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      White House prepares for possible charges against Hunter Biden

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      The White House is bracing for political fallout from a looming decision by federal prosecutors over whether to charge Joe Biden’s son Hunter with tax crimes and lying about his drug use when he bought a handgun.In a signal that the investigation is nearing completion, Hunter’s lawyers last month held a meeting with David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware, at the justice department in Washington, the Washington Post said. A separate report by CNN noted that Hunter’s longtime lawyer Chris Clark was among those entering the department headquarters.Republicans would be sure to seize on a high-profile criminal case against Hunter, 53, in an effort to inflict political damage on the US president, who last week announced his bid for re-election in 2024.Attacks on Hunter and his alleged laptop in the 2020 campaign fizzled but the 53-year-old is taking an increasingly public role at his father’s side, appearing at a state dinner honouring the French president, Emmanuel Macron; at the Kennedy Center Honors; and on a recent trip to the Republic of Ireland.Hunter’s taxes and foreign business dealings have been under investigation by a federal grand jury in Delaware since at least 2018. His membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have raised questions by Republicans about whether he traded on his father’s public service.As the FBI sought to interview him in 2020, Hunter was forced to publicly acknowledge that he was under scrutiny, stating: “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”Then media reports last October claimed that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to criminally charge Hunter on two matters: failing to report all his income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and making a false statement in relation to buying a gun in 2018.According to the Washington Post, Hunter filled out a federal form in which he allegedly answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance”. Yet the president’s son has acknowledged his long struggle with drug addiction and, in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recalled spells in 2018 when he smoked crack “every 15 minutes”.If prosecutors agree that evidence is likely to lead to a conviction at trial, it would represent a political gift to Republicans whose efforts to paint the Biden family as corrupt have failed to gain much traction beyond rightwing media.Hunter’s new career as a painter previously raised ethical questions and now his legal and financial woes continue to pile up, posing political risks for his father’s re-election campaign.This week, Hunter was ordered to appear in a court in Arkansas in a paternity case involving Lunden Roberts, a woman with whom he had a child, now four years old. Citing a “substantial material change” in his income, Hunter’s lawyers have been seeking to lower child support payments from what they say are currently $20,000 a month.Republicans, now in control of the House of Representatives, have opened their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of his finances. Last month, an IRS special agent requested whistleblower protection to disclose information about alleged political interference and mishandling of the tax investigation.On Friday, the Axios website reported growing disagreement between the White House and Hunter’s own team over how to handle the onslaught. Without consulting his father’s aides, the site said, Hunter hired the lawyer Abbe Lowell to take a more aggressive stance, while his team is planning to create a legal defence fund to help pay mounting bills that have reportedly put him millions of dollars in the red.Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, declined to comment on whether he had been approached to act as an adviser to such a fund. “I’m an attorney and I get lots of calls from people who are interested in legal issues,” he said on Friday. “I end up engaging as a lawyer only for a small fraction of those but I’m not at liberty to discuss any of those types of calls publicly under the lawyer’s ethics rules for confidentiality.”A legal defence fund could trigger further ethical problems for the White House. Anthony Coley, a former spokesman for the justice department, told Axios: “For this fund to work, it must be extraordinarily transparent and even restrictive by prohibiting foreign citizens and registered lobbyists from contributing. Without these type of guardrails, the fund will be a legitimate headache for the White House.”Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about foreign business. There are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, told a congressional hearing that he would not interfere with the department’s investigation and had left the matter in the hands of Weiss, the US attorney for Delaware, who would be empowered to expand his investigation outside the state if needed.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “If Biden’s son gets indicted, that obviously is going to lead to a long process that will most likely continue through the election and will give fodder to Republican claims about Hunter Biden being corrupt.“On the other hand, I’m sure there will be people in the Biden camp, though not Biden himself, who will point to this as evidence of the rule of law, that the change from Trump to Biden is clear. That is, he did not interfere in the justice department’s investigation. It was straight up. It’s kind of good news for America, maybe bad news for Joe Biden’s family.”Whether charges against Hunter would carry much sway with voters remains doubtful, especially if his father faces a rematch against Trump, who recently became the first former president to be indicted and has more legal headaches to come.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, commented: “If there’s traction on the things that arguably could have affected policy during his dad’s vice-presidency, that could be troublesome. But if it’s simply troubled guy doing troubled guy things, it’s bad for Hunter and it will be touted a bit in the conservative press but I don’t think it’ll have a significant bearing on the president’s re-election.” More

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      Federal Reserve increases interest rates by a quarter point to 16-year high – as it happened

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      From 6h agoThe Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates this afternoon, with an announcement coming at 2pm ET from the central bank after its most recent board meeting. Analysts expect the Fed will raise rates by a quarter point, which will bring rates up to 5% to 5.25%. This would be the central bank’s 10th interest rate increase since March 2022, when rates were at zero.The interest rate increase will come at what in hindsight may seem like an inflection point for the economy. Inflation is down, consumer spending has flattened and growth in the job market is starting to slow down, but Fed officials, especially Fed chair Jerome Powell, have been stringent on getting inflation down to their target of 2%. Inflation in March was 5%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, but still quite far from 2%.Analysts and economists will be closely watching Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm, where he will discuss the direction Fed staff see the economy going, giving hints as to whether even more interest rate hikes are to come or whether the Fed will end its rate-hike campaign.Here’s a quick summary of everything that’s happened today:
      The Federal Reserve increased interest rates by a quarter point, bringing rates up to 5% to 5.25%. Fed chair Jerome Powell said that Fed officials no longer anticipate more hikes, but will monitor economic data to see if they are necessary in coming months. The stock market dipped slightly after the Fed’s announcement.
      The debate over the debt ceiling continued today, with news that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will keep himself out of the specific of negotiating talks and hints that senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are breaking from Dems and looking to take Senate negotiations seriously.
      2024 is already gearing up: Joe Biden released his second TV ad since launching his campaign last week, while US rep. Colin Allred of Texas announced his bid to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz. In Nevada, Jim Marchant, an election denier and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, also announced a Senate big.
      We’ll be closing this blog for today. Thanks for reading.Democratic senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia said that his two young kids were on lockdown at school because of the shooting in midtown Atlanta.“They’re there. I’m here, hoping and praying they’re safe,” he said on the Senate floor. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”One person has been confirmed dead and at least four injured after a gunman opened fire in a building in midtown around 12.30pm ET. Police said they are still searching for a suspect.The Washington Post just published a cheery report that the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill technically have just six working days together before the US government potentially defaults on its debt on 1 June.With the House and Senate in session on different days, and Biden making international trips for the G7 summit in Japan and another “Quad” meeting with Australia, Japan and India in Australia, the legislative and executive branches are scheduled to have just six more days together to figure out the debt ceiling.Of course, negotiations can take place even when a chamber is not in session, but the precariousness of negotiations and the closeness of default makes the timing a tad inconvenient.Talking about the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that it seems the worst of the crisis is over.“The severe period of stress, those have now all been resolved and all the depositors have been protected,” he said, adding that JPMorgan’s acquisition of First Republic bank marked the end of the worst of it all.Asked about lessons that he learned from the crisis, he noted that there needs to be stronger regulation and supervision, but declined to offer any specifics as he has tasked Fed vice chair Michael Barr with drafting specific policy proposals.“I am not aware of anybody thinking [the collapse] could happen so quickly,” Powell said. “Now that we know that was possible… it will be up to vice chair Barr to design ways to address that.”Today’s Federal Reserve interest rate hike is its second quarter-point hike in a row, after a series of half- and three-quarter point hikes over the last year. Fed chair Jerome Powell said at his press conference this afternoon that “slowing down was the right move”.“I think it’s enabled us to see more data and it will continue to do so. We have to always balance the risk of not doing enough and not getting inflation under control against the risk of maybe slowing down economic activity too much,” he said. “We thought that this rate hike, along with the meaningful change in our policy statement, was the right way to balance that.Asked about the possibility of a recession, Powell seemed optimistic that the Fed could achieve a “soft landing” – keeping interest rates high without seeing huge impacts on unemployment. He noted that even as rates have hit 5% over the last 14 months, the unemployment rate stands at 3.5%.“It’s possible that we can continue to have a cooling in the labor market without having the big increases in unemployment that have gone with many prior episodes,” he said.Of course, Powell noted earlier in the press conference that the full impacts of the interest rate increases have yet to be seen, acknowledging uncertainty about the full economic impact of rate hikes.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell emphasized the importance of raising the debt ceiling, though noted that the debt limit is “fiscal policy matters”.“It’s essential that the debt ceiling be raised in a timely way so that the US government can pay all of its bills when they’re due. Failure to do that would be unprecedented,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted territory.Powell noted that the Fed doesn’t “give advice to either side” and also noted that “no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy from the potential short- and long-term effects” upon default.He also noted that debt limit standoff did not play a role in the Fed’s decision today to increase interest rates.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is holding a press conference after the central bank announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. Powell’s tone in the press conference has changed since he last addressed the press in March. The Fed is no longer anticipating needing more rate increases, but will monitor the economy in determining future interest rate changes.While Powell is still reiterating the Fed’s inflation target of 2%, he acknowledged that the economy is “seeing the effects of our policy tightening on demand and the most interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, particularly housing and investment”. In other words, the Fed sees its interest rate hikes taking effect in the slowing of the economy.“There are some signs that supply and demand in the labor market are coming back into balance,” Powell said. He added that the “economy is likely to face further headwinds from tighter credit conditions”, meaning the full effects of the interest-rate hikes have yet to be seen.Taking a question from a reporter on whether the Fed’s statement today should be taken as a hint that officials will pause rate hikes, Powell said the officials did not make a decision on a pause, but noted that they intentionally updated their stance in today’s press statement that removed a line suggesting more increases would be appropriate.“Instead, we’re saying that in determining the extent to which [more hikes are needed], the Committee will take into account certain factors,” he said. “That’s a meaningful change that we are no longer saying we anticipate [changes] and we will be driven by incoming data meeting by meeting.”The press statement that came with the Federal Reserve’s announcement of another interest rate hike is nearly identical to the one that was released at its last meeting on 22 March, with one key exception.In its 22 March release, Fed officials in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hinted that more interest rates are to come, saying: “The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate” in order to bring inflation down to the target of 2%.In today’s statement, that line was cut.The rest of the statement was in line with FOMC’s March meeting statement. They reiterated their stance that “inflation remains elevated” and the jobs market has been strong, with the unemployment rate low. They emphasized that “the US banking system is sound and resilient” and that they are “highly attentive to inflation risks”.Analysts have been wondering whether this interest rate increase will be the Fed’s last, with pauses to come after as the interest rate is held steady at future meetings.Any more hints about what is next for interest rates after this most recent hike will likely be made at Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm ET.The Federal Reserve just announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. This brings the interest rate to a 16-year high at 5% to 5.25%. The central bank has been on a year-long campaign to temper inflation, though it has had to delicately balance the potential of shaking the economy too much with stringent rate increases.Fed chair Jerome Powell will lead a closely watched press conference, where he will discuss the Fed’s view on the state of the economy.The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said in an internal memo that it is holding off on a Joe Biden endorsement due to the president’s electric vehicle policies.UAW president Shawn Fain said in the memo that union leaders met with Biden last week and discussed “our concerns with the electric vehicle transition”, according to the New York Times. The union is concerned that auto workers will suffer during the transition to EV as less workers are needed to assemble EVs.“The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” the memo reads, referring to electric vehicles. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”The union has 400,000 members across the country, though members are primarily in auto-industry heavyweight Michigan, a key election battleground state.The FBI arrested a man in Florida on Tuesday for his involvement in the January 6th Capitol riots, specifically for setting off an “explosive device” in the US Capitol tunnel that leads into the building. Daniel Ball, 38, was first arrested last week by the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office for assaulting seven people, including law enforcement officers, in Florida. Ball’s probation officer, upon being shown photos and videos of the Capitol riot, identified Ball as the person throwing an explosive device in the tunnel, where law enforcement was blocking rioters.Ball faces multiple charges related to the riot, including assaulting police officers and entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon.The justice department said in March that at least 1,000 people have been arrested on charges related to the riots, with 518 pleading guilty to federal crimes so far.Election denier Jim Marchant announced that he will be running for US Senate, challenging Democrat incumbent senator Jacky Rosen for the seat she won last year.During his announcement speech on Tuesday, Marchant said that he is running to “protect Nevadans from the overbearing government, from Silicon Valley, from big media, from labor unions, from the radical gender-change advocates,” the Washington Post reported.His election campaign was acknowledged by Rosen on Twitter, who replied to Marchant’s announcement:
      Nevadans deserve a Senator who will fight for them, not a MAGA election denier who opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest…
      While far-right politicians like Jim Marchant spread baseless conspiracy theories, I’ve always focused on solving problems for Nevadans.
      Marchant has described himself as a “MAGA conservative”, the Post reports, and is an avid supporter of Donald Trump. More

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      US sends 1,500 troops to Mexico border as Covid-era asylum rule is set to expire

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      Joe Biden will send 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in preparation for a possible rise in immigration when Covid-19 border restrictions lift later this month.The 90-day deployment of active-duty troops will supplement the work of the US border patrol but will not carry out law enforcement duties, said Brig Gen Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, in a statement.The force will be in addition to an ongoing deployment of about 2,500 national guard troops.The deployment comes as the Title 42 restrictions, which allow US authorities to rapidly expel non-Mexican migrants to Mexico without the chance to seek asylum, are set to to end on 11 May. Donald Trump activated the policies during the pandemic and Biden had expanded the controversial public health measure, despite criticism from immigration advocates.Now officials are bracing for the Biden administration’s ending of Title 42 next week. El Paso, the Texas border city, has declared a state of emergency in preparation for a potential influx of more than 35,000 asylum seekers who are currently stuck in the Mexican sister city of Juárez.Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2021.Republicans have criticized Biden for rolling back the hardline policies of Donald Trump while some Democrats and immigration activists also have lambasted Biden for gradually toughening his approach to border security.Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat and chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, said Biden’s decision to send troops was unacceptable.“Trying to score political points or intimidate migrants by sending the military to the border caters to the Republican party’s xenophobic attacks on our asylum system,” Menendez said in a statement.The 1,500 troops could arrive at the US-Mexico border by 10 May, Ryder said during a briefing. They will conduct ground-based monitoring, data entry and warehouse support to free up border agents and “fill critical capability gaps”, he said.The Pentagon is looking at ways to replace the active-duty personnel with those from the reserve force, he said.When asked about the troop deployment in a news conference, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president, said the US is a sovereign nation and that Mexico respects its decisions.The US has used military troops at the border during previous presidential administrations, including Republican George W Bush, Democrat Barack Obama and Trump, who deployed thousands of active-duty and national guard troops.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called such deployments “a common practice”.Pentagon leaders have long been frustrated about military deployments to the border, privately arguing that the mundane tasks are better suited for law enforcement agencies and can affect military readiness.Immigration advocates have criticized previous efforts to send troops to the border.“People seeking asylum should be met with humanitarian professionals, welcoming volunteers, and medical and mental health professionals. Not soldiers,” Bilal Askaryar, the interim campaign manager of the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign, said on Twitter. More

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      Bipartisan US debt ceiling talks restart as deadline moves closer – as it happened

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      That’s it for today’s live politics blog!Here’s what happened today:
      Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy. “There is no solution in the Senate,” said McCarthy to reporters on Tuesday.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts, but added that Democrats will be pushing for a two-year full extension.
      Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes, as California senator Dianne Feinstein remains absent from the Senate following a bout of shingles.
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Thank you for reading! Check in for more updates tomorrow!The White House’s economist warned against Republicans “playing games” with the US economy through the debt ceiling debate when interest rate increases are already having an averse impact on the economy, Reuters reports.“The economy remains, it’s been strong. You don’t want to be pushing it off of the course that it’s on,” said Heather Boushey in an interview with Reuters.Boushey added: “The Fed is raising interest rates in the hope of reducing inflation. That is having this negative effect on the banking sector. Why would we add to that?”Boushey noted that raising the debt ceiling could remove the risk of a debt default, one that could take affect on 1 June.A Florida woman was charged with allegedly throwing a drink at the Florida representative Matt Gaetz. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports.
      A Florida woman faces two charges of battery – one a felony – after allegedly throwing a drink at the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz.
      The Walton county sheriff reportedly said Gaetz insisted on pressing charges. Gaetz maintained he was justified in doing so, saying 41-year-old Selena Jo Chambers “cross[ed] the Rubicon beyond just words to throwing stuff”.
      A previous case of a drink being thrown at Gaetz resulted in a woman being sent to prison.
      In 2019, Amanda Kondrat’yev, then 35 and a former political opponent of Gaetz, received a 15-day prison sentence for throwing a slushie at her rival.
      That beverage-blitzing brouhaha happened at an “Open Gaetz” public event at restaurant in Pensacola appropriately named the Brew Ha Ha.
      Read the full story here.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has said that Democrats will wait on a 9 May meeting between Biden and congressional leaders to decide if they will move forward on a clean debt ceiling push that would not include spending cuts. Schumer added that he wants a two-year extension of the debt ceiling versus a stopgap measures, the Washington Post reported.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will be in the 9 May meeting on the debt ceiling, but emphasized that Biden has to negotiate with House speaker Kevin McCarthy.“There is no solution in the Senate,” said McConnell to reporters on Tuesday.From CNN’s Manu Raju:Many expect McConnell to ultimately help negotiate a bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, as the Kentucky senator did in 2021.But McConnell has maintained that Biden must negotiate with McCarthy and House Republicans about the debt ceiling.Illinois senator Dick Durbin said that he wants to move on a bill imposing a code of ethics on supreme court justices, but wants to make sure he has the votes.CNN’s Manu Raju noted that with California senator Dianne Feinstein out, Durbin is unsure of when he could forward such legislation.“I’d like to make sure we have enough folks to pass it,” said Durbin.Feinstein is a member of the Senate judiciary committee, but has been out due a case of shingles. Durbin confirmed to Raju that he has “not personally” spoken with Feinstein about when she would return.The defense department and the Federal Aviation Administration have been tracking a balloon that was flying off the coast of Hawaii last week, but a defense official said today there’s no indication it is connected to China or any other adversary, and it presents no threats to aviation or national security, the Associated Press reports.The balloon was first detected by radar on Friday.
      Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object. We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat,” US Indo-Pacific Command said.
      The defense official said the balloon was floating at about 36,000ft (11,000 meters), and it did not fly over any critical defense infrastructure or sensitive sites.After determining that the balloon presented no threat to people on the ground or to aviation over Hawaii, the military took no action to bring it down, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.It’s not clear who owns the balloon, which has now passed out of Hawaii’s airspace, the official said.The latest balloon sighting comes about three months after the US military shot down what officials said was a Chinese spy balloon that crossed Alaska and part of Canada before returning to the US and triggering widespread interest as it flew across the country.It was shot down over the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast on 4 February. Large portions of the balloon were recovered by the US military.US officials said it was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries. Beijing insisted the balloon was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.The US military acknowledged there have been several other balloons that have been tracked over and near the US in recent years, but none lingered over America for as long as that one did. The incident further eroded relations between the US and China.At a press conference just now, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated on what Joe Biden will discuss with House majority leader Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling next week:“The president is going to make it clear to them that they have to avoid a default. It is their constitutional duty to do this. It is their constitutional duty to the American people for them to do their jobs. He will also say we will have a conversation about the budget and appropriations, and that is something that he will be very clear about. We can have a conversation about that, but it is important to not default.“The president is going to continue to make that clear. He is going to make that clear and have that conversation.”The Biden administration will temporarily send an additional 1,500 troops to the US-Mexico border as pandemic-related restrictions to migration are set to expire on 11 May.An unnamed US official told Reuters on Tuesday that the additional troops will be part of a supplementary preparation for an increase in illegal immigration as Title 42 comes to an end. Title 42 allowed the US to expel migrants amid the Covid-19 pandemic.The troops will not carry out any law enforcement operations and will assist US border patrol that is currently in the area, said the US official who asked to stay anonymous.The number of Americans listing guns and crime as a top issue for them has increased, according to a new Gallup poll.Of those polled for Gallup’s Most Important Problem list, seven percent said that guns and gun control were a priority issue for them, the Hill reported. Six percent listed crime and violence.In polling done months earlier, only 3% listed crime as their top issue and 1% listed crime.Both issues were listed below problems such as government and poor leadership, immigration and the economy.House Democrats have quietly started taking steps to introduce a rare legislative procedure that could force a debt limit increase and bypass Republican legislation for cuts.The New York Times just reported that Democrats are trying to set up a discharge petition that would allow Democrats to force a bill onto the floor if they get enough signatures – 218. This would mean all 213 house Democrats would need to sign the petition, and five Republican representatives would have to join.Though the House is in recess today, House Dems held a pro forma session and introduced an emergency rule that would give them two weeks, until 16 May, to collect the 218 signatures.Though Democrats see the bill as a gamble, Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic House minority leader, sent a letter to fellow Democrats today expressing a tone of defiance and saying that House Dems “are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid default”.Oklahoma is the latest state to pass legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors, as several states pass bills targeting the rights of transgender people.The Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, signed a bill on Monday making it a felony for healthcare practitioners to provide children with gender-affirming care, including puberty-blockers and hormones, the Associated Press reported.The bill comes as parents of transgender children, healthcare workers, and transgender people say that such care is essential.“Gender-affirming care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, live authentically as themselves, and dream about their futures,” said Lambda Legal and the ACLU in a joint statement, PBS Newshour reported.At least 15 other states have taken similar measures, with over 500 bills introduced in 2023 that target aspects of life for transgender people.A Montana lawmaker is suing the state, Montana’s house speaker, and the sergeant of arms of the state’s house after she was censured, asking to be fully reinstated to her position.House GOP voted to ban representative Zooey Zephyr on Wednesday from the state’s floor, gallery and anteroom after Zephyr, who is the state’s first openly transgender representative, criticized legislators for supporting a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.Zephyr is now suing to be allowed back onto the house floor as she is only allowed to vote virtually. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, argues that limiting her ability to vote violates “free speech and expression rights,” the Washington Post reported.“House leadership explicitly and directly targeted me and my district because I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself,” said Zephyr in a statement.“By doing so, they’ve denied me my own rights under the constitution and, more importantly, the rights of my constituents to just representation in their own government.”We’ve reached the midpoint for today’s politics live blog.Here’s what’s happened so far:
      New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said late on Monday that the California senator Dianne Feinstein should resign, joining a bipartisan chorus calling for Feinstein to step down amid absences from the Senate.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said during a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor that Democrats will only pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase, as a 1 June debt default looms.
      A new poll puts Donald Trump ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis among Republican primary voters in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election, as Trump continues to outperform DeSantis in several polls.
      Debt ceiling talks have gained a second wind after a warning on Monday by the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen that the US could default on its debt as soon as 1 June, as Biden confers a 9 May meeting with top congressional leaders.
      Here is reporting on the Senate judiciary committee meeting from the Guardian’s Chris Stein, who is currently in the hearing room.Partisan splits were apparent in the Senate judiciary committee today as it kicked off a hearing on the supreme court’s ethics, with Democrats accusing the nation’s highest court of believing itself to be outside the law, and Republicans defending the justices from what they said were attacks motivated by bitterness over its recent rulings.“Ethics cannot simply be left to the discretion of the nation’s highest court,” the committee’s Democratic chair Richard Durbin said. “The Court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules so both Justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line. The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That reality is driving a crisis in public confidence in the supreme court.”Durbin called the hearing after a series of reports about entanglements between the court’s justices, particularly its six conservatives, and lawyers and donors with interests in the court’s outcome. Chief justice John Roberts was invited to testify, but declined, instead sending a document signed by all of the court’s nine justices that outlined their approach to ethics.Lindsey Graham, the judiciary committee’s top Republican, said the Democrats were using the hearing to retaliate against justices who authored opinions they didn’t agree with. Last year, the court’s conservatives upended nearly a half-century of precedent by overturning Roe v Wade and allowing states to ban abortion entirely, cut into the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions and weakened laws on possession of concealed weapons.“This is not about making the court better,” Graham said. “This is about destroying a conservative court. It will not work.”The Senate judiciary committee is holding a meeting to discuss whether the US supreme court should bolster its ethics rules following a series of reported conflicts between supreme court justices and personal interests.The Tuesday meeting comes after several scandals that have called into question the ethics of the court and diminishing public confidence in the institution, the Washington Post reported.Most recently, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has come under fire after media organization ProPublica publicized that the longest-serving justice accepted luxury travel and vacations over two decades from the real estate mogul and Republican donor Harlan Crow.Such gifts and a real estate deal between Thomas and Crow were undisclosed by Thomas.Ahead of today’s meeting, Chief Justice John Roberts declined an invitation to appear and testify about judicial ethics. The justice instead forwarded a three page “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices”, which is signed by all nine justices. The non-binding memo is meant to “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe”.But Roberts himself is facing scrutiny after a whistleblower alleged that Roberts’s wife, Jane Roberts, made millions through recruiting for top law firms. More

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      Biden says banking system is ‘safe and sound’ despite First Republic collapse – as it happened

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      From 5h agoJoe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
      I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
      These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
      Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
      The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
      For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
      As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
      Read more:We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us.It’s been an eventful day, with Joe Biden attempting to reassure the public the US banking system was “safe and sound” following the collapse of First Republic bank.The president praised regulators and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, that stepped in to pick up First Republic’s deposits and assets, safeguarding money invested in the failed California institution.Here’s what else we followed:
      Kevin McCarthy launched a robust defense of his stance on Ukraine in a testy exchange with a Russian reporter in Jerusalem. The speaker, with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary, challenged the reporter’s assertion that Republican rightwingers weakened his position by calling for an end to US aid.
      The Democratic governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, announced he would not seek a fourth term in elections next year.
      It followed an announcement by Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down after three terms in office, creating a primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
      Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney escalated with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to sue the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Republican Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
      Dominion Voting Systems executives insisted its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
      Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr filed a lawsuit seeking her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.
      Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN. The surprise announcement said the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.
      Please join us again tomorrow for more live US politics.The US military is tracking a mysterious balloon that flew over American soil, NBC News is reporting. It is not clear what it is or who it belongs to, according to three US officials cited by the network.The object flew across portions of Hawaii but did not go over any sensitive areas, the officials said.NBC reported the military had been tracking the object since late last week and has not determined if posed a threat to aerial traffic or national security. It was not communicating signals, one official said.It is also not clear if it is a weather balloon or something else, the official said, adding that the US military could shoot it down if it nears land.It was revealed last month that a Chinese spy balloon that flew over parts of the US earlier this year, and was shot down in February, had sent sensitive intelligence from US military sites back to Beijing.Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN, the cable news channel he has frequently and loudly derided as “fake news”.The network made the surprise announcement on Monday afternoon, saying the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.The event will be hosted by Kaitlan Collins, host of CNN This Morning.Trump attacked the network frequently during his single term in office, at one stage revoking the press credentials of White House correspondent Jim Acosta, a particular bête noire. Acosta was reinstated after a legal challenge.It is not yet known who else might be appearing at the event.Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr are asking a court to allow for her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.A lawsuit was filed Monday in state district court in Helena on behalf of Zephyr and several constituents who say they are being denied their right to adequate representation, the Associated Press reported.Zephyr was removed from the chamber last week after telling Republicans they would have “blood on your hands” if they voted for the measure.The controlling party said her actions “violated decorum” and that she had incited protests at the statehouse.The legal challenge against House speaker Matt Regier and statehouse sergeant-at-arms Bradley Murfitt comes with just days left in the legislature’s biennial session. Neither has commented on the lawsuit.Another prominent Democrat, the governor of Washington state Jay Inslee, has announced he won’t be seeking re-election. It follows the declaration earlier Monday by Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down.Inslee won election to a third term in 2020, but said in a statement: “I’m ready to pass the torch”.He didn’t say what he intended to do after his retirement next year, but said: “Now is the time to intensely focus on all we can accomplish in the next year and a half”.Inslee, who ran for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2020, added: “Serving the people as governor of Washington state has been my greatest honor”.Senior Democrat Jamie Raskin – the Maryland congressman – has paid tribute to his friend Ben Cardin, his state’s US senator who has announced he’s standing down after three terms in office:
      After 58 years of integrity-filled public service, where he showed his prodigious work ethic from Annapolis to Washington, senator Ben Cardin has assembled a remarkable record of advancing the needs and priorities of Maryland.
      I salute him and have congratulated him on a truly amazing and inspiring career devoted to service of our people and the old-fashioned public values of honesty and decency. I want to thank him, his beloved wife Myrna and their whole family for their outstanding and continuing contributions to our state.
      In his own statement saying he had given his “heart and soul” to the state, Cardin said he would remain in office until the 2024 election:
      There is still much work to be done. During the next two years, I will continue to travel around the state, listening to Marylanders and responding to their needs.
      My top priorities include continuing our progress for the Chesapeake Bay, helping the people of Baltimore city deal with the challenges they face, and permanently expanding opportunities for telehealth, mental and behavioral health.
      Kevin McCarthy had a testy exchange with a Russian reporter over the war in Ukraine after his speech to the Israeli Knesset this afternoon.Asked if Ukraine was losing the support of Republicans, following comments by rightwingers such as McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor-Greene that the US “had done enough” to help the country against the Russian invasion, the speaker of the American House of Representatives was firm:
      I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children either.
      And I think for one standpoint, you [Russia] should pull out and I don’t think it’s right, and we will continue to support because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.
      Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of California’s First Republic bank, the third US lender to fail this year. He said the swift action of regulators, and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, to take on First Republic’s deposits and most assets, helped ensure the US banking system was “safe and secure”.Here’s what else we’ve been following:
      Kevin McCarthy, the first speaker to address the Knesset for 25 years, talked up US-Israel relations in Jerusalem, and pledged full financial support for the country’s security. He promised US support for ensuring Iran never obtains nuclear weapons.
      Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney stepped up a notch with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to file its own lawsuit against the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for its opposition to his “don’t say gay” law.
      Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin announced he was standing down after three terms in office, opening the prospect of a furious primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
      Dominion Voting Systems executives have been insisting that its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
      We’ve plenty more coming up this afternoon. Please stick with us.Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
      I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
      These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
      Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
      The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
      For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
      As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
      Read more:Long-serving Democratic senator Ben Cardin of Maryland is expected to announce his retirement Monday after serving three terms, opening a rare vacancy in the chamber ahead of the 2024 election, according to the Associated Press, citing his spokesperson.The 79-year-old plans to release a statement saying he will not seek reelection. His retirement is likely to create a highly competitive Democratic primary to replace him as the party faces a tough electoral map to maintain its slim majority next year.Cardin has served in the Senate since 2006, when he won a seat to replace retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Before that, he was a congressman who represented a large part of Baltimore and several nearby suburbs, winning his first House race in 1986.During his tenure in the Senate, Cardin has been a leader on health care, retirement security, the environment and fiscal issues. The senator has been a leading advocate for clean water and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, which flows in his home state.No reason for his decision was given. More

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      in US Politics

      The Democrats think centrism will re-elect Biden. That’s a dangerous assumption | David Sirota

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      The Democratic party’s political class has developed a rote formula over the last decade: ignore rather than channel discontent among the party’s rank-and-file voters, prevent competitive primaries where those voters can act on their dissatisfaction, and then hope to eke out general election victories on a wave of voter disgust with the Republican party’s outlandish nominees.This isn’t just a fleeting tactic. This is now The Formula of Democratic Politics™, one with mixed results. In 2016, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, publicly bragged that the Formula would result in flipping enough moderate voters to secure a victory – just before the Formula’s epic failure handed Donald Trump the presidency.Four years later, though, the Formula seemed to work – Democrats united to quash the primary against the quasi-incumbent Joe Biden, and Trump’s horrific first term allowed Biden to eke out a win with a flaccid campaign based on a meaningless platitude about “the soul of America”.Now Democrats seem intent on using the Formula again – only this time, it’s even more risky because this is not a race against a sitting Republican president. In 2024, Biden is the incumbent playing defense, and data suggest that there’s not much enthusiasm for his re-election campaign, even among his own party.A stat from the Washington Post illustrates this larger problem: “Biden has less support for renomination among Democrats than Trump, Obama and Clinton had from their parties,” the newspaper reports, noting that surveys show just 38% of Democrats want Biden to be the party’s nominee in 2024. CNN’s polling shows that right now, just one-third of Americans believe Biden deserves to be re-elected – lower than where Trump was at around this stage of his first term.If there was a healthy, genuinely democratic culture among the Democratic party’s political class, the response to the prospect of depressed voter enthusiasm might be a serious primary challenge. There might be a traditional top-tier candidate – maybe a senator, a governor, or even a member of the House – who is both ambitious enough to run for president and worried enough about a Biden failure in a general election against Trump.Such a primary would serve the additional benefit of testing Biden’s own re-election viability, and making sure he can handle the rigors of a campaign before he’s already the nominee.But that hasn’t happened. The response has been the Formula.First, Biden and Democratic leaders have rejected the FDR strategy of winning elections by making a show of delivering for the working class. They have instead made a show of putting their boots in the eye of dissatisfied voters as a way to brandish their “centrist” (read: corporate) credentials.After a very good American Rescue Plan momentarily helped millions of people and boosted Biden’s standing among voters, Democrats cut off pandemic aid, jacked up taxes on the working class, stomped out a rail strike, expanded fossil fuel drilling amid the climate emergency, demagogued the crime issue, and reappointed Trump’s worker-crushing Federal Reserve chair – all while abandoning the minimum wage and healthcare promises they made in 2020. And then they spiked the football by bailing out Silicon Valley Bank tech moguls while the government moved to force up to 15 million people off Medicaid.With voters now understandably ticked off, here comes the Formula’s primary-crushing phase.There was the decision to move the first Democratic presidential primary to South Carolina – a state widely seen as a place where the party machine has the best chance to control the outcome against insurgent candidates.More recently, there’s the effort to shut down the discourse: though a Fox News survey shows 28% of Democrats already saying they will vote against Biden in a primary contest, the Washington Post reports: “The national Democratic party has said it will support Biden’s re-election, and it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.”So far, this phase of the Formula has been successful. Though Marianne Williamson and Robert F Kennedy Jr, are promising primary challenges, no elected official in the party seems willing to vigorously support even the concept of a primary, much less run in one.No doubt every Democratic officeholder is deterred by the cautionary tale of Senator Bernie Sanders, who was shamed for the crime of momentarily considering a primary challenge to Barack Obama while the incumbent was bailing out banks amid the foreclosure meltdown. For his part, Sanders provided an early Biden re-election endorsement, not even holding out for any policy concessions.So far, this part of the Formula has been successful in manufacturing a sense of inevitability and creating the illusion that there is no other path – even if voters might want one. As the Washington Post’s headline put it: “Democrats reluctant about Biden 2024, but they see no other choice”. Or as Sanders told MSNBC about his Biden endorsement: “I don’t think one has many alternatives here.”Assuming Biden is the nominee, the Formula’s final phase will probably be anchored in Schumer’s 2016 assumption. Democrats will presume that come general election time, disgust with the Republican nominee will cure all the discontent, demoralization and disillusionment sown by a feeble left-punching incumbent and by the party’s heavy-handed primary suppression tactics.Maybe that’s what ends up happening. Maybe voters will see the Republican nominee as so flagrantly grotesque that Biden will get four more years. But there’s mounting evidence that the opposite could happen, and that 2024 could be more like 2016 than 2020.That’s hardly surprising. As gross as Republican politicians are, Democrats’ formula may not be sustainable over the long haul. There may be only so long that a party can ignore and suppress mass discontent and then just hope the other party’s extremism generates revulsion.As FDR once warned: “The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.”
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of The Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign speechwriter More

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      in Elections

      ‘They say I’m ancient’: Joe Biden pokes fun at White House correspondents’ dinner – video

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      Joe Biden, the oldest president in US history, joked about his age as he addressed the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. The president earned a big laugh when he said: ‘They say I’m ancient; I say I’m wise. They say I’m over the hill; Don Lemon would say, “That’s a man in his prime”.’ The CNN host Don Lemon was fired last week after a series of missteps including remarks about the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. Biden also poked fun at the media, especially Fox Corp’s settlement of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5m. ‘It’s great the cable news networks are here tonight. MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal. Fox News, owned by Dominion Voting Systems.’ For all the comedy, Biden also used his speech to issue forceful denunciations of attacks on press freedom and called for the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘They say I’m ancient’: Biden speech to White House media proves to be one for the ages

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      Age shall not weary him, but it might provide some good punchlines.Joe Biden, the oldest president in American history, faced his biggest political liability with a smile on Saturday as he addressed a gathering of Washington’s political and media elites.The 80-year-old, who this week announced a bid for re-election in 2024, flipped between a pugnacious defence of press freedom and crisp one-liners at the expense of political opponents as he addressed the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner.As opinion polls show that a majority of Americans have little appetite for a second Biden term, with many citing his age as a defining concern, he chose not to hide from his most obvious vulnerability but run towards it.“I believe in the first amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” he said, referring to one of America’s founding fathers, who died in 1836.He went on: “Look, I get that age is a completely reasonable issue. It’s in everybody’s mind and by everyone, I mean the New York Times. Headline: ‘Biden’s advanced age is a big issue. Trump’s, however, is not.’”The president had a dig at Don Lemon, a CNN host who was fired this week after a series of missteps including remarks that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, 51, “isn’t in her prime” because “a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s”.Biden earned a big laugh when he said on Saturday: “They say I’m ancient; I say I’m wise. They say I’m over the hill; Don Lemon would say, ‘That’s a man in his prime’.”There was also an indirect pitch that, despite concerns over his readiness for a gruelling election campaign, Biden is spoiling for the fight with Republican opponents.He said of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman from Georgia: “I want everybody to have fun tonight but please be safe. If you find yourself disoriented or confused, it’s either you’re drunk or Marjorie Taylor Greene.”Referring to Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’s protracted battle with Disney, he quipped: “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got there first.”And Biden said of House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy: “Look, you all keep reporting my approval rating as 42%. I think you don’t know this. Kevin McCarthy called me and asked me, ‘Joe, what the hell is your secret?’ I’m not even kidding about that.”Biden also had fun poking fun at the media, especially Fox Corp’s recent settlement of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5m in a case that centred on Fox News’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been manipulated in favour of Biden.“It’s great the cable news networks are here tonight. MSNBC owned by NBC Universal. Fox News owned by Dominion Voting Systems.” That line earned laughter and applause.“Last year your favourite Fox News reporters were able to attend because they were fully vaccinated and boosted. This year, with that $787m settlement, they’re here because they couldn’t say no to a free meal.”In a jab at former president Donald Trump, Biden quipped that comedian Roy Wood Jr, who also was a featured speaker at the dinner, had offered him $10 to keep his speech short. “That’s a switch – a president being offered hush money.”Earlier this month Trump was charged with 34 felony counts in a case involving an alleged $130,000 hush payment to an adult film star during his 2016 presidential campaign.Biden assured Wood: “I’m going to be fine with your jokes but” – he put on his trademark sunglasses – “I’m not sure about Dark Brandon.” This was a nod to an internet meme that began as a rightwing attack but has been co-opted by Biden’s supporters.Wood, a regular on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, naturally could not resist making Biden’s age a target. He said: “We should be inspired by the events in France. They rioted when the retirement age went up two years to 64. Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man, begging us for four more years.”For all the comedy, Biden also used his speech to issue forceful denunciations of attacks on press freedom and on misinformation that threatens to undermine democracy.The president and first lady Jill Biden met privately with the parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich upon arriving at the dinner. Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia since March after being charged with spying, despite strong denials from his employer and the US government.Also among the 2,600 guests in a cavernous hotel ballroom was Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, who has not been heard from since disappearing at a checkpoint in Syria in 2012.Biden said: “Journalism is not a crime. Evan and Austin should be released immediately along with every other American detained abroad. I promise you, I am working like hell to get them home.”The president acknowledged Brittney Griner, a basketball player who was detained in Russia for nearly 10 months last year before her release in a prisoner swap. Griner attended with her wife, Cherelle, as guests of CBS News. “This time last year we were praying for you, Brittney,” Biden said.In another preview of a 2024 campaign theme, Biden condemned news outlets that use “lies told for profit and power” to stir up hatred. “Lies told for profit and power. Lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again designed to generate a cycle of anger and hate and even violence.”The Washington black-tie dinner returned last year after being sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Biden was the first president in six years to accept the invitation after Trump shunned the event while in office.This year the gala drew politicians including Vice-President Kamala Harris and celebrities such as actor Liev Schreiber and singer John Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, a model and television personality. More