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      ‘We want everybody walking out’: UAW chief outlines mass strike for May 2028

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      Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, criticized Donald Trump on Monday but declined to back Joe Biden as he reaffirmed plans to lead a general strike in the US in 2028.Speaking to union members at the UAW national political conference in Washington DC, Fain said it was time for union members to come together.“We have to pay for our sins of the past. Back in 1980 when Reagan at the time fired patco workers, everybody in this country should have stood up and walked the hell out,” Fain said. “We missed the opportunity then, but we’re not going to miss it in 2028. That’s the plan. We want a general strike. We want everybody walking out just like they do in other countries.”He reaffirmed ambitious plans to organize a general strike for 1 May 2028, coinciding with International Solidarity Day or May Day.The UAW rescheduled the expiration of their union contracts with the US’s big three automakers to align on this day in the contracts it reached late last year and has been encouraging other labor unions to schedule contracts to expire on this day to maximize the participation from workers across different industries.A general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions. In the US, they have been virtually non-existent in recent decades given the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 that restricted secondary strikes and the decline of labor unions in the US since the 1970s.After successfully taking on the US auto companies, Fain has emerged as a potent political figure, courted by Trump and Biden.Fain also used his speech to criticize Trump, telling reporters that Trump “is as a person … pretty much contrary to everything we stand for”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the UAW has yet to formally endorse Biden, who was the first president to walk on a picket line with striking workers in September 2023. Fain told reporters the union will be holding formal discussions on an endorsement amid rumors that Biden may address the union in person later this week.
      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Biden campaign calls for investigation of New Hampshire robocalls impersonating US president – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      Nikki Haley made the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was unexpectedly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else happened today:
      Kamala Harris assailed Trump for his role in overturning Roe v Wade on the 51st anniversary of the supreme court decision that allowed abortion access nationwide.
      Nikki Haley has avoided talking much about abortion, even though she has signalled she would be fine with restricting the procedure federally. Some voters who support abortion rights are fine with that.
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary, prompting the president’s re-election campaign to call for an investigation.
      As she blitzes the state, Nikki Haley talks about keeping taxes low, the military strong and the border secure. One issue she does not mention: abortion.On the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, Joe Biden and Democrats across the country are railing against Republicans, calling them “anti-abortion extremists” who would impose a federal ban on the procedure if they win back power this fall.Haley calls herself “pro-life” but has promised to seek consensus as president. In Iowa, where evangelical Christians dominate the caucuses, Haley signaled her willingness, if elected, to sign any restrictions that reached her desk.But in comparatively moderate New Hampshire, she has mostly shut down inquiries about what kind of federal limit she would support, insisting that any legislation is purely theoretical without 60 votes in the Senate – as she told one curious onlooker at a stop in Epping on Sunday.Across the state, several pro-choice independent voters said the risk of a Trump presidency worried them more than Haley’s views on abortion.“I’ve long ago accepted that I can’t agree with a candidate on everything,” said Carole Alfano, an independent who met Haley at the campaign stop in the town of Epping. “We’ll part ways on that.”Alfano backed Biden in 2020, but plans to support Haley in Tuesday’s primary.In Derry, Marie Mulroy is ecstatic about the prospect of a Haley nomination even though she believes abortion should remain legal.“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” she said.Can Nikki Haley pull a shock win in New Hampshire out of the bag?She’s the last candidate standing against Donald Trump, after Florida governor Ron DeSantis exited the race and endorsed the former president on Sunday. Host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast Jonathan Freedland headed out on the campaign trail in the Granite state to find out the answer:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign marked Roe v Wade’s 51st anniversary by debuting an advertisement in which Texas obstetrician-gynecologist Austin Dennard discusses how she had to leave the state to get an abortion after finding out that her fetus would not survive.Who’s to blame? Donald Trump, as Dennard makes clear. Expect to see tons of this sort of messaging coming from the campaigns of the president and other Democrats over the coming months:On the 51st anniversary of the supreme court’s Roe v Wade decision, Kamala Harris attacked Donald Trump for his role in appointing justices who overturned the precedent and allowed states to ban abortion.The vice-president spoke during a visit today to Wisconsin, a battleground state that will be crucial to deciding the outcome of the November election. Democrats plan to campaign on restoring access to abortion, after the 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that curtailed abortion access in many states.Harris did not hold back from assailing the former president, citing his comments that he was “proud” of his role in getting three justices confirmed to the court, all of whom voted to overturn Roe. Here’s what she had to say:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
      David Scanlan, the New Hampshire secretary of state, predicted Republican voter participation in the primaries will reach 322,000, eclipsing 2016’s total, when Republicans set a record of 287,652 votes. In 2020, it was Democrats who saw record turnout for their competitive primary, with 300,368 votes cast.Before a deadline in October, as many as 4,000 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation to “undeclared,” suggesting some plan to vote in the Republican primary.A Monmouth University Poll-Washington Post poll released today found that the number of registered New Hampshire independents who plan to vote in the Republican primary increased from 52% in November to 63%.More than a third of these voters said they voted for Biden in 2020, suggesting there could be a “measurable influx of Democratic-leaning independents” who will participate in Tuesday’s primary.In a conversation on Friday, Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and prominent Trump opponent, said he did not see evidence that Haley had “lit a spark” among these voters in the way that might foretell “some kind of surge coming her way.”“People turn out when they are inspired, or they’re pissed off,” said Cullen, who had seen Haley on the campaign trail four times. “What we’re seeing is that people are not inspired, and they’re apathetic. And that means that they don’t show up.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state David Scanlan is predicting record turnout in the Republican primary, while governor Chris Sununu is joking that he is cashing in all of his political capital to ensure balmy weather for voters headed to the polls on Tuesday.That would be a stark contrast from Iowa, where arctic temperatures were blamed for the low turnout last week. Recent polling has shown Trump with a double digit lead in the state. But New Hampshire has a record of unpredictability, thanks to the large number of voters who proudly belong to neither party. They are not a monolith, but analysts believe that the more of them who choose to vote in the Republican primary, the better for Haley.“The only big X factor I see: how big is turnout?” said Dante Scala, a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of New Hampshire.According to Scala, Haley is attempting something novel in New Hampshire. Republican presidential candidates who have pulled off wins in New Hampshire – such as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 – managed to appeal to the state’s independents while still pulling in a sizable chunk of the party faithful. (Independents, called “undeclared” voters in New Hampshire, can vote in either party’s primary.)This year, Trump has a lock on Republican base voters. To win, or even to come within striking distance of Trump, Scala said Haley will need to run up the score with these independent voters, some of whom could choose to vote in the sleepy Democratic primary or not at all if they feel the contest is a foregone conclusion.Scala said Haley’s test is whether she “inspired enough people to show up, who don’t normally show up, to get a turnout big enough that it swamps the Trump people and your mainstream Republican in New Hampshire.”Joe Biden spoke to UK prime minister Rishi Sunak on Monday about Gaza, Ukraine, and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, AFP reported.From White House correspondent for AFP Danny Kemp:Judy Sheindlin, widely known as Judge Judy, told CNN on Monday that she would endorse Nikki Haley if she “were a frog”.During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Judge Judy was asked if the reason she endorsed Haley was because Haley is a woman.“No, I would support her if she were a frog,” said the ever-colorful Sheindlin.“She’s capable. She’s poised,” Sheindlin added.Sheindlin said that neither Trump nor Biden have the “intellectual gravitas” to be US president.According to Sheindlin, she has only endorsed one presidential candidate before –the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, during the 2020 presidential election.Sheindlin has campaigned for Haley ahead of the highly watched New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.Nikki Haley is making the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was abruptly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
      Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
      Someone is reportedly making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Supporters of a campaign to write in his name – he is not appearing on the ballot, in line with Democratic National Committee rules – say the calls are meant to undermine them.
      Donald Trump is clearly smarting from the ongoing defamation lawsuit against him by author E Jean Carroll, and a jury’s verdict last year that he sexually abused her. As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, his campaign yesterday barred a NBC News reporter who had pressed his ally Elise Stefanik for her thoughts on the verdict:Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly blocked an NBC News journalist from covering campaign events in New Hampshire on Sunday.Sunday’s exclusion of NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard came when he was set to serve as a pool reporter. Instead of having a pack of reporters follow a candidate everywhere, campaigns will often allow television, print, and radio news organizations to send a single pool reporter to travel with them – and those reporters in turn then send a readout to other news outlets.But on Sunday, Hillyard wrote in an email to the pool: “Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”The email, which was subsequently published by several news organizations, added: “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2.20pm that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”Hillyard a day earlier had pressed New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik – said to be a potential Trump running mate – on whether she believed the ex-president had sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.NBC News and Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, did not immediately return a request for comment.You don’t have to be Joe Biden for someone to make a robot of your likeness. As the Guardian’s Dan Milmo reports, Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dean Phillips has his own AI impersonator:OpenAI has removed the account of the developer behind an artificial intelligence-powered bot impersonating the US presidential candidate Dean Phillips, saying it violated company policy.Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic party candidacy, was impersonated by a ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot site.The bot was backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers, who have started a Super Pac – a body that funds and supports political candidates – named We Deserve Better, supporting Phillips.San Francisco-based OpenAI said it had removed a developer account that violated its policies on political campaigning and impersonation.“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent,” said the company.The Phillips bot, created by AI firm Delphi, is now disabled. Delphi has been contacted for comment.A factor working against Nikki Haley in her quest to win the New Hampshire Republican primary is Donald Trump’s resounding victory in last week’s Iowa caucus.His triumph in the first state to vote in the GOP’s nomination process confirmed his status as the frontrunner for the nomination. But election turnout was low in the Hawkeye state, a fact Haley was keen to remind voters of in New Hampshire:Nikki Haley is spending the final moments before New Hampshire’s make-or-break primary getting out the vote with the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu by her side.“This is it. Twenty-four hours to go,” Sununu told the crowd at a packed, dimly lit veteran’s hall in Franklin. “All the momentum is at Nikki Haley’s back.”He told the voters not to pay any mind to the polls – unless it’s the ones showing Haley trouncing Joe Biden in a general election – and reminded them of their fiercely guarded reputation as the state that delivers political upsets.“We always buck the trend in New Hampshire,” he said. “It’s going to start tomorrow.”Haley reminded voters of the stakes of tomorrow’s primary – not that they needed any reminding, since some say they’ve received upwards of 10 campaign mailers a day in recent weeks, in addition to the political ads flooding the airwaves.“Don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t play in this primary tomorrow,” she charged. “It matters.” More

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      Kamala Harris kicks off abortion rights tour on 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade

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      Kamala Harris kicked off her much-vaunted abortion rights nationwide tour in Wisconsin on Monday as Joe Biden convened a meeting of his taskforce on reproductive healthcare access, in a tag-team effort to double down on what is likely to be a key campaign issue this year.The vice-president chose the 51st anniversary of the Roe v Wade ruling to begin the Reproductive Freedoms Tour, announced in December, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, which the president won in the 2020 presidential election by just over 20,000 votes.Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that enshrined the federal right to abortion, was overturned in June 2022 after then president Donald Trump nominated three conservative justices to the nation’s highest court.The decision was a major blow to supporters of reproductive rights, but since the ruling seven states – including the conservative strongholds of Kentucky, Kansas and Montana – have held ballot referendums where voters chose to protect abortion rights. The issue also appeared to hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.Wisconsin is a notable starting point for Harris’s reproductive freedoms tour. Last year, abortion rights propelled a Democratic victory in a critical election for the state supreme court.In the first of many similar scheduled events, Harris is expected to announce support for increased access to abortion and contraceptives through the new emergency care law, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala).She will also denounce Trump, the runaway frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, for his hand in overturning the federally protected right to abortion.“Proud that women across our nation are suffering?” Harris will say, according to excerpts from her speech obtained by the Associated Press. “Proud that women have been robbed of a fundamental freedom? That doctors could be thrown in prison for caring for patients? That young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers?”The following day, Harris will be joined by Biden for another abortion-focused event, along with their spouses, Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff.Biden’s re-election campaign also rolled out a new campaign ad Sunday, titled Forced, which aims to tie Donald Trump directly to the abortion issue.In Dobbs v Jackson, the 2022 supreme court case that overturned Roe, a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with certain medical exceptions was upheld, negating the constitutional right to abortion and overruling the precedent set by Roe more than half a century ago.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement on the 51st anniversary of Roe V Wade, Biden said: “Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor – free from the interference of politicians. Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans. Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk.”When announcing her tour in December, Harris said: “Extremists across our country continue to wage a full-on attack against hard-won, hard-fought freedoms as they push their radical policies – from banning abortion in all 50 states and criminalizing doctors, to forcing women to travel out of state in order to get the care they need.“I will continue to fight for our fundamental freedoms while bringing together those throughout America who agree that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own body – not the government.” More

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      Biden’s name won’t appear on New Hampshire ballots – where does that leave Democrats?

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      While Donald Trump and Nikki Haley might draw focus, a shadow presidential primary is taking place in New Hampshire, where Joe Biden could stumble at the first hurdle of his bid to run for president again in 2024 following an internal Democratic party feud.As a consequence of the party scrap, Biden’s name will not even appear on the ballot in the Granite state on Tuesday. While the president remains the favorite to win his party’s overall nomination, his absence here has opened a window for Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020, to mount longshot presidential bids.The pair have spent weeks campaigning in the state, pitching different visions for the future. Phillips, 55, has touted his reputation as a centrist; his record of working with Republicans to get things done; and the fact that he is 26 years younger than Biden.Williamson, who withdrew from the 2020 race before the Iowa caucuses, is selling more of a deviation from the current administration. A progressive, she would introduce free college tuition, declare a climate emergency and “Department of Peace” which would be tasked with avoiding war abroad and tackling white supremacy at home.So far it is Phillips who seems to be drawing the most attention from Granite staters, even if, as he told voters in Salem on Friday, challenging Biden has meant being “excommunicated” from the wider Democratic party.“I was a darling as of 90 days ago, and now I’m the devil somehow,” Phillips told the Guardian after the event.“But that’s how it works. I expected this because it is a nonsensical culture, of standing in line playing your role waiting your turn. We can’t do that if we hope to save this country.”Phillips, who ran his family’s hundred million dollar brewing company before winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 2018, only launched his campaign in October 2023, but he has established a large political operation in the state.At his events his volunteers scurry around gathering signatures from people in the crowd, and hand out T-shirts and buttons with the legend: “I like Dean” written on the front. Frequently the crowds are large.An event in Nashua on Saturday, a bitterly cold day with wispy snow falling from the sky, drew more than 200 people, who heard Phillips tout his record as “the second most bipartisan” Democrat in the House of Representatives.“We believe it is time to segregate the far-left and the far-right and give voice to the exhausted majority of America. Are you ready for that?” Phillips said, to applause.A man who clearly has a passion for language, Phillips then addressed a Democratic effort to write-in Biden’s name on the ballot on Tuesday by suggesting: “If he wrote you off, why would you write him in,” and claimed that Biden “took the granite state for gran-ted”.On the stump Phillips sometimes adds: “I did torpedo my career in Congress, so that this country will not be torpedoed by this nonsense.”New Hampshire polling shows Biden with a commanding lead over Phillips, and an even more commanding lead over Williamson. But given Biden’s name isn’t on the ballot, there’s a possibility Phillips could win.The unusual situation stems from the Democratic national committee’s decision to ditch decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway – South Carolina will vote next week – the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the state’s results.It means that Phillips’s and Williamson’s efforts here won’t actually help them become a presidential candidate, but that doesn’t render the time they spend here completely redundant, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.“New Hampshire historically has not been about delegates, because we have relatively few to offer in the big scheme of things,” Scala said.“It’s about the publicity that comes with a victory or even a better-than-expected performance in an early voting state in the nomination process, and I think they’ve been following that playbook.”Biden might be absent from the state, but a movement has emerged encouraging people to write his name on voting slips, and in a sign that the Biden campaign sees the potential for embarrassment, a series of high-profile Biden supporters have been dispatched to New Hampshire in recent weeks.Ro Khanna, a rising Democratic congressman from California, held an event for Biden on Saturday, while Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, is among a slew of Biden’s cabinet officials who have pitched up here since the start of December.Another problem for Phillips and Williamson is a liberal-led effort to get independent New Hampshirites to vote for Haley in the Republican primary, in an attempt to damage Trump’s chances in the state. PrimaryPivot, the organization running the campaign, has been a regular presence at Republican events.“There’s a difference between a regular conservative Republican and someone who is an autocrat,” said Robert Schwarz, co-founder of PrimaryPivot.“For the issues most important to our democracy, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump are night and day.”For Phillips and Williamson, the write-in Biden campaign, and a separate effort to write-in “ceasefire” on Democratic ballots to critique Biden’s handling of Israel’s actions in Gaza, is an unwanted distraction.“President Biden doesn’t really care about a write-in campaign. The president would care if a candidate, such as myself, who has called for a ceasefire from the very beginning, got a lot of votes,” Williamson said at a campaign event in Manchester on Saturday.“I find [the campaign] kind of self-indulgent, performative.”Williamson, who after dropping out of the 2020 race endorsed Bernie Sanders for president, has a much broader critique of the US than Phillips. Political elites, Williamson said, have a “business model” of “job elimination, and worker exploitation, and demonization of unions, and tax cuts for the very, very wealthy”.“A majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans can’t even dream of homeownership at this point. A majority of Americans cannot afford to absorb a $500 unexpected expenditure. One in four Americans live with medical debt, 75 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured,” Williamson said.She has found some support among people like Lisa Swanson, a student at Quinnipiac university who voted for Sanders four years ago. Speaking after the Manchester event, Swanson said she found Williamson “very reasonable”.“She shares a lot of the beliefs that I’ve had for a very long time, as if she’s plucked them right out of my own brain. So that’s very refreshing,” Swanson said.But while the campaigns of Williamson and Phillips might be winning support, there is still a sense that this could all be for naught. Neither is expected to seriously challenge Biden in South Carolina primary, let alone in the states to follow.Like others who attended events for these rebel candidates, Swanson was angry at the Democratic party skipping their state.“I feel like it’s pretty anti-democratic, quite frankly. It is the opposite of democracy. We are supposed to vote as the people to show what we want, and the DNC doing that with Joe Biden, quite frankly, says that they don’t trust the people to make a decision,” Swanson said. More

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      Weekend podcast: Bernie Sanders on Trump and democracy, Marina Hyde on Prince Harry, and is brain-boosting coffee a fad?

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      So Prince Harry is a living legend of aviation? Why not, says Marina Hyde (1m21s); Bernie Sanders on what happens if Trump wins – and how to stop him (8m32s); and mushroom macchiato, anyone? Are the new boosted coffees worth the hype? (34m37s)

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Biden signs measure to avert shutdown but Ukraine aid remains frozen

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      Joe Biden signed a measure to keep the US government funded on Friday but as Washington shivered under its second major snowfall in a week, the bill did not unfreeze funding for Ukraine.Hard-right House Republicans, led by the speaker, Mike Johnson, are ensuring the chances of more money and weapons for Kyiv in its fight with Moscow hinge on negotiations for immigration reform.On Wednesday, the president welcomed Johnson and other senior Republicans, as well as Democratic leaders, to the White House for talks.Though the meeting ended with the two sides still short of agreement on immigration and the southern border, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, said he was optimistic a deal could be struck and aid to Ukraine thereby put back on the table.“Once Congress avoids a shutdown, it is my goal for the Senate to move forward to the national security supplemental as soon as possible,” Schumer said. “Our national security, our friends abroad, and the future of democracy demands nothing less.”Biden said a “vast majority” of members of Congress supported aid to Ukraine.“The question is whether a small minority are going to hold it up, which would be a disaster,” Biden added, speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday.Johnson, however, told reporters: “We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine. But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security.”Many observers suggest Republicans do not want a deal on immigration and the southern border, instead using the issue, and the concept of more aid for Ukraine, as clubs with which to attack Biden in an election year.“The GOP is more interested in nursing grievances and stoking anger than actually solving problems,” Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, wrote. “That’s exactly what Donald Trump has trained them to do.”Robinson went on to quote the Texas congressman Troy Nehls, who this month told CNN: “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating. I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”Amid such familiar dysfunction, one slightly dystopian possibility stood out: Democrats, senior party figures said, might provide the votes to keep Johnson as speaker – against a likely rebellion from his right – should he bring any Senate deal on immigration to the House floor, thereby putting Ukraine aid back on the table.“Our job is not to save Johnson but I think it would be a mighty pity, if he did the right thing … for us not to support him,” Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House homeland security committee, told Politico. “Up to this point, he’s been a fairly honest broker.”In October, Democrats could have saved Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, from becoming the first speaker ever ejected by his own party – but chose not to.Whether stoked by Trumpist isolationism or by equally Trumpist authoritarianism, and therefore preference for Vladimir Putin and Moscow, resistance to aid for Ukraine remains strong among Republicans in Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the party is not united. On the presidential campaign trail, Trump’s closest challenger for the Republican nomination, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, told voters in New Hampshire on Thursday that though the US did not “need to put troops on the ground anywhere … what you do have to do is deter.“There’s a reason the Taiwanese want the US and the west to support Ukraine. Because they know if Ukraine wins, China won’t invade Taiwan.”Haley also linked Ukraine aid to helping Israel against Hamas – another issue awaiting discussion should immigration talks succeed.In the House, Michael McCaul, chair of the foreign affairs committee, tried a more emotive tactic, appealing to Republicans’ better angels – or at least to their foreign policy traditions.Johnson, McCaul told the Post, “is going to have to make a hard decision about what to do. If we abandon our Nato allies and surrender to Putin in Ukraine, it’s not going to make the world safer, it’s going to make the world more dangerous … [Ronald] Reagan would never have surrendered to the Soviet Union. Maybe that’s a shift in our party.”Most observers would suggest that it is, Republicans long having surrendered to Trump. In his own contribution to the debate over whether to do a deal on immigration and get back to supporting Ukraine, Trump struck a predictably harsh note, clearly meant to stiffen Johnson’s spine.“I do not think we should do a border deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION”, the former president wrote on his social media platform.“Also, I have no doubt that our wonderful speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, will only make a deal that is PERFECT ON THE BORDER.” More

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      Former Republican candidate Tim Scott to endorse Donald Trump ahead of New Hampshire primary, reports say – as it happened

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      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington DC on Friday as part of the March for Life campaign. The rally comes ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, which brought national reproductive rights to the country, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the supreme court’s decision to strike it down.
      Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.
      In response to whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization, White House spokesperson John Kirby said: “That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States.”
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has pushed back against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal for a Palestinian state, writing in a statement on X:
      Ideological extremism is destroying prospects for peace. Most Americans will support a pragmatic peace strategy to free the hostages, provide aid to the population of Gaza, launch the two-state solution and put Hamas terror & right-wing fanaticism behind us.
      The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is at the March for Life rally in Washington DC where anti-abortion activists are protesting ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade.Here are some of her dispatches:Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.Earlier this week, Trump complained loudly in the Manhattan courthouse during Carroll’s testimony, making comments including “It is a witch-hunt” and “It really is a con job” to his lawyers.In turn, Kaplan threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom, to which Trump replied: “I would love it, I would love it.”While speaking at a briefing, White House spokesperson John Kirby answered a question on whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from defense secretary Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization.Kirby said:
      That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States. They have spoken as recently as late last week. As you have heard the president say himself, he has full trust and confidence in Secretary Austin and his leadership at the Pentagon and that will continue.
      In a letter to Austin on Thursday, Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Alabama who chairs the committee, said that he is “alarmed” over Austin’s recent hospitalization.He added: “I expect your full honesty and cooperation in this matter. Anything shot of that is completely unacceptable.”Here is where the day stands:
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Anti-abortion activists are gathering in Washington DC today for the annual March for Life campaign.This time the event takes place ahead of the 51st anniversary, on Monday, of the supreme court’s ruling in Roe v Wade in 1973 that brought in the national right to an abortion in the US, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the current, right-leaning supreme court striking down Roe in 2022.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to highlight the depletion of reproductive rights, which is proving a vote-loser for Republicans, on the 2024 campaign trail next week, amid high Democratic party spending on related ads, Axios reports.The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is in the cold and snowy capital and will be sending a dispatch. Meanwhile, she’s on X/Twitter with vignettes.The move follows the House of Representatives passing the short-term spending bill late on Thursday, sending the legislation to the president’s desk with just two days left before government funding was to run out, in the latest nail-biter.The bipartisan legislation averted a government shutdown that would have begun at one minute past midnight tonight.The bill, which represents the third stopgap spending measure of this fiscal year, will extend government funding at current levels until 1 March for some government agencies and until 8 March for others.The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a vote of 77 to 18, following bipartisan negotiations that stretched into late Wednesday evening. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, praised the bill as a vital measure that would allow lawmakers more time to negotiate over full-year appropriations bills.“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for the country, for our veterans, for parents and children, and for farmers and small businesses – all of whom would have felt the sting had the government shut down,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “And this is what the American people want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos. No spectacle. No shutdown.”You can read more on the passage of the legislation last night, from my colleague Joanie Greve, here.The Associated Press is also now reporting that Tim Scott of South Carolina is expected to endorse Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for president ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. It would be a blow to Scott’s fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations during his presidency.The New York Times was first to report the story today, noting it would “spur more talk” of Scott’s prospects as Trump’s vice-presidential pick.The AP news agency also further reports:
      A person familiar with Scott’s plans confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that Scott would travel from Florida to New Hampshire with the GOP front-runner.
      The person spoke on the condition of anonymity due to not being allowed to discuss the plans publicly.
      Scott launched his own bid to challenge Trump last May before shuttering his effort about six months later. Trump has been appearing on the campaign trail with several other former rivals who have endorsed him, including North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
      Scott’s endorsement was sought by the remaining major contenders in the Republican primary, particularly ahead of South Carolina’s February 24 primary, which has historically been influential in determining the eventual nominee.
      Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week. More

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      US should ‘reset relationship of unconditional support’ for Israel, progressives say

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      Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticized the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.The Israeli prime minister declared on Thursday that Israel would forever maintain control over all land west of the River Jordan, making an independent Palestinian state there impossible. “This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of [Palestinian] sovereignty,” Netanyahu said. “What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel’s security.”Pramila Jayapal, the US representative who heads the influential Congressional Progressive caucus, on Friday issued one of the sharper responses to Netanyahu, saying in a video that the Israeli prime minister’s stance “should cause us to reset our relationship of unconditional support to [his] government”.“These are policies that are diametrically opposed to the US’s stated goals,” Jayapal said about Netanyahu’s calls for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.Meanwhile, 15 Jewish members of the House released a statement Friday saying they “strongly disagree with the prime minister” of the predominantly Jewish nation.“A two-state solution is the path forward,” said the statement, whose signatories included Jerry Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Elissa Slotkin. They were joined by 11 fellow House Democrats: Jake Auchincloss, Rebecca Balint, Suzanne Bonamici, Steve Cohen, Daniel Goldman, Seth Magaziner, Mike Levin, Dean Phillips, Jan Schakowsky, Kim Schrier and Bradley Sherman.In a separate statement, the Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid predicted that “continuing to unconditionally fund Israel’s war in Gaza” would cost him enough votes to doom Joe Biden’s campaign to be re-elected as president.“He will break a fundamental trust with many Democrats,” said Shahid, a former spokesperson for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats. Shahid also warned that “lecturing about the greater evil” represented by the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, would do “little” to repair it.Trump is facing more than 90 pending criminal charges for attempting to forcibly overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office, and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him. He has also been grappling with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape accusation which a judge has determined to be substantially true.“I pray, for all our sakes, that Biden corrects course – because our country cannot afford to pay the bill for disregarding Palestinian lives should it come due in November,” Shahid said.A spokesperson for Biden’s national security council, John Kirby, said the president and Netanyahu discussed “post-conflict Gaza” on Friday by telephone, as the foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen wrote on the social media platform X.Biden made clear that “an independent Palestinian state” was important for long-term security, Kirby remarked, as reported by Rozen.“The president still believes in the promise and the possibility of a two state solution,” Kirby said, in part, according to Rozen. “And the United States stands firmly committed to eventually seeing that outcome.”Despite occasionally endorsing the concept, Netanyahu has worked to obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state throughout his political career.His statements on Thursday were his most pointed attack on the US’s preferred foreign policy approach in Gaza, however.It came after Biden’s administration had spent enormous domestic political capital – and billions of dollars in aid – to support Israel’s military in its strikes there.Israel, which receives $3.8bn annually in security assistance from the US, mounted the offensive in Gaza in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200. Israeli military operations in Gaza have since killed more than 24,000 people.Netanyahu’s comments on Thursday came two days after US senators defeated a measure from the progressive Bernie Sanders that would have made military aid to Israel conditional on whether the Israeli government is violating human rights and international accords with its offensive in Gaza.Biden’s White House opposed Sanders’s proposal and has asked Congress to approve an additional $14bn for Israel. More