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      Marjorie Taylor Greene claims ‘bullshit’ as expert says Covid vaccine saved 14m lives

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      Responding to an expert’s statement that “about 3.2 million” American lives have been saved by vaccines against Covid, with “over 14 million lives” saved globally, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognising bullshit when I hear it.”On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Greene attended a hearing staged by the House oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.The expert Greene responded to, Dr Peter Marks, the director of biologics evaluation and research at the Food and Drug Administration, also described how at the height of the pandemic in the US, “about 3,300 [people], about a World Trade Center disaster a day”, were dying of Covid-19, contributing to a death toll of more than 1.1m.Marks later apologised to viewers, after Greene claimed children should not be given Covid vaccines.Greene, from Georgia, is a former CrossFit gym owner, conspiracy theorist and controversialist who entered Congress in 2021 and has assumed an influential position in a House Republican caucus controlled by the far right.Touting herself as a possible vice-presidential pick for Donald Trump, she is set to act as a manager in the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, a process Greene drove in the House.Speaking after Marks answered questions from the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, Greene first dismissed the doctor’s comments as “bullshit”.Then she used her allotted five minutes to deliver rambling remarks about “all kinds of injuries, miscarriages, heart attacks, myocarditis, permanent disability, neurological problems” that she said had arisen from “people being forced to take vaccines”.“There’s been thousands of peer-reviewed medical studies, thousands of them studying vaccine injuries,” Greene said. “They are real. People are dying.“People are having heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and many other countries are dropping the Covid-19 vaccine and saying we shouldn’t give them to children. It’s time to be honest about the vaccine-injured and we need to stop allowing these Covid-19 vaccines to be given out to children.”The next speaker, the California Democrat Robert Garcia, said: “I’m sorry you all had to go through that. That was a lot of conspiracy theories and wild accusations, which we know have been debunked by medical science. We should be clear that vaccines work and have saved lives, and have saved millions of lives in this country.”Garcia displayed blow-ups of tweets and comments in which Greene has spread conspiracy theories and misinformation including comparing pandemic public health rules to the Holocaust, encouraging parents to deny Covid vaccines to children and claiming vaccines contribute to an increase in “turbo cancers”.As Greene indicated her displeasure, Garcia asked Dr Marks to “clarify once again for the American people, do the Covid vaccines cause ‘turbo cancers’?”“I’m a haematologist and oncologist that’s board certified,” Marks said. “I don’t know what a ‘turbo cancer’ is. It was a term that was used first in a paper on mouse experiments, describing an inflammatory response. We have not detected any increase in cancers with the Covid-19 vaccines.”As Garcia began to speak, Marks interjected.“May I just add something here,” he said. “I do need to apologise to the thousand or so parents of children under four years of age who have died of Covid-19, who were unvaccinated. Because there were deaths and there continue to be deaths among children, and that is the reason why they need to get vaccinated. Thank you.” More

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      Larry Hogan says he doesn’t want to be a senator – but he’s polling well anyway

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      Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland who says he doesn’t really want to be a US senator but is running anyway, is tied with or leads his possible Democratic opponents, according to a poll released on Thursday.The former governor of Maryland leads Angela Alsobrooks, a state politician, by seven points in a hypothetical matchup and ties at 42% support with the US congressman David Trone, in a poll by Emerson College, the Hill and DC News Now.Governor from 2015 to 2023, Hogan left office as a popular moderate Republican in an otherwise generally Democratic state. Opposing Donald Trump’s grip on his party, and flirting with a third-party presidential run, Hogan repeatedly said he did not want to succeed the Democrat Ben Cardin in the Senate after Cardin retires next year.Last week, Hogan said he would run after all.Last May, Hogan said he did not “have a burning desire to be a senator”, would find sitting in the Senate “really frustrating on a personal human level”, thought being a senator was “not where my skill set lies” and said that although he could win a seat, “the problem was I would win and I would have to go be a senator”.On Wednesday he told CNN “not much” had changed.“I still feel exactly the same way,” he said. “Not a lot gets done in Washington. Who in their right mind would want to go in and be a part of that divisiveness and dysfunction? I said I wasn’t going to walk away from politics, I was going to try to be a voice, standing up to try to fix things, and you can’t just sit back and complain about things if you’re not willing to try to make a difference.“Still personally, there’s not a burning desire to go be a senator … I’m only doing it because I think I have a unique voice and perspective.”Hogan also said he only decided to run “a week ago, after the debacle that took place on the Senate floor”, when Republicans sank a border and immigration deal they themselves helped draft apparently in part because Trump told them to do so.The poll noted that Hogan also holds broad appeal in a matchup against Trone among independents, at 48%, and would attract the support of nearly a quarter of Democratic voters.Hogan was therefore a prized target for Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, who is seeking to take control of the chamber in November.“In Maryland I won huge numbers of suburban women and Black voters,” Hogan told CNN. “I have been able to reach out to people across the spectrum.”Asked about appealing to such voters while on a Republican ticket headed by Trump, Hogan said: “It’s a big challenge. Maryland is the most Democratic state in the country. But I’m not running as Donald Trump … I’m not running for the Republican party or for any candidate for president. I decided to run to kind of stand up and fight for the people of Maryland, and stand against the broken politics in Washington.”Hogan has held positions that could reduce his bipartisan appeal. Asked on CNN about his record on abortion – an issue that has fueled Democratic victories since the US supreme court removed the federal right in 2022 – Hogan said he was a moderate.“I’m personally not a proponent of abortion,” he said, “but I said I’m not going to take away that right for others to make that decision for themselves.”Calling Democratic attacks on the issue “tired”, Hogan said that as a senator, he would not vote for a national abortion ban.“I understand why this is such an important and emotional issue for women across Maryland and across the country,” he said, adding: “There’s no threat to the protection of these rights in Maryland, where it’s already a law. Voters have already weighed in on it. It’s settled law.”Hogan’s successor as governor, the Democrat Wes Moore, hit back, telling the Baltimore Banner: “Anyone who thinks that there is no threat to women’s reproductive rights and abortion access is delusional.” More

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      Trump says mixing Haley with Pelosi and Biden with Obama was tactic, not gaffe

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      Donald Trump claimed high-profile campaign trail gaffes, in which he seemed to think Barack Obama was still president and mistook Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi, were deliberate, the result of his being “sarcastic” in the first instance and choosing to “interpose” names in the second.“When I say ‘Barack Hussein Obama is the president of the United States’, [I am] meaning there’s a lot of control there because the one guy can’t put two sentences together,” the former president told supporters in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday.“So I say ‘Barack Hussein Obama’.”“The one guy” to whom Trump referred was Joe Biden, once Obama’s vice-president, who soundly beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election but whose fitness for office and a possible second term is now the subject of fierce speculation, given his age, 81, and allegations about his memory and performance.Trump, who is 77, is also the subject of fierce speculation over his mental state and fitness for office.Regardless – and despite his facing 91 criminal charges, attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection and civil suits including one in which he was adjudicated a rapist – the former president dominates the Republican primaries.Having won in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Trump enjoys huge polling leads over Haley in South Carolina, the former governor and UN ambassador’s home state which will be the next to vote.In North Charleston, Trump repeated his racist and Islamophobic dog whistle about Obama’s middle name, itself an echo of the “birther” conspiracy theory Trump helped spread (and which he recently sought to direct at Haley), which contended that Obama was not qualified to be president because he was supposedly not born in the US.“Remember Rush?” Trump asked, referring to Rush Limbaugh, the divisive rightwing talk radio host the comedian and senator Al Franken famously called a “big fat idiot” but whom Trump honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020, not long before Limbaugh died of cancer.Impersonating Limbaugh’s habit of stressing Obama’s middle name, Trump said: “He used to go, ‘Barack Hussein Obama’. ‘He’d go ‘Barack Hussein Obama’. But he did that, Rush. Do we miss Rush? Yes.“But when I say that Obama is the president of our country, bah bah bah, they go, ‘He doesn’t know that it’s Biden. He doesn’t know.’ So it’s very hard to be sarcastic.“When I interpose, because I’m not a Nikki fan and I’m not a Pelosi fan, and when I purposely interposed names, they said, ‘He didn’t know Pelosi from Nikki, from Tricky Nikki. Tricky Dicky. He didn’t know.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn remarks in New Hampshire last month, Trump appeared to think Haley had been responsible for security at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.In fact, Pelosi was speaker of the House on the day Trump sent supporters to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Biden, a riot now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and an attempt to remove Trump from the ballot which reached the US supreme court last week.“I interpose and they make a big deal out of it,” Trump continued. “I said, ‘No, no, I think they both stink, they have something in common. They both stink.’”According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “interpose” means “to place in an intervening position, or to put (oneself) between”.Trump possibly meant to say he “interpolated” Pelosi’s name for Haley’s – in the sense of “to alter or corrupt … by inserting new or foreign matter”. More

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      US Senate passes US$95 billion aid package for Ukraine – what this tells us about Republican support for Trump

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      After months of wrangling, the US Senate has finally passed Joe Biden’s US$95 billion (£75 billion) foreign aid package. Ukraine is the destination for almost two-thirds of the aid, with US$14 billion set aside to assist Israel’s war against Hamas, and US$10 billion destined for humanitarian aid in conflict areas, such as Gaza.

      The bill passed the Senate by 70 votes to 29, with 22 Republicans joining the Democrat majority. But two Democrats and Bernie Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, voted against the bill because of its support of Israel.

      The split in the Senate illustrates the divisions among both parties on the subject.

      Republican senators originally voted against a much larger bill (US$118 billion). They demanded that any foreign aid package must be dependent on increased funding for security on the US southern border with Mexico, and declared the proposed bill was insufficient to address concerns there.

      But when former president Donald Trump came out against the bill, even with the financial support for border control measures, Republicans were divided. Trump called the bill a “horrible, open borders betrayal of America,” and vowed that he would “fight it all the way”.

      Republican support for the bill was led by Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. McConnell has always been supportive of Ukraine, claiming it is in the US interest to support Ukraine. After passing the bill, McConnell argued: “We equip our friends to face our shared adversaries so we’re less likely to have to spend American lives to defeat them.”

      McConnell’s advocacy was enough to get the bill through the Senate, although his position as leader has been severely weakened by the number of GOP senators who defied him on the aid package.

      McConnell’s support for Ukraine puts him in direct opposition to Trump. Last year, Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine in just one day if he was reelected, indicating he would push the US towards a more isolationist position.

      The former president doubled down on this with a statement at a rally in South Carolina on February 11, where he declared he would refuse to support Nato members who failed to pay their way, and that he would encourage invading nations “to do whatever the hell they want”.

      This is not a new position for Trump, who has regularly talked about pulling US support for Nato. But, as with his position on the Ukraine aid package, not all Republicans support his views.

      Senator Josh Hawley, a staunch supporter of the former president, said that Trump was right to criticise those nations that did not pay 2% of their GDP towards the upkeep of Nato. But he added that the US should live up to its commitments and that if Russia “invaded a Nato country, we’d have to defend them”.

      Unsurprisingly, Utah’s Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a long-time Trump critic, said on the Senate floor: “If we fail to help Ukraine, we will abandon our word and our commitment, proving to our friends a view that America cannot be trusted.”

      It is too early to know whether – and to what extent – Trump is losing the support of some of the Republican party. But there definitely appears to be a division along foreign policy between the former president and some Senate Republicans.

      What is clear is that the majority of those opposed to abandoning Ukraine – and who supported the bill through the Senate – are made up primarily of national security hawks and former veterans.

      Now for the House

      Even though the bill has passed the Democrat-controlled Senate, it will have an extremely tough time in getting through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. McConnell has already reached out to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to ensure that it will get a fair hearing, but there are questions about whether the bill will even reach the floor.

      In an interview with US politics website Politico, McConnell asked Johnson to “allow the House to work its will on the issue of Ukraine aid”.

      At loggerheads: House speaker Mike Johnson (right) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (centre) are at odds over sending aid to Ukraine.
      AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

      House Republicans have called the bill a “waste of time” and “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. House support for the war in the Ukraine has fallen, especially as Republicans have begun to scrutinise the details of US assistance to Kyiv.

      Johnson has declared that the bill will not even get a reading without sufficient provisions for security on the US southern border. “National security begins with border security,” he said. “We have said that all along. That has been my comment since late October, it is my comment today.”

      Johnson’s refusal to get the bill on the floor of the House is understandable. House Republicans that oppose the bill believe that if it does get a reading then there is enough of a majority among moderates in both parties for it to pass. Republican representative Andy Biggs, a member of the Trump-supporting Freedom Caucus, told one talk radio host: “If it were to get to the floor, it would pass.”

      This is a not a sign that Trump’s influence on House Republicans is dwindling. But it shows there is still just enough bipartisan support for Ukraine for bills such as this to pass Congress.

      Johnson is now at the centre of what will be a parliamentary issue. If he refuses to allow the bill to be read, then it may make it onto the floor through a “discharge petition” brought about by a bipartisan majority.

      This is a mechanism by which matters can be brought before the House without the sponsorship of the majority leadership. It would undermine Johnson’s position as leader of the House and deeply divide the Republicans in an election year.

      The Senate passing the bill is a small victory for the pro-Ukraine lobby – but there could be many twists and turns before it gets voted on in the House, if it does at all. More

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      Mike Johnson declares ‘no need for public alarm’ after national security warning, reports say – as it happened

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      House speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly declared “no need for public alarm” regarding House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner’s national security warning. “Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” Johnson told media on Wednesday afternoon.His comments come after Turner issued a statement that Congress had been made aware of a “serious national security threat” and called on Joe Biden to “declassify all information” related to it.During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he planned to meet with members of the House intelligence committee on Thursday.“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”Turner’s concerns are reportedly related to Russian military capabilities.Thanks for following along today, live blog readers. As we close up for the day, here’s a quick summary of today’s developments in U.S. politics – including the fallout from Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment and cryptic warnings about a looming national security threat:
      Democrats reacted to the Tuesday vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – the first time in nearly 150 years that a Cabinet secretary has been impeached. “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship,” said Joe Biden, of the impeachment.
      The impeachment effort will almost certainly die in the senate, which would require a supermajority vote to impeach following a trial that begins in two weeks. Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called the impeachment a “sham.”
      House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner warned in a cryptic statement of a national security threat, calling on Biden to “declassify all information related to this threat”. During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to directly address the nature of the alleged threat and said he had “scheduled a briefing for House members of the Gang of Eight” on Thursday.
      The Washington Post reported that the security threat had been identified using surveillance permitted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), a controversial provision that allows the government to surveil non-citizens abroad – but has also led to the surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails. House Republicans are pushing to enact a version of Fisa that does not include a warrant requirement for the FBI – a reform critics of the legislation have long advocated.
      A Republican activist charged for his involvement in the fake elector scheme in Michigan testified today that he didn’t knowingly try to unlawfully subvert the results of the 2020 election. He was charged with creating a false public record.
      Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement on the topic of the alleged national security threat that the “most urgent national security threat facing the American people right now is the possibility that Congress abandons Ukraine and allows Vladimir Putin’s Russia to win”.The Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh reports on Nato’s secretary general responding to Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about Nato countries: Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has accused Donald Trump of undermining the basis of the transatlantic alliance as he announced that 18 Nato members were expected to beat the target of spending more than 2% of GDP on defence.It was the second rebuke by the Nato chief to the Republican frontrunner in less than a week, reinforced by a declaration that Germany was among the countries planning to spend over the threshold for the first time in a generation.“We should not undermine the credibility of Nato’s deterrence,” Stoltenberg said on Wednesday as he responded to comments made by Trump at a campaign rally at the weekend. “Deterrence is in the mind of our adversaries,” he added.On Saturday, Trump caused outrage in Europe when he said he would “not protect” any Nato member that had failed to meet the 2% target – and added that he would even encourage Russia to continue attacking them.A day later, Stoltenberg said Trump’s rhetoric “puts American and European soldiers at increased risk”, while on Wednesday, before a meeting of defence ministers, the normally diplomatic secretary general returned to the theme, arguing: “We should leave no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding in Moscow.”The Washington Post reports that the alleged security threat that House intelligence committee chairman Mike Turner warned about in a cryptic statement today was likely identified using surveillance permitted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), a controversial provision that allows the government to spy on non-citizens living abroad – and has also led to the surveillance of Americans’ phone calls, texts and emails.House Republicans are pushing for a new version of the bill that does not include a warrant requirement for the FBI – a key reform critics of the legislation have pushed for.House speaker Mike Johnson has said there is “no need for public alarm” regarding the unconfirmed national security threat.In a statement, the chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence, Mark Warner, and the vice-chair of the committee, Marco Rubio, said the committee “has the intelligence” that House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner referred to in a Wednesday statement warning of a national security threat.According to the statement, the committee “has been rigorously tracking this issue from the start”. The statement warned against “potentially disclosing sources and methods that may be key to preserving a range of options for US action”.CNN has reported the alleged threat is related to Russian military capabilities.Nikki Haley blasted Donald Trump for his comments on her husband, who is currently deployed overseas. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly puts Haley’s remarks in context:Donald Trump is “unhinged” and “diminished”, said Nikki Haley, the former president’s last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday.“To mock my husband, Michael and I can handle that,” the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told NBC News’s Today, referring to comments by Trump about Michael Haley, a national guard officer deployed in Djibouti.“But you mock one member of the military, you mock all members of the military … Before, when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, and everybody thought, ‘Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean?’ The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.”In the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, an Arizona senator and former nominee for president who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Having avoided the draft for that war, Trump was expected to pay a heavy political price but did not, going on to attract controversy in office for allegedly deriding those who serve.House speaker Mike Johnson has reportedly declared “no need for public alarm” regarding House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner’s national security warning. “Steady hands are at the wheel, we’re working on it, there’s no need for alarm,” Johnson told media on Wednesday afternoon.His comments come after Turner issued a statement that Congress had been made aware of a “serious national security threat” and called on Joe Biden to “declassify all information” related to it.During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said he planned to meet with members of the House intelligence committee on Thursday.“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”Turner’s concerns are reportedly related to Russian military capabilities.A Michigan Republican accused of participating in a fake elector plot after the 2020 presidential election testified on Wednesday that he did not know how the electoral process worked and never intended to make a false public record, the Associated Press reports.“We were told this was an appropriate process,” James Renner, 77, said during a preliminary hearing for a half-dozen other electors who face forgery and other charges.People who falsely posed as electors in a six-state scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election have been criminally charged in Georgia and Nevada. In Wisconsin, false electors agreed to a settlement in a civil case in December.“You have a majority of Americans who believe that we need to protect our democracy,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in response to a question about recent polling showing about 18% of Americans believe in the conspiracy theory that Taylor Swift is part of a plot by Democrats to deliver the 2024 presidential election to Joe Biden. That poll also found people who believe the Taylor Swift theory are also more likely to doubt the validity of the 2020 presidential election.The United States expects Israel to meet its commitment to allow a shipment of flour to be moved into Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reports.Sullivan was responding to a question about an Axios report on Tuesday that said the Israeli government was blocking a US-funded flour shipment to Gaza.Jake Sullivan has finished taking questions from the media and has left the west wing now. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will now take the briefing onto more domestic matters in US political news.Meanwhile, Axios wrote:
      Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is blocking a U.S.-funded flour shipment to Gaza because its recipient is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), two Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.
      U.S. officials said this is a violation of a commitment Benjamin Netanyahu personally made to President Biden several weeks ago and another reason the U.S. leader is frustrated with the Israeli prime minister.
      CNN reports the national security threat that Congressman Mike Turner called on Joe Biden to declassify is related to a “highly concerning and destabilizing” Russian military capability.During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to comment on the specifics of the threat.“We scheduled a briefing for the for House members of the Gang of Eight tomorrow,” said Sullivan. “I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of a meeting on the books for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow.”National security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked at the White House press briefing about efforts to secure a “temporary pause” in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and how that might work.There are international talks under way in Egypt about a ceasefire in Gaza and a deal with Hamas to return hostages it took during its attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which provoked a crushing Israeli military response in Gaza. Our colleague Bethan McKernan reports that mediators are struggling to make progress in the face of a threatened Israeli offensive on Rafah, the Palestinian territory’s last place of relative safety.Sullivan described that a plan could “start with the temporary pause … The idea is that we have multiple phases as part of the hostage deal and we move from phase 1 to the next and we can extend the pause [in fighting] as more hostages come out.”He added: “What we would like to see is that Hamas is ultimately defeated, that peace and security come to Gaza, and then we work towards a longer term, two-state solution, with Gaza’s security guaranteed.”Our colleague Léonie Chao-Fong wrote this explainer piece over the weekend about the latest US push for a solution in the Middle East that would result in Israel and Palestine coexisting in peace. You can read it here.In a statement, Republican congressman Mike Turner, who chairs the House intelligence committee, warned that Congress had been alerted to a “serious national security threat” and called on Biden to “declassify all information related to this threat”. During a press briefing, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, declined to directly address the nature of the alleged threat and said that he had plans to meet with congressional intelligence lawmakers tomorrow. More

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      US House intelligence chair warns of ‘urgent’ national security threat

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      The head of the House intelligence committee said on Wednesday he had information about a serious national security threat and urged the administration to declassify the information so the US and its allies can openly discuss how to respond.Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, gave no details about the nature of the threat in his statement. The White House also declined to provide details.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said there was no need for alarm. He said he was not at liberty to disclose the classified information. “But we just want to assure everyone steady hands are at the wheel. We’re working on it and there’s no need for alarm,” he told reporters at the Capitol.Turner earlier on Wednesday sent an email to members of Congress saying his committee had “identified an urgent matter with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability” that should be known to all congressional policymakers. He encouraged them to come to a Scif (sensitive compartmented information facility), a secure area, to review the intelligence. He again provided no details.Turner’s announcement appeared to catch the Biden administration off guard.The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters at the White House he already had been due to brief Turner and other senior congressional leaders on Thursday. Sullivan did not disclose the topic or provide any other details related to Turner’s statement.“I’m focused on going to see him, sit with him as well as the other House members of the Gang of Eight, tomorrow,” Sullivan said. “And I’m not in a position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”He acknowledged it was not standard practice to offer such a briefing.“I’ll just say that I personally reached out to the Gang of Eight. It is highly unusual, in fact, for the national security adviser to do that,” Sullivan said. He said he had reached out earlier this week.He would not say whether the briefing was related to Turner’s warning. “I leave it to you to draw whatever connections you want,” he told reporters.Johnson said he sent a letter last month to the White House requesting a meeting with the president to discuss “the serious national security issue that is classified”. He said Sullivan’s meeting was in response to his request. More

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      Say it with cash: Trump’s Valentine love letter to Melania is fundraising email

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      In a Valentine’s Day fundraising message, Donald Trump sought to demonstrate the depth of his love for Melania Trump, his third wife, by referring to his lengthy list of criminal charges.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side,” the message said.The probable Republican presidential nominee faces four criminal indictments: for election subversion (13 state charges, four federal), retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to an adult film star and director who claims a sexual affair (34, state).Stormy Daniels claims to have had sex with Trump in 2006, shortly after Melania gave birth to her son, Barron Trump, a claim Trump denies despite having arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 to be quiet during the 2016 election.Nor is that Trump’s only legal problem – or product of what he claims are witch-hunts mounted by his enemies – to do with matters of sex.Last month, Trump was on the wrong end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from an allegation of rape, from the writer E Jean Carroll, that a judge said was “substantially true”.Carroll said Trump assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In a deposition, Trump memorably confused a picture of Carroll for a picture of Marla Maples, his second wife.And yet, despite it all, when it comes to his current wife – and the matter of raising campaign cash – Trump remains a determined softie.Under the headline “This is a Valentine’s Day letter from Donald J Trump”, the message sent out on Wednesday began: “Dear Melania. I love you!”It then took its unexpected turn.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side. You’ve always supported me through everything. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without your guidance, kindness and warmth. You will always mean the world to me, Melania! From your husband with love, Donald J Trump.”Recipients who clicked on one of three big red invitations to “send your love” were directed to a page offering the chance to send a “personalised message” to Melania – and to donate to Trump’s campaign amounts ranging from $20.24 to $3,300 or “other”.Melania Trump has recently reappeared in public with her husband, after an absence believed related to the death of her mother, Amalija Knavs, last month. Donald Trump recently told Fox News his wife “wants to make America great again, too” and would “play a big role” in his campaign to return to power.“I think she’s going to be very active in the sense of being active,” Trump added. More

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      Mayorkas impeachment: petty, doomed … but still potentially damaging

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      In 1876, the last US cabinet official to be impeached, William Belknap, resigned before the House could vote on the matter. Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of war was tried in the Senate anyway, on charges of corruption, but escaped conviction.Nearly 150 years later, in the House on Tuesday and at the second time of asking, Republicans corralled just enough votes to ensure Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, suffered Belknap’s fate. But Mayorkas has not resigned – and nor is he likely to be convicted and removed.Democrats control the Senate, which means Mayorkas is all but certain to be acquitted at any trial, regardless of reported doubts among Republican senators about their party’s case.After the 214-213 vote to impeach, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, set out what will happen next. House managers will present the articles of impeachment after Monday’s President’s Day holiday. Senators will be sworn in as jurors. And Patty Murray of Washington state, the Democratic Senate president pro tempore, will preside thereafter.Schumer also issued a stinging statement.“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans,” the New Yorker said. “The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker [Mike] Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.”The Mayorkas impeachment is of a kind with Senate Republicans’ decision last week to detonate their own hard-won border and immigration bill because Trump, their likely nominee for president, wants to campaign on the issue.Schumer continued: “House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the constitution. House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense. This is a new low for House Republicans.”Most observers agree that the charges against Mayorkas – basically, that he performed incompetently and violated immigration law regarding the southern border – do not remotely rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, as constitutionally required for impeachment and removal.Perhaps with a nod to the unfortunate Belknap, the Biden White House weighed in, saying: “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”But history also records that all impeachments (and impeachment efforts, such as that mounted by Republicans against Biden himself) are inherently political, so this one could prove as politically potent as did those of Trump. Both Trump impeachments concerned behaviour – blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – much closer by any standard to the status of high crimes and misdemeanours. Regardless, Republicans ensured Trump was acquitted in both and have since fed Trump’s fierce desire for revenge.The Mayorkas impeachment was driven by Trump-aligned extremists prominently including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps on Tuesday, the same day the Senate passed a $95bn national security package including funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia, Greene said she was “very thankful to our Republican Congress. We’re finally working together with the American people to send a message to the Biden administration that it’s our border that matters, not other countries’ borders. Our border matters.”Claiming Mayorkas was guilty of “willful betrayal of the American people and breaking federal immigration laws”, Greene also said the impeachment “sends a message to America that Republicans can get our job done when we work together and do what’s important and what the American people want us to do.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf there were any remaining doubt that Mayorkas was impeached in service of pure politics, Greene said senators set to sit as jurors should “look at the polling. They know that our border security is the No 1 issue in every single campaign in every single state, every single city, in every single community … They better pay attention to the American people.”It is not certain, however, that a trial will happen.Joshua Matz, a lawyer who has written extensively on impeachment and worked on both impeachments of Trump, recently told Politico: “Impeachment trials are meant to be deadly serious business for matters of state – not free publicity for the House majority to air policy attacks on the current administration.”The Mayorkas impeachment articles, Matz said, are “so manifestly about policy disagreement rather than anything that could arguably qualify as high crimes and misdemeanours, that it would be unwarranted to waste the Senate’s time with the trial on the matter.“The articles are formally deficient in so many ways that any trial would be flagrantly unfair and create such grave due process issues that it would be outrageous to even proceed.”Senate Democrats could bring up a simple motion to dismiss the Mayorkas charges, a gambit which would be likely to succeed, given indicated support from the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, a key swing vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Less starkly, Democrats could seek to tie proceedings up in procedure, options including sending the charges to a committee, there to sit in limbo throughout an election year.All choices carry political peril, however. On Wednesday, the news site Semafor quoted an unnamed Republican aide as saying: “If Democrats give Republicans the opportunity to say that they are sweeping this under the rug, we will gladly take it.“If this is the sham Democrats claim it is, why would they be afraid of holding a trial?” More