US Politics

Former US senator and two-term Florida governor Bob Graham, who gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died aged 87.Graham’s family announced the death in a statement posted on X by his daughter Gwen Graham on Tuesday.“We are deeply saddened to report the passing of a visionary leader, dedicated public servant, and even more importantly, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather,” the family’s statement said.Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, emphasising his opposition to the Iraq invasion.But his bid was delayed by heart surgery in January 2003, and he was never able to gain enough traction with voters to catch up, bowing out that October. He didn’t seek reelection in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martinez.Graham was a man of many quirks. He perfected the “workdays” political gimmick of spending a day doing various jobs from horse stall mucker to FBI agent and kept a meticulous diary, noting almost everyone he spoke with, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores.Graham said the notebooks were a working tool for him and he was reluctant to describe his emotions or personal feelings in them. “I review them for calls to be made, memos to be dictated, meetings I want to follow up on and things people promise to do,” he said.Graham was among the earliest opponents of the Iraq war, saying President George W Bush distorted intelligence data and argued it was more serious than the sexual misconduct issues that led the House to impeach President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. It led Graham to launch his short, abortive presidential bid.“The quagmire in Iraq is a distraction that the Bush administration, and the Bush administration alone, has created,” Graham said in 2003.During his 18 years in Washington, Graham worked well with colleagues from both parties, particularly Florida Republican Connie Mack during their dozen years together in the Senate.As a politician, few were better. Florida voters hardly considered him the wealthy, Harvard-educated attorney that he was.Graham’s political career spanned five decades, beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1966. He won a state Senate seat in 1970 and then was elected governor in 1978. He was re-elected in 1982. Four years later, he won the first of three terms in the US Senate when he ousted incumbent Republican Paula Hawkins.View image in fullscreenGraham remained widely popular with Florida voters, winning reelection by wide margins in 1992 and 1998 when he carried 63 of 67 counties. In that latter election, he defeated Charlie Crist, who later served as a Republican governor from 2007 to 2011. Crist said on Tuesday that he came to “love him for the good, decent man that he was”.House speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi called Graham “a patriotic American” who “brought his love for his family and for his state of Florida to the Senate, where he served with immense dignity and courage”.Daniel Robert Graham was born 9 November 1936 in Coral Gables, where his father, Ernest “Cap” Graham, had moved from South Dakota and established a large dairy operation. Young Bob milked cows, built fences and scooped manure as a teenager. One of his half-brothers, Phillip Graham, was publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek until he took his own life in 1963, just a year after Bob Graham’s graduation from Harvard law.In 1966 he was elected to the Florida legislature, where he focused largely on education and health care issues. He got off to a shaky start and was dubbed “Governor Jello” for some early indecisiveness, but he shook that label through his handling of several serious crises.As governor he also signed numerous death warrants, founded the Save the Manatee Club with entertainer Jimmy Buffett and led efforts to establish several environmental programs. Graham was also known for his 408 “workdays”, including stints as a housewife, boxing ring announcer, flight attendant and arson investigator. They grew out of a teaching stint as a member of the Florida Senate’s education committee and then morphed into the campaign gimmick that helped him relate to the average voter.“This has been a very important part of my development as a public official, my learning at a very human level what the people of Florida expect, what they want, what their aspirations are and then trying to interpret that and make it policy that will improve their lives,” Graham said in 2004 as he completed his final job as a Christmas gift wrapper.After leaving public life in 2005, Graham spent much of his time at a public policy centre named after him at the University of Florida and pushing the legislature to require more civics classes in the state’s public schools.Graham was one of five members selected for an independent commission by President Barack Obama in June 2010 to investigate a huge BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatened sea life and beaches along several south-eastern Gulf states. 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Kharkiv is at risk of becoming “a second Aleppo” unless US politicians vote for fresh military aid to help Ukraine obtain the air defences needed to prevent long-range Russian attacks, the city’s mayor has warned.Ihor Terekhov said Russia had switched tactics to try to destroy the city’s power supply and terrorise its 1.3 million residents by firing into residential areas, with people experiencing unscheduled power cuts for hours at a time.The mayor of Ukraine’s second city said the $60bn US military aid package, currently stalled in Congress, was of “critical importance for us” and urged the west to refocus on the two-year-old war.“We need that support to prevent Kharkiv being a second Aleppo,” Terekhov said, referring to the Syrian city heavily bombed by Russian and Syrian government forces at the height of the country’s civil war a decade ago.View image in fullscreenOn 22 March, Russian attacks destroyed a power station on the eastern edge of the city as well all its substations; a week later officials acknowledged a second plant, 30 miles south-east of the city, had been eliminated in the same attack.Power in the city, about 30 miles from the Russian border, was interrupted after another bombing raid this week, causing the metro to be halted briefly. Residents said there was usually a few hours’ supply a day in the city centre, although in the outskirts the situation was said to be better.Children are educated either online or in underground schools, for their own safety. The water supply remains on, but Terekhov said there were concerns the Russian military may switch to targeting gas distribution, after storage facilities in the west were attacked last week.Ukrainian leaders have begun asking western nations to donate Patriot air defence systems, requests for help that were thrown into sharper relief by the US and UK military support for Israel over the weekend when it neutralised an air attack from Iran.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the allies’ defensive action “demonstrated how truly effective unity in defending against terror can be when it is based on sufficient political will” – before making a comparison to Ukraine.Iranian-designed Shahed drones used by Russia “sound identical to those over the Middle East”, he said. “The impact of ballistic missiles, if they are not intercepted, is the same everywhere.”The Ukrainian leader concluded: “European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles.”Seven people were killed in Kharkiv when two rockets struck near an unused shopping mall on the ring road north of the city shortly after midnight on 6 April, leaving behind 4-metre-deep craters and military debris near a residential area.Nina Mykhailivna, 72, who lives nearby, said the shock from the strike “lifted her bed in the air” and was followed by about 90 minutes of secondary explosions, the most serious she had experienced during the war.Few residents have left the city since Russia increased its bombing campaign around the turn of the year, and Kharkiv remains a lively metropolis with busy restaurants and cafes, and some businesses thriving despite the threat.View image in fullscreenOleksii Yevsiukov, 39, and Viktoriia Varenikova, 30, run the Avex clothing factory in a residential district and have installed $20,000 worth of solar panels on the roof since the start of the conflict. The additions provide enough electricity to power the sewing machines for the 10 employees working below in the Soviet-era building, which is undergoing a total refurbishment.“We anticipated there might be power cuts from energy infrastructure attacks this winter,” Yevsiukov said. “We looked at solutions and decided a diesel generator was not suitable, expensive and not very eco friendly, so we ordered the solar panels last year.”A newly installed power bank stores enough electricity for two days’ use if the panels are unable to generate it, and a geothermal pump keeps the building warm, avoiding the need for gas. As such, the factory is self-sufficient, which could become necessary as the owners anticipate at least two more years of war.View image in fullscreenTheir company makes women’s swim and fitness wear for branded companies in Ukraine, and, the couple say, sales have grown even though the goods might be considered luxuries during wartime. With the factory refurbishment nearly complete, Yevsiukov said they planned to roughly double the workforce.Soon after the war began, Varenikova found out she was pregnant. Their son Max is now one, and she expresses the hope that war might be over by the time he is ready for school. “I want him to go to a normal school, not an underground school, not a school in the metro, not an online school.”However, not everybody is so optimistic. One of the firm’s employees, Liubov, said she was planning to leave her home in Kharkiv and move to central Ukraine for at least a month to provide a calmer environment for her two daughters, who can continue to take classes remotely.Russian bombing had become “much more frequent, much more often”, Liubov said. The comprehensive attack on 22 March was “very, very scary and loud” and “attacks could come at daytime or night-time, in any part of the city”.Liubov did not want to be photographed or give a surname, reflecting perhaps a concern about not wanting to be identified as someone leaving the city. “We’ve had to get used to everything, I wish we didn’t have to. We have power banks, we have storage of food, but we want this to be over soon. We simply want to live.” More

Shomari Figures, an attorney and Obama White House executive from a politically-prominent civil rights family, has won the Democratic nomination to run in Alabama’s redrawn second congressional district Tuesday night, defeating state representative Anthony Daniels.The runoff election has been closely watched because of its implications for control of Congress in November, and for the effect of supreme court orders requiring southern states to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and eliminate racial gerrymandering.Republicans currently control Congress by a margin of 218 to 213, with four vacancies. A win by Figures in November represents one seat flipping control from Republicans to Democrats.Alabama legislators resisted complying with the order of the US supreme court last year, requiring the state’s congressional map to add an additional district that would be politically competitive for a Black candidate. The courts eventually appointed a special master to oversee redrawing district lines, creating a new second district in southern Alabama, stretching through the “Black Belt” of counties with large African American populations.Just under half of the residents are Black. The Cook Political Report rates Alabama’s second congressional district as “leans Democratic” with a +4 Democratic partisan advantage, which Republicans believe may still provide an opportunity to hold the seat.Tuesday night, Republicans chose Caroleene Dobson, a real estate attorney and political newcomer, to face Figures in November. Dobson, a Harvard graduate and Federalist Society member, ran as a more conservative candidate than her runoff opponent, former State Senator Dick Brewbaker, who served a Montgomery-area district for 10 years.The Republican runoff candidates had contributed about a million dollars to their campaigns by March election filing deadlines, a sign of how hard fought the contest will be in November.The campaigns of Figures, 38, and Daniels, 41, differed less by ideology than biography. Daniels is the youngest Black man to lead Democrats in the Alabama house of representatives. He grew up in a small Black Belt town south of Montgomery, but represents Huntsville, Alabama, a prospering north Alabama city from which he has built a statewide power base.Daniels developed a reputation as a political dealmaker while serving in the legislature, navigating a political environment that is hostile to Democrats to get legislation passed that eliminated state income taxes on overtime pay. But Daniels could not overcome Figures’ financial advantages in a runoff.Figures is the kind of Alabama political royalty whose engagement five years ago was announced in the New York Times. Figures’ father, Alabama state Senator Michael Figures was a crusading attorney who famously bankrupted the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in the ’80s. His mother, state Senator Vivian Davis Figures, won the seat held by her husband after his death in 1996 and has held it since.Figures resigned his job as the deputy chief of staff and counselor to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, to compete in the crowded March primary. His longstanding connections to national politics helped him draw nearly $2m in outside spending from groups like Protect Progress, a Washington-based political action committee. More

House Republicans on Tuesday formally presented articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to the Senate, part of the party’s attempt to force an election-year showdown with the Biden administration over immigration and border security.In a ceremonial procession, 11 House Republican impeachment managers carried the two articles of impeachment across the rotunda of the US Capitol, where they informed the Senate they were prepared, for the first time in American history, to prosecute a sitting cabinet secretary for “willful and systemic refusal” to enforce border policies and a “breach of public trust”.Constitutional scholars, including conservative legal experts, have said the Republicans’ impeachment case is deeply flawed and fails to meet the high bar of “high crimes and misdemeanors” outlined in the constitution.Democrats, who control the Senate, have made clear their intention to quickly dispense with the articles, arguing that the politically charged proceedings amount to little more than a policy dispute with the administration. A two-thirds majority is needed to win an conviction in the Senate, an impossible threshold if all of the Democrats are united in favor of dismissing the charges against Mayorkas, who retains the support of Joe Biden.In February, House Republicans bypassed skepticism within their own ranks and unified Democratic opposition to approve by a one-vote margin two articles of impeachment against the secretary, who they have made the face of the Biden administration’s struggle to control record migration at the US-Mexico border.“Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement,” the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on Tuesday, adding: “Talk about awful precedents. This would set an awful precedent for Congress.”Schumer has said the Senate would convene on Wednesday as a “court of impeachment” and senators will be sworn in as jurors. Patty Murray, the Senate president pro tempore, a Democrat of Washington, presided over the chamber as the House homeland security chair, Mark Green of Tennessee, read the charges aloud.Schumer said he hoped to deal with the matter as “expeditiously as possible”. But Republicans are pressuring Democrats to hold a full trial.“We must hold those who engineered this crisis to full account,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said in a statement on Monday after signing the articles of impeachment. “Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial.”Johnson initially delayed the delivery of the articles to focus on funding legislation to avert a government shutdown. Then the transmission was delayed again after Senate Republicans asked for more time to strategize ways to ensure a Senate trial.In remarks on Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell charged that it would be “beneath the Senate’s dignity to shrug off our clear responsibility” and not give thorough consideration to the charges against Mayorkas.“I will strenuously oppose any effort to table the articles of impeachment and avoid looking the Biden administration’s border crisis squarely in the face,” the Senate minority leader said.Mayorkas, the first Latino and first immigrant to lead the agency, has forcefully defended himself throughout the process, writing in a January letter to House Republicans: “Your false accusations do not rattle me.”Hours before the articles were delivered to the Senate, Mayorkas was on Capitol Hill, pressing Congress to provide his agency with more resources to enforce border policies and to pass legislation updating the nation’s outdated immigration laws.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he told members of the House homeland security committee on Tuesday morning. “Only Congress can fix it. Congress has not updated our immigration enforcement laws since 1996 – 28 years ago. And, only Congress can deliver on our need for more border patrol agents, asylum officers and immigration judges, facilities and technology.”Republicans seized on the opportunity to assail Mayorkas, blaming him for the humanitarian crisis at the country’s southern border.“The open border is the number one issue across America in poll after poll and that is exactly why this committee impeached you,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia congresswoman, one of 11 House Republicans tapped to serve as an impeachment manager.Several Republican senators have expressed deep skepticism about the House’s impeachment effort, former secretaries of homeland security as well as conservative legal scholars have denounced the Republicans’ case against Mayorkas as deeply flawed and warned that it threatens to undermine one of Congress’s most powerful tools for removing officials guilty of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.A group of Republican senators are contemplating ways to slow-walk the process, suggesting they will deliver lengthy speeches and raise time-consuming procedural inquiries to keep the attention on immigration, one of Biden’s greatest political vulnerabilities.Americans broadly disapprove of the president’s handling of the border, now a top concern for many voters. Ahead of the 2024 election, Republicans have assailed Biden over the border while Donald Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, has again put immigration at the center of his campaign.An attempt to pass a bipartisan border bill – negotiated by Mayorkas and touted as the most conservative piece of immigration legislation in decades – was derailed by Republicans at the behest of Trump, who did not want Biden to notch a victory on an issue that plays to the former president’s political advantage.Biden has also asked Congress to approve requests for more border patrol agents and immigration court judges, but Republicans have refused, saying Biden should use his executive authority to stem the flow of migrants. Biden has said he is mulling a far-reaching executive action that would dramatically reduce the number of asylum seekers who can cross the southern border. More

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