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      ‘Uncommitted’ vote in Michigan a warning shot over Biden’s support of Israel

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      Standing before shimmering gold curtains on Tuesday evening, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, spoke with pride about his city.“We had the audacity to choose people over political party,” he said. “We had the damn audacity to put people over president.”For many gathered at this sprawling banquet hall in the heart of America’s most concentrated Muslim population, the outcome of last night’s Democratic primary in Michigan was beyond even the boldest of predictions.Although Joe Biden took the state, it was the hastily organized but committed grassroots campaign against the president’s support for the Israeli government’s war with Gaza that took the night. Organizers with Listen to Michigan, a group that urged voters to withdraw support for Biden and instead vote uncommitted, had hoped for a showing of 10,000 votes. They returned more than 100,000 – a clear demonstration of the growing fractures among the diverse coalition that brought Biden to power in 2020.It is a warning shot to the Democratic party, and shows more signs of expanding than diminishing as the primary season wears on.In just four weeks, the uncommitted campaign mobilized a cohort of progressives concentrated in the suburbs of Detroit, a region that saw a significant rise in Democratic turnout four years ago.“This is a humanitarian vote,” said the campaign’s manager, Layla Elabed, a 34-year-old lifelong Democrat, as she sipped coffee at a Yemeni cafe on a frigid Sunday morning, two days before the vote. “Right now, Joe Biden sits in a place of power where he can actually change course and save lives.”Elabed, the sister of the US representative Rashida Tlaib – the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress – met Biden last year at the White House during Eid celebrations. The president has heard personal stories of their grandmother’s struggles living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she said. “But it feels a lot like it’s falling on deaf ears.”Her next stop was a rally in the city of Hamtramck, where those assembled underlined not only the movement’s diverse collective of ages and race, but also the divergent outlooks on how the campaign could or should affect the general election in November.“I’m very focused on the moment,” said Dima Hassan, a Palestinian American who would be voting in her first presidential election in 2024. “What is happening right now is an active genocide so thinking about November honestly feels silly.”Yet Tuesday’s result should send alarm bells ringing for that vote, given the thin margin of Trump’s victory in 2016, which saw him swing the state red by just more than 10,000 votes. Organizers say the group is also representative of the large Democratic disapproval ratings of Biden’s handling of the war, the death toll in which is likely to surpass 30,000 in Gaza by this week.Although hastily convened, Listen to Michigan is well organized, with an effective phone banking operation making more than 500,000 calls in just a matter of weeks, according to the campaign. But with no official headquarters, meetings are held in cafes and living rooms. Elabed’s car is laden with boxes of flyers that she hauls alone, darting between locations.Although Biden sent campaign representatives to meet with members of the Arab-American community here earlier this month and on Monday expressed hope of a ceasefire, recent comments from the state’s Democratic governor that equated an uncommitted vote to effective support for Donald Trump were met with scorn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMuslim communities in Dearborn and elsewhere endured rising rates of hate crimes during the Trump presidency, following a campaign laced with Islamophobia. Trump implemented a travel ban for several Muslim majority countries, which he has pledged to reinstate if he wins in 2024.With just a few hours left to vote on Tuesday afternoon, polling stations in Dearborn were still welcoming a steady flow of primary voters. At an intersection by the McDonald elementary school, Linda Sarsour, the New York-based organizer, was handing out flyers to those who trickled through. Most had already decided to cast their ballot uncommitted.Sarsour, who co-chaired the Women’s March in 2017 and became a prominent activist during the Trump era, expressed contempt at those within the party making the Trump equation.“Shame on them for gaslighting this community,” she said. “This is a presidential primary, this is democracy and people should be able to vote for whoever they want. Donald Trump is not part of the Democratic primary.”She continued: “But also the ball is in Joe Biden’s court. Why start pointing fingers at the voters when they should be pointing fingers at Joe Biden. They should be demanding that Joe Biden do better in order to keep these voters within the Democratic party.”Sarsour was one of a handful of volunteers from outside Michigan who had come to support the campaign on Tuesday. Others had arrived from Florida, Illinois and Washington, as the grassroots effort looks to expand beyond Michigan.Efforts are already under way for an uncommitted vote in Minnesota and also in Washington, while other states that do not offer an uncommitted ballot option may see new write-in campaigns.“This is becoming an opportunity to translate protest in the street to protest at the ballot,” Sarsour said. More

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      McConnell upbeat on avoiding government shutdown after White House talks – as it happened

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      In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was noncommittal after the meeting on if or when he’d do that.Here’s what else happened today:
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized Johnson’s demands for tougher border security, saying, “I don’t even think he knows what he wants.”
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF.
      Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said she was voting “uncommitted” in her state’s primary tonight in protest of Biden’s policy towards Israel.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has long pressed the Biden administration to take actions to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the southern border. Yet he also helped kill a bipartisan compromise that would have tightened border security while also approving aid to Ukraine and Israel.Nonetheless, Johnson reiterated his demand that Biden get tougher on immigration today after meeting at the White House with the president. At her press briefing later in the day, Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked what exactly Johnson wants.“I appreciate the question. I don’t even think he knows what he wants,” Jean-Pierre replied.The press secretary continued:
      You had a bipartisan group of senators coming out of the Senate, working for four months with the White House to put forward a bipartisan piece of legislation that dealt with a … important challenge that we see at the border in immigration. And then so we did that, we’ve moved that forward, we presented it. And we were told no no, we don’t want the border security, we want just the national security supplemental without border security.
      Then, the Senate goes back and they pass the national security supplemental without border security, 70-29 … and the speaker refuses to put that to the floor. So what is it that he really wants here? If you look at the border security deal, that proposal, it has components of what the speaker has been talking about for years. So the question is really for him.
      The Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell also told reporters he supports holding a trial for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who House Republicans impeached earlier this month.Convicting Mayorkas requires approval by a two-thirds majority of senators, which is probably impossible, since Democrats, who have a majority, have rejected the charges against him. They also have not said if they will even bother holding a trial of Mayorkas, or find a way to dismiss the charges without considering them.McConnell was asked for his thoughts on the matter, and here’s what he had to say:In remarks at the Capitol, the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was ready to work with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.While he noted that the government would probably get close to hitting its shutdown deadline, he expected lawmakers would be able to find an agreement on keeping the government open beyond Friday:Americans consider immigration to be the most important issue facing the US, according to a new Gallup poll.The survey found that 28% of respondents cited immigration as the top issue facing the country, up from 20% who said the same a month ago.It marks the first time immigration has been the most cited problem since 2019, and come as Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to make separate visits to the US-Mexico border on Thursday.A separate question in the survey found that a record-high 55% of respondents said that “large numbers of immigrants entering the United States illegally” is a critical threat to US vital interests, up eight points from last year.Here’s a clip of Republican House speaker Mike Johnson speaking to reporters after meeting with Joe Biden and top congressional leaders at the White House.Johnson called the talks “frank and honest” and said his primary concern is addressing migration along the US-Mexico border.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.Congressman Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democrat of Michigan, said she was “proud” to cast a ballot for “uncommitted” in her state’s Democratic primary today.Progressive Democrats in Michigan have urged supporters to vote “uncommitted” as a means of protesting against the war in Gaza, calling on Joe Biden to do more to bring about a ceasefire.“We must protect our democracy. We must make sure that our government is about us, about the people,” Tlaib said in a video shared to social media.Tlaib noted that a recent poll showed 74% of self-identified Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire in Gaza, and she accused Biden of “not hearing us”.“This is the way we can use our democracy to say: listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted, but also listen to the majority of Americans who are saying enough. No more wars, no more using our dollars to fund a genocide. No more,” Tlaib said.“So please, take your family members. Use our democratic process to speak up about your core values [and] where you want to see our country go.”Joe Biden met with Congress’s leaders in the Oval Office to find a way to avoid a government shutdown that is set to start on Saturday and would “damage the economy significantly”, in the president’s words. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the negotiations were “making good progress”, and noted that the group pressed Republican House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, leading to “intense” discussions. Johnson was reportedly noncommittal after the meeting on whether he’d do that.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Senate Democrats will tomorrow try to pass a bill to protect IVF care, following the Alabama supreme court’s ruling against the procedure.
      Rightwing House Republicans accused Johnson and his deputies of having “NO PLAN TO FIGHT” the Democrats over government spending.
      Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has pulled a “fetal personhood” bill after the Alabama ruling on IVF care.
      CNN reports that Republican House speaker Mike Johnson gave a similar recounting of his meeting with Joe Biden, Congress’s top Democrats and the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell.The biggest question, which Johnson still has not answered, is if and when he will allow a vote on new aid for Ukraine, and what House Republicans might want in return. Here’s more, from CNN:The congressional leaders who met with Joe Biden at the White House made “good progress” on avoiding a government shutdown, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the meeting.The group, which also included Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, also pressed the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to support further aid to Ukraine, a discussion Schumer noted was particularly “intense”.“We’re making good progress and we’re hopeful we can get this done quickly,” Schumer said, adding that Johnson “said unequivocally he wants to avoid a government shutdown”.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.’”While the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is at the White House to negotiate with Joe Biden, a member of his party is trying to get Joe Biden declared too old to serve, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:A Colorado Republican introduced a congressional resolution calling for Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th amendment to the US constitution and remove Joe Biden because he is too old.The resolution from the US House member Ken Buck has little chance of success.John Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon, the president who resigned under pressure from his own party, said: “Just when you think there may be a few normal Republicans, you discover they are all crazy.“This man [Buck] is leaving public office. He is the person with the cognitive problem not Joe Biden.”Section four of the 25th amendment provides for the replacement, by the vice-president, of a president deemed incapable. It has never been used. Calls for its use intensified in 2021, after the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in an attempt to stay in the Oval Office. More

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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