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      US Senate close to passing $95bn aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after key vote

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      The US Senate on Tuesday was preparing to give final approval to a $95bn in wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, with a bipartisan coalition eager to send the long-stalled package to Joe Biden’s desk for signature.In a sweeping 80-19 vote, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to advance the measure in a step hailed by the Senate majority leader as “one of the greatest achievements the Senate has faced in years”.“Today the Senate sends a unified message to the entire world: America will always defend democracy in its hour of need,” said Chuck Schumer in a floor speech moments after the Senate moved toward final passage of the bill, possibly as early as Tuesday evening.“Make no mistake, America will deliver on its promise to act like a leader on the world stage, to hold the line against autocratic thugs like Vladimir Putin,” he continued. “We are showing Putin that betting against America is always, always a grave mistake.”After months of delays and setbacks, the House last week approved four bills to rush funding to three American allies while approving a conservative proposal that could lead to a nationwide ban of the social media platform TikTok. The measures were combined into one large package that the Senate will take up on Tuesday.The legislation includes $60.8bn to replenish Ukraine’s war chest as it seeks to repel Russia from its territory; $26.3bn for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8.1bn for the Indo-Pacific region to bolster its defenses against China.In a call on Monday, Biden informed the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that he would “move quickly” to send desperately needed military aid, including air defense weaponry, to the country following the bill’s passage by the Senate.In a move to bolster Republican support, the GOP-controlled House added a provision that would see TikTok blocked in the US unless its Chinese-owned parent company divests from the social media platform within a year. Much of the foreign aid section of the bill mirrors what the Senate passed in February, with the addition of a measure mandating the president seek repayment from Kyiv for roughly $10bn in economic assistance in the form of “forgivable loans”, an idea first floated by Donald Trump, who was initially opposed to aiding Ukraine.A vast majority of senators was expected to support the package on final passage. In the test vote earlier on Tuesday, 17 hardline Republican senators opposed moving forward with the measure. Among them was Rick Scott, the Florida senator, who said he supported several provisions in the bill, including the TikTok ban and aid for Israel, but could not endorse sending billions of US taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.Two progressive senators, Democrat Jeff Merkley and independent Bernie Sanders, voted against the procedural rule, saying they could not support providing additional military aid to Israel at a time when its government is waging a war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza and pushed the territory to the brink of famine.“We are now in the absurd situation where Israel is using US military assistance to block the delivery of US humanitarian aid to Palestinians,” Sanders said in remarks on the Senate floor. “If that is not crazy, I don’t know what is.”The Vermont senator sought to introduce two amendments: one that would end offensive military funding to Israel, citing Americans’ “increasing disgust” for Benjamin Netanyahu’s “war machine”, and another to restore funding to the UN relief agency Unrwa. Both were blocked from consideration, a move he denounced as a “dark day for democracy”.The foreign aid package largely resembles the measure passed by the Senate in February. But several Republican senators who voted against it then reversed course and on Tuesday gave their approval.Among them was Lindsey Graham, a longtime defense hawk who previously opposed the Senate’s foreign aid package because it wasn’t paired with border legislation but on Tuesday voted to advance it. Following a visit to Ukraine earlier this year, Graham endorsed Trump’s loan plan and has since pointed to Iran’s aerial attack on Israel as a reason send aid to the country.“Israel needs the US Senate now. No excuses,” Graham wrote on X before voting to advance the bill.The Senate’s passage of the aid package caps a tortured odyssey on Capitol Hill that began last year with a request for the White House for a fresh round of funding for Ukraine and for Israel, reeling from the 7 October cross-border attack by Hamas.Despite broad congressional support, the effort almost immediately stalled as a faction of Republicans, increasingly skeptical of US involvement in foreign entanglements, resisted sending more aid to Ukraine. Conservatives began insisting that any funding to foreign countries be paired with legislation aimed at stemming the rise of people arriving at the US-Mexico border.When a bipartisan border and national security bill negotiated in the Senate collapsed, Schumer proceeded to move forward with a vote on the foreign aid bill up for a vote. It passed overwhelmingly in a 70-29 vote in February, but had no clear path forward in the Republican-controlled House, where the new speaker, Mike Johnson, dithered as Ukraine suffered battlefield losses.Personal entreaties from Biden, congressional leaders and European heads of state, participation in high-level intelligence briefings as House speaker, and prayer eventually persuaded Johnson to act. The decision may come at a political cost: his job.“History judges us for what we do,” Johnson said at an emotional press conference last week, after a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers passed the aid package by lopsided margins.In remarks on Tuesday, Schumer praised Johnson, who he said “rose to the occasion”, as well as Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader with whom the Democrat said he had worked “hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to get this bill done”.“A lot of people inside and outside the Congress wanted this package to fail,” Schumer said. “But today those in Congress who stand on the side of democracy are winning the day.”McConnell has made funding Ukraine’s war effort a legacy-building quest, after announcing his decision to step down as the long-serving Senate Republican leader. In a lengthy floor speech ahead of the procedural vote on Tuesday, McConnell confronted the strain of “America first” isolationism favored by Trump and his loyalists in Congress that is rife and growing within the Republican party.“Today’s action is overdue, but our work does not end here,” he said. “Trust in American resolve is not rebuilt overnight. Expanding and restocking the arsenal of democracy doesn’t just happen by magic.” More

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      Two Turning Point USA members admit to assaulting queer professor

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      Two employees of a rightwing youth organization who harassed and assaulted a queer professor last year agreed to a diversion program and admitted they were guilty of the acts.Turning Point USA’s Kalen D’Almeida and Braden Ellis accosted the Arizona State University (ASU) professor David Boyles last October, hounding him about his sexuality and the classes he teaches. Boyles is an English instructor and the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona.At one point, D’Almeida pushed Boyles to the ground, bloodying his face. Boyles posted an image of his injuries online at the time, saying his physical injuries were “relatively minor” but that he felt “angry, violated, embarrassed and despairing at the fact that we have come to normalize this kind of harassment and violence” against the LGBTQ+ community.Both D’Almeida and Ellis signed diversion agreements with prosecutors that acknowledge they committed the offenses and enter them into an educational program to avoid convictions, Phoenix TV station 12News reported.D’Almeida, who was charged with misdemeanors for assault, harassment and disorderly conduct, and Ellis, charged with misdemeanor harassment, had previously pleaded not guilty and, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the organization said Ellis, who works as its cameraman, would pursue charges against Boyles.Boyles told the Guardian he was “disappointed but not surprised” that the county attorney pursued “the lightest possible slap on the wrist” for the Turning Point employees, but that he was gratified to see that “the two hateful losers who stalked, harassed, and assaulted me at my place of work last October have admitted their guilt”.“I hope this incident has made people aware that Turning Point USA does not care about free speech or serious debate but instead trades in hateful and bigoted rhetoric solely to ‘create content’ for their endless tedious podcasts and to stoke fear and violence in the real world,” Boyles said in a statement. “And I hope administrators at Arizona State and other universities will work to protect their LGBTQ+ students, staff, and faculty by no longer indulging and coddling organizations like TPUSA.”Turning Point USA said in a statement that it was “uninvolved in this matter, and the decision on the correct legal course had been left entirely to our reporters and their counsel”.“To be clear, Kalen and Braden have not been found guilty of anything in court. Diversion is a legal tactic where all charges are dismissed, and the language is boilerplate and standard to all such cases,” a TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet, said. “The fact is our reporters would not be permitted a jury trial for such a low-level misdemeanor, but instead be subject to a bench decision from a judge, Tyler Kissell, who doesn’t even have a law degree, was vice-president of the ASU chapter of Young Democrats, ran for state senate as a Democrat, and whose recent work experience includes teaching pre-school. Given these realities, we entirely understand why they decided to pursue this route.”ASU’s president, Michael Crow, previously condemned the attack on Boyles and has tried to get Turning Point to remove the university’s professors from its “professor watchlist” because it prompted harassment and threats against them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are looking at all of our options now that the TP employees have plead[ed] guilty to their crimes,” Crow said in an email on Tuesday. “This includes direct engagement with TP to see what they are doing with their criminal employees.”Turning Point USA plays a large role in Republican politics, especially in Arizona, where it is based. The group boosted Donald Trump’s candidacy and is aligned with the Maga movement. Its leaders, including founder and executive director Charlie Kirk, are prominent conservative commentators, and it has chapters on college campuses around the country. Multiple Arizona lawmakers have held jobs at the organization over the years, including state representative Austin Smith, who recently resigned from Turning Point after allegations he submitted forged signatures of voters in his petitions to run for re-election.The organization has also clashed with the university community in a few instances, including over an event that brought Kirk and other conservatives to campus to speak. More

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      Trump on Trial: National Enquirer boss dishes on Trump

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      You’re reading the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter. To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, sign up here.On the docket: Pecker tells allDavid Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, returned to the witness stand on Tuesday as a witness for the prosecution and explained to jurors how he coordinated with Donald Trump and his team to bury scandals about the then candidate during the 2016 campaign.Pecker laid out how he’d repeatedly paid to purchase stories about Trump’s alleged marital infidelities before keeping them from reaching the light of day – a scheme known as “catch-and-kill” that prosecutors claim Trump illegally falsified business records to conceal in order to help his presidential campaign.Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump that dated back to the late 1980s – then spent the next hours of testimony damning him with not-so-faint praise.Pecker described Trump as “very knowledgeable”, “very detail-oriented”, “very cautious and very frugal”, and “almost a micromanager” in his business dealings. Those complimentary descriptions hurt Trump because prosecutors need to prove that Trump had direct knowledge of the scheme to pay his attorney Michael Cohen back for his payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels by falsely labeling them as business expenses.Pecker then discussed a 2015 meeting he had at Trump Tower with Trump, Cohen and Hope Hicks, a top Trump campaign official, where they asked him what he could do “to help the campaign”.He promised to be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” to find out about “women selling stories” about Trump, and work to kill them, because Trump was “well known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women” (another unhelpful compliment for Trump, who had been married to his third wife, Melania, for a decade at that point). He then testified that he routinely coordinated with Cohen at Trump’s behest to run negative stories about Trump’s political foes. It’s a misdemeanor under New York law to conspire to promote the election of someone by unlawful means.Pecker then walked through two schemes to catch and kill those stories. The first was paying Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin $30,000 for the rights to a story about Trump fathering a child with a maid who worked in the building. When Pecker told Cohen the Enquirer would pay the fee itself (even though he didn’t plan to run the story), he said Cohen told him “the boss would be very pleased”.Pecker then testified that he bought the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a former model who claims she had an affair with Trump.Pecker said Trump called him once about McDougal, but that most of his interactions were with Cohen.“Michael was very agitated – it looked like he was getting a lot of pressure,” Pecker said shortly before court adjourned for the day.Pecker will return to the witness stand when the trial resumes on Thursday. He’ll likely finish testifying about McDougal and move on to explain his role in connecting Trump’s team to Stormy Daniels.Judge rips Trump’s lawyer during contempt hearingView image in fullscreenOn Tuesday morning, before the trial resumed with Pecker’s testimony, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing to determine whether he should find Trump in contempt for repeatedly violating his gag order prohibiting the former president from attacking potential witnesses and jurors.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Hugo Lowell reported from the courtroom, it didn’t go well for Trump’s team.Merchan was deeply skeptical of arguments from Trump attorney Todd Blanche, expressing frustration that Blanche wasn’t answering his questions about Trump’s specific social media posts, and rebuking him for his arguments.“Mr Blanche, you’re losing all credibility, I have to tell you right now,” Merchan said at one point. “You’re losing all credibility with the court.”Prosecutors had highlighted 10 different Trump social media posts in which he’d attacked likely witnesses including Cohen and Daniels and reposted attacks on the jury itself. They also said they’d file paperwork on an 11th example: Trump left court on Monday and immediately went on camera to attack Cohen by name. They said they wouldn’t seek jail time for the violations, but asked Merchan to fine Trump the legal maximum of $1,000 for each violation.Blanche’s arguments that Trump was “allowed to respond to political attacks” and that, in some cases, he was just resharing others’ comments didn’t fly with Merchan.“Give me one. Give me one recent attack he was responding to,” Merchan said when Blanche said Trump was just responding in kind.Merchan didn’t issue a ruling on whether he’d hold Trump in contempt.But Trump was nonetheless furious. After court concluded for the day, the former president complained to reporters that the “totally unconstitutional” gag was blocking him from attacking likely witnesses.“They can say whatever they want, they can lie, but I’m not allowed to say anything. I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered me to have a gag order,” he said. More

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      Senate leader Chuck Schumer hails bipartisanship and thanks Mike Johnson as foreign aid bill heads for passage – as it happened

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      The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, once again spoke from the chamber’s floor after lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to advance the $95b bill authorizing military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.Passing the legislation was a top priority for Joe Biden, his Democratic allies and some Republicans, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. It faced resistance from others in the GOP, among them the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson. But Johnson relented earlier this month, and allowed it to be voted on in the House, where it passed with more Democrats in favor than Republicans.In his remarks, Schumer thanked Johnson and McConnell, while saying the bill’s passage was a sign that bipartisanship is alive and well in a Congress better known for intractable partisan stalemate.“Today’s outcome yet confirms another thing we’ve stressed from the beginning of this Congress. In divided government, the only way to ever get things done is bipartisanship,” Schumer said.“I thank leader McConnell, as I’ve mentioned before, working hand in hand with us, not letting partisanship get in the way. I thank Speaker Johnson, who rose to the occasion, in his own words, that he had to do the right thing, despite the enormous political pressure on him. And I thank leader Jeffries, who worked so well together in his bipartisan way, with Speaker Johnson.” The last name is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader.The Senate has taken the key step of invoking cloture on the $95b bill that will send military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and could set the stage for social media app TikTok’s ban nationwide. Lawmakers are now debating the legislation, with final passage expected later today or perhaps tomorrow. The chamber earlier in the day rejected an attempt to make amendments to the bill, which already passed the House, thwarting independent Bernie Sanders’s plans to tweak the text to stop weapons shipments to Israel in what he called “a dark day for democracy”. Meanwhile, GOP senators called on the Biden administration to step in to break up pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses, including New York University and Yale University.Here’s what else happened today:
      Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s hand in overturning Roe v Wade in a speech in Florida, and mocked his Bible sales.
      The US plans to ship $1b in weapons to Ukraine that can be quickly deployed on the battlefield once the foreign aid bill passes.
      Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records is continuing in New York City, with testimony from former Nation Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson took a risk by allowing the chamber to pass the bill funding Ukraine’s defense, but Trump praised him nonetheless.
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, thanked Johnson for allowing the House to vote on and pass the foreign aid bill, despite his previous hesitancy towards arming Ukraine.
      Back in the Senate, lawmakers continue to debate the foreign aid bill for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, which appears headed for passage later today.The speeches will probably go on for a few hours. Shortly after the chamber overwhelmingly took the key legislative step of invoking cloture on the bill, CNN reports Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell, an ardent supporter of Ukraine, laid into conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his support of Vladimir Putin, and the damage it has caused:Carlson traveled to Russia in February for an interview with Putin, which did not appear to go the way the conservative commentator hoped:Much of what Joe Biden told the crowd in Florida was well-trod territory for the president, who has pledged to protect abortion access ever since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.But he did try out a new line, one inspired by Donald Trump’s foray into theology.“Trump bragged how proud he was to get rid of Roe v Wade … He took credit for it. He said, there has to be punishment for women exercising their reproductive freedom. His words, not mine,” Biden said.Then he teed up a zinger: “He described the Dobbs decision as a miracle. Maybe it’s coming from that Bible he’s trying to sell. I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell’s in it.”If you haven’t heard about it, yes, Trump is selling a Bible:Joe Biden vowed to protect abortion access as president, including vetoing any attempt by Congress to pass a nationwide ban on the procedure.But much of his speech was dedicated to reminding voters of Donald Trump’s role in Roe v Wade’s downfall.“It was Donald Trump who ripped away the right to freedom of women in America. It will be all of us who restore those rights for women in America,” Biden said.“When you do that, you’ll teach Donald Trump and extreme Maga Republicans an extremely valuable lesson: don’t mess with the women of America.”Joe Biden has made it to Tampa, where he’s laying into Donald Trump for his role in the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade, which has allowed states to ban abortion.Beginning next week, abortion will be banned in Florida beyond six weeks of pregnancy – a point at which many women are not aware they are pregnant. During his presidency, Trump appointed to the supreme court three conservative justices who would go on to vote to overturn Roe.“For 50 years, the court ruled that there was a fundamental constitutional right to privacy. But two years ago, that was taken away. Let’s be real clear. There was one person responsible for this nightmare, and he’s acknowledged and he brags about it – Donald Trump,” Biden said.“Trump is worried voters are gonna hold him accountable for the cruelty and chaos he created. Folks, the bad news for Trump is we are going to hold them accountable.”Independent senator Bernie Sanders expressed disappointment that the chamber declined to consider amendments to the foreign aid bill he planned to offer that would restore funding to UN relief agency Unrwa and remove weapons shipments to Israel.“I am very disappointed, but not surprised, that my amendment to end offensive military aid to Netanyahu’s war machine – which has killed and wounded over 100,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are women and children – will not be considered,” the Vermont lawmaker said.“Polls show that a majority of Americans, and a very strong majority of Democrats, want to end US taxpayer support for Netanyahu’s war against the Palestinian people. It is a dark day for democracy when the Senate will not even allow a vote on that issue.”The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, once again spoke from the chamber’s floor after lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to advance the $95b bill authorizing military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.Passing the legislation was a top priority for Joe Biden, his Democratic allies and some Republicans, including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. It faced resistance from others in the GOP, among them the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson. But Johnson relented earlier this month, and allowed it to be voted on in the House, where it passed with more Democrats in favor than Republicans.In his remarks, Schumer thanked Johnson and McConnell, while saying the bill’s passage was a sign that bipartisanship is alive and well in a Congress better known for intractable partisan stalemate.“Today’s outcome yet confirms another thing we’ve stressed from the beginning of this Congress. In divided government, the only way to ever get things done is bipartisanship,” Schumer said.“I thank leader McConnell, as I’ve mentioned before, working hand in hand with us, not letting partisanship get in the way. I thank Speaker Johnson, who rose to the occasion, in his own words, that he had to do the right thing, despite the enormous political pressure on him. And I thank leader Jeffries, who worked so well together in his bipartisan way, with Speaker Johnson.” The last name is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader.The Senate invoked cloture on the $95bn bill to provide military assistance to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, an important procedural step that clears the way for a final vote on its passage later today.The bill advanced with 80 votes in favor, and 19 opposed.The measure has already been approved by the House, and will be signed by Joe Biden after it passes the Senate. Lawmakers are now expected to debate the legislation and offer a limited number of amendments.Back in the Senate, they’re voting on whether to invoke cloture on the foreign aid bill.That will set the stage for its final consideration, after a period of debate.A previous motion by Republican senator Mike Lee that would have blocked the bill’s progress was voted down with 50 senators opposed and 48 in favor.When he speaks in Tampa at 3pm, Joe Biden will press his message that Donald Trump is responsible for the spread of abortion bans across the country, his re-election campaign announced.The president will arrive in Florida one week before a law banning abortions after six weeks – a point at which many women are not yet aware they are pregnant – goes into effect. In a memo, Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, said such laws were out of step with the American public.“Trump is hoping that Americans will somehow forget that he’s responsible for the horror women are facing in this country every single day because of him. It’s a bad bet,” Chávez Rodriguez wrote.Here’s more:
      When President Biden speaks out against attacks on reproductive freedom across the country and yet another extreme Trump abortion ban taking effect in Florida, it will resonate with voters across every battleground state. Women and their families do not want Trump and MAGA Republicans continuing to dismantle their fundamental freedoms. An overwhelming majority of voters have rejected Trump’s abortion bans every time they’ve been on the ballot, and this November, they’ll reject Trump too.
      Joe Biden will shortly arrive in Tampa, where he is scheduled to give an address this afternoon on abortion rights, including attacking Florida’s six-week ban that is set to take effect on 1 May.Reporters on the ground in Tampa say Biden will be faced by several dozen people who have gathered to protest the president’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.The Senate’s procedural vote on the foreign aid bill is being delayed by Republicans complaining they can’t offer amendments to it.Eric Schmitt, of Missouri, and Utah’s Mike Lee are accusing the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, of effectively railroading through his version of the bill “with minimal debate and perhaps no amendments”, Lee said.He insists, as extremist House Republicans who opposed the bill last week did, that money for Ukraine is unpopular.Bernie Sanders, independent senator for Vermont, says he agrees with Lee.He says he wants to offer two amendments, one to ensure there’s no money for Israel’s “war machine”. The second is removing a block on aid money for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), which Israel says has been infiltrated by “Hamas terrorists” stealing funds.“Members can agree with me or disagree with me on the issues, but they should be voted upon,” Sanders said.Senators are voting now whether to adopt a motion by Lee to table (kill) Schumer’s motion to move forward with the foreign aid bill.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will visit Saudi Arabia this weekend in pursuit of the Biden administration’s ambitious goal of helping to restore that nation’s relations with Israel, Axios reports.He’ll be attending the special meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh on Sunday, and meeting the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and other regional leaders, the outlet said.Axios, citing US officials, adds that Blinken “is considering” visiting Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of his trip, but has not yet finalized an itinerary.Senators are inching towards a procedural vote on the $95.3bn foreign aid package, expected close to the top of the hour.Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly has just been on the chamber floor, lamenting that it took so long for Congress to pass a bill he said 71% of members ultimately voted for.“Because of delays, Ukraine’s fighters are desperately low [on weapons and ammunition],” he said.“That’s tying the hands of their commanders at the same time Russia is revitalizing its war effort.”But, he says, “Ukraine can win this war. Passing this bill will allow the transfer to them more of what Ukraine needs to turn the tide.”Republican Maine senator Susan Collins concurs. “[This is] a volatile and dangerous time in world history,” she says:
      If [Russia’s president Vladimir] Putin is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, he will continue to pursue his goal of recreating the Soviet Union. He’s made no bones about that.
      She fears Moldova, Georgia, the Baltic nations and Poland are in Putin’s sights.“Then our troops would be involved in a much larger war,” she says.The Senate will soon begin voting on a $95bn foreign aid bill for Israel, Ukraine and other US allies, ending months of negotiations over one of Joe Biden’s top priorities and giving Kyiv another lifeline in its defense against Russia’s invasion. But the drama isn’t over yet. Independent senator Bernie Sanders has vowed to offer amendments stripping from the bill funds to send Israel weapons, while Republicans opposed to arming Ukraine may make their own stand. Voting begins at 1pm with a procedural motion. Meanwhile, GOP senators are calling on the Biden administration to step in to break up pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses, including New York University and Yale University.Here’s what else is going on today:
      The US plans to ship $1b in weapons to Ukraine that can be quickly deployed on the battlefield once the foreign aid bill passes.
      Donald Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records is continuing in New York City, with testimony from former Nation Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson took a risk by allowing the chamber to pass the bill funding Ukraine’s defense, but Trump continued to praise him, raising his chances of keeping his job.
      Twenty-five Republican senators have demanded that the Biden administration send federal law enforcement to respond to college campuses where pro-Palestinian protests have occurred, and called the demonstrators “anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs”.“The Department of Education and federal law enforcement must act immediately to restore order, prosecute the mobs who have perpetuated violence and threats against Jewish students, revoke the visas of all foreign nationals (such as exchange students) who have taken part in promoting terrorism, and hold accountable school administrators who have stood by instead of protecting their students,” the group wrote in a letter addressed to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, and the education secretary, Miguel Cardona.Among the signatories is the party’s Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and his deputy, John Thune. Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who separately demanded the president deploy national guard troops to college campuses, also signed the letter.Here’s more on the campus protests: More

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      Trump’s hush-money trial: National Enquirer publisher says he was ‘eyes and ears’ of 2016 campaign

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      Donald Trump sat for the second day of witness testimony in court in Manhattan on Tuesday in his criminal trial over hush-money payments to an adult film star and an alleged fraudulent cover-up of those payments just weeks before the 2016 election.David Pecker, the ex-president’s longtime ally and former publisher of the National Enquirer – who prosecutors contend was integral in illicit, so-called catch-and-kill efforts to prevent negative stories about Trump from going public – was on the stand again as a prosecution witness after a brief appearance on Monday following opening statements.He told the court about being invited to a meeting with Trump and his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, in New York in 2015 after Trump had just declared his candidacy for president and was seeking a friendly and powerful media insider.“They asked me what can I do – and what my magazines could do – to help the [election] campaign … I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr Trump and I would publish negative stories about his opponents, and I said that I would also be the eyes and ears because I know that the Trump Organization had a very small staff,” he said.Earlier on Tuesday, however, Judge Juan Merchan heard arguments about a request from prosecutors to hold Trump in contempt of court. They said he repeatedly violated a gag order barring him from publicly attacking witnesses in the trial.Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, argued that his client was just responding to political attacks, not flouting the judge’s order, and that seven of the instances cited were reposts of other people’s content on social media, which “we don’t believe are a violation of the gag order.”Merchan asked whether there was any case law on it. Blanche replied: “I don’t have any case laws, your honor, it’s just common sense.”As Blanche continued to repeat that claim, the judgesaid:“Mr Blanche you’re losing all credibility…with the court. Is there any other argument you want to make?”Merchan on Tuesday did not announce a decision on the contempt issue.Trump’s criminal hush-money trial: what to know
      A guide to Trump’s hush-money trial – so far
      The key arguments prosecutors will use against Trump
      How will Trump’s trial work?
      From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: The key players
      Pecker first took the stand on Monday and provided brief testimony of his work as a tabloid honcho. “We used checkbook journalism and we paid for stories. I gave a number to the editors that they could not spend more than $10,000 to investigate or produce or publish a story, anything over $10,000 they would spend on a story, they would have to be vetted and brought up to me, for approval.”Pecker said he had final say over the content of the National Enquirer and other AMI publications.Prosecutors contend that Pecker was at the center of a plot to boost Trump’s chances in the 2016 election. The alleged plan with Trump and Cohen was, if Pecker caught wind of damaging information, he would apprise Trump and Cohen, so they could figure out a way to keep it quiet. That collusion came to include AMI’s $150,000 payoff to the Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, prosecutors have said.This kind of “catch-and-kill” tactic did not happen with Trump before he ran for president, Pecker said.The alleged plot to cover up a claimed sexual encounter between Daniels and Trump is the basis of prosecutors’ case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn October 2016, the Washington Post published a video featuring Trump’s hot-mic comments during an Access Hollywood taping, in which he boasted about sexually assaulting women. The comments, which Colangelo read to jurors, included “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”After they surfaced, the campaign went into panic mode, Colangelo said. It worked to characterize these comments as “locker room talk”, but, when Daniels’ claim came across Trump and his allies’ radar, they feared the backlash: people would see these ill-behaved ways were not mere talk.“Another story about infidelity, with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape, would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo said in his address to jurors. “Cohen carried out a $130,000 payoff to Daniels which Trump allegedly repaid him in checks that he listed as legal services in official company records.“Look, no politician wants bad press, but the evidence at trial will show that this wasn’t spin or communication strategy,” Colangelo continued. “This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures – to silence people with something bad to say about his behavior.“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”Trump denies the charges. On Tuesday afternoon, Steinglass asked why Pecker said he would notify Cohen if he heard “anything about women selling stories”.Pecker said: “In a presidential campaign, I was the person that thought that there would be a lot of women that would come out to try to sell their stories because Mr Trump was well-known as the most eligible bachelor and dated the most beautiful women.”In fact, he was also accused of sexual assault and harassment by a series of women. In a civil case, Trump was found liable last year for having sexually abused the New York writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s.Pecker said he ran negative stories about Trump rivals, including presidential opponent Hillary Clinton and GOP rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.He said he paid $30,000 to catch and kill a story from a doorman purporting that Trump had fathered an illegitimate child with a woman who cleaned his New York penthouse.The trial is due to resume on Thursday. More

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      Trump lauds House speaker as a ‘good person’ after Ukraine aid bill passage

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      Mike Johnson is a “good person” and is “trying very hard”, Donald Trump said, after the US House speaker oversaw passage of military aid to Ukraine, long opposed by Trump, in the face of fierce opposition from the right of the Republican party.“Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump said in a radio interview on Monday night, after a day in court in his New York hush-money trial.“It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do,” Trump said of Johnson. “I think he’s a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on Nato when I said Nato has to pay up … I think he’s a very good man. I think he’s trying very hard. And again, we’ve got to have a big election.”Johnson faces opposition from rightwingers in his party, in particular from Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fervent Trump ally who has threatened to trigger a motion to vacate, the mechanism by which a speaker can be removed, and called for Johnson to quit.No less than 112 House Republicans voted against Ukraine aid, leaving Johnson reliant on Democratic support. A similar scenario saw his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, removed last year, but with an election looming, many see Johnson as safe for now.Trump’s distaste for Nato was often on show when he was president and has been prominent in his campaign to return to the White House despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties.Trump recently said he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies he deemed financially delinquent: remarks Joe Biden condemned as “dumb, shameful, dangerous [and] un-American”.Trump’s apparent fondness for Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has also been a constant of his time in politics.Most observers thought Trump would therefore continue to back Republicans who blocked Ukraine aid for months. But as Johnson manoeuvred towards passing a bill and then did so last Saturday, Trump declined to shoot down the effort.In his Monday interview with John Fredericks, a rightwing radio host, Trump praised Johnson for converting $9bn of Ukraine aid into a “forgivable loan” – a proposal some Republicans wanted to apply to the whole package.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFocusing on avoiding chaos in Congress in an election year, Trump said: “We’ve got to election [sic] some people in Congress, much more than we have right now. We have to elect some good senators. Get rid of some of the ones we have now, like [Mitt] Romney [of Utah] and others.”Romney, who as the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 picked Russia as the “number one geopolitical foe” of the US, was also the only GOP senator to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, for seeking to blackmail Ukraine by withholding military aid in return for dirt on his rivals.Focusing on his own political prospects, in a rematch with Biden in which polling his been slowly tilting towards the incumbent, Trump said: “We have to have a big day, and we have to win the presidency. If we don’t win the presidency, I’m telling you I think our country could be finished … We are absolutely a country in decline.”Trump spent much of the interview complaining about his various prosecutions, which have reduced his ability to campaign. Teeing Trump up, Fredericks called the hush-money case, concerning payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair, “this scam, communist, Soviet manifesto trial that is going on in New York City”. More

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      Trump has dodged financial calamity – for the time being | Lloyd Green

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      Donald Trump dodged financial calamity on Monday. The office of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and lawyers for Trump reached agreement in open court on the terms governing the appellate bond posted by the former president. After nearly an hour of argument and an extended recess, the parties achieved a workable solution. It is a ray of sunshine in Trump’s otherwise bleak legal landscape.Trump would be required to leave $175m in cash only as collateral for the bond. Mutual funds or other securities will not suffice. In addition, the brokerage account holding the funds would fall under the exclusive control of the bonding company.Trump would no longer maintain any authority over the account. In turn, James remains barred from enforcing her $454m judgment against Trump and his businesses. For those keeping score, Trump is now out-of-pocket in a neighborhood north of a quarter of a billion dollars and counting.His pretense of being cash-rich is soiled. In March, he shelled out for a separate $91.63m bond while he appeals the $83.3m verdict in the latest E Jean Carroll defamation case. Earlier, he paid another $4m into court to block Carroll from collecting a prior defamation judgment, also on appeal.The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group – his eponymous meme stock, DJT – is in the doldrums. Politico also reports that Save America, a Trump-controlled Pac, has already spent $59m on his legal fees and may run shortly out of money.Beyond that, Trump World tussles with Ken Griffin, a major Republican donor and the chief of Citadel Securities, a leading Wall Street market-maker. Last Thursday, Devin Nunes – the former Republican congressman who resigned from the House to run Trump’s media company – wrote to the head of the Nasdaq, raising the issue of “potential market manipulation” of DJT stock and blasting “naked short-selling”.Griffin, whose wealth is estimated at a cool $37bn, quickly struck back. He branded Nunes a “proverbial loser” whom Trump “would have fired on The Apprentice”. He also accused the humorless Californian of trying to deflect blame for DJT’s lackluster stock price.The hush-money trial in Manhattan, however, is presently Trump’s greatest fear. On Monday, the case finally kicked off with opening arguments. David Pecker, of the National Enquirer, will reportedly be the prosecution’s first witness – but not the witness likely to garner the most attention. Not even close.Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, will eventually take center stage, with assists from Hope Hicks, an ex-senior Trump White House aide, and Karen McDougal, a Playboy model and one-time playmate of the year. Testimony by Daniels and McDougal will likely turn graphic.According to reports, Hicks has already met with prosecutors. Purportedly, she was involved in negotiations aimed at preventing Daniels from publicly disclosing her alleged trysts with Melania’s husband and Ivanka’s dad. For the record, neither woman is expected to attend the trial.The criminal case also involves alleged hush-money payments to McDougal. She too claims that she had sex with Trump, albeit “many dozens of times”.“I was in love with him. He was in love with me,” she said in a 2019 interview. “I know that because he told me all the time.“He’d say, ‘You’re my baby and I love you.’ He showed me off to his friends.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sincerity of Trump’s purported displays of extramarital affection may likely be met with disbelief by at least one jury member. In court, the juror disclosed that she thought Trump to be “very selfish and self-serving”.Last Friday, Juan Merchan, the trial judge, looked at Trump and sternly announced: “Sir, can you please have a seat.” To some, it sounded as if Merchan were talking to an unruly dog. On Monday, the court ruled that if Trump takes the witness stand, he may be cross-examined over past bad acts.Don’t hold your breath on Trump testifying in his own defense. It would likely be embarrassing, if not necessarily perjurious.The emcee of Mar-a-Lago stands diminished. Together, all this may be straining his coping mechanisms, wallet and poll numbers. In contrast, Joe Biden demonstrates renewed political vitality. On Saturday, he scored a major legislative victory, a foreign aid package that bolstered Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Punchbowl’s headline blared: “Attention House GOP: Biden is the winner”.Looking back, when Trump complained to Randall Stephenson, then CEO of AT&T, of women being the bane of his existence he wasn’t far off. Among female voters, Trump consistently trails Biden by double digits. Meanwhile, James stands ever ready to separate the man from his money.“For the next six weeks, a man who values control and tries to shape environments and outcomes to his will is in control of very little,” wrote Maggie Haberman. His image as a pugnacious rule breaker will likely get dinged. “Vagina is expensive,” Trump once reportedly told radio shock-jock Howard Stern.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      On trial, Trump is a shadow of the superhero his supporters crave | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump is already in jail. He is pressed into confinement every weekday, except Wednesdays, beginning bright and early, no excuses, at 9.30 in the morning, in the dreary courtroom in Manhattan, where his impulse to mouth off wearies and worries his lawyers, and he must listen, for the first time since his father slapped him down, to an authority telling him to gag himself. He had more leeway when Fred Trump shipped the problem child to the New York military academy where Donald bullied his classmates.Trump’s required attendance in the courtroom as a criminal defendant is his first loss of liberty.His image there is raw, uncut and unfiltered, like Andy Warhol’s film Sleep,in which Warhol fixed a camera on his slumbering lover for six hours. It’s not a Trump rally. The withering focus – without the introduction of the thumping music, his emergence from a dry ice-generated cloud of fog and the predictably orgasmic reception of frenzied minions – reveals something less than the conquering hero in a “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap clapping his hands.Day after day, Trump slumps in his chair, his eyes narrowing and closing, his facial features sagging, until he suddenly jerks to life, once muttering a seemingly veiled threat to a potential juror that earned him a rebuke from Judge Juan Merchan that if he persisted he would be in contempt for witness intimidation. Without self-discipline, Trump invites being disciplined. Lacking control, he fails to control himself. Time and again, he falls asleep, “appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest”, Maggie Haberman reported in the New York Times.He appears to pass through the seven ages of man in a blink of the eye without having gone through those of adulthood, leaping from caterwauling infant to angry curmudgeon, the stages from napping to napping.Trump clearly prefers to be where he is when his eyes are closed rather than when they are open. His sleeping might be a form of passive aggression, showing his hostility, and at the same time willful avoidance and denial. Railing on his Truth Social account, while minute by minute the price of the market-listed “DJT” dives, he wails in capital letters against the trial – “THIS SCAM ‘RUSHED’ TRIAL TAKING PLACE IN A 95% DEMOCRAT AREA IS A PLANNED AND COORDINATED WITCH HUNT” – and the judge – “POSSIBLY THE MOST CONFLICTED JUDGE IN JUDICIAL HISTORY, WHO MUST BE REMOVED FROM THIS HOAX IMMEDIATELY.”For Trump, the trial is an ordeal – literally an ordeal, in the sense of a medieval trial in which the offender is subjected to torture to determine guilt or innocence. Documents and witnesses did not figure into those trials in the Middle Ages. The verdict was procured by ordeals of walking on fire or boiling in water. Trump, for his part, flips the historical script. He is out to discredit the documents and witnesses. He acts as if the only truth appears when he speaks outside the courtroom. He wants his devotees to see the trial as an ancient ordeal by combat in which he is warrior, not the offender.In a waking moment, Trump’s promise that he will testify shows his understanding of the trial as more than a matter of the law, but a spectacle that raises the central issue at stake in his cult of personality. Of course, if he were to take the stand, inevitably to allegedly lie, as he has in past depositions, and inescapably to present himself to the jury as an unsympathetic narcissist, he would undermine his case, and possibly face additional severe penalties for obstruction of justice and perjury up to a separate sentence of seven years in jail.But it is likely that Trump will not take the witness chair to subject himself to the prosecutor’s cross-examination. Trump’s dissembling is a gesture of false bravado showing that he intuitively grasps that for his followers his image as a strongman is on trial. He needs to tell them he fears nothing. He’ll think of an excuse later. He is on trial because he has been accused of bribing people not to tell the truth, but he has to lie to maintain his myth.The trial is a morality play that has also become a mortality play. His elemental appeal is that he can do whatever he wants, that his power derives from making a mockery of the rules. He wants more than presidential immunity for anything he has done, from the attempted coup of January 6 to stealing national security secrets. He demands absolute immunity from social norms and conventions. His defiance, so far without consequences, is essential to demonstrating his strength. He appears immune to ordinary strictures. But strongmen can’t exist within someone else’s regime. The trial is a prequel of Trump caged. He doesn’t play by the rules, but now he has to obey them.Trump has strategized that he could use the trial as his platform to depict himself as the superhero against the system. He would invert the terms of the prosecution to persecution and convert the trial into his campaign trail. As a victim of the forces of evil elites, he would inflate himself into a larger fighter for his followers. “I am your retribution!”But the action hero can’t move without permission. “Sir, would you please have a seat,” the judge ordered when he stood up to walk out before adjournment. Superman can’t fly. He may dream of racing like Batman through Gotham, but he is facing the judge on the high bench issue a ruling about his contempt for violating the gag order.He has lost more than his ability to articulate; he is becoming disarticulated as a figure. “It is a shame,” he whined. “I am sitting here for days now, from morning until night in that freezing room. Everybody was freezing in there! And all for this. This is your result. It is very unfair.” Under the weight of the trial, he is decaying, “haggard and rumpled, his gait off-center, his eyes blank”, according to the Times.Trump is widely seen as obnoxious, vile and no model for children, even by some who support him, but he retains one great political asset that has allowed him to transcend his toxicity. He is perceived as a “strong and decisive leader”, according to the Gallup Poll. For his followers his strength has been immutable. This image is at the heart of his cult of personality, the center of his political theology and the core of his authoritarianism.The trial is about facts, fiction and putrefaction. The prosecution will present its facts to strip Trump of his lies, his fiction. That regular and expected process has surprisingly but naturally disclosed his physical deterioration, which is hardly incidental but critical to his projection, which is another fiction.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the kitsch art of Trumpism, a cross between Stalinist socialist realism and comic books, his true believers always, without exception, portray him as a physical strongman. In popular versions, there is Trump in leather jacket on a Harley, Trump on a galloping horse holding a flag, and Trump in fatigues holding an AR-15 rifle standing next to Lincoln and Washington, also in fatigues.Trump, used to living the life of a sloth of the leisure class, actively encourages and profits from these images of virility. When he announced his re-election campaign for president in December 2022, he sold a deck of digital cards for $99 showing himself as Superman (with a “T” on his muscled chest), a Star Wars-like hero, and another holding a lightning bolt in his hand with jet planes in the background and the logo: “Superhero.”His obsession with cultivating the strongman image, like that of Vladimir Putin posing shirtless on a horse, reached an apogee in October 2020, when he was released from the Walter Reed medical center for treatment of Covid, and planned to rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman’s letter “S”. Instead, he stood on the White House balcony and tore off his mask.Trump now aspires to be a dictator “only on day one”. His desire to be an absolute despot is another of his wishful medieval anachronisms. “Be a king, be a killer,” Fred Trump told him. If he is the personification of the Leviathan, the state itself, a divine monarch above the law, his corporeal body merges with that of the body politic. His followers already accept implicitly that tenet of his myth, whether they know it or are Know Nothings. It is vital to his cult.But, if true, the physical decline of his body must be reflected in the decline of his body politics, his kingdom of Maga, which is not the state, at least yet, unless there is a new law of succession, not yet introduced by the Freedom Caucus. Trump’s putrefaction in the courtroom is refutation of his pretension to royalty apart from any legal argument that might be considered by the conservatives on the supreme court to grant his plea of immunity as if he were king.Being tried on the evidence trail of his pathetic old affairs is a cruel irony for the lumpish former man-about-town forced to sit today in the courtroom. He is being visited by the ghost of Playboy Mansion past.“I am supposed to be in Georgia; in North Carolina, South Carolina. I’m supposed to be in a lot of different places campaigning, but I’ve been here all day,” Trump complained. “It’s a whopping outrage and it is an outrage. Everybody is outraged by it.”
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More