US Politics

House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial.According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”Johnson went on to add that Schumer is “the only impediment to delivering accountability for the American people.”“Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial,” Johnson said.In response, Schumer said that he wants to “address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” adding, “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”Following the latest move from the House, senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors on Wednesday. The chamber will then formally inform Mayorkas of the charges and request for a written response from him.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial. According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”
A second House Republican has joined the effort to oust the speaker, Mike Johnson, escalating the risk of another leadership election just six months after the Louisiana congressman assumed the top job. Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, announced on Tuesday that he would co-sponsor the motion to vacate resolution introduced last month by congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia.
At a press conference on Tuesday, House speaker Mike Johnson remained defiant that he would not resign and accused his critics of undermining Republicans’ legislative priorities. “I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said.
The criminal trial of Donald Trump entered its second day as judge Juan Merchan continued to vet over 500 prospective jurors. At one point during the jury selection process, Merchan sternly rebuked Trump after his team found a video on a possible juror’s social media account over Trump’s 2020 presidential loss. “Your client was audible… I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom,” Merchan said.
A potential juror caused Donald Trump to smile after he said that he read several of Trump’s books including the Art of the Deal. The juror, a resident of New York City’s Battery Park, said he is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and is a board member of his synagogue.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office have filed a motion for contempt against Donald Trump. In the motion, prosecutors argue that Trump “wilfully violated this court’s [gag] order by publishing several social media posts attacking two known witnesses – Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.”
That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Alaska’s Republican senator Dan Sullivan has voiced his support for the House’s articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.In a post on X, Sullivan wrote:
“The articles of impeachment delivered by the House are thorough, compelling, and damning. The American people need to hear the evidence underlying these impeachment articles. Chuck Schumer has a constitutional duty to move forward with a Senate trial.”
Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she delivered the impeachment articles against Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate. In a post on X accompanying a video of her walking towards the Senate, Greene wrote:
“Mayorkas is derelict of his duty and must be removed from office. Chuck Schumer: HOLD THE TRIAL.”
House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial.According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”Johnson went on to add that Schumer is “the only impediment to delivering accountability for the American people.”“Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial,” Johnson said.In response, Schumer said that he wants to “address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” adding, “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”Following the latest move from the House, senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors on Wednesday. The chamber will then formally inform Mayorkas of the charges and request for a written response from him.Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche and judge Juan Merchan discussed a misunderstanding over how potential jurors should be identified, including by number, according to a trial pool report.Attorneys also spoke with Merchan over social media posts, with Merchan saying that they can bring in prospective jurors and question them individually about concerning posts.Here are some images coming through the newswires:Donald Trump’s lawyers told the court before an early afternoon break that the former president no longer wished to exercise his right to be present for all one-on-one sidebar questioning of prospective jurors.Trump insisted on Monday that he wants to attend every conference, including side conferences during jury selection. No such questioning has taken place yet.Judge Merchan noted Trump had signed a form waiving his right to do so, saying:
Mr. Trump, yesterday we discussed whether you wanted to be present at sidebars. You indicated you did. Your attorney indicated to me that you have changed your mind.
At a press conference on Tuesday, House speaker Mike Johnson remained defiant that he would not resign and accused his critics of undermining Republicans’ legislative priorities.“I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said.
It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country. It does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda.
Congressman Thomas Massie’s announcement comes one day after Johnson unveiled a plan to advance a series of foreign aid bills through the House, following months of inaction on the issue. In February, the Senate passed a $95bn foreign aid package, which included funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian efforts.Johnson proposed splitting up the package into four separate bills with some notable changes, such as cutting the humanitarian aid included in the Senate proposal and sending money to Ukraine as a loan. The speaker plans to hold separate votes on the bills and then combine them into one package to simplify the voting process for the Senate, which will need to reapprove the proposal.The plan won some tepid praise from many members of the House Republican conference, but the plan to bundle the bills into one larger funding package sparked frustration among hard-right Republicans. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had already indicated she might force a vote on the motion to vacate over the issue of Ukraine funding, said she would not support Johnson’s plan and echoed Massie’s suggestion that the speaker should resign.A second House Republican has joined the effort to oust the speaker, Mike Johnson, escalating the risk of another leadership election just six months after the Louisiana congressman assumed the top job.Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, announced on Tuesday that he would co-sponsor the motion to vacate resolution introduced last month by congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia.“[Johnson] should pre-announce his resignation (as Boehner did), so we can pick a new Speaker without ever being without a GOP Speaker,” Massie said on X, formerly known as Twitter.The former House speaker John Boehner resigned from Congress in 2015 after a fellow Republican, then congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, filed a motion to vacate the chair. In October, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker in history to ever be formally removed from his job via a motion to vacate vote.Speaking to reporters after a Republican conference meeting this morning, Massie predicted that Johnson would lose the vote on the motion and would become the second speaker to lose the gavel. Massie said:
The motion is going to get called, and then [Johnson] is going to lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche has been conducting his own questioning of jurors, which boils down to: What is your opinion of Donald Trump?Some jurors seemed reticent about voicing an opinion while others didn’t seem all that perturbed by the former commander-in-chief’s antics. One juror said:
I find him fascinating. He walks into a room and he sets people off. One way or another, and I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy could do all this?
Blanche pressed:
Well certainly, he makes things interesting. So, I follow because so may people are set off one way or another, and that is interesting to me.
Blanche said, “uhm, alright,” and then thanked the man. One potential juror repeatedly tried to avoid answering the question.
If we were sitting at a bar, I’d be happy to tell you, but in this room what I feel about President Trump is not important or inherent to either the case you’re presenting or you’re defending.
After repeated prodding, he conceded: “Look: I’ll say I’m a Democrat, so there you go, that’s where it goes with me,” but, he insisted:
I walk in here and he’s a defendant.
One woman appreciated Trump’s brashness. “He speaks his mind. Come on: What else can you say about that?” At this moment, Trump smiled.
He says what he wants to say. I want to say some things but my mother said, ‘be nice.’
The court has taken a recess for lunch and will resume at 2.15pm ET.Just before the break, Donald Trump and his lawyers went to a nearby courtroom to begin deciding which prospective jurors they’d want to remove using peremptory challenges.When they returned to the courtroom a short time later, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said they needed more time.Judge Merchan said they would have until after the lunch break to decide.Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche has been asking potential jurors for their opinions of the former president. Here are some of their responses, per pool.One potential juror said he found Trump “fascinating and mysterious”, adding:
He walks into a room and he sets people off one way or another … I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy can do all of this. Wow, that’s what I think.
Another potential juror said he was “a big fan of the Apprentice when I was in middle school” and that there are “some things I agreed with, some things I disagreed with” with regards to Trump’s presidency.One potential juror told Blanche that she isn’t really into politics but that “obviously I know about president Trump. I’m a female.” When asked what she meant by that, she replied:
I know that there have been opinions on how he doesn’t treat females correctly. Stuff like that.
Another potential juror largely refused to share his views on the former president, insisting that his views don’t matter. He said:
I’ll say I’m a Democrat so there you go. But I walk in there and he’s a defendant and that’s all he is.
No cameras are allowed inside the Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is under way, but sketch artists have been capturing scenes:Here are some of the questions potential jurors have been asked to answer as part of the trial’s jury selection process:
Are you a native New Yorker? If not, where did you live previously?
What do you do for a living?
Do you participate in any organizations or advocacy groups?
Which of the following print publications, cable and/ or network programs, or online media such as websites, blogs, or social media platforms do you visit, read, or watch? (Choices are: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, Huffington Post, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Newsmax, MSN, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Truth Social, X, Tik Tok, I do not follow the news, Other [name])
Have you, a relative, or close friend had any experience or interaction with the criminal justice system, including a police officer or other type oflaw enforcement agent, which caused you to form an opinion, whether positive or negative, about the police or our criminal justice system?
Have you, a relative, or a close friend ever worked or volunteered for a Trump presidential campaign, the Trump presidential administration, or any other political entity affiliated with Mr. Trump?
Have you ever attended a rally or campaign event for Donald Trump?
Have you ever considered yourself a supporter of or belonged to any of the following: the QAnon movement, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Three Percenters, Boogaloo Boys, Antifa?
The defendant in this case has written a number of books. Have you read (or listened to audio) of any one or more of those books? If so, which ones?
There are 18 jurors in the jury box, according to a trial pool report.Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked whether media reports surrounding the case have impacted the prospective jurors’ opinions.He also asked if they could set aside what has been reported in the media.Steinglass also said that it does not matter whether a juror has heard about the case, the pool report added.Prosecutor Josh Steinglass gestured to Donald Trump as he told prospective jurors that this criminal case is about “whether this man broke the law,” according to the trial reporter pool.Steinglass went on to acknowledge Trump as a former president and current presidential candidate.No jurors raised their hand when Steinglass asked whether anyone believed that prosecutors should have to prove more because of Trump’s position, the pool report added.In just five hours of jury selection, Donald Trump has seen dozens of New Yorkers say that they could not be fair and impartial.These prospective jurors have been excused from serving on the case, of course, but it still must smart a bit: This is Trump’s home town, after all, but he is so polarising that his compatriots want out.One juror did appear to make Trump’s morning, however. The prospect said “yes” to question 36 on the selection questionnaire, which was: “The defendant in this case has written a number of books. Have you read (or listened to audio) of any one or more of these books? If so, which ones?”The potential panelist revealed “I read the Art of the Deal, and I want to say How to be Rich, and Think Like a Champion – is that right?” The panelist hesitated, uncertain as to whether this was the title.Trump nodded his head and offered a smile.A potential juror caused Donald Trump to smile after he said that he read several of Trump’s books including the Art of the Deal, Politico reports.The juror, a resident of New York City’s Battery Park, said he is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and is a board member of his synagogue.He added that he follows various news outlets including the New York Times, New York Post and NY1. More

The Republican senator Tom Cotton has urged Americans to “take matters into their own hands” when encountering pro-Palestine supporters, an apparent call to vigilantism as Israel’s military strikes in Gaza continued despite global calls for a ceasefire.Demonstrations on Monday by supporters of Palestine blocked roads in major US cities, including New York and Philadelphia; delayed flights at the bustling Chicago O’Hare and Seattle-Tacoma international airports; and caused traffic congestion on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.Cotton, a Republican, eventually appeared on Fox News and labeled the protesters “criminals”. He also expressed his sympathy for the people whose commutes were interrupted by Monday’s demonstrations, which demanded that the US government drop its military support of Israel.Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1,100 mostly civilians and taking hostages. Israel responded with a ground and air onslaught that has killed more than 30,000 mostly women and children as well as pushed the region to famine.The far-right senator from Arkansas told the Fox News host Sandra Smith that as far as he was concerned, those who deserved his sympathies were “all those people who are trying to get to work or trying to pick up a kid”.He also said he “very worried about the diversion of police resources where it needs to be stopping crime in cities like San Francisco, where firefighters are having to go there when they might have calls for fires out”.He soon went further, arguing that people in his state would inflict bodily violence on the protesters, whom he called “antisemitic” and “pro-Hamas”.“If something like this happened in Arkansas on a bridge there – let’s just say I think there’d be a lot of very wet criminals that have been tossed overboard, not by law enforcement, but by the people whose road they’re blocking,” Cotton said.“If they glued their hands to a car or the pavement, well, [it would be] probably pretty painful to have their skin ripped off. But I think that’s the way we’d handle it in Arkansas.”Cotton said he “would encourage most people anywhere that get stuck behind criminals like this who are trying to block traffic, to take matters in their own hands” and solve the problem without involving police.It is not the first time Cotton had expressed such sentiments. In a notorious 2020 New York Times op-ed headlined Send In the Troops, the senator likened Black Lives Matter protests to a rebellion and urged the government to deploy the US military against demonstrators by invoking the Insurrection Act.“The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military ‘or any other means’ in ‘cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws,’” Cotton wrote. “These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further.“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.”At the time, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement were exercising their constitutional rights to assemble and advocate for social justice after a white Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, in plain view of a cellphone camera.Cotton argued in the 2020 piece that “a majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants”. He also falsely claimed that anti-fascist – or “antifa” – members had infiltrated Black Lives Matter marches, meriting a military response.Mainstream reaction to Cotton’s op-ed was largely negative, forcing the Times to issue a statement saying that the piece did not meet its editorial standards and should not have been published. The editorial page editor subsequently resigned, and his deputy was reassigned. More

The US supreme court expressed concern on Tuesday with prosecutors using an obstruction statute to charge hundreds of January 6 Capitol riot defendants, with the justices leaning towards a position that could jeopardize those prosecutions and the criminal case against Donald Trump.The Trump case was not mentioned at the argument. But a decision curtailing the use of the obstruction statute in connection with the Capitol attack could eliminate two of the four charges against the former president.The case, which on its face involves a January 6 riot defendant named Joseph Fischer, became of sudden importance last year after Trump was also charged with obstruction of an official proceeding over his efforts to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.At issue is whether the obstruction statute passed under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 in the wake of the Enron scandal could be used to prosecute general instances of obstruction, or whether it was intended to be used more narrowly for evidence tampering or document destruction.If the supreme court decides that section 1512(c) of title 18 of the US criminal code was being used too broadly, it could cripple part of the case against Trump as the special counsel Jack Smith looks to draw a line at trial from the former president’s January 6 speech to the violence.And if the court moved to strike down the use of the obstruction statute, it could undercut the remaining conspiracy statutes used in the indictment against Trump.The US solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the justice department, found herself repeatedly pressed on those points by the justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – and John Roberts, the chief justice.When Congress passed the obstruction law, it was done in a two-part provision. The first part makes it a crime to corruptly alter, destroy or conceal evidence to frustrate official proceedings. The second part, at issue in Fischer’s case, makes it a crime to “otherwise” obstruct official proceedings.The argument from Prelogar contended that “otherwise” was designed as a catchall for any obstructive conduct that Congress might not have imagined when the law was being drafted. Prelogar’s point was that the theme of the law was outlawing all obstruction.Fischer’s lawyer, Jeffrey Green, argued that was too broad: “otherwise” should be defined as engaging in “similar” conduct as expressed in the first part of the statute – to do with obstructing an investigation or evidence tampering – done in a different way.Alito and Gorsuch appeared deeply skeptical of the justice department’s position. They suggested repeatedly that Prelogar’s reading of the law was overly expansive, peppering her with hypotheticals.Would delaying an official proceeding count as obstruction? How significant did the delay have to be to count as obstruction? Gorsuch asked. Alito added that the statute mentioned obstruction but also mentioned “impeding” proceedings, which, he said, was less serious than obstruction.Prelogar, on the defensive, was eventually pressed into replying that peaceful protests would be a technical violation of the law, even if the justice department was unlikely to prosecute minor disturbances, drawing a contrast to the events of January 6.But that invited Alito to ask how Prelogar would define minor disturbances. Would it be a minor disturbance if people heckled a court hearing, delaying the hearing and causing lawyers to lose their train of thought? Prelogar’s definition would encompass everything and anything in between, Alito suggested.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThomas also appeared concerned with the enforcement history of the obstruction statute. Prelogar took the opportunity to point out that the justice department had previously prosecuted cases of interfering with a grand jury investigation and interfering with federal court proceedings.But in rebuttal, Fischer’s lawyer suggested that her examples supported his position, because both were related to the use of evidence in proceedings.The justice department’s position came under additional fire from Chief Justice Roberts, who noted that the supreme court in the past had eschewed the use of general statutes under the doctrine known as “ejusdem generis”.Roberts suggested he might credit a lower court ruling that found the first part of the statute limited the second part of the statute: if the first part was about tampering with evidence in an investigation, the second part follows with “otherwise” referring to other ways to tamper with evidence.The skepticism from the conservative-leaning justices on the supreme court was not shared by Sonia Sotomayor, the justice who appeared to firmly see the “otherwise” language being used as a reference to any obstructive conduct.Sotomayor separately raised her own hypothetical of rules that prohibited photographing or otherwise disturbing a theatrical performance. If a defendant heckled and disturbed the performance, no one would be surprised if they were ejected, Sotomayor suggested to Fischer’s lawyer. More

Defiant and determined, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, pushed back on Tuesday against mounting Republican anger over his proposed US aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, and rejected a call to step aside or risk a vote to oust him from office.“I am not resigning,” Johnson said after a testy morning meeting of fellow House Republicans at the Capitol.Johnson referred to himself as a “wartime speaker” of the House and indicated in his strongest self-defense yet he would press forward with a US national security aid package, a situation that would force him to rely on Democrats to help pass it, over objections from his weakened majority.“We are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said, calling the motion to oust him “absurd … not helpful.”Tuesday brought a definitive shift in tone from both the House Republicans and the speaker himself at a pivotal moment as the embattled leader tries, against the wishes of his majority, to marshal the votes needed to pass the stalled national security aid for Israel, Ukraine and other overseas allies.Johnson appeared emboldened by his meeting late last week with Donald Trump when the Republican former president threw him a political lifeline with a nod of support after their private talk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. At his own press conference on Tuesday, Johnson spoke of the importance of ensuring Trump, who is now at his criminal trial in New York, is re-elected to the White House.Johnson also spoke over the weekend with Joe Biden as well as other congressional leaders about the emerging US aid package, which the speaker plans to move in separate votes for each section – with bills for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region. He spoke about it with Biden again late on Monday.It is a complicated approach that breaks apart the Senate’s $95bn aid package for separate votes, and then stitches it back together for the president’s signature.The approach will require the speaker to cobble together bipartisan majorities with different factions of House Republicans and Democrats on each measure. Additionally, Johnson is preparing a fourth measure that would include various Republican-preferred national security priorities, such as a plan to seize some Russian assets in US banks to help fund Ukraine and another to turn the economic aid for Ukraine into loans.The plan is not an automatic deal-breaker for Democrats in the House and Senate, with leaders refraining from comment until they see the actual text of the measure, due out later on Tuesday.House Republicans, however, were livid that Johnson will be leaving their top priority – efforts to impose more security at the US-Mexico border – on the sidelines. Some predicted Johnson will not be able to push ahead with voting on the package this week, as planned.Representative Debbie Lesko, a Republican from Arizona, called the morning meeting an “argument fest”.She said Johnson was “most definitely” losing support for the plan, but he seemed undeterred in trying to move forward despite “what the majority of the conference” of Republicans wanted.When the speaker said the House GOP’s priority border security bill HR 2 would not be considered germane to the package, Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and a chief sponsor, said it was for the House to determine which provisions and amendments are relevant.“Things are very unresolved,” Roy said.Roy said Republicans want “to be united. They just have to be able to figure out how to do it.”The speaker faces a threat of ouster from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, the top Trump ally who has filed a motion to vacate the speaker’s office in a snap vote – much the way Republicans ousted their former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last fall.While Greene has not said if or when she will force the issue, and has not found much support for her plan after last year’s turmoil over McCarthy’s exit, she drew at least one key supporter on Tuesday.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, rose in the meeting and suggested Johnson should step aside, pointing to the example of John Boehner, an even earlier Republican House speaker who announced an early resignation in 2015 rather than risk a vote to oust him, according to Republicans in the room.Johnson did not respond, according to Republicans in the room, but told the lawmakers they had a “binary” choice” before them.The speaker explained they either try to pass the package as he is proposing or risk facing a discharge petition from Democrats that would force a vote on their preferred package – the Senate-approved measure. But that would leave behind the extra Republican priorities. More

The US House of Representatives agreed to reauthorize a controversial spying law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last Friday without any meaningful reforms, dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies’ warrantless surveillance of Americans’ emails, text messages and phone calls.The vote not only reauthorized the act, though; it also vastly expanded the surveillance law enforcement can conduct. In a move that Senator Ron Wyden condemned as “terrifying”, the House also doubled down on a surveillance authority that has been used against American protesters, journalists and political donors in a chilling assault on free speech.Section 702 in its current form allows the government to compel communications giants like Google and Verizon to turn over information. An amendment to the bill approved by the House vastly increases the law’s scope. The Turner-Himes amendment – so named for its champions Representatives Mike Turner and Jim Himes – would permit federal law enforcement to also force “any other service provider” with access to communications equipment to hand over data. That means anyone with access to a wifi router, server or even phone – anyone from a landlord to a laundromat – could be required to help the government spy.The Senate is expected to vote on the House bill as soon as this week, and if it passes there, Joe Biden is likely to sign it. All Americans should be terrified by that prospect.Section 702 is supposedly a foreign intelligence tool that allows the US government to surveil the communications of non-US citizens abroad without a warrant. But as many civil liberties groups have pointed out, intelligence agencies like the FBI also use it as a warrantless spying tool against Americans. The FBI abused its authority under the law no fewer than 300,000 times in 2020 and 2021, according to a ruling from a Fisa court judge. In arguing for the reauthorization of Section 702 late last year, Turner, chair of the House intelligence committee, shockingly suggested in a closed-door briefing that the law could be used to spy on Americans protesting against the war in Gaza.It’s not supposed to be that way. In most cases, the fourth amendment requires the government to have a court-approved warrant to obtain an American’s communications. But intelligence agencies have used Section 702 as a loophole that allows them to vacuum up and comb through communications between an American and a foreigner who can be targeted under the law – all without a warrant.The House didn’t just fail to reform Section 702. It voted to grant intelligence agencies expansive new surveillance powers. The Turner-Himes amendment would allow them to deputize ordinary Americans and businesses as government spies. When privacy advocates raised alarms about the Stasi-like powers this would create, lawmakers like Himes brushed them off without a substantive response. The proposed expansion deserves an explanation. The US government has a long history of abusing its existing surveillance powers. It would be naive to think it wouldn’t abuse new ones.While the Turner-Himes amendment lists some business types that are excepted from the requirement to help spy – like dwellings and restaurants – an almost limitless number of entities that provide wifi or just have access to Americans’ devices could be roped into the government’s surveillance operations. Using the wifi in your dentist office, hiring a cleaner who has access to your laptop, or even storing communications equipment in an office you rent could all expose you to increased risk of surveillance.The Turner-Himes amendment would also make it harder to push back on abusive surveillance practices, including those targeting first amendment rights. Take, for example, the surveillance of journalists. Big tech companies may sometimes resist government orders to spy on news outlets. They command armies of lawyers, receive Section 702 orders frequently, and have a commercial incentive to at least appear to care about their customers’ privacy concerns. But what hope could a news organization have that its cleaning crew, for instance, will want to take on the federal government on its behalf?The FBI’s abuses of Section 702 violate Americans’ privacy and often threaten their first amendment rights. A declassified report from 2023, for example, revealed that the FBI had used Section 702 to investigate Black Lives Matter protesters. Section 702 has also been used to spy on American journalists, weakening their first amendment right to report the news by undermining their ability to speak with foreign sources confidentially – something reporters must do frequently.In response to these and other abuses, many reformers argue that Section 702 should be reauthorized only with real reforms that would rein in government spying, such as requiring the government to get a warrant before it can access Americans’ communications. Johnson himself initially attempted to weaken Fisa’s surveillance provisions in an effort to satisfy the hardline rightwingers in his caucus and Donald Trump. He did not succeed. The House voted to reauthorize Section 702 without adding a warrant requirement.The fact that Section 702 has been used so often against the exercise of first amendment rights – including those of journalists – makes it both shocking and inexplicable that so many news outlets continue to support it. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune have all published editorials in recent days cheering the demise of the warrant requirement and urging Congress to reauthorize the law. But the House vote wasn’t just a reauthorization. It was a drastic, draconian expansion of the government’s surveillance powers.Some of these editorials scoff at Trump’s recent nonsensical social media post criticizing Section 702 and frame the anti-surveillance crowd as a ragtag bunch of fringe rightwingers, ignoring that lawmakers and civil liberties organizations across the political spectrum opposed extending Fisa without reforming it. They also ignore the real threats Section 702 poses to Americans’ privacy rights and first amendment interests, especially if a future administration is determined to surveil and chill its opponents.Thankfully, it’s not too late for the Senate to prevent these future abuses. In the face of the pervasive past misuse of Section 702, the last thing Americans need is a large expansion of government surveillance. The Senate should reject the House bill and refuse to reauthorize Section 702 without a warrant requirement. Lawmakers must demand reforms to put a stop to unjustified government spying on Americans. More

Remember Kamala Harris? Just a few years ago the first female vice-president of the US was surrounded by fanfare, splashed on the cover of Vogue and being feted as the future of the Democratic party. For a brief moment, it seemed plausible that Joe Biden, the oldest inaugurated president in history, might serve just a single term and then gracefully hand the reins over to his VP. “Ms Harris now finds herself the most clearly positioned heir to the White House,” the New York Times mused after the 2020 election.Four years on and Harris’s position is a lot less clear. Indeed, you could be forgiven for forgetting that the vice-president even exists. And, to be fair, that’s because part of her job is ensuring she doesn’t steal the spotlight from her boss. Very few vice-presidents shine in the role; there is a reason Teddy Roosevelt once opined that the position “is not a stepping stone to anything except oblivion”. Biden, of course, was an exception to that. Still, he jokingly complained that being number two was “a bitch” back in 2014, when he was VP.Even bearing in mind the inherent limitations of the position, however, Harris’s vice-presidency has been a damp squib. Not even Harris’s inner circle seem enthused by the 59-year-old: the early days of her vice-presidency were plagued with headlines about dysfunction and infighting in her office. Harris may have had a trailblazing career, but few people seem to take her seriously – not even allies dependent on US government aid. A recent report by the Washington Post, for example, suggests that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was irritated when Harris recently asked him to stop attacking oil refineries in Russia, and proceeded to ignore her because he wasn’t sure she (the vice-president!) actually reflected the Biden administration’s views.The bad press has been accompanied by even worse polls. Indeed, an NBC News poll from last June found Harris had the lowest net-negative rating for any vice-president in the survey’s history – 49% had a negative view while 32% had a positive view. With the election drawing closer, the situation hasn’t much improved.And while Harris has insisted she is prepared to serve as president “if necessary”, she is not widely seen as a shoo-in in the unlikely case that the Democrats replace Biden as the 2024 nominee. Rather, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michelle Obama have been floated as more electable replacements.So what went so terribly wrong? How did Harris go from being a rising star to something of an embarrassment?Racism and misogyny obviously play some part. Trump has referred to Harris as “this monster” and the right have always been desperate to paint Harris in the most dehumanising light. It hasn’t helped, of course, that Biden gave Harris the impossible task of dealing with migration and border security, which put her even more firmly in the right’s firing line.Still, it would be disingenuous to say that bigotry is at the heart of Harris’s image problem. Yes, the right automatically see the worst in her – but a hell of a lot of people on the left have been desperate to see the best in her. You did not have to be a Harris fangirl (and many progressives, alienated by her record as a prosecutor, were not) to want to see the first female vice-president, the first woman of colour vice-president, succeed.Now, however, as one of the faces of Biden’s heartless policy towards Gaza, she has alienated many of the people who thought she represented a more inclusive future. “Can we really celebrate Black women in power who can’t use said power to prevent death and starvation inflicted on a stateless people?” the Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote last month. “I – like an increasing number of voters – don’t think so.”Ultimately, however, the problem with Harris isn’t so much her stance on Gaza so much as the fact that she doesn’t seem to have a genuine stance on anything. Throughout her career, Harris has been characterised by what the New York Times called a “lack of ideological rigidity”. Which is a polite way of saying she seems to believe in little except her own advancement. It’s been a successful strategy so far, but it may have finally come to an end. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush-money trial enters its second day on Tuesday morning with continued jury selection. The commencement of Trump’s trial on Monday marked a momentous day in US history: when jury selection began, he became the first current or former American president to face a criminal trial.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, brought the case against Trump, which involves purported payments aimed at keeping secret his alleged affairs with the adult film star Stormy Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal. Prosecutors said Trump schemed to keep these alleged liaisons under wraps, so he would not suffer in the 2016 presidential election.The trial is unfolding amid a presidential contest in which Trump – who is all but guaranteed to be the Republican nominee – will go head to head with Joe Biden in November.Bragg’s office contends that Trump, whom a grand jury indicted in spring 2023 on 34 counts of falsifying business records, was part of an alleged “catch-and-kill scheme” from August 2015 until December 2017, with his then attorney, Michael Cohen.Trump’s former consigliere, who in 2018 admitted to federal charges for his involvement in that particular hush-money scheme, wired $130,000 to Daniels’s then attorney less than two weeks before the election. Cohen funneled these funds via a shell company.When Trump won his White House bid, he repaid Cohen with a smattering of monthly checks. These checks initially came from the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust – which was set up in New York to hold the president’s company’s assets during the 2016 presidency.Trumps payments to Cohen were later written on the company’s financials “disguised as a payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement”.As Trump allegedly framed these payments as recompense for legal consulting, he “made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise”, prosecutors contended. He did so “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof”, they said. More

In her new book, the former British prime minister Liz Truss directs scathing attacks and mockery at Joe Biden, president of her country’s closest ally. Biden was guilty of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance”, Truss writes, when the US leader said he “disagree[d] with the policy” of “cutting taxes on the super wealthy” in the mini-budget Truss introduced in September 2022, shortly after taking power.“I was shocked and astounded that Biden would breach protocol by commenting on UK domestic policy,” Truss adds. “We had been the United States’ staunchest allies through thick and thin.”Such harsh words between British and American leaders, in or out of office, would normally seem unusual. But Truss has scores to settle. By the time Biden spoke, in an ice-cream parlor in Portland, Oregon, Truss’s mini-budget had already caused panic over British pension funds, threatened to crash the UK economy and been withdrawn – a humiliating reversal for any prime minister, let alone one little more than a month into the job. Six days later, Truss was forced to resign.A year and a half later, offering the public her version of what went so terribly wrong, Truss still manages to thunder: “What the Biden administration, and the [European Union], and their international allies didn’t want was a country demonstrating that things can be done differently, undercutting them in the process.”Perhaps. Either way, Biden is still president while Truss is now a mere backbench MP for a constituency in rural Norfolk. But the release of her book, Ten Years to Save the West, alongside her founding of Popular Conservatism, a new pressure group, says a lot about where she sees her future.Far from taking her allowance and pursuing traditional, relatively sedate pursuits – lobbying, say, or trying to achieve peace in the Middle East – Truss wants to remain relevant on the global populist right, particularly in the US.Truss’s book is published in the US and UK on Tuesday. The American jacket carries praise from two hard-right senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, both vocal enemies of Biden. It also carries a different subtitle from the British edition. In the UK, Truss is said to offer “Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room”. In the US, she is “Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment”.It’s a lot to pack in between the school run – Truss has two daughters – and her duties as a Norfolk MP. But it all points to a clear ambition to carve out a presence in rightwing US media, long on plain display.In February, Truss attended the CPAC conference in Maryland, giving an address to an audience of what Politico called “bewildered conservatives” before appearing with Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign chair and White House adviser, a leading far-right voice who pitched Truss into controversy with remarks about the jailed far-right figure Tommy Robinson.View image in fullscreenTruss will soon be back, visiting Washington to promote her book at the Heritage Foundation, the thinktank behind Project 2025, a vast and controversial plan for a second Trump administration.Truss’s relationship with Heritage is well established. She spoke there in 2015, as trade secretary and over the objections of the British ambassador, and accepted an award named after Margaret Thatcher there last year. Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage, also blurbs the US edition of Truss’s book.The foundation is a couple of miles from the White House, but Truss is hardly likely to seek contact with Biden or his administration. That may be just as well. Elsewhere in her book, she describes meeting the president at the White House in September 2021, when she was foreign secretary under Boris Johnson.“Our Oval Office meeting lasted around an hour and a half,” Truss writes, adding that this was not a sign of favor.“The truth was it owed more to Biden’s penchant for telling extended anecdotes in response to any issue that came up. ‘Ah, that reminds me …’ he would say, as his officials looked at each other with knowing smiles. Ten minutes later, the story would end and he would move on to something else.”Biden’s age, 81, and mental capacity to be president are the source of constant media speculation and political attack – and strong White House pushback. But Truss has more to say. At the Cop 26 climate conference in Glasgow, later in 2021, she “bumped into Joe Biden again. He remembered our meeting at the White House, telling me he’d never forget ‘those blue eyes’, even though we’d both been wearing Covid masks.”It is not clear if the reader should think Biden or Truss was under the impression mouth coverings also obscure the eyes.Truss is still not done. She includes the president with the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi among US politicians deemed “unhelpful” over Northern Ireland issues, their interventions “generally on one side of the argument, doubtless egged on by the Irish embassy in Washington”.She also describes how in September 2022, as prime minister, she attended the UN general assembly in New York. There, she says, “Biden regaled me with tales of the Democrat campaign trail, including an incident in which he had fallen over. He said, ‘I can see them thinking, ‘You can’t get up, grandpa’, but I got up.’“I formed the view that he was running again in 2024,” Truss writes, before risking a self-own by writing about a faux pas at the same event, when she called out “Hi, Dr Biden!” to “a blonde lady” who turned out to be Brigitte Macron, the wife of the president of France.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope she didn’t hear!” Truss writes.The vignette about Biden at the UN is not the only one in Ten Years to Save the West in which Truss uses “Democrat” to refer to the Democratic party. It is a telling choice. Republicans have long used the incorrect term as a term of political abuse. Nor is it the only instance in which Truss – or her US editors – must adapt or explain her language.When writing about UK politics, as in most of the book, Truss must often offer translations or explanations for US readers. For one small but telling example, in referring to her distaste for National Insurance – a payroll tax that supports state pensions and unemployment and incapacity benefits – she calls it “a social security entitlement”. On the US right, “entitlement” is almost as dirty a word as “Democrat”.At least until the eve of publication day, Truss had shied from saying Donald Trump’s name but said she wanted a Republican in the White House in 2025. She says so in her book but abandons any pretense of subtlety when it comes to praising Trump, now the presumptive GOP nominee despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar penalties for tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Calling herself “an early fan of the TV show The Apprentice” who “enjoyed the Donald’s catchphrases and sassy business advice”, Truss says that when Trump entered politics in 2015, colleagues in parliament and “elderly ladies” in Swaffham, a town in her constituency, were united in “seem[ing] genuinely animated by the disruptive Republican candidate”. She makes a common link between support for Trump and support for Brexit – which she campaigned against before becoming its hardline champion on her way to leading her country.View image in fullscreenWhen Trump was president, Truss writes, she “chased” Boris Johnson “down a fire escape” in New York, to demand inclusion in a meeting between the British and American leaders. According to Truss, who was then trade secretary, that meeting saw Trump urge her and his own trade representative, Bob Lighthizer, to get on with talks for a UK-US trade deal – only for Johnson to try to make Trump focus on restoring the Iran nuclear agreement, a tactic that did not work.Truss never got her trade deal. In part, she blames “many in Number 10” Downing Street who “seemed to want to hold Trump at arm’s length for political reasons”.“The UK media provided universally negative coverage of Trump, and leftists in the Conservative party were keen to insult him at every opportunity,” Truss writes. “My view was that he was the leader of the free world and an important ally.”That view stands in stark comparison to her abuse of Biden, who beat Trump conclusively in an election Trump still refuses to concede. Furthermore, when it comes to the deadly fruits of that refusal – the attack on Congress Trump incited – Truss keeps her observations to a single paragraph.On 6 January 2021, Truss writes, she was “on a phone call with Bob Lighthizer”, “working on” removing a US tariff on Scottish whisky. From the Executive Office building, next to the White House, Lighthizer “remarked … in passing that the street was full of people with huge American flags walking towards Congress. Little did I realise how seismic that event would turn out to be.”Truss eventually saw the whisky tariff removed – in summer 2021, after “talks with the new Democrat administration”.“But with Joe Biden as president,” Truss writes, “it was made quite clear that a trade deal with the United Kingdom was no longer a priority. We had missed the boat.” More