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      Biden and Harris meet congressional leaders to try to avert government shutdown

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris met congressional leaders on Tuesday in hopes of striking a deal to try to avert a government shutdown.“We’re making good progress, and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” the top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said after the meeting, adding that the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.While the debacle over the government shutdown has been brewing for months, the 1 March deadline is different from the many similar instances that came before, in that it would herald only a partial government shutdown, with the legislation funding departments including agriculture, transportation and veteran affairs expiring on Friday. The rest of the shutdown is scheduled for 8 March.The meeting was scheduled for late morning with Johnson, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer and the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.At the top of the meeting, Biden warned that a government shutdown would “significantly” damage the nation’s economy, which saw strong growth last year despite tenacious inflation and high interest rates.The group pressed Johnson to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.McConnell along with Biden and Congress’s top Democrats are all supporters of aid to Ukraine, but Johnson has waffled, even turning down a package of hardline immigration policy changes Democrats had agreed to in order to win Republican support for Kyiv.“The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Schumer said. “We said to the speaker, ‘Get it done.’”Johnson, meanwhile, told CNN the meeting was “frank and honest” and focused on the need for an immigration and border plan. This comes after House Republicans tanked bipartisan legislation that included border funding, alongside Ukraine and Israel aid – a move that has been attributed to Donald Trump’s pressure to not allow Democrats any wins in an election year.The House reconvenes on Wednesday. More

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      Top Virginia Republican apologizes for misgendering Democratic state senator

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      A top Republican in Virginia has apologized for misgendering a state senate Democrat in a row that caused legislative activity in the chamber to be temporarily suspended.“We are all equal under the law. And so I apologize, I apologize, I apologize, and I would hope that everyone would understand there is no intent to offend but that we would also give each other the ability to forgive each other,” the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, said in an address to the state senate on Monday.It all started when Danica Roem, 39, a state senator from Prince William county and the US’s first openly transgender person to serve in any state legislature, had asked Earle-Sears, 59, how many votes were needed to pass a bill on prescription drug prices with an emergency clause.“Madame President, how many votes would it take to pass this bill with the emergency clause?” Roem asked Earle-Sears, who was presiding over a legislative session at the time.Earle-Sears responded: “Yes, sir, that would be 32.”Roem walked out of the room after being misgendered. Earle-Sears initially refused to apologize for the mistake but finally did so after two separate recesses.The lieutenant governor maintained that she did not mean to upset anyone.“I am here to do the job that the people of Virginia have called me to do, and that is to treat everyone with respect and dignity,” Earle-Sears said.She added: “I myself have at times not been afforded that same respect and dignity.”Earle-Sears herself also made history as the state’s first Black and first female lieutenant governor.Roem has served in Virginia’s state senate since 2023. She was previously a member of the Virginia house of delegates, to which she was elected in 2017.The bill about which Roem inquired, HB592, ultimately passed the Virginia senate.Roem’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      California’s Orange county was once a conservative bastion. Can it swing the balance of the US House in 2024?

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      In the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House of Representatives, one region could hold the key to victory – Orange county, California’s historically conservative heartland.For decades, the region – perhaps most famously described by Ronald Reagan as the place “where the good Republicans go before they die” – was a Republican stronghold and a hotbed for radical conservatives.But the county has undergone dramatic changes both politically and demographically. The region has shifted from the largely white center of conservative politics in California to a far more diverse place and one of the few true purple counties in the US, the effects of which have reverberated nationally.Today the county of 3.1 million people is home to some of the most competitive congressional elections in the US. Four of Orange county’s six congressional districts, including the seat vacated by congresswoman Katie Porter as she runs for the Senate, are ranked among the most competitive races, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.Recent polling from UC Irvine suggests that Asian Americans and Latino voters could play a key role in the upcoming races as potential swing voters. Orange county is far less white than it once was and its growing diversity has helped fuel its political transformation, said Jon Gould, who launched the poll.It’s a stark contrast to years past when Asian Americans were an afterthought in county political campaigns, said Andrew Ji, the managing director of the Orange county office for Asian Americans Advancing Justice. “In certain regions where there’s tight races, Asian Americans are gonna be the swing voting bloc,” Ji said.Orange county was conservative even for conservatives, a place that embraced the John Birch Society, a far-right political group that opposed the civil rights movement and spread conspiracy theories that Republican president Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.The region was overwhelmingly Republican into the 1990s, said Jim Newton, a UCLA lecturer and veteran journalist who covered the region. Demographic trends suggested it wouldn’t remain so forever, he said, but the political shift came far sooner than anticipated.In 1990, Orange county was 65% white while Latinos comprised 23% of the population and Asian Americans 10%, according to the US census. By 2020, Latinos accounted for 34% of county residents, the Asian American population climbed to 22% and white people made up 37% of the population.Greater ethnic and racial diversity fueled change, but other demographic changes played a role too, said Gould, the dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. There’s been a rise in college-educated county residents – and there is a link between higher education and less extreme Republicans, he said.“When I was younger this was the home of the John Birch Society, this was … the place Ronald Reagan was king,” said Gould. “The transformation has been remarkable.”The changes in the political landscape were evident in 2016, when Orange county favored a Democrat for president for the first time in nearly a century – giving more votes to Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. In 2018, Democrats flipped four seats and the county sent an entirely blue delegation to Congress.The shifting political winds came as California as a whole was becoming more blue, and the far-right shift in the Republican party and Donald Trump alienated voters, particularly suburban women.View image in fullscreenThe GOP’s association with downplaying or outright denying the climate crisis also didn’t play well in a state where people take the environment seriously, Newton, the UCLA lecturer, argues.“The fact that we talk about Orange county as potentially a swing place is really bad news for Republicans,” Newton said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic voters have a slight lead in the county today, but it remains firmly purple. Republicans won two House seats back from Democrats in 2020 with the election of Young Kim and Michelle Steel – two of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress.Purple counties – where congressional and presidential contests are truly competitive – are increasingly rare, said Gould, who recently conducted a poll of county voters.The poll published by UC Irvine suggests that the county will swing left in this year’s election due to independent and “modestly partisan Republicans”. The latter group has become a political anomaly in a sharply divided America, but could play a strong role in the races in the region. That demographic is less supportive of Trump, does not dislike Biden as much as other Republicans and is generally more diverse, Gould noted.“They tend to be more educated, wealthier and compared to the strongly attached Republicans, they are much less likely to be white,” he said. “That is where there is a Latino and Asian group of modestly attached Republicans who may very well have a strong influence on the presidential race and congressional races in 2024.”They may not necessarily vote for Democrats, he said, and the question is whether they will vote, and if so will they vote for Republicans in every race.The outcome of the congressional races could have major implications nationally and determine which party controls the House.“If Democrats can’t keep this seat, they have no hope of winning the House majority, because demographically this is exactly the type of district that is coming into the Democrats’ coalition,” David Wasserman, with the Cook Political Report, said of Porter’s seat in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.For Ji, the election is another sign of how much has changed in Orange county and there is an excitement to see it transform from a mono-political white place, into somewhere known for diversity – ethnically and politically.“I’m very excited for the future of Orange county,” Ji said. “We are pivotal. We can be seen as an inflection point and we are very important nationally in the way we vote.” More

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      Manhattan prosecutors seek gag order on Trump in hush money case – live

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      Manhattan prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump involving hush money payments to impose a gag order on the former president.Trump is already under a limited gag order in his federal election interference case in Washington, and prosecutors in Manhattan sought a similarly “narrowly tailored order restricting certain prejudicial extrajudicial statements by defendant.”In their motion, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Trump had a “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and court staff,” adding:
      Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant and imminent threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding and a substantial likelihood of causing material prejudice.
      If approved, the gag order would bar Trump from “making or directing others to make” statements about witnesses concerning their role in the case.Trump has been charged with 34 counts related to the alleged falsification of business records as part of a purported scheme to cover up extramarital affairs. Jury selection is set to begin on 25 March, making it the first of four criminal cases against Trump to go before a jury.
      Manhattan prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump involving hush-money payments to impose a gag order on the former president.
      Trump has appealed his $454m New York civil fraud judgment, challenging a judge’s ruling that he manipulated the value of his properties to obtain advantageous loan and insurance rates as he grew his real estate empire.
      Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family must remain behind bars while he awaits trial, a judge ruled, reversing an earlier order releasing the man.
      Hunter Biden said, in a rare interview, that his battle to stay sober was unique because failure would be used as a political cudgel as his father, Joe Biden, seeks a second term as US president.
      Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP), the conservative Super Pac backed by billionaire Charles Koch, announced it has paused its financial support of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Joe Biden is planning to meet with congressional leaders in Washington tomorrow as he once again tries to head off the looming prospect of a partial government shutdown at midnight on Friday.
      Joe Biden is set to make a rare visit the US-Mexico border on Thursday to meet with US border patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders – on the same day that Donald Trump has already reportedly scheduled a border trip.
      Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) plans to stand down beginning next week, paving the way for a slate of Donald Trump loyalists to lead the party in the run-up to the November general elections.
      Kenneth Chesebro, the former Trump attorney who allegedly devised the “fake electors” plan, concealed dozens of damning posts on a secret Twitter account and failed to share them with Michigan prosecutors, according to a report.
      US authorities are investigating organizations that coordinate organ donations over allegations that the non-profits are potentially defrauding the federal government.The federal investigation, first reported by the Washington Post, is looking at several organ procurement organizations (OPOs) that secure organs for transplants within the United States.A focus of the inquiry is investigating whether the organizations knowingly overbilled the Department of Veteran Affairs as well as Medicare, two agencies that reimburse OPOs for the procurement of organs.The investigation is also looking into whether OPOs arranged kickbacks between organizations, the Post reported, citing one person with knowledge of the investigation.The latest investigation, led by the Department of Health and Human Services as well as inspector general Michael Missal with the Department of Veterans Affairs, could lead to a mass overhaul of the organ transplant industry, the Post reported.At least six people with knowledge of the investigation told the Post that the inquiry has been taking place for several months. But it recently intensified as investigators visited the offices and homes of at least 10 chief executives at different OPOs.Kenneth Chesebro, the former Trump attorney who allegedly devised the “fake electors” plan, concealed dozens of damning posts on a secret Twitter account and failed to share them with Michigan prosecutors, according to a report.Chesebro told investigators he did not use Twitter, now known as X, or have any “alternate IDs” on social media, but a CNN report has found he had a private Twitter account where he promoted a “far more aggressive election subversion strategy” than he later told investigators.The anonymous account “BadgerPundit” included a post just days after the 2020 presidential election which said:
      You don’t get the big picture. Trump doesn’t have to get courts to declare him the winner of the vote. He just needs to convince Republican legislatures that the election was systematically rigged, but it’s impossible to run it again, so they should appoint electors instead.
      But in his interview with Michigan investigators, Chesebro said the very opposite, claiming that the entire electors plan was contingent on the courts.An internal review has blamed the Pentagon’s failure to notify government officials and the public about Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization on privacy restrictions and said no one should be held responsible.The review, which was done by Austin’s subordinates, largely absolves anyone of wrongdoing for the secrecy surrounding his hospitalization last month, which included several days in the intensive care unit, Associated Press reported.There was “no indication of ill intent or an attempt to obfuscate”, according to an unclassified summary of the review released by the Pentagon today. Rather it in part blames the lack of information sharing on the “unprecedented situation” and says that Austin’s staff was trying to respect his medical privacy.Austin has been called to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a House hearing on the matter and is expected to face sharp criticism.Austin’s health became a focus of attention in January when he underwent prostate cancer surgery and was readmitted to hospital for several days because of complications – without the apparent knowledge of the White House.Top advisers to the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump have held discussions that included efforts to secure an endorsement of the former president by McConnell, according to reports.The conversations, first reported by the New York Times, have been held between Trump’s campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, and longtime McConnell adviser, Josh Holmes. The NYT report writes:
      Donald J. Trump and Mitch McConnell haven’t said a word to each other since December 2020. But people close to both men are working behind the scenes to make bygones of the enmity between them and to pave the way for a critical endorsement of the former president by the one Republican congressional leader who has yet to offer one.
      An endorsement from McConnell would be the culmination of a relationship that was frosty even before it collapsed over the January 6 Capitol attack. The longtime Senate GOP leader blamed Trump for being “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”Manhattan prosecutors have asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump involving hush money payments to impose a gag order on the former president.Trump is already under a limited gag order in his federal election interference case in Washington, and prosecutors in Manhattan sought a similarly “narrowly tailored order restricting certain prejudicial extrajudicial statements by defendant.”In their motion, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Trump had a “long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and court staff,” adding:
      Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant and imminent threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding and a substantial likelihood of causing material prejudice.
      If approved, the gag order would bar Trump from “making or directing others to make” statements about witnesses concerning their role in the case.Trump has been charged with 34 counts related to the alleged falsification of business records as part of a purported scheme to cover up extramarital affairs. Jury selection is set to begin on 25 March, making it the first of four criminal cases against Trump to go before a jury.A longtime Democratic political operative has admitted he commissioned a robocall which featured an AI-created imitation of Joe Biden discouraging voters from participating in the New Hampshire presidential primary.In a statement, Steve Kramer said he resorted to “easy-to-use online technology” to mimic the president’s voice and send out the infamous automated call to 5,000 Democrats who were most likely to vote in the 23 January primary.The robocall remains the subject of a law enforcement investigation. The US government has since outlawed automated calls using AI-generated voices, saying they are a threat to democracy.“With a mere $500 investment, anyone could replicate my intentional call,” Kramer’s statement – provided to NBC News on Sunday and the Guardian on Monday – also said. “Immediate action is needed across all regulatory bodies and platforms.”Kramer’s statement stopped short of saying that he had permission from his client at the time of the robocall: the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips. The Minnesota congressman’s campaign has accused Kramer of commissioning the robocall without permission, and has said it would not work with the operative again after paying him nearly $260,000 in December and January.Additionally, Kramer’s statement avoided addressing a version of events relayed by a magician and hypnotist from New Orleans who says he was paid $150 to create the audio used in the robocall.Hello US politics blog readers, it’s been a lively morning and there’s more news to come. We’ll bring you the developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand:
      Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family must remain behind bars while he awaits trial, a judge ruled, reversing an earlier order releasing the man.
      Hunter Biden said, in a rare interview, that his battle to stay sober is unique because failure would be used as a political cudgel as his father, Joe Biden, seeks a second term as US president.
      Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP), the conservative Super Pac backed by billionaire Charles Koch, announced it has paused its financial support of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Joe Biden is planning to meet with congressional leaders in Washington tomorrow as he once again tries to head off the looming prospect of a partial government shutdown at midnight on Friday.
      Joe Biden is set to make a rare visit the US-Mexico border on Thursday to meet with US border patrol agents, law enforcement and local leaders – on the same day that Donald Trump has already reportedly scheduled a border trip.
      Donald Trump has appealed his $454m New York civil fraud judgment, challenging a judge’s ruling that he manipulated the value of his properties to obtain advantageous loan and insurance rates as he grew his real estate empire.
      Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) plans to stand down beginning next week, paving the way for a slate of Donald Trump loyalists to lead the party in the run-up to the November general elections.
      Former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov was re-arrested last Thursday morning while meeting with his lawyers at their offices in downtown Las Vegas, the Associated Press reports.In an emergency petition with the 9th US circuit court of appeals, Smirnov’s lawyers said US district judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles did not have the authority to order Smirnov to be taken back into custody.The defense also criticized what it described as “biased and prejudicial statements” from Wright insinuating that Smirnov’s lawyers were acting improperly by advocating for his release.Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, starting in 2017, according to court documents. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.Prosecutors previously said that during an interview before his arrest last week, Smirnov admitted that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter.Prosecutors in the FBI informant case revealed that Alexander Smirnov has reported to the FBI having extensive contact with officials associated with Russian intelligence, and claimed that such officials were involved in passing a story to him about Hunter Biden, the Associated Press reports.Prosecutors said Smirnov, who holds dual Israeli-US citizenship, had been planning to travel overseas to multiple countries days after his February 14 arrest where he said he was meeting with foreign intelligence contacts.Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, related to fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family, but his lawyers have said they look forward to defending him at trial.Defense attorneys have said in pushing for his release that he has no criminal history and has strong ties to the United States, including a longtime significant other who lives in Las Vegas.In his ruling last week releasing Smirnov on GPS monitoring, US magistrate judge Daniel Albregts in Las Vegas said he was concerned about his access to what prosecutors estimate is $6 million in funds, but noted that federal guidelines required him to fashion “the least restrictive conditions” ahead of his trial.A former FBI informant charged with fabricating a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden’s family must remain behind bars while he awaits trial, a judge has just ruled, reversing an earlier order releasing the man, the Associated Press reports.US district judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles ordered Alexander Smirnov’s detention after prosecutors raised concerns that the man who claims to have ties to Russian intelligence could flee the country.A different judge had released Smirnov from jail on electronic GPS monitoring after his February 14 arrest, but Wright ordered him to be taken back into custody last week after prosecutors asked to reconsider Smirnov’s detention.Wright said in a written order unsealed Friday that Smirnov’s lawyers’ efforts to free him were “likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.”Smirnov is charged with falsely telling his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, $5m each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.A majority of Americans support building a wall along the US-Mexico border, according to a new poll, the first time since Donald Trump popularized the idea during his 2016 presidential bid.The Monmouth University poll, which found that 53% of respondents back a border wall, comes as both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are expected to make separate trips to the US-Mexico border in Texas on Thursday.The poll found that public concern about illegal immigration is growing, with more than eight in 10 Americans seeing it as a serious or very serious problem. Some 91% of Republicans said it is a serious problem, up from 66% in 2015.Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University polling institute, said in a statement:
      Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year. Other Monmouth polling found this to be Biden’s weakest policy area, including among his fellow Democrats.
      On Wednesday, Hunter Biden is due to sit for a closed-door interview with the House oversight and judiciary committees.The same panels last week interviewed James Biden, the president’s younger brother. Coupled with charges and revelations concerning Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant behind allegations against the Bidens trumpeted by senior Republicans, the James Biden interview was widely held not to have advanced the GOP’s case.Joe Biden’s surviving son, after the death of the former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden in 2015, Hunter Biden has previously publicly discussed his struggles with grief and addiction, not least in Beautiful Things, a memoir published in 2021.Facing tax- and gun-related felony charges, Hunter Biden has sworn in federal court that he has not used alcohol or drugs since 1 June 2019. Axios said a representative said Biden continued to test negative for alcohol or drugs.Biden said he felt “a responsibility to everyone struggling through their own recovery to succeed” with his attempt to stay sober.
      I don’t care whether you’re 10 years sober, two years sober, two months sober or 200 years sober – your brain at some level is always telling you there’s still one answer.
      Embrace the state in which you came into recovery, which is that feeling of hopelessness which forces you into a choice. And then understand that what is required is that you basically have to change everything.
      In a rare interview, Hunter Biden said his battle to stay sober is unique because failure would be used as a political cudgel as his father seeks a second term as US president.“Most importantly, you have to believe that you’re worth the work, or you’ll never be able to get sober,” Joe Biden’s son told Axios on Monday. “But I often do think of the profound consequences of failure here.
      Maybe it’s the ultimate test for a recovering addict – I don’t know. I have always been in awe of people who have stayed clean and sober through tragedies and obstacles few people ever face. They are my heroes, my inspiration.
      I have something much bigger than even myself at stake. We are in the middle of a fight for the future of democracy.
      Biden, 54, became embroiled in the 2020 election between his father and Donald Trump amid Republican attempts to capitalize on his personal struggles and tangled business affairs, particularly in relation to Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine.As the 2024 election approaches, Republicans are still using Hunter Biden and Burisma as political weapons, alleging corruption as they seek to impeach the president, notwithstanding the indictment for lying of a key source also linked to Russian intelligence.That effort is in large part motivated by a desire for revenge for Democrats’ first impeachment of Donald Trump, which focused on attempts to extract dirt on the Bidens from the Ukrainian government.Following Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel’s announcement that she would step down, her co-chair Drew McKissick has also announced his resignation.McKissick, who serves as the chair of the South Carolina Republican party, is also expected to stand down on 8 March. In a statement, he said:
      I’m honored to have had the privilege to serve as RNC Co-Chair for this past year, as well as to have worked with so many grassroots leaders to help make our party successful. It’s what drives me.
      He added that he was looking forward to working with the RNC and Donald Trump’s campaign “to make sure that we WIN this November by taking back the White House, the Senate and maintaining our majority in the House of Representatives.”Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP), the conservative Super Pac backed by billionaire Charles Koch, announced it has paused its financial support of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination.AFP Action said it “wholeheartedly” supports Haley’s plan to keep campaigning but that its backing would only come in the form of words. The announcement on Sunday came a day after Haley lost her home state’s GOP primary to Donald Trump. The statement said:
      Given the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory. And so while we will continue to endorse her, we will focus our resources where we can make the difference. And that’s the US Senate and House.
      Haley’s campaign described the group as a “great organization and ally in the fight for freedom and conservative government” and insisted it has “plenty of fuel to keep going”.The US Congress is lurching into a new week of political chaos.Lawmakers are not only trying to avoid a partial government shutdown but also deal with hard right House Republicans’ push for an election-year impeachment trial of the Biden administration’s top official dealing with the US-Mexico border, homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Reuters reports.The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is also grasping for a way forward on vital US aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and plans to hear closed-door testimony from Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in an impeachment probe that has failed so far to turn up evidence of wrongdoing by the president.Congress has been characterized by Republican brinkmanship and muddled priorities over the past year, more so since Donald Trump undermined a bipartisan border deal in the Senate and now wants aid to US allies extended as loans.Almost two months have passed since Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed on a $1.59 trillion discretionary spending level for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, without the needed legislation to follow.
      It’s becoming more chaotic. The longer Congress is dysfunctional, the further they fall behind on very time-sensitive, high-priority legislation,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute.
      Some hardliners are threatening to oust Johnson as speaker, if the Christian conservative allows a vote on the $95bn foreign aid bill that passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support.Joe Biden plans to meet with Schumer, Johnson and other congressional leaders on Tuesday. More

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      Biden and Trump to visit US-Mexico border on same day

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump will both travel to the US border with Mexico on Thursday, dueling visits by the president and his probable opponent for re-election underlining the importance of immigration as an issue in the coming campaign.Biden will visit Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande valley, while his presidential predecessor will head for Eagle Pass, about 325 miles distant.Conditions at the southern border are widely held to represent a growing problem for the White House, both practically in terms of coping with record numbers of undocumented migrants arriving via Central America and politically in terms of defending against Republican attacks.Biden and other Democrats have attacked Trump and Republicans in Congress for sinking a bipartisan border and immigration deal in the Senate.Demanding a border bill regardless of such machinations by their party, House Republicans also managed, at the second attempt, to impeach Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas.Despite the widely held view that the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas do not come close to meeting the standard for conviction and removal from office, the process now moves to the Senate.Alarming leading progressives, Biden is reportedly weighing using executive orders to impose policy changes including restricting access to the US for migrants claiming asylum.On the campaign trail, Trump has upped his far-right, anti-migrant rhetoric, regularly claiming migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country.A new poll from Monmouth University on Monday said more than 80% of Americans now see undocumented migration as either a very serious problem (61%) or a somewhat serious problem (23%).A majority, 53%, said they supported building a wall on the border with Mexico. A promise to do so – and to have Mexico pay for it – was a main plank of Trump’s shock victory in the 2016 election. Failure to do so, and debate over the effectiveness and environmental impact of such barriers as were built or maintained, was a constant theme of his presidency.More than 60% of respondents to the Monmouth poll said they supported applicants for asylum having to remain in Mexico.On another central Trump campaign issue, crime, the pollsters said “about one in three (32%) think that illegal immigrants are more likely than other Americans to commit violent crimes like rape or murder”.The poll noted that 65% of Republicans – but only 12% of Democrats – held that belief.“Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “Other Monmouth polling found this to be Biden’s weakest policy area, including among his fellow Democrats.”In Brownsville on Thursday, Biden will meet border patrol agents, law enforcement officers and local political leaders.“He wants to make sure he puts his message out there to the American people,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said as the president traveled from Washington to New York for a campaign event.Trump will reportedly deliver remarks in Eagle Pass.On Monday, the former president used his Truth Social platform to say: “When I am your president, we will immediately seal the border, stop the invasion, and on day one, we will begin the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals in American history!”A Trump spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, accused Biden of making “a last-minute, insincere attempt to chase President Trump to the border”, which she said would not “cut it” with voters.The Guardian contacted the Biden campaign for comment.In a video released on Sunday by the president’s campaign, Biden was seen watching footage of Trump discussing why he leant on Senate Republicans to sink their own border deal.“It made it much better for the opposing side,” Trump told Fox News.“He just admitted it,” Biden said. “He sabotaged our bipartisan deal to secure the border … you know who the opposing side is? In this case, it’s America. Donald Trump roots against America every chance he gets.” More

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      Michigan governor says not voting for Biden over Gaza war ‘supports second Trump term’

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      Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.“We don’t want a country that supports war and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza … This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government,” she said in a video posted to her Twitter account. “If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted.”Tlaib’s sister, Layla Elabed, is the campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, the group that has been leading the effort to get people to vote uncommitted. The group has the support of 30 elected officials across south-east Michigan, including Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, which has a large Arab American population.“Biden must earn our vote through a dramatic change in policy,” the group says on its website. “President Biden has been a successful candidate in the past by representing a broad coalition, but right now he’s not representing the vast majority of Democrats who want a ceasefire and an end to his funding of Israel’s war in Gaza.”While Biden will easily win the Democratic primary there, Michigan is a key swing state in the November general election. Biden will need strong support of voters who are a part of his Democratic base in addition to support from more moderate voters to win.Acknowledging that reality, Biden dispatched top aides to Dearborn to meet with leaders there earlier this month. During that meeting, Jon Finer, a deputy national security adviser, acknowledged errors in how the administration had responded.“We are very well aware that we have missteps in the course of responding to this crisis since October 7,” he said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the New York Times. “We have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict.” More

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      Lots of cash. First in the polls. California’s Senate race is Adam Schiff’s to lose

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      Adam Schiff looked like a front-runner when he first announced he was running for the US Senate more than a year ago, and he hasn’t stopped looking like one since.The California congressman from Los Angeles, best known for his withering critiques of Donald Trump and the threat the former president poses to US democracy, hasn’t always been able to match the charisma of his two leading Democratic rivals, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee. His continuing support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, broadly in line with the Biden administration’s, has created divisions among his constituents and opened up one of the few significant policy differences in the race.But as the clock ticks down to the 5 March primary, that has yet to make an appreciable difference in the race to fill Dianne Feinstein’s seat. Schiff has out-raised his opponents by significant margins, allowing him to bombard the airwaves with campaign ads. He has raked in the lion’s share of endorsements from fellow party members, labor unions, newspapers and others.Opinion polls long had him leading, narrowly, but now suggest he may be breaking away from the rest of the pack. The most recent surveys show Schiff at least five points ahead of his competitors. Porter and Republican Steve Garvey are neck-and-neck for second place – though it’s highly unlikely the former baseball star would prevail in the general election in November given Democrats’ dominance in the state. Lee lags behind.In an election year when many voters say they fear for the future of the republic, a contest in a reliably blue state featuring three generally well-regarded Democratic members of Congress (plus one near-unelectable Republican neophyte) can seem a bit of a luxury.But the pressure cooker dynamics of national politics have arguably played into Schiff’s hands. As the leading voice on the first of Trump’s two impeachments and as a congressional investigator into the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Schiff has won widespread admiration and near-heroic status within his own party.As the Los Angeles Times wrote in endorsing Schiff over what it called his “smart, experienced, savvy” Democratic opponents: “Given the increasingly authoritarian statements from Donald Trump, the possibility he could return to the White House and the Republican Party’s lockstep loyalty to him, the Senate needs Schiff.”Schiff himself has played up his anti-Trump credentials, calling the ex-president “the gravest threat to our democracy” in a recent debate in response to a question about what made him different from his fellow Democrats. And he has only been helped by the obvious loathing he inspires, as Trump and his Republican partisans routinely call him “shifty”, a “lowlife”, and, without evidence, a “stone-cold liar”.View image in fullscreenWhen the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to censure Schiff last June – on the partisan-driven grounds that he had threatened national security and was “undermining our duly elected president” – it proved to be a fundraising boon for Schiff’s Senate campaign that cemented the significant financial advantage he was already enjoying over his rivals.Rick Wilson, a former Republican political operative now working for the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said Schiff had a singular ability to drive Trump Republicans to distraction because of his skill, much of it learned from his pre-congressional experience as a prosecutor, to marshal facts, zero in on what matters and lay out the stakes in clear, persuasive language.“Adam Schiff is one of the people who understood where the bodies were buried,” Wilson said. “He presented a combination of intelligence and wit that gave the Trump people a tremendous amount of heartache … I don’t mean this to be facetious, but they hate smart people. I say, tell me who you hate and I’ll show you who you fear.”Still, the race is about more than Trump, and Schiff has talked a lot about other issues close to the heart of California voters, including homelessness, affordable housing, health care costs and the environment.Since the election has played out largely as a contest among Democrats – with Garvey providing a sideshow more than a serious threat – it also presents voters with questions about the direction they want to set for the party, both in the Golden state and across the country.Feinstein, who died in office last September, was an old-school centrist, and whoever replaces her will hew significantly to her left. Still, in an age of deep partisan polarization, do voters want a pragmatist, as Schiff styles himself, or a firebrand? Someone who falls somewhere in the political middle of his party, like Schiff, or the most progressive voice possible?View image in fullscreenMany voters will remember that, for close to 30 years, California had two female senators – first Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, who overlapped from 1993 to 2017, then Feinstein and Kamala Harris, who overlapped until Harris became vice-president in 2021. Are they ready to revert to two male ones – Alex Padilla and, potentially, Schiff?Democratic voters in California are also consistent in saying that diversity matters, which explains why Gavin Newsom, the state governor, made a point of naming a Black woman, the veteran labor organizer and voting rights activist Laphonza Butler, to complete Feinstein’s term after her death. Butler is not competing to hold on to the seat. Does it matter, then, that Schiff is not only a man, but a white man?“A majority … of Democratic party voters participating in the primary are women and a majority are people of color. So, yeah, these things are on our minds,” said Aimee Allison, a California-based political activist whose group She the People champions progressive Black and Latina women running for office. “This is not just about the politics of representation. For Californians under 35, in particular, it’s about representation, plus life experience, plus the policies a candidate is advocating – all three things.”Allison is supporting Lee, and in her mind the race might look very different if it weren’t for the money and the establishment support that Schiff has been able to rake in.“White guys get more money in politics,” she said. “That doesn’t make Adam Schiff special. It’s just the bias of the system, the bias in the minds of people with money … One of the reasons women of color are defeated in primaries is because existing elected officials weigh in against them, both publicly and behind the scenes. When someone like Nancy Pelosi puts her support behind Schiff, it has huge downstream effects.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchiff’s financial advantage has certainly been significant. As of 31 December, he had outspent all his opponents and still had $35m in cash on hand, more than all the other candidates put together. That financial edge is now playing out on the airwaves, especially in expensive media markets like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Schiff’s recent campaign ads present Garvey, not Porter or Lee, as his competition. “Two leading candidates for Senate,” the ad begins. “Two very different visions for California.”Since Garvey does not have enough money for his own television ad campaign, this has been widely interpreted as an attempt by the Schiff team to boost the Republican’s candidacy in the hope that he will come in second on 5 March and thus qualify for the general election under California’s top-two primary system.“It’s disappointing that Adam Schiff is playing cynical, anti-democratic political games to avoid a competitive election in November,” an incensed Porter wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Voters deserve better.”This, though, is how politics in California is often played. When Newsom first ran for governor in 2018, his camp ran an ad similarly designed to boost the leading Republican over his closest Democratic rival and attracted similar complaints. With Porter restricted in the number of ads of her own she can afford to run – some of which have boosted a different Republican candidate in an apparent attempt to dilute Garvey’s support – it arguably does not damage Schiff so much as boost the perception that this is his race to lose.View image in fullscreenIndeed, Schiff has run more like an incumbent than a challenger for an open seat, pointing to his record over 23 years in the House and calling himself “an effective leader who can get things done and deliver for California”.While Porter has leaned heavily into her reputation as a populist crusader against corrupt corporate leaders, and Lee has often shown up to debates with cheering fans from her grassroots and union support base, Schiff has sought to make a virtue of his careful manner and calm demeanor by embracing the idea that he is a trusted establishment candidate.At a candidates’ forum last fall, Schiff pointed to his temperament as its own political asset, recounting how a Republican colleague in the House often complained how difficult it was to argue against his progressive positions because “you sound so damn reasonable”.One issue where Schiff has taken criticism is his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza – a position in line with the Biden administration’s, but one decried by many young progressives who have staged demonstrations at party and campaign events and warned the candidates they will be punished at the polls if they do not denounce Israel’s military campaign.Lee argues forcefully that the deaths of more than 29,000 Palestinians have done nothing to enhance Israeli security or to achieve the US policy goal of a two-state solution. Schiff, though, has been unapologetic in his support for Israel. “I don’t see how there could be a lasting peace as long as a terrorist organization is governing Gaza and threatening to attack them over and over and over again,” he said in a debate last week, “nor do I see how there can be a permanent ceasefire while that is true.” In an earlier statement he went further, pinning blame for the high civilian death toll in Gaza on “Hamas’ actions”, and calling on Congress to approve emergency assistance to the Netanyahu government.Polling since 7 October suggests the issue has yet to hurt Schiff or provide any boost to Lee, despite indications that it has alienated many non-white Democratic voters across the country and split the party along generational lines. More than 1 million Jews live in California, and that may help Schiff, who is himself Jewish, gain as much support as he has lost elsewhere.As the primary looms, Schiff is focusing much of his campaigning energy on partisan politics. In a flurry of tweets and television appearances over the past few weeks he has blasted the Republicans for blowing up the bipartisan deal on border security, denounced the GOP’s willingness to flirt with Russian intelligence operatives and ridiculed them for their impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary.His message to voters after the final primary debate on Monday was not about the candidates he’d just sparred with, but about another, more prominent candidate for national office whom he has taken on again and again. “Trump has made me his public enemy No 1,” he declared flatly. “And I wear that as a badge of honor.” More

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      John Avlon targets New York Republicans in US House campaign: ‘They’re scared’

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      To John Avlon’s knowledge, “the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t feel compelled to weigh in when any of the other candidates in the Democratic primary got in the race. But they did for me. And I think that’s because they’re scared.”The race is in New York’s first congressional district, a US House seat represented by a Republican, Nick LaLota, in an area that trended towards Joe Biden in 2020 and is thus one of many Democratic targets in the state this year. Avlon announced his run on Wednesday.“I think they thought they were going to have a relatively easy race, maybe facing the candidate who had been defeated before. But I think when they saw me getting in the race, they recognised that changes the calculus.”Avlon, 51, is no unknown quantity: he has written four books on politics and history, was for five years editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and, until this month, was a contributor and anchor at CNN.The primary comes first. Nancy Goroff contested the seat on the eastern end of Long Island in 2020 and is in again. So is James Gaughran, a former state senator. There’s plenty of time for things to get testy but Gaughran welcomed Avlon to the race, telling Politico: “I’ve watched him a lot on CNN, and I’ve actually become a big fan. His advocacy – particularly pointing to the issues we have in this country of trying to save this country from Donald Trump, is spot on.”Avlon laughs. “That was very kind of Jimmy. And by the way … don’t we want to see more of that? Don’t we want to see more, ‘Let’s have a civil conversation, disagree where we disagree, find the areas where we agree, and be civil and constructive and not tear each other down in primaries, because it distracts the focus from the real work to be done, which is winning a general election.’”Republicans have not been quite so welcoming to Avlon. The NRCC said it looked forward “to litigating this smug, liberal hack’s past so voters can see just how left he and the rest of the modern Democrat [sic] party have become”.A LaLota spokesperson piled in, calling Avlon “a Manhattan elitist without any attachments to Long Island other than his summer home in the Hamptons” and claiming NY-1 “has a history of rejecting out-of-state and Manhattan elitists, from both sides of the aisle, who parachute into the district”.Avlon has homes in Sag Harbor and Manhattan. LaLota, a graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, lives in Amityville – outside his district.Avlon says: “I don’t think it’s remotely credible to attack me as radical far left. That’s the kind of cut-and-paste political attack that people realise is just fundamentally false. And I think the reality is that Nick LaLota has been a Donald Trump flunky, doing whatever he says rather than solving problems on behalf of people in Suffolk county. You know, he’s far too far right for this swing district.”Twice, Avlon mentions as a model the centrist Tom Suozzi’s Democratic win this month in NY-3, the seat formerly held by the notorious George Santos, the sixth House member ever expelled. Twice, Avlon cites as motivation farcical scenes in Washington DC in which Senate Republicans sank their own border and immigration deal, Trump having made clear he wants to campaign for president against the backdrop of a “border crisis”, real or confected.House Republicans have since refused to consider a foreign aid package without attendant border reform.Avlon says: “When LaLota attacked Senator James Lankford [of Oklahoma, the Republican negotiator] for trying to solve the border crisis with a bipartisan solution, he just revealed himself as part of the problem, not part of the solution of our politics. I want to be part of the solution.”To some Democrats, “centrist” has become a dirty word. Not to Avlon. He has distanced himself from No Labels, the group he co-founded in 2010, left a decade ago and now accuses of a “reckless gamble with democracy” in its flirtation with a presidential campaign. But the political centre is still where he wants to be, “particularly in swing districts [like NY-01] as a matter of practicality but I think also on principle.“If the larger goal is to win elections, we still need to find a way to reunite America. That’s a lofty goal. I’m not saying that’s why I’m running. But once we break this fever, we need to find a way to come together again. I do believe in the power of unifying leaders in divided times and the best American politics is that which focuses on what unites us, not what divides us.”Avlon’s third book, from 2017, was Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations. The historian Richard Norton Smith called it “a stake through the heart of political extremism”, a subject Avlon knows well, also having written Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (2010) and presented Reality Check with John Avlon: Extremist Beat for CNN.“There’s a fundamental importance in building broader community and building a big tent,” he says. “The Democratic party is the last big tent party. The Democratic party, unfortunately, is the only functioning political party in America, because the other party is set to re-nominate a guy who tried to destroy our democracy, and is using election lies as a litmus test for loyalty. I don’t think you can underscore that enough.“But in the larger sense, democracy depends upon reasoning together. That requires common facts and identifying common ground and focusing on how you solve common problems. And that’s about putting country over party.”Avlon’s own marriage is bipartisan. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a TV host and political commentator whose great-grandfather, Herbert Hoover, was the unlucky president hit by the Great Depression.Avlon is “proud of her and her family and the work she does to defend and extend his legacy. When Margaret and I are on air together or doing something onstage together, I hope it serves as a reminder that people can disagree agreeably – again, that partisan politics shouldn’t define every aspect of our lives, especially our personal lives. We can have honest disagreements, as long as it’s accompanied by an assumption of goodwill.”Avlon also started out working for a Republican: Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, long before he became Trump’s attack dog. As speechwriter and policy director, Avlon was there on 11 September 2001, when the towers fell.“September 11 is one of the defining moments in my life,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s unusual. I think New Yorkers understand how it defined our collective character. And I think some folks have slipped into a certain 9/11 amnesia. And I’ve warned against the wisdom of that, in a lot of segments, on air and written.“I’ll always be proud of the work we did in those days. My team and I were responsible for writing the eulogies for 343 firefighters, for police officers and Port Authority workers. And I think that memory, and the example they set by running into the fire, and the way we were briefly able to unite as a nation, in the aftermath, those are all core parts of my character and my experience.“And I think folks in Suffolk county will understand that, because they’ve experienced it themselves or they’ve been touched by it themselves. You don’t have to be retired police officer or firefighter to understand the importance of that day and its aftermath to our communities. It’s just part of who I am.” More