Pence, who also served in the House of Representatives for a decade before becoming Indiana governor, joins a crowded field for the Republican nomination.In recent months, Pence has appealed to his base of evangelical Christians and anti-abortion activists.“God is not done with America yet,” he said in the announcement video.Wednesday is also Pence’s birthday. He is 64. More