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      in US Politics

      Putin ‘gains every day’ Congress fails to send Ukraine aid, top Biden official says

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      Vladimir Putin “gains every day” the US House does not pass a new aid package for Ukraine, Joe Biden’s national security adviser warned, as its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned of dire outcomes unless Ukraine receives US military aid within one month.Ahead of a crunch week in Washington that could end in a government shutdown – in part made possible by hardline Republican opposition to new support for Kyiv – Jake Sullivan told CNN that “the reality is that Putin gains every day that Ukraine does not get the resources it needs and Ukraine suffers.”Sullivan pointed to “a strong bipartisan majority in the House standing ready to pass” an aid package for Ukraine “if it comes to the floor”.The Democratic-held Senate already passed a $95bn package of aid to Ukraine and other US allies, including Israel, earlier this month. But in the House, the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, is under pressure from the pro-Trump far right of his party not to bring it to a vote.In striking contrast to the division within the US Congress, European leaders were set to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss Ukraine, seeking to show unity and support. “We are at a critical moment,” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, said. “Russia cannot win in Ukraine.”Speaking on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskiy on Sunday said “millions will be killed without US aid” and told a conference in Kyiv that a US failure to pass new aid would “leave me wondering what world we are living in”.The US has so far sent billions of dollars of aid and weapons, but with the pro-Russian Trump all but confirmed as the Republican nominee for president, large elements of the congressional GOP have fallen in behind him to block new Ukraine spending.Ukrainian forces report shortages of weapons and ammunition, as a grinding stalemate gives way to Russian gains. On Sunday, Zelenskiy put the overall death toll among Ukrainian troops at 31,000.US officials were previously reported to have put it at 70,000.Congress has been on holiday for two weeks and reconvenes on Wednesday. In order to approve Ukraine aid, rightwing House Republicans are also demanding spending on border and immigration reform – regardless of the fact that Senate Republicans this month sank a bipartisan border deal of their own which included it.“History is watching whether Speaker Johnson will put [the Senate foreign aid] bill on the floor,” Sullivan said. “If he does, it will pass, will get Ukraine what it needs for Ukraine to succeed. If he doesn’t, then we will not be able to give Ukraine the tools required for it to stand up to Russia and Putin will be the major beneficiary of that.”Many Republicans in the House do support Ukraine aid. A senior Republican member of the foreign relations committee called on Johnson to put the aid package on the floor for a vote or risk a party rebellion.“Ukrainians have already died because we didn’t provide this aid eight months ago as we should have,” Brad Sherman of California told CNN. “I think that it’s up to Speaker Johnson to put this bill on the floor. It’ll pass it’ll pass by a strong vote. And he needs to do that so the aid flows in March.“If he doesn’t, eventually Republicans will get tired of that obstructionism and will join Democrats in a discharge petition” – a congressional manoeuvre, rarely used, that can bypass blockages.“But that’s a very bulky way to try to pass a bill. It’s only happened once in my 28 years in Congress. I suspect that we’ll be getting the aid to Ukraine in April, unless Speaker Johnson is willing to relent.”Ukraine, Sherman said, was a “bulwark between Russia and Nato countries that we are obligated to defend, notwithstanding what Trump may have said”.Trump has repeatedly threatened to refuse to defend Nato countries he deems not to have paid enough to maintain the alliance, going so far as to say he would encourage Russia to attack such targets.The defence of Ukraine, Sherman said, “is just critical to us. They can’t do it. They haven’t been able to do it this last month, because we have not provided the artillery shells and other systems.” More

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      in Elections

      Spending Impasse Persists Amid G.O.P. Resistance as Partial Shutdown Looms

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      With Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy measures to spending bills, lawmakers are running out of time to strike a deal to avert a partial government shutdown before a deadline of Friday at midnight.Congressional leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday, with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Mr. Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn’t occur.”With no sign of a breakthrough, President Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed earlier this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.Three consecutive times over the last six months, Congress has relied on short-term, stopgap spending bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longer-term agreement for several weeks at a time. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Mr. Johnson — has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Mr. Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a deadline on Friday to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      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

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      in US Politics

      To Trump or not to Trump: Stefanik and Hutchinson offer contrasting Republican visions

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      At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Elise Stefanik made her case for a glittering prize: the Republican nomination for vice-president to Donald Trump. At the Principles First summit on Saturday, Cassidy Hutchinson received a prize of her own: a Profiles in Courage award.Stefanik, who is 39 and the No 3 Republican in the US House, received standing ovations from an audience ultra-loyal to Trump. Hutchinson, 28, received standing ovations too, as she appeared with Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sarah Matthews, fellow Trump White House staffers turned Trump critics, before an audience of anti-Trump conservatives.Stefanik is a former moderate who has molded herself in Trump’s far-right image, to rise in a party locked in his grip. Hutchinson is a former Trump loyalist who became a star witness before the House January 6 committee.Hutchinson’s aim now, she said on Saturday, is to “bring people back to reality, to bring people back to not believing these conspiracy theories and the propagation of lies that Donald Trump has done”.Over two days of Washington talk, at two contrasting events, Stefanik and Hutchinson offered starkly differing visions of the present and future of the American right – as well as interesting studies in political star power.At CPAC, in the Maryland suburbs, Stefanik backed Trump’s lie about a stolen 2020 election, safe in the knowledge that most of her cheering audience would not remember what she said the day Trump’s supporters stormed Congress to try to overturn that result. For the record – which she allegedly sought to delete – Stefanik lamented “truly a tragic day for America” and demanded rioters be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.At Principles First, an event linked to the Bulwark website and staged in downtown DC, echoes of January 6 were also strong. Hutchinson received her award from its previous recipient, Harry Dunn, a former police officer who helped defend the Capitol.Gesturing to people onstage, Matthews said: “We’re all lifelong Republicans or lifelong conservatives. We probably all agree with about 70% of Donald Trump’s policies. But I think we’re all very open-eyed to his character.Hutchinson said: “What we need to do is practice compassion for people who did fall into [Trump’s] seduction, people who were artificially duped. We have to help educate people out of that belief system. We have to plug them back in.”Describing the costs of her decision to stand against Trump, she emphasised the experiences of others, such as the Georgia elections workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman and the Arizona official Rusty Bowers, who also experienced “horrible attacks that ruined our lives”.“We need to push towards normalcy,” Hutchinson said. “We start in this next election. We start by doing everything we possibly can to make sure that Donald Trump never gets near the Oval Office again, and to make sure that every … ”Interrupted by applause, she eventually continued: “ … that every member of Congress that has enabled Donald Trump’s agenda is also held accountable and voted out of office.”That would include Stefanik, named by Farah as someone “we were very close with” but also someone comfortable with the “mental gymnastics” it takes to stay with Trump.View image in fullscreenAnother name came up: Mike Gallagher of Ohio, until this month a Republican rising star, now on his way out of the House after voting against an impeachment of Joe Biden mounted to satisfy Trump’s thirst for revenge and based on the claims of a man indicted for lying and linked to Russian intelligence.Gallagher’s retirement “makes me sad”, Matthews said, “because we need more people like Mike Gallagher in Congress and less people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat jab at the far-right Trump ally from Georgia drew its own applause. But Matthews also rebuked Stefanik and her ilk.“Sadly, people are more concerned with their own positions of power than they are with doing what’s right for the country. These people were elected not to serve Donald Trump. They’re there to serve their constituents, and they seem to have forgotten that.“They’re doing his bidding and they’re so concerned with not painting a target on their own back. Donald Trump, when people speak out against him, what does he do? He tries to find a primary opponent, so he gets them out and gets someone he would approve in … and it’s really disappointing because I think … people would believe the threat of Donald Trump if these elected officials would come out and say what I know they privately say.”Dunn, the former Capitol officer, is running to become an elected official, seeking a seat in Congress as a Maryland Democrat. Outside the ballroom, he could be overheard discussing a “small-business tour” in his prospective district. Listening to Hutchinson – then seeing her signing copies of her memoir and patiently posing for selfies, a line snaking off down the hall – it wasn’t hard to imagine her following a similar path. After all, it was a scene similar, in its way, to the one at CPAC that saw Stefanik surrounded by admirers as she spoke to Steve Bannon.On stage, Hutchinson said: “As I’ve been traveling around the country, I’ve been very encouraged by the amount of young people who see the threat Donald Trump poses and see we need to do more.“We need to do more to mobilise voters. We need to do more to educate voters. The reality of this next election is it’s going to come down to a handful of states, similarly to how it happened in 2020. We need to focus on those states and make sure that those constituents are adequately educated on who they’re voting for.“And if the ticket is a binary choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, people need to understand on a very basic, very fundamental level that there’ll be one candidate on that ballot that will support our democracy so we can continue to thrive. And it’s not Donald Trump.”Her audience rose to its feet again. More

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      in US Politics

      Cameron warns failure to supply arms to Ukraine will harm US security

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      David Cameron has said that the continued US failure to supply arms to Ukraine would undermine its own security, strengthen China and cast doubt on America’s reliability as an ally around the world.The UK foreign secretary, who attended the G20 meeting in Brazil earlier in the week, admitted that the effort to rally global support for the Ukrainian cause had been “damaged” by the fact that neither the US nor the UK had voted for a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. But he argued the damage had been mitigated by the UK’s clarification of its position.Cameron was speaking in New York on the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at a time when the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is blocking a substantial package of military aid to Kyiv, leading to a severe ammunition shortage for Ukrainian troops.The foreign secretary was flanked by his German and Polish counterparts, Annalena Baerbock and Radek Sikorski, who made their own calls for US supplies to be resumed at a meeting organised in New York by the Wall Street Journal ahead of a UN security council meeting on Ukraine on Friday afternoon.Earlier in the day, Joe Biden had announced 500 new sanctions on Russia and a further 100 entities around the world for providing support to Russia, in an effort to squeeze Moscow’s revenues. But the foreign ministers made clear that arms supplies were the key in the struggle with Russia in Ukraine.Cameron sought to frame his argument in terms of competition with China, one of the few issues that unites Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress.“I know that lots of people in Congress are hugely concerned about the role of China and if you’re concerned about the role of China, you must make sure that Putin doesn’t win,” he said.He added that Beijing was enjoying “the fact that we’re, we’re not as united as we should be. I think that’s why the American package is so important.”In its relations with countries around the world, Cameron argued, China was saying “come have a relationship with us. America isn’t reliable.”The end of US military support to Ukraine, he added “would strengthen that argument they make in an enormous way”.Baerbock said the blockage of US aid “will be the biggest gift for Putin and will be the biggest gift for China”.“The Ukrainians are fighting like lions, but you cannot fight with bare hands,” Sikorski said. “They are running out of ammunition for anti-aircraft missiles that are protecting cities and when soldiers don’t have artillery shells, they have to do close combat fighting. That means that Ukrainian casualties are greater.”The European ministers face an uphill task persuading a Republican congressional leadership that is under the powerful sway of Donald Trump, an opponent of Ukrainian aid, and also resistant to allied pressure. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman, responded to an earlier effort by Cameron to persuade Congress in Ukraine’s favour that the foreign secretary could “kiss my ass”.“I’m not trying to lecture or tell American congressmen what to do,” Cameron insisted on Friday. “I love my own country but I love America too. I think this is really important for America, for American security.”He admitted that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and western positions on the conflict had complicated efforts to build global solidarity against Russia. Earlier this week, the US vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire for the third time, and the UK abstained.“The fact that we haven’t signed up for some of these resolutions and what have you, it does do some damage. There is no doubt about that,” Cameron said. “But I think when you explain how we really want to stop the fighting right now and have got a plan to do it, I think that helps to build some faith between the Arab world and what foreign ministers like myself and others say.”As European ministers sought to change minds in the Republican party, Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with a US congressional delegation in Lviv. The group – led by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer – said it wanted to show that the US had not abandoned “the Ukrainian people”, or its Nato allies in Europe.Schumer said he and his fellow Democrats would “not stop fighting” until $61bn in military funding for Ukraine was delivered. House Republicans are currently blocking the assistance package, despite a 64-19 Senate vote in favour.View image in fullscreen“We believe we are at an inflection point in history and we must make it clear to our friends and allies around the globe that the US does not back away from our responsibilities,” Schumer said. The consequences of walking away would be “severe”, he warned, saying he would “make this clear” to the Republican speaker and to others obstructing aid back in Washington.Schumer told the Associated Press opposition to the national security package “may be the view of Donald Trump and some of the hard-right zealots. But it is not the view of the American people, and I don’t think it’s the view of the majority of people in the House or Senate.”Ukrainian commanders say with no new US weapons deliveries they are facing serious problems on the battlefield. They say that Ukrainian soldiers were forced to withdraw from the eastern city of Avdiivka last week because of an acute shortage of shells and ammunition. Further Russian gains were likely if no more aid arrived, they admitted.Ukraine is also running out of western-supplied interceptor missiles. A Russian drone strike killed three people early on Friday in the Black Sea port of Odesa, the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said. Ukrainian air defences were only able to shoot down 23 out of 31 drones – a significantly lower number than in attacks last year.Earlier in Lviv Zelenskiy met with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. The country has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest European allies. Frederiksen recently pledged to give all of Denmark’s artillery reserves to Ukraine and on Friday signed a long-term security agreement with Kyiv. It envisages giving €1.8bn ($1.9bn) in support.The two leaders visited Lviv’s Lychakiv cemetery and laid flowers at the grave of a Ukrainian soldier. Many hundreds of service personnel have been buried there since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago. More

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      in US Politics

      Russia-linked Biden accuser charged with lying? Who cares, Republicans say

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      Congress should publicly investigate the case of Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant charged with lying about corruption involving Joe Biden and linked to Russian intelligence, a leading lawyer said, adding that senior Republicans who pushed Smirnov’s claims should be forced to testify.“The Senate should open an immediate investigation into the Alexander Smirnov scandal – with public hearings,“ said Tristan Snell, formerly a prosecutor on the Trump University fraud case, now author of Taking Down Trump, a book on the former president’s many legal challenges.“Bring Smirnov in to testify,” Snell added. “And then bring Jim Jordan, James Comer and Elise Stefanik in right behind him. This is a national security breach of the highest order.”Stefanik, from New York, is the Republican House conference chair and a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, the probable presidential nominee whose desire for revenge for his own impeachments is widely held to motivate Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden in return.Jordan, from Ohio, is the House judiciary chair. On Wednesday, his committee and the oversight panel, chaired by Comer of Kentucky, interviewed James Biden about his business affairs and links to his older brother, the president. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, is due to be interviewed next week.The bombshell news of Smirnov’s ties to Russian intelligence exploded the night before, in filings related to his arrest in Nevada. After James Biden’s interview, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, told Republicans it was time to bring to an end the “circus” of attempts to impeach the president.Republicans were not listening. Charges against Smirnov and news of his links with Russian intelligence did not “change the fundamental facts” of the case, Jordan told reporters, rehashing claims about Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company and the supposed involvement of his father.One reporter, Manu Raju of CNN, pushed back, referring to an FBI document containing claims Smirnov is now charged with making up, possibly in connection with Russian intelligence, a document senior Republicans used eagerly as they pushed their claims.“You said the 1023 is the most corroborating piece of information you have,” Raju said to Jordan. “But it’s not true!”Comer, the leader of the impeachment effort, also showed little sign of concern with the truth. Reaching for Trump-like language, he told the rightwing Newsmax network Democrats were “going to play the Russia card again”, a reference to investigations of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow which dogged Trump’s term in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s what Dan Goldman’s done, that’s what Jamie Raskin’s done,” Comer said, referring to prominent Democratic voices calling for impeachment efforts to end.Goldman, from New York, told CNN: “Wittingly or unwittingly, House Republicans have been acting as an agent or an asset of Russian intelligence.”Raskin said Republicans “just say, ‘Russia hoax Russia hoax.’ What part of it is the hoax? Is it the war in Ukraine? Is it the death of [Alexander] Navalny? What is hoax-like about it?“The hoax is that there’s a Russian hoax. There’s not a Russian hoax. There has been a series of efforts by Vladimir Putin to destabilize and undermine American political democracy.” More

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      in US Politics

      White House could use federal law to control US-Mexico border crossings

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      The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private White House discussions.The exploration of such avenues bythe president’s team underscores the pressure Biden faces this election year on immigration and the border, which have been among his biggest political liabilities since he took office. For now, the White House has been hammering congressional Republicans for refusing to act on border legislation that the GOP demanded, but the administration is also aware of the political perils that high numbers of migrants could pose for the president and is scrambling to figure out how Biden could ease the problem on his own.White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández stressed that “no executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected”.“The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system,” he said. “Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, rejected what border agents have said they need, and then gave themselves a two-week vacation.”Arrests for illegal crossings on the US-Mexico border fell by half in January from record highs in December to the third lowest month of Biden’s presidency. But officials fear those figures could eventually rise again, particularly as the November presidential election nears.The immigration authority the administration has been looking into is outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives a president broad leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the US if it would be “detrimental” to the national interest of the country.Trump, who is the likely GOP candidate to face off against Biden this fall, repeatedly leaned on the 212(f) power while in office, including his controversial ban to bar travelers from Muslim-majority nations. Biden rescinded that ban on his first day in office through executive order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut now, how Biden would deploy that power to deal with his own immigration challenges is currently being considered, and it could be used in a variety of ways, according to the people familiar with the discussions. For example, the ban could kick in when border crossings hit a certain number. That echoes a provision in the Senate border deal, which would have activated expulsions of migrants if the number of illegal border crossings reached above 5,000 daily for a five-day average.Mike Johnson, the House Republican speaker, has also called on Biden to use the 212(f) authority. Yet the comprehensive immigration overhaul Biden also introduced on his first day in office – which the White House continues to tout – includes provisions that would effectively scale back a president’s powers to bar immigrants under that authority. More

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      Biden brother testifies as key witness’s Russia links cloud impeachment push

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      Joe Biden’s younger brother, James Biden, testified to the House oversight and judiciary committees on Wednesday, a closed-door session held even as Republican attempts to impeach the president for alleged corruption teetered on the edge of collapse.In a combative opening statement, released to the press, James Biden denied that his brother had ever been involved in his financial affairs and called anyone alleging otherwise “mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out lying”.Hunter Biden, the president’s son whose troubled personal life, legal jeopardy and complex business affairs provide the chief fuel for Republican allegations, is due to be interviewed in private next week.All the while, Washington will continue to digest and debate the news that a former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Bidens and Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence.Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact on Tuesday, as they urged a judge to keep Alexander Smirnov in custody before trial.Smirnov is charged with falsely reporting to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 or 2016, when Joe Biden was vice-president to Barack Obama.Donald Trump’s first impeachment was fueled by his search for dirt on the Bidens related to Ukraine. Smirnov’s claim has been central to Republican attempts to impeach Biden in return, and was therefore eagerly promoted by senior Republicans and their rightwing media allies, particularly on Fox News.Smirnov was taken into custody at a facility in rural Pahrump, Nevada, west of Las Vegas, last week. Prosecutors said that before his arrest, Smirnov admitted “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive and Smirnov had planned to meet one official on a future trip.They said Smirnov had numerous contacts with a person he described as the “son of a former high-ranking government official” and “someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service”.Prosecutors also said there was a serious risk Smirnov could flee. David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, defense attorneys, said they were asking for Smirnov’s release “so he can effectively fight the power of the government”. The judge ruled that Smirnov should be released on bond.The White House did not immediately comment. But Politico quoted “a person close to Joe Biden” as saying: “Obviously there’s a case that’ll have to play out here. But based on the indictment and filing, it lays bare how unscrupulous the entire [Republican party] and their enablers in rightwing media have become.“Republicans in Congress ought to be facing the crushing burden of a massive scandal of their own making right now: an impeachment based on what might be a Russian intelligence operation. If nothing else, a criminal lie, based on the indictment.”According to prosecutors, Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma, starting in 2017, when Joe Biden was out of office. Smirnov made the bribery allegations, prosecutors said, after “express[ing] bias” against Biden while he was a presidential candidate in 2020, against Trump.After Smirnov was indicted, Democrats called for an end to the impeachment inquiry. Republicans dsaid they would continue to “follow the facts”. However, James Comer, the oversight chair, is reportedly considering whether it to stage a vote on a Biden impeachment – particularly after the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, first failed then squeaked through by a single vote.On Wednesday, two far-right Republicans, Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs, told CNN the Smirnov revelations did not change their determination to push on. Biggs claimed: “We have lots of evidence.”CNN also quoted an aide to the impeachment inquiry as saying the inclusion then deletion of a reference to Smirnov in a letter to a potential witness, first reported by the Huffington Post, was simply a clerical error.James Biden, Republicans’ target on Wednesday, is a businessman long linked to his brother’s political career.Now 74, and known in the family as Jimmy, recent duties have included overseeing Oval Office decorations including a bust of the labour organiser Cesar Chavez, sketches of the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, and a rugby ball from Rob and Dave Kearney, Biden cousins and international players for Ireland.Republicans allege personal cheques, addressed by James Biden to Joe Biden when the latter was out of office, represent evidence of corruption. Multiple news outlets have said the cheques simply repaid personal loans.In 2022, James Biden used a rare interview to say: “I’m the guy who assists in everything. When it comes to my family, I try to be as supportive as I can. But this notion of ‘fixer’, or any reference that has a negative connotation, is offensive.”According to the Washington Post, James Biden repeatedly said he should not be talking to a reporter while his wife, Sara, advised him to put down the phone.“Talk to a real person who knows me,” James Biden said. “Guess what? There’s not many who do.”On Wednesday, in his opening statement to the Republican-led committees, he outlined “four critical points.“One: I have had a 50-year career in a variety of business ventures. Joe Biden has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest in those activities. None.“Two: Because of my intimate knowledge of my brother’s personal integrity and character, as well as my own strong ethics, I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship.“Three: I never asked my brother to take any official action on behalf of me, my business associates or anyone else.“Four: In every business venture in which I have been involved, I have relied on my own talent, judgment, skill and personal relationships and never my status as Joe Biden’s brother. Those who have said or thought otherwise were either mistaken, ill-informed or flat-out lying.”Associated Press contributed to this report More