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      Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke law

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      Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke law Panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeatThe House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to stage six public hearings in June on how Donald Trump and some allies broke the law as they sought to overturn the 2020 election results, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.The hearings are set to be a pivotal political moment for the country as the panel aims to publicly outline the potentially unlawful schemes that tried to keep the former president in office despite his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden.According to a draft schedule reviewed by the Guardian, the select committee intends to hold six hearings, with the first and last in prime time, where its lawyers will run through how Trump’s schemes took shape before the election and culminated with the Capitol attack.Subpoenas of Trump allies by January 6 panel set up high-stakes showdownRead more“We want to paint a picture as clear as possible as to what occurred,” the chairman of the select committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters. “The public needs to know what to think. We just have to show clearly what happened on January 6.”The select committee has already alleged that Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election, including obstructing Congress and defrauding the United States. But the hearings are where the panel intends to show how they reached those conclusions.According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.As the witnesses – most of whom are being subpoenaed to appear at the hearings – give evidence that the panel believes will show how Trump and some allies violated the law, committee attorneys will simultaneously flash texts, photos and videos to illustrate the testimony, the sources said.Rudy Giuliani poised to cooperate with January 6 committeeRead moreWhile the exact content and timings of the hearings are still subject to change, the sources said, the panel intends to lay out how the efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat crystallized over a critical 65-day period from the time he falsely declared he won the 2020 election until 6 January.The select committee is expected, for instance, to run through how the Trump White House appeared to coordinate the illegal plan to send fake electors to Congress, the plot to seize voting machines, and the unlawful plan to delay the certification of Biden’s win.The panel is also expected to chart the reactivation of the Stop the Steal movement by Trump activist Ali Alexander and associates, and how he applied for a permit to protest near the Capitol on January 6 but never held the “Wild Protest” and instead went up the Capitol steps.The select committee additionally intends to address the question of intent, such as why Trump deliberately misled the crowd that he would march with them to the Capitol, and why he resisted entreaties to call off the rioters from obstructing the joint session on January 6.“The president’s rhetoric persuaded thousands of Americans to travel to Washington for January 6, some of whom marched on the Capitol, breached security, and took other illegal actions,” the panel said in a March court filing. “Hearings will address those issues in detail.”Capping off the six hearings under the current schedule, the sources said, will be a close examination of video footage of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militia groups’ leaders meeting in a parking garage the day before the deadly riots, and their movements at the Capitol.That final hearing is notable, the sources said, because the select committee is attempting to connect Trump’s political plan for January 6 and the militia groups’ violence at the Capitol in what could form evidence that Trump oversaw an unlawful conspiracy.The video footage of the militia group leaders at a rendezvous the day before the Capitol attack that the select committee intends to review has also already been referenced in seditious conspiracy indictments, including against the Oath Keepers’ chief Stewart Rhodes.January 6 ‘was a coup organized by the president’, says Jamie RaskinRead moreThe way that the select committee packages and presents each of the hearings isn’t yet final. For example, the final session about the militia groups planning and executing the Capitol attack could be moved around to become the first of the six hearings, the sources said.But the panel’s attorneys have been told which hearings they will lead. Sean Tonolli, who led the inquiry into the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, will be chief counsel for the militia hearings, supported by “gold” team counsel Alejandra Apecechea, and others.The “purple” team has focused on the militia groups, while the “gold” team has examined Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The “red” team has looked at Stop the Steal, the “green” team at the financing for January 6, and the “blue” team at the government response.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS elections 2020US politicsDonald TrumpDonald Trump JrJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Russia bans 963 Americans from entering country

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      Russia bans 963 Americans from entering countryList includes Biden and other senior officials, but not Trump, as country says it is retaliating against what it calls hostile US actions Russia on Saturday released a list of 963 Americans it said were banned from entering the country, a punctuation of previously announced moves against president Joe Biden and other senior US officials.The country, which has received global condemnation for its 24 February invasion of Ukraine, said it would continue to retaliate against what it called hostile US actions, Reuters reported.The lifetime bans imposed on the Americans, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and CIA head William Burns, are largely symbolic.Putin warns Ukraine allies against intervention | First ThingRead moreThey came on the same day Biden signed a support package providing nearly $40bn (£32bn) in aid for Ukraine.But the latest action by Russia forms part of a downward spiral in the country’s relations with the west since its invasion of Ukraine, which prompted Washington and allies to impose drastic sanctions on Moscow and step up arms supplies to Ukraine’s military.Several on the Russian government’s list of undesirables wouldn’t have been able to make the trip anyway: they are already dead.John McCain, the former Republican US presidential candidate and long-serving senator; Democrat Harry Reid, who served as senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015; and Orrin Hatch, whose 42 years in the chamber made him the longest-serving Republican senator in history; are all included.McCain died in August 2018 at the age of 81; Reid died last December, aged 82; and Hatch died on 23 April at 88.Notably, Donald Trump, who as president from 2017 to 2021 sought a close relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, is absent from the ban list.Others who are still very much alive, but now banned from Russia for perceived slights against Putin or his regime, are the actor Morgan Freeman, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, British journalist and CNN correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of the DreamWorks animation studio.Last month, Russia’s foreign ministry banned Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Ben Wallace and 10 other British government members from entering the country.The ministry said the decision was made “in view of the unprecedented hostile action by the UK government”.TopicsRussiaJoe BidenKamala HarrisAntony BlinkenUS politicsEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Trump pays $110,000 in fines after being held in contempt of court – as it happened

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      Former US president Donald Trump has paid the $110,000 in fines he racked up after being held in contempt of court for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena issued by New York’s attorney general, the Associated Press writes.Trump paid the fine Thursday but must still submit additional paperwork in order to have the contempt order lifted, the office of attorney general Letitia James said Friday.A message seeking comment was left Friday with Trump’s lawyer.A Manhattan judge declared Trump in contempt of court on April 25 and fined him $10,000 per day for not complying with a subpoena in James’ long-running investigation into his business practices.Judge Arthur Engoron agreed May 11 to lift the contempt order if, by Friday, Trump paid the fines and submitted affidavits detailing efforts to search for the subpoenaed records and explaining his and his company’s document retention policies.Engoron also required a company hired by Trump to aid in the search, HaystackID, finish going through 17 boxes kept in off-site storage, and for that company to report its findings and turn over any relevant documents. That process was completed Thursday, James’ office said.Engoron told Trump to pay the money directly to James’ office and for the attorney general to hold the money in an escrow account while Trump’s legal team appeals the judge’s original contempt finding.Engoron stopped the fine from accruing May 6, when Trump’s lawyers submitted 66 pages of court documents detailing the efforts by him and his lawyers to locate the subpoenaed records. He warned that he could reinstate it, retroactive to May 7, if his conditions weren’t met.James, a Democrat, has said her three-year investigation uncovered evidence that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of assets like skyscrapers and golf courses on financial statements for over a decade.Trump, a Republican, denies the allegations.Trump’s lawyers have accused her of selective prosecution. Trump is also suing James in federal court, seeking to shut down her probe.Last week, a lawyer for James’ office said that evidence found in the probe could support legal action against the former president, his company, or both.The lawyer, Andrew Amer, said at a hearing in Trump’s lawsuit against James that:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’s clearly been a substantial amount of evidence amassed that could support the filing of an enforcement proceeding.” A final determination on filing such an action has not been made.That’s it for the US politics blog for the day and the week. Thanks for joining us.Donald Trump’s wallet is a little lighter this weekend after he coughed up $110,000 in contempt of court fines for defying the New York attorney general’s investigation into the former president’s business dealings. Here’s what else we followed today:
      A Florida appeals court reinstated Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s “racist” congressional redistricting map that disenfranchises Black voters.
      With no resolution yet in the Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania, neck-and-neck candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick are beefing up their staff with lawyers experienced in vote recounts.
      Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
      Joe Biden ended the first day of his Asian tour with the lowest approval rating of his presidency.
      Bill Barr, attorney general in the Trump administration, is reportedly in negotiations to testify before the 6 January House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden.
      A reminder that you can follow coverage of the Ukraine conflict in our global live news blog here.If you had billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison on your insurrection bingo card, congratulations. The co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle was identified by the Washington Post Friday afternoon as a participant in a call of staunch Donald Trump allies trying out ways to keep him in office after his election defeat by Joe Biden.The 14 November 2020 teleconference focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote, according to court documents and a participant, the Post said.It included fellow Trump acolytes Lindsey Graham, Republican senator for North Carolina; Sean Hannity, Fox News host; Jay Sekulow, attorney for Trump; and James Bopp Jr, attorney for True the Vote, a nonprofit that has promoted the lie of widespread voter fraud. That Ellison was/is a Trump supporter is not new. He gave significant support to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, including hosting a fundraiser at his California mansion.But the Post says Ellison’s reported participation in the call is “the first known example of a technology industry titan joining powerful figures in conservative politics, media and law to strategize about Trump’s post-loss options and confer with an activist group that had already filed four lawsuits seeking to uncover evidence of illegal voting”.He was also among business figures identified by CNBC as distancing themselves from Trump in the wake of the deadly 6 January 2021 Capitol riot.Ellison is the world’s eighth richest person with a net worth of $106bn, according to Forbes.Oracle representatives did not respond to the Post’s request for comment. As Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for help getting his son into an elite Washington university in 2014, the Fox News host’s wife, Susie, reportedly wrote in an email: “Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!” Since the 2020 election, however, Carlson has fueled rightwing attacks on Joe Biden’s son, particularly over business affairs in which he allegedly benefited from his father’s position.The existence of emails about getting Buckley Carlson into Georgetown has been known for some time, thanks to a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden that was obtained by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and pushed to media in 2020.On Thursday the Washington Post revealed new emails and said analysis by security experts confirmed their authenticity.The emails, the Post said, “reveal the extent to which Carlson was willing to turn on a former associate as he thrives in a hyper-partisan media world in which conservatives have made Biden a prime target for attack”.“They also show how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the ‘ruling class’.”Carlson told the Post that in 2014, when Joe Biden was vice-president, “Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well.“I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about. And I’ve said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that’s why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I’ve said that many times, and I mean it.”Read more:Tucker Carlson tried to use Hunter Biden to get his son into GeorgetownRead moreWith no resolution yet in the Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania, neck-and-neck candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick are beefing up their staff with lawyers experienced in vote recounts, the Associated Press reports.A few hundred votes separated the candidates on Friday afternoon, with 99% of the count completed. Barring a surprise surge in the remaining votes one way or the other, an automatic recount is all but certain.Both campaigns have hired Washington-based lawyers to lead their recount efforts, and both have hired Philadelphia-based campaign strategists who helped lead the operation to observe vote-counting on election day for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020, the AP says.The two campaigns already had dozens of lawyers and volunteers fanned out around the presidential battleground state as election workers and election boards toiled through the remaining ballots.A recount would mean that the outcome of the race might not be known until 8 June, the deadline for counties to report their results to the state.Oz, the celebrity TV doctor endorsed by Trump, led McCormick, a former treasury department official, by 1,092 votes, or 0.08%, out of 1,338,399 ballots counted by midday Friday. Pennsylvania’s department of state, which oversees elections, said there were almost 28,000 mail-in and absentee ballots still to count.A see-saw legal battle over Florida’s “racist” redestricting of its congressional maps has tilted back in favor of Republican governor Ron DeSantis.An appeals court on Friday removed a block on the new maps that a circuit judge – one appointed by DeSantis himself – had imposed.It means that, for now at least, the governor’s hand-drawn redistricting stands. It effectively removes Black representation from areas in the state’s north by dividing Florida’s Black majority fifth district into four smaller ones where the vote will be diluted.Although Florida’s Republican controlled legislature should have been the body to draw up the maps, it abrogated the responsibility to DeSantis then obediently gave the governor’s proposal swift approval at a hastily convened special legislative session last month.That sparked a lawsuit from voting rights groups, and the hold put on DeSantis’s map by circuit court judge Layne Smith last week that the 1st District Court of Appeals overturned today. “Based on a preliminary review, the court has determined there is a high likelihood that the temporary injunction is unlawful, because by awarding a preliminary remedy to the appellees [plaintiffs] on their claim, the order ‘frustrated the status quo, rather than preserved it,’” the appeals court said.In simple terms, the court indicated it was fine with DeSantis carving up the congressional map however he saw fit.Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, said of DeSantis last month:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This is a deeply racist move that targets Black political power. What he’s doing in the Florida fifth just seems gratuitous. It seems mean-spirited. Read more:‘Democracy in Florida is not functioning.’ Governor’s rigged maps rob Black voters of power Read moreIt’s been a lively morning and there’s more to come in the next few hours so please stay tuned for live updates in US political news.Here’s where things stand:
      Former US president Donald Trump has paid the $110,000 in fines he racked up after being held in contempt of court for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena issued by New York’s attorney general Letitia James.
      Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, the Washington Post reports.
      There’s more trouble at home for Joe Biden as he ends the first day of his Asian tour: his approval rating has dropped to the lowest point of his presidency.
      Bill Barr, attorney general in the Trump administration, is reportedly in negotiations to testify before the special House committee investigating the events on and surrounding the insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, who were intent on overturning Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
      Former US president Donald Trump has paid the $110,000 in fines he racked up after being held in contempt of court for being slow to respond to a civil subpoena issued by New York’s attorney general, the Associated Press writes.Trump paid the fine Thursday but must still submit additional paperwork in order to have the contempt order lifted, the office of attorney general Letitia James said Friday.A message seeking comment was left Friday with Trump’s lawyer.A Manhattan judge declared Trump in contempt of court on April 25 and fined him $10,000 per day for not complying with a subpoena in James’ long-running investigation into his business practices.Judge Arthur Engoron agreed May 11 to lift the contempt order if, by Friday, Trump paid the fines and submitted affidavits detailing efforts to search for the subpoenaed records and explaining his and his company’s document retention policies.Engoron also required a company hired by Trump to aid in the search, HaystackID, finish going through 17 boxes kept in off-site storage, and for that company to report its findings and turn over any relevant documents. That process was completed Thursday, James’ office said.Engoron told Trump to pay the money directly to James’ office and for the attorney general to hold the money in an escrow account while Trump’s legal team appeals the judge’s original contempt finding.Engoron stopped the fine from accruing May 6, when Trump’s lawyers submitted 66 pages of court documents detailing the efforts by him and his lawyers to locate the subpoenaed records. He warned that he could reinstate it, retroactive to May 7, if his conditions weren’t met.James, a Democrat, has said her three-year investigation uncovered evidence that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of assets like skyscrapers and golf courses on financial statements for over a decade.Trump, a Republican, denies the allegations.Trump’s lawyers have accused her of selective prosecution. Trump is also suing James in federal court, seeking to shut down her probe.Last week, a lawyer for James’ office said that evidence found in the probe could support legal action against the former president, his company, or both.The lawyer, Andrew Amer, said at a hearing in Trump’s lawsuit against James that:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’s clearly been a substantial amount of evidence amassed that could support the filing of an enforcement proceeding.” A final determination on filing such an action has not been made.The Washington Post said Friday it had obtained emails showing that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state and choose “a clean slate of electors”.Thomas wrote to two unidentified lawmakers on 9 November 2020, the newspaper says, six days after the general election, arguing they needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. The emails came two days after media organizations declared Biden the victor in Arizona, and nationally.Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure”, the Post says, telling them responsibility to choose electors to present Arizona’s result to Congress for certification was “yours and yours alone” and that they had the “power to fight back against fraud”.In Arizona, as in the rest of the country, there was no evidence of widespread fraud.Yet in sending the emails, the newspaper noted, Thomas played a significant role in Donald Trump’s scheming to substitute the will of Republican-controlled legislatures for the will of voters.Thomas has come under increasing scrutiny for her activities since the election and support of Trump’s big lie that it was stolen from him.In March, the Post obtained text messages between Thomas and Trump’s then chief of staff Mark Meadows, also sent in the days following the election, calling on him to do anything he could to subvert the democratic result. Ginni Thomas texts spark ethical storm about husband’s supreme court roleRead moreEither Joe Biden is having a very late night, or somebody on his staff is. It’s after 1.30 in the morning in Seoul, South Korea, and the president’s official Twitter account has burst back into life with news and photos from the first day of his Asia tour (this after a lengthy two-stage flight late Thursday into Friday morning from Washington DC to Seoul, via Alaska):The United States and the Republic of Korea work together to make the best, most advanced technology in the world. This factory is proof. And that gives us both a competitive edge in the global economy if we can keep our supply chains resilient, reliable, and secure. pic.twitter.com/l9NgV9zC9b— President Biden (@POTUS) May 20, 2022
      In a week when a teenager shot dead 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, apparently motivated by the ‘great replacement’ theory, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Michael Harriot and Anne Applebaum about why this racist ideology has become mainstream in rightwing circles in the US, and why we shouldn’t be surprised.Listen to the Guardian’s latest Politics Weekly America podcast here:Politics Weekly AmericaWill Republicans drop the ‘great replacement’ theory? Politics Weekly AmericaSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:36:22Donald Trump appears to be engaged in a hasty retreat from next week’s Republican governor’s primary in Georgia, in which his vendetta against the incumbent Brian Kemp looks about to blow up in his face.The former president went all in on the candidacy of former senator David Perdue, convinced his hand-picked choice was certain to oust Kemp from the governor’s mansion.Kemp angered Trump by refusing to bend to his demands to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.However, after a bright start in the polls, Perdue – a recent convert to Trump’s big lie of a stolen election – appears to have lost his luster and now trails Kemp by a seemingly unassailable margin, according to RealClearPolitics.Accordingly, Trump is washing his hands of Perdue, according to NBC News, which said on Friday he’s given up the Perdue campaign for dead and won’t be making any more appearances or offering any further support.Trump, the article says, citing anonymous insiders, “has groused about what he believes is a lackluster campaign effort from Perdue”.It also quoted Kemp’s lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, who said Trump had engaged in “a very shallow attempt at trying to unseat a perfectly fit conservative governor”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At the end of the day, Donald Trump doesn’t care about David Perdue winning. He just cared about Brian Kemp losing.Defeat for Perdue would be a particularly bloody nose for Trump, who likes to boast about the power of his endorsements. Former president Mike Pence, with whom Trump has also feuded in recent months, campaigned for Kemp.Regardless of the outcome of the Kemp v Perdue race, Georgia is unlikely to be a total dead loss for Trump. His pick for the Republican senate nomination, former NFL star Herschel Walker, enjoys a huge lead, more than 60% in some polls, over rivals.Joe Biden has been talking microchips in South Korea, touring a factory that could become the model for a similar facility in Texas he says will keep the US at the forefront of new technology.The president also promised closer cooperation between the US and South Korea in an address with the country’s leader Yoon Suk Yeol.“It’s emblematic of the future of cooperation and innovation that our nations can and must build together,” Biden said of the Samsung semiconductor plant in Pyeongtaek.The company he said, was investing $17bn in US operations, including the new factory in Texas he said would create 3,000 new jobs:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}So much of the future of the world is going to be written here, in the Indo Pacific, over the next several decades. This is the moment, in my view, to invest in one another to deepen our business ties, to bring our people even closer together. It’s past midnight now in Seoul, so we’re not expecting any more news from the president’s first Asian visit of his presidency in the next few hours.But we do know that the bill passed by the US Senate on Thursday approving $40bn in new military, economic and humanitarian aid for Ukraine is being flown to South Korea for Biden’s urgent signature. Here’s the video of Biden’s address from Friday night:Tune in as I deliver remarks with President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea. https://t.co/vnkjCXQQfw— President Biden (@POTUS) May 20, 2022
      We’re still waiting for the final result from Tuesday’s Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania, in which Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz, and former treasury official David McCormick are separated by only a few hundred votes with 99% of the count in.But there was a clear winner in the race to become the Republican nominee for state governor in November’s midterms – Trump loyalist and big lie proponent Doug Mastriano.My colleague Sam Levine has this profile of the extremist, whom critics fear will be in charge of appointing officials to oversee the state’s elections if he wins later this year, and who will theoretically have the power to reject a result he doesn’t like:The Trump loyalist who could be a major threat to US democracyRead moreBill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York city, is running for Congress in a district that includes areas of Manhattan and his home in western Brooklyn.He made the announcement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, shortly before his Bill de Blasio for Congress website went live with the campaign slogan: “The only way to save our democracy is to be a part of it”. De Blasio, whose second term as NYC mayor ended last year, is seeking election in New York’s 10th congressional district, currently represented by Democrat Jerry Nadler. Redistricting under the supervision of a New York judge, which Nadler says is unconstitutional, has forced him into a race for the 12th district with another Democratic incumbent, Carolyn Maloney, opening up the 10th for de Blasio’s run.The state’s primary has been pushed back from June to 23 August following legal wrangling over the legality of New York’s maps and a court’s decision last month that Democrats’ original proposals were too heavily in their own favor.De Blasio, 61, toyed with running for governor this year, the Associated Press says, but decided not to challenge incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. He also had a short-lived run for president in 2019. There’s more trouble at home for Joe Biden as he ends the first day of his Asian tour: his approval rating has dropped to the lowest point of his presidency.Raging inflation, soaring gas prices, the baby formula shortage and a failure to deliver on campaign promises were cited by respondents in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research study that also reflects deepening pessimism among his own Democratic party.Only 39% of US adults approve of Biden’s performance as president, a further drop from already negative ratings a month earlier.Overall, only about two in 10 adults say the US is heading in the right direction or the economy is good, both down from about three in 10 a month earlier. Those drops were concentrated among Democrats, with just 33% within the president’s party saying the country is headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April.Of particular concern for Biden ahead of the midterm elections, his approval among Democrats stands at 73%, a substantial drop since earlier in his presidency. In AP-NORC polls conducted in 2021, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats never dropped below 82%.The findings reflect a widespread sense of exasperation in a country facing a cascade of challenges ranging from inflation, gun violence, and a sudden shortage of baby formula to a persistent pandemic.“I don’t know how much worse it can get,” Milan Ramsey, a 29-year-old high school counselor and Democrat in Santa Monica, California, told the AP. She said she and her husband had to move into her parents’ house to raise their infant son.“He hasn’t delivered on any of the promises. I think he’s tired and I don’t blame him, I’d be tired too at his age with the career he’s had.”Biden has been attempting to play up his successes at home over improved unemployment figures and his bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the White House sees his tour of Asia, including meetings with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, as an opportunity to market the US abroad.But the trip has already attracted unwelcome headlines. A member of Biden’s advance security detail was arrested for allegedly assaulting a South Korean citizen in Seoul in a dispute over a taxi, and CNN reports that two secret services agents have been sent home.It is not known if it relates to the same incident.Read more:Biden security team member arrested in Seoul over alleged drunken assaultRead moreBill Barr, the former attorney general who says he told Donald Trump his fantasy of a stolen election was “bullshit”, could soon be on the record with the 6 January House panel.Axios is reporting that Barr, who resigned in the waning days of Trump’s single term of office, is in negotiations with the committee to tell what he knows of the days surrounding the deadly insurrection, and Trump’s demand for the justice department to declare the election fraudulent.Details are scant, the committee is refusing to confirm the story, and it’s not known if Barr will be invited to take part in public hearings the panel will be holding this spring.But Axios says it has sources with knowledge of the situation who insist Barr is in “active discussions” to follow up his previous informal conversations with the committee with on-the-record testimony and transcribed interviews.The news comes at an important juncture for the bipartisan inquiry, which wants to complete its work ahead before November’s midterms, when Republicans are expected to win back control of the House and shut it down.What information Barr has to offer remains to be seen. Most of what we already know about his knowledge of Trump’s desperate efforts to stay in power comes from his book, which the Guardian reviewed in March as a “self-serving narrative that ignores tricky truths”. But the pace of the 6 January investigation is undoubtedly picking up as members scramble to complete their work.Separately on Friday, CNN reported that John Eastman, the rightwing attorney and Trump acolyte, was deeply involved in the plot to steal back the election, and has revealed in a court filing that he spoke regularly with, and had handwritten notes from the former president, concerning those efforts.The panel is chasing those documents, and on Thursday wrote to Georgia congressman Barry Loudermilk seeking information about “reconnaissance tours” of the Capitol the Republican is reported to have hosted on 5 January 2021, one day before Trump’s supporters ransacked the building in efforts to stop Congress certifying his defeat. Read more:Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of Capitol before attack, evidence suggestsRead moreGood morning blog readers, and welcome! We’ve made it to Friday, but as you know, the pace of US politics never winds down!We’re learning that Bill Barr, the former attorney general, is poised to give sworn testimony to the 6 January House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Axios reports that Barr, who has already spoken informally to the panel, is in “active discussions” for a formal, transcribed interview. We’ll have more on that coming up, as well as the following:
      Joe Biden is in Seoul, South Korea, talking computer chips at a technology factory with ties to Texas. Meanwhile, his popularity rating back home has taken another dive.
      Vote counting from Tuesday’s Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania is limping towards the finish line, with Trump-endorsed TV doctor Mehmet Oz in a neck-and-neck race with former treasury department official David McCormick.
      Polls suggest Trump is set for a bruising in next week’s Georgia primary, where David Perdue, the former senator Trump wants to replace incumbent Republican governor Brian Kemp, has fallen further behind.
      Covid-19 cases are rising again across the US, and there’s little sign that Congress is willing to fund Biden’s requested $22.5bn relief package for vaccines, testing and therapeutics.
      A decision is expected imminently from a federal judge in Louisiana, who will decide if the Biden administration can proceed with plans to end next Monday the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy keeping refugees at the border because of the pandemic.
      Stick with us as the days unfolds, and you can also follow developments in the Ukraine conflict in our global live news blog here. More

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      in Elections

      Bill Barr in ‘active discussions’ to testify before Capitol attack panel – live

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      We’re still waiting for the final result from Tuesday’s Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania, in which Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz, and former treasury official David McCormick are separated by only a few hundred votes with 99% of the count in.But there was a clear winner in the race to become the Republican nominee for state governor in November’s midterms – Trump loyalist and big lie proponent Doug Mastriano.My colleague Sam Levine has this profile of the extremist, whom critics fear will be in charge of appointing officials to oversee the state’s elections if he wins later this year, and who will theoretically have the power to reject a result he doesn’t like:The Trump loyalist who could be a major threat to US democracyRead moreBill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York city, is running for Congress in a district that includes areas of Manhattan and his home in western Brooklyn.He made the announcement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, shortly before his Bill de Blasio for Congress website went live with the campaign slogan: “The only way to save our democracy is to be a part of it”. De Blasio, whose second term as NYC mayor ended last year, is seeking election in New York’s 10th congressional district, currently represented by Democrat Jerry Nadler. Redistricting under the supervision of a New York judge, which Nadler says is unconstitutional, has forced him into a race for the 12th district with another Democratic incumbent, Carolyn Maloney, opening up the 10th for de Blasio’s run.The state’s primary has been pushed back from June to 23 August following legal wrangling over the legality of New York’s maps and a court’s decision last month that Democrats’ original proposals were too heavily in their own favor.De Blasio, 61, toyed with running for governor this year, the Associated Press says, but decided not to challenge incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. He also had a short-lived run for president in 2019. There’s more trouble at home for Joe Biden as he ends the first day of his Asian tour: his approval rating has dropped to the lowest point of his presidency.Raging inflation, soaring gas prices, the baby formula shortage and a failure to deliver on campaign promises were cited by respondents in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research study that also reflects deepening pessimism among his own Democratic party.Only 39% of US adults approve of Biden’s performance as president, a further drop from already negative ratings a month earlier.Overall, only about two in 10 adults say the US is heading in the right direction or the economy is good, both down from about three in 10 a month earlier. Those drops were concentrated among Democrats, with just 33% within the president’s party saying the country is headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April.Of particular concern for Biden ahead of the midterm elections, his approval among Democrats stands at 73%, a substantial drop since earlier in his presidency. In AP-NORC polls conducted in 2021, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats never dropped below 82%.The findings reflect a widespread sense of exasperation in a country facing a cascade of challenges ranging from inflation, gun violence, and a sudden shortage of baby formula to a persistent pandemic.“I don’t know how much worse it can get,” Milan Ramsey, a 29-year-old high school counselor and Democrat in Santa Monica, California, told the AP. She said she and her husband had to move into her parents’ house to raise their infant son.“He hasn’t delivered on any of the promises. I think he’s tired and I don’t blame him, I’d be tired too at his age with the career he’s had.”Biden has been attempting to play up his successes at home over improved unemployment figures and his bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the White House sees his tour of Asia, including meetings with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, as an opportunity to market the US abroad.But the trip has already attracted unwelcome headlines. A member of Biden’s advance security detail was arrested for allegedly assaulting a South Korean citizen in Seoul in a dispute over a taxi, and CNN reports that two secret services agents have been sent home.It is not known if it relates to the same incident.Read more:Biden security team member arrested in Seoul over alleged drunken assaultRead moreBill Barr, the former attorney general who says he told Donald Trump his fantasy of a stolen election was “bullshit”, could soon be on the record with the 6 January House panel.Axios is reporting that Barr, who resigned in the waning days of Trump’s single term of office, is in negotiations with the committee to tell what he knows of the days surrounding the deadly insurrection, and Trump’s demand for the justice department to declare the election fraudulent.Details are scant, the committee is refusing to confirm the story, and it’s not known if Barr will be invited to take part in public hearings the panel will be holding this spring.But Axios says it has sources with knowledge of the situation who insist Barr is in “active discussions” to follow up his previous informal conversations with the committee with on-the-record testimony and transcribed interviews.The news comes at an important juncture for the bipartisan inquiry, which wants to complete its work ahead before November’s midterms, when Republicans are expected to win back control of the House and shut it down.What information Barr has to offer remains to be seen. Most of what we already know about his knowledge of Trump’s desperate efforts to stay in power comes from his book, which the Guardian reviewed in March as a “self-serving narrative that ignores tricky truths”. But the pace of the 6 January investigation is undoubtedly picking up as members scramble to complete their work.Separately on Friday, CNN reported that John Eastman, the rightwing attorney and Trump acolyte, was deeply involved in the plot to steal back the election, and has revealed in a court filing that he spoke regularly with, and had handwritten notes from the former president, concerning those efforts.The panel is chasing those documents, and on Thursday wrote to Georgia congressman Barry Loudermilk seeking information about “reconnaissance tours” of the Capitol the Republican is reported to have hosted on 5 January 2021, one day before Trump’s supporters ransacked the building in efforts to stop Congress certifying his defeat. Read more:Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of Capitol before attack, evidence suggestsRead moreGood morning blog readers, and welcome! We’ve made it to Friday, but as you know, the pace of US politics never winds down!We’re learning that Bill Barr, the former attorney general, is poised to give sworn testimony to the 6 January House committee investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Axios reports that Barr, who has already spoken informally to the panel, is in “active discussions” for a formal, transcribed interview. We’ll have more on that coming up, as well as the following:
      Joe Biden is in Seoul, South Korea, talking computer chips at a technology factory with ties to Texas. Meanwhile, his popularity rating back home has taken another dive.
      Vote counting from Tuesday’s Republican senate primary in Pennsylvania is limping towards the finish line, with Trump-endorsed TV doctor Mehmet Oz in a neck-and-neck race with former treasury department official David McCormick.
      Polls suggest Trump is set for a bruising in next week’s Georgia primary, where David Perdue, the former senator Trump wants to replace incumbent Republican governor Brian Kemp, has fallen further behind.
      Covid-19 cases are rising again across the US, and there’s little sign that Congress is willing to fund Biden’s requested $22.5bn relief package for vaccines, testing and therapeutics.
      A decision is expected imminently from a federal judge in Louisiana, who will decide if the Biden administration can proceed with plans to end next Monday the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy keeping refugees at the border because of the pandemic.
      Stick with us as the days unfolds, and you can also follow developments in the Ukraine conflict in our global live news blog here. More

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      Tucker Carlson tried to use Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown

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      Tucker Carlson tried to use Hunter Biden to get his son into GeorgetownEmails reveal the ‘extent’ which Carlson was willing to turn on Biden’s son since the 2020 election, Washington Post says As Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for help getting his son into an elite Washington university in 2014, the Fox News host’s wife, Susie, reportedly wrote in an email: “Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!”Since the 2020 election, however, Carlson has fueled rightwing attacks on Joe Biden’s son, particularly over business affairs in which he allegedly benefited from his father’s position.The existence of emails about getting Buckley Carlson into Georgetown has been known for some time, thanks to a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden that was obtained by Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and pushed to media in 2020.On Thursday the Washington Post revealed new emails and said analysis by security experts confirmed their authenticity.The emails, the Post said, “reveal the extent to which Carlson was willing to turn on a former associate as he thrives in a hyper-partisan media world in which conservatives have made Biden a prime target for attack.”“They also show how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the ‘ruling class’.”Carlson told the Post that in 2014, when Joe Biden was vice-president, “Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well.“I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about. And I’ve said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that’s why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I’ve said that many times, and I mean it.”He also said he would not comment on the emails, as they “were described by our [intelligence] community as Russian disinformation. So why would I? And I read that in the Washington Post”.The Post said Carlson was “speaking with apparent irony”. He and others on the right charge that mainstream media willfully overlooked the Biden laptop in 2020, amid reports it could contain disinformation planted by Russia or other malign actors.The Post also said emails showed Carlson helping Biden in 2015, amid reports about the state of Biden’s marriage. Carlson has confirmed doing so.But the Post focused on Carlson’s apparent hypocrisy.Quoting Carlson accusing Hunter Biden of getting “lucrative jobs … because he had an important father”, the Post said the Fox News host did so without “disclosing that he had once enlisted Biden to help get his son into a prestigious private university”.On the same January 2020 show, Carlson said: “In America today, there’s nothing illegal about paying de facto bribes by handing fake jobs to the unqualified family members of powerful people. And since it is perfectly legal, naturally, Hunter Biden isn’t the only one shamelessly cashing in on his family name.”In another email reported by the Post, Susie Carlson wrote: “Tucker and I would be so grateful if you could write a letter or speak to someone in the Georgetown Admission’s [sic] Office about Buckley.”Biden reportedly agreed to write to the university president and said: “I will do anything you would like me to do.”According to the Post, Tucker Carlson wrote: “I can’t thank you enough for writing that letter to Georgetown on Bucky’s behalf. So nice of you. I know it’ll help. Hope you’re great and we can all get dinner soon.”Buckley Carlson went to the University of Virginia. Now communications director for Jim Banks, a House Republican from Indiana, he did not comment on the Post report.Amid reaction online, the author Radley Balko wrote: “The story here is that Tucker Carlson is the living embodiment of the unearned, privileged elitism that Tucker Carlson derides on his show every night. The Hunter Biden part is just gravy.”Rightwing accounts pointed to an NBC report which said Biden’s laptop and other sources showed that between 2013 and 2018, he and his company brought in about $11m from work linked to Ukraine and China.TopicsHunter BidenFox NewsJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US Senate passes $40bn aid package for Ukraine – as it happened

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      The US Senate has approved Joe Biden’s massive new military and humanitarian aid bill for Ukraine, with a huge bipartisan vote in favor of the package as allies boost the fight back against Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor.The final vote moments ago was 86 in favor, 11 against. The vote had been expected last week until Kentucky rightwinger Rand Paul blocked it.All 50 Democrats in the Senate and all but 11 Republicans supported the bill, which was larger than the original $33bn one first requested by Biden last month.The US president is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as possible. Russia invaded Ukraine three months ago.“Help is on the way, really significant help. Help that could make sure that the Ukrainians are victorious,” Senate majority leader and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer said.That’s a wrap for Thursday’s US politics blog, but our global live blog of the Ukraine conflict continues here.Here’s what we followed today:
      The US Senate has (finally) passed a $40bn package of military, economic and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
      Joe Biden says he’s “proud” to support applications by Finland and Sweden to join Nato, after meeting the countries’ leaders at the White House, saying their addition will strengthen the defense alliance. But Turkey says it can’t support the move.
      Oklahoma has passed the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, a total ban beginning at conception which allows citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” a woman in terminating a pregnancy.
      The 6 January House panel wants to hear from Republican congressman Barry Loudermilk about a “tour” he allegedly hosted at the Capitol building the day before it was overrun by a mob of Donald Trump supporters.
      The homeland security department has suspended the government’s troubled new disinformation board after the resignation of its director and a wave of Republican criticism.
      Biden is on his way to Alaska, the staging post for his onward journey on Air Force One to Seoul and Tokyo and meetings with the leaders of South Korea and Japan in the coming days.
      The alleged white supremacist behind Saturday’s grocery store massacre in Buffalo, New York, made a brief court appearance this morning. House lawmakers sent the domestic terrorism bill to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate.
      National security adviser Jake Sullivan has been giving a preview of Joe Biden’s trip to South Korea aboard Air Force One as the president and his entourage travel on the first leg towards their staging post in Alaska.The audio feed from 38,000 feet is, how shall we say, patchy. But it seems Sullivan was asked about the likelihood of North Korea launching some kind of deliberate action or challenge to the US while Biden is in Asia to meet the leaders of South Korea and Japan:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Our analysis [is] that there is a genuine possibility, a real risk of some kind of provocation while we’re in the region, whether in South Korea or in Japan, that could take the form of a nuclear test, the seventh nuclear test that North Korea has conducted.
      It could take the form of a missile test. There have been a number of missile tests this year. And of course, North Korea has a long history going back decades of missile tests, both to advance their capabilities and to cause provocations.
      We are prepared for those eventualities, we are coordinated closely with both the ROK [Republic of South Korea] and Japan, we know what we will do to respond to that.
      One of the main messages we are sending on this trip is that the United States is here for our allies and partners. We are here to help provide deterrence and defense for the ROK and Japan. Our cooperation will only strengthen in the face of any further provocations by North Korea.Vladimir Putin “had to keep explaining things” to Donald Trump when Trump was US president, the former White House aide Fiona Hill said. “Putin doesn’t like to do that,” Hill told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.“You could see that he got frustrated many times with President Trump. Even though he loves to be able to spin his own version of events, he wants to have predictability in the person that he’s engaging with.”Under Trump, Hill was senior director for European and Russian affairs on the national security council. She is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.The British-born adviser come to prominence when she testified in Trump’s first impeachment for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract political dirt on opponents including Joe Biden.Putin ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. Bloody fighting continues. Biden has committed to supporting Ukraine.At the Chicago event, Hill said Putin “thought that somebody like Biden, who’s a trans-Atlanticist, who knows all about Nato, who actually knows where Ukraine is, and actually knows something about the history, and is very steeped in international affairs, would be the right person to engage with as opposed to somebody that you have to explain everything to all the time, honestly”.The Russian president, Hill said, might still be “waiting for us to sue for peace, [to] negotiate away Ukraine”.Trump and Republicans claim Putin would not have invaded if Trump was in power.The Trump administration was dogged by investigations of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Read more:Putin ‘had to keep explaining things to Trump’, ex-White House aide saysRead moreThe 6 January House panel wants to hear from a Republican congressman about a “tour” he allegedly hosted at the Capitol building the day before it was overrun by a mob of Donald Trump supporters.The committee has written to Georgia representative Barry Loudermilk asking for his voluntary cooperation.According to a publicly released letter, panel chair and Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson wrote:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Based on our review of evidence in the select committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021.
      Public reporting and witness accounts indicate some individuals and groups engaged in efforts to gather information about the layout of the US Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, in advance of January 6, 2021.Loudermilk did not immediately reply to a request for comment.The House committee is looking into Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden and the deadly riot at the Capitol by his supporters on the day Congress was certifying the result.Today’s move suggests the panel has evidence pointing to certain “reconnaissance tours” taking place in the days before 6 January, potentially providing some rioters with a layout of the complex, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.Read more:January 6 panel evidence suggests Congress members led ‘reconnaissance tours’ of the Capitol before attackRead moreThe words “Donald Trump” and “risk averse” rarely appear in the same sentence, but after the former president suffered mixed fortunes in some Republican primary race endorsements, and a bloodied nose in others, he’s rethinking his strategy of prolifically backing candidates, according to CNN.The network says candidate in upcoming elections are likely to have a harder time winning Trump’s coveted endorsements.An adviser tells CNN that Trump is “agitated” by the inability of his pick Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor-turned-politician, to score a decisive victory over David McCormick in the Pennsylvania senate primary. The race is heading for an automatic recount with just a few hundred votes from Tuesday’s primary separating them.“This is not how he expected this to go,” the adviser tells CNN.“If Oz loses, it puts [Trump] in an awkward spot because he absolutely trashed David McCormick at his rally and pissed off quite a few allies who never thought he should have endorsed Oz.” While Trump has scored some wins, for example a convincing victory by Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial primary, other endorsements have fallen flat. The scandal-plagued North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn lost his seat despite Trump’s (admittedly late-in-the-game) backing, and former senator David Perdue looks headed for a thumping loss to incumbent Brian Kemp in Georgia’s governor primary next Tuesday, according to Huffpost.A newly cautious approach to upcoming primaries by Trump would underscore his belief that in order to maintain influence inside the Republican party, his endorsement must remain powerful, CNN says.Oklahoma’s Republican-led legislature just passed the nation’s strictest abortion ban, which allows citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” a woman in terminating a pregnancy. The ban begins at conception.The law would take effect immediately if Republican governor Kevin Stitt signs the bill, which he is expected to do. It would allow litigants to sue for $10,000 and “emotional distress”. If the law goes into effect, it will make Oklahoma “the first state to successfully outlaw abortion and eliminate access while Roe v Wade is still standing,” according to a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, and have profound effects for women in Texas. Oklahoma’s total abortion ban is modeled after a six-week abortion ban first passed by Texas. There, the state passed a law to allow anyone, anywhere to sue those who “aid and abet” an abortion. Texas’s law banned abortion at six weeks, which is before most women know they are pregnant. Consequently, thousands of Texan patients headed to Oklahoma seeking to terminate pregnancies. Oklahoma then passed a similar six-week abortion ban. The bill being considered by Stitt would outlaw abortion from the moment an egg is fertilized, even before it implants in the uterus. The right to obtain an abortion was established in the landmark 1973 supreme court decision Roe v Wade. The case provided a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb. In early May, a leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito Jr, one of the court’s conservatives, showed a majority of justices considered reversing Roe v Wade outright. If they followed through with that draft decision, at least 26 US states would be certain or likely to ban abortion. Thousands of patients in the Midwest and South would then be forced to seek care across state lines, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles. Perhaps as many as one-in-five, according to the estimates of one economist, would be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.Here’s a heartwarming image that encapsulates the US Senate’s celebrated spirits of bipartisanship, camaraderie and mutual friendship: Democratic and Republican senators prepare to take lunch with Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson and Finland’s president Sauli Niinistö on Capitol Hill today.The leaders held a closed-door meeting with the senators after their earlier summit with Joe Biden at the White House to discuss the Nordic nations’ historic application to join Nato.Time to take stock of developments so far today:
      The US Senate has (finally) passed a $40bn package of military, economic and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says thank you, and predicts it will spur his country to victory.
      Joe Biden says he’s “proud” to support applications by Finland and Sweden to join Nato, after meeting the countries’ leaders at the White House, saying their addition will strengthen the defense alliance. But Turkey says it can’t support the move.
      The homeland security department has suspended the government’s troubled new disinformation board after the resignation of its director and a wave of Republican criticism.
      Biden is on his way to Alaska, the staging post for his onward journey on Air Force One to Seoul and meetings with the leaders of South Korea and Japan in the coming days. We’ll hear from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security adviser Jake Sullivan aboard the flight a little later.
      The alleged white supremacist behind Saturday’s grocery store massacre in Buffalo, New York, made a brief court appearance this morning. House lawmakers have sent the domestic terrorism bill to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate.
      A top aide to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the US Senate after it approved nearly $40 billion in aid, saying this would help ensure the defeat of Russia, Reuters writes.Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Zelenskiy, posted praise online.“Together we’ll win,” he tweeted.Thanks US Senate for the historic decision to provide $40 billion aid package to 🇺🇦. Together, we’ll win.— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) May 19, 2022
      He also said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} We are moving towards victory confidently and strategically. We thank our allies.”In addition, Group of Seven (G7) financial leaders have agreed on $18.4bn (£14.7bn) to help Ukraine and said they were ready to stand by Kyiv and “do more as needed”, according to a draft communique seen by Reuters.Finance ministers and central bank governors of the US, Japan, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are holding talks as Ukraine is running out of cash.G7 countries have “mobilised $18.4 billion of budget support, including $9.2 billion of recent commitments” in 2022, the draft said.You can read more about this and all the news from the ground and Europe on the war in Ukraine in our global live blog on the crisis, here.The Senate passing the $40bn aid bill for Ukraine with a richly bipartisan vote was a glaring exception to the partisan divisions that have hindered work on other issues under Biden.They promise to become only less bridgeable as November’s elections for control of Congress draw closer, the Associated Press reports.That includes Republicans blocking Democrats from including billions to combat the relentless pandemic in the measure, leaving their efforts to battle Covid-19 in limbo.Last week the House approved the Ukraine bill 368-57, with all of those opposed Republicans. Though support in both chambers was unmistakably bipartisan, the GOP defections were noteworthy after Trump, still a potent force in the party, complained that such sums should first be targeted at domestic problems.Senate Majority leader and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer said there could be yet more aid packages for Ukraine from the US..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}They’re doing the fighting, they’re the ones getting killed, they’re the ones struggling and suffering. The least we can do is give them the weaponry they need,” he said. Schumer called it “beyond troubling” that Republicans were opposing the Ukraine assistance..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}It appears more and more that MAGA Republicans are on the same soft-on-Putin playbook that we saw used by former President Trump,” said Schumer, using the Make America Great Again acronym Democrats have been using to cast those Republicans as extremists.Senate Minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, a strong backer of the measure, addressed concerns by his GOP colleagues, saying Ukraine’s defeat would jeopardize America’s European trading partners, increase US security costs there and embolden autocrats in China and elsewhere to grab territory in their regions..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The most expensive and painful thing America could possibly do in the long run would be to stop investing in sovereignty, stability and deterrence before it’s too late,” McConnell said. The US Senate has approved Joe Biden’s massive new military and humanitarian aid bill for Ukraine, with a huge bipartisan vote in favor of the package as allies boost the fight back against Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor.The final vote moments ago was 86 in favor, 11 against. The vote had been expected last week until Kentucky rightwinger Rand Paul blocked it.All 50 Democrats in the Senate and all but 11 Republicans supported the bill, which was larger than the original $33bn one first requested by Biden last month.The US president is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as possible. Russia invaded Ukraine three months ago.“Help is on the way, really significant help. Help that could make sure that the Ukrainians are victorious,” Senate majority leader and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer said.The Buffalo massacre will be “a catalyst” for legislation to combat hate crime against Blacks, according to the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the families of several of the 10 victims.Crump says he’s also working with the Brady Center to achieve a reduction in gun violence in the US.His office released a statement this morning announcing Crump will be representing the families of Buffalo victims Andre Mackneil and Geraldine Talley. He was already acting for the family of victim Ruth Whitfield.Mackneil was killed as he was buying a cake for his son, whose third birthday was the day of the massacre. Talley was buying iced tea.All three families will join Crump and veteran civil rights activist Al Sharpton at a press conference in Buffalo on Thursday afternoon.Crump said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I am honored to stand with these families in the face of such horror and hatred as we investigate and call for meaningful change to ensure no family has to feel such pain ever again.
      I hope that one day soon these families will know their loved ones’ deaths were a catalyst for long overdue Black anti-hate crime legislation – and for that we demand swift action from our elected officials.Gun reform legislation has stalled in the Senate amid opposition from Republicans. On Wednesday, the House passed the domestic terrorism bill including some gun reforms and new categories of offenses for some hate crimes. It, too, faces substantial headwinds in the Senate.Information is coming in that the government’s new disinformation board is out.The homeland security department has paused the work of the troubled panel and accepted the resignation of its director Nina Jankowicz.She told the Associated Press hours after resigning on Wednesday that a wave of attacks and violent threats she has fielded since the board’s launch will not stop her from speaking out about disinformation campaigns pulsing through the social media feeds of Americans:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We need to have a grownup conversation about how to deal with threats to our national security and that’s not what happened here. I’m not going to be silenced.It remains to be seen how the board’s disastrous rollout and ensuing criticism around it will damage ongoing US efforts to counter disinformation used as a weapon by Russia and other adversaries.The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, acknowledged the board’s controversy had become a distraction to the department’s other work, which includes safeguarding US elections, two officials familiar with his decision said.While the board has not formally been closed down, it will be reviewed by members of a DHS advisory council that is expected to make recommendations in 75 days. The Washington Post first reported the board’s pause.The department announced the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board on 27 April with the stated goal to “coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” Read more:US homeland security pauses new disinformation board amid criticismRead more More

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      Biden tells Buffalo shooting mourners: ‘Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail’ – as it happened

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      Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.We’re closing our live blog now, but it’s far from the end of our political coverage for the day. It’s primary day in several states, with prominent Republican Senate and governor candidates in Pennsylvania notably going head to head.Please watch for my colleague Lauren Gambino’s coverage later, including TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s bid to advance his chase for a Senate seat and North Carolina extremist Madison Cawthorn’s efforts to hold on to his in the House of Representatives.The day was otherwise dominated by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America. Here’s what else we followed:
      Buffalo mayor Byron Brown said he saw Biden’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      02:19Donald Trump has received a savage Twitter smackdown from George Conway, a constant bête noire of the former president as co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and husband to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway.The Tuesday afternoon insult likening Trump to a caged monkey throwing feces came as part of a chain that began with news the 6 January committee was not expecting to call him as a witness in public hearings this spring.Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson says its “not our expectation” to call Donald Trump as a witness. He said it’s not clear Trump would enhance investigators’ understanding of the evidence they’ve already unearthed.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 17, 2022
      Lawyer Elizabeth de la Vega decided it was not something she wanted to see:Smart. Calling Trump as a witness in the June hearings would be a terrible move. https://t.co/FxCobKVb32— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) May 17, 2022
      And Conway followed up with this:Yes. Displaying a monkey in a cage throwing its feces around would provide equal enlightenment, even if the monkey were sworn. https://t.co/6oHg2oWapd— George Conway🇺🇦 (@gtconway3d) May 17, 2022
      Thousands of ballots from several counties in today’s Pennsylvania primary election might not be able to be read “for several days”, the Associated Press reports, because of a printing error.Officials in Lancaster county, the state’s sixth most populous, said the problem involved at least 21,000 mailed ballots, only a third of which were scanning properly. The glitch will force election workers to redo ballots that can’t be read by the machine, a laborious process expected to take several days, the AP says. Officials in the Republican-controlled county pledged that all the ballots will be counted eventually.“Citizens deserve to have accurate results from elections and they deserve to have them on election night, not days later,” Josh Parsons, Republican vice chair of the county board of commissioners said at a news conference. “But because of this, we’re not going to have final election results from these mail ballots for probably several days”. pic.twitter.com/YacDxjCitN— Commissioner Ray D’Agostino (@CommissionerRD) May 17, 2022
      John Fetterman, frontrunner in today’s Democratic senate primary in Pennsylvania, is undergoing what campaign staff say is “a standard procedure” to install a heart pacemaker.The state’s lieutenant governor announced on Sunday he had suffered a minor stroke two days previously, but said he was recovering and his campaign “isn’t slowing down one bit”.“John Fetterman is about to undergo a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator. It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm,” the statement from his campaign said.Fetterman tweeted that he used “an emergency absentee ballot” to cast his vote today (presumably for himself) from his bed in Penn Medicine Lancaster general hospital.Just cast my Primary Election Vote from Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital using an emergency absentee ballot. ✅ pic.twitter.com/HftIKtZG2V— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) May 17, 2022
      Buffalo’s mayor Byron Brown has just been talking about Joe Biden’s visit to his city today, and what he sees as the president’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.Brown told reporters that the president and first lady Jill Biden spent considerable private time with the families of the 10 killed by an alleged white supremacist, which he said he thought strengthened Biden’s “commitment to try to bring change”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As it relates to gun control in this country change has been very elusive. There are those in Washington who have put the needs and the desires of the gun manufacturers ahead of the lives of Americans. That has to stop.
      The president talked about gun control. He talked about his concern for the families here. There was talk about what could be done to end these mass shootings.
      The president seemed very moved by what he saw here in this community. And I really felt a strong sense of resolve and commitment in the president to try to bring change as it relates to these kinds of situations.
      I saw him steel himself during this visit to get something done. I felt it, I think it’s powerful, and I think it’s real.Brown also paid tribute to police officers and fire fighters who responded to Saturday’s shooting, and credited Aaron Salter, the former police officer and Tops market security guard who lost his life in a firefight with the killer, for saving lives:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If not for the heroic actions of… Aaron Salter engaging the shooter and exchanging gunfire with the shooter that ultimately took his life, more people would probably have gotten killed inside the store.The US Congress held its first open briefing on UFOs in more than 50 years on Tuesday, but those seeking explanations for the numerous military sightings of unexplained objects were left disappointed, as defense officials appeared to hold their juiciest information for closed door hearings.During a 90-minute briefing in Washington a highlight was the release of two new videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena, although one of them was immediately debunked by Scott Bray, the deputy director of navy intelligence.The hearing, the first of its nature since 1966, came after a bumper year for UFO enthusiasts. In 2021, US intelligence released a landmark report which found 144 reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon, only one of which could be explained.The report followed US navy pilots publicly discussing their encounters with UAPs, with one retired lieutenant claiming he saw objects in the sky above the east coast “every day for at least a couple years”.On Tuesday Bray sought to defend the government’s investigation of UAPs – following accusations that the Pentagon is not taking the issue seriously enough – but also showed members of an intelligence subcommittee videos of airborne objects.One video, filmed during daylight, showed an object appearing to whiz past a military jet. The fleeting appearance of the object – it appeared on screen for less than a second – showed the difficulty in gathering data on some UAPs, Bray said.Another clip, recorded at night from a military plane at some time in 2019, showed triangle shapes appearing to hover in the sky. Bray then played another video that captured the same phenomena, but followed it up with a mundane explanation: the objects were drones, rendered triangular in shape and other-worldly in motion because of a quirk in the way video was captured through night-vision equipment.The debunking did little to counter accusations – including one leveled by Andre Carson, the committee chair – that the Pentagon has little interest in investigating the inexplicable. Read more:Out-of-this-world revelations in short supply at US Congress briefing on UFOs Read moreThe US has taken control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington DC, and consulates in New York and Beverly Hills, California, the state department has said.It moved to secure the properties Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, after determining Afghanistan “formally ceased conducting diplomatic and consular activities in the United States” at noon yesterday.In reality, there have been no formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Kabul since the Taliban assumed power after the chaotic US withdrawal last summer. The US does not recognize the Taliban as a legitime government.An official notice will be published in the federal register on Wednesday stating that the department had assumed responsibility for “protection and preservation” of the properties the AP said.Nobody will be allowed to enter the buildings without state department official, it said.The day has been dominated so far by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.The president and first lady Jill Biden met with the families, then he delivered a powerful address in which he called out the racial hatred behind the killings, and urged Americans to unite in the fight against “hateful and perverse ideology”.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America.Elsewhere:
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, by submitting false electoral ballots to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner, are facing a lawsuit.The legal action in Dane county circuit court says the decision by a Republican slate of electors to send the ballots saying Trump had won was “as legally baseless as it was repugnant to democracy”, the Associated Press says. Biden won the state, and its 10 electoral college votes, by almost 21,000 votes. The lawsuit, filed by three Democratic voters, names 10 Republicans and two attorneys it says were responsible and seeks up to $2.4m in damages, as well as disqualifying the Republicans from serving as electors in the future.“It’s essential to have accountability and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the AP.“We have heard in the more than a year since the fraudulent electors met the excuse that what they did was not wrong, it was totally fine. We want a court to make clear that is not true”.Republican electors who have spoken publicly have argued they weren’t trying to change the Wisconsin result but attempting to “preserve legal options” if a court ruled in favor of Trump.Wisconsin was among a number of heavily contested swing states that Biden won to deny Trump a second term in office. The twice-impeached Trump has since expounded the big lie that the election was fraudulent and victory was stolen from him, and incited the 6 January Capitol riot by his supporters to try to cling on to power.Numerous conservative groups pushing the big lie are facing legal actions is several states, the Guardian reported last week.Read more:Groups perpetuating Trump’s 2020 election lie face scrutiny and lawsuitsRead moreA tweet from the president in Buffalo urges the nation “to find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life”.Jill and I are in Buffalo to stand with the community and to grieve with the families. As a nation, we must find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life. pic.twitter.com/Om8sTigHXl— President Biden (@POTUS) May 17, 2022
      An emotional Joe Biden, who received several bursts of applause during his Buffalo address, closed with a powerful call for Americans to come together to defeat what he said was a “hateful minority”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now’s the time for the people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy.
      These actions we’ve seen in these hate filled attacks represent the views of a hateful minority. We can’t allow them to distort America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.And he widened his comments to include the divisiveness of the current political climate:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I travel the world all the time. Heads of state in other countries ask me, ‘What’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo?’
      We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.
      We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.
      You must all enlist in this great cause of America. This is work that requires all of us, presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens, none of us can stay on the sidelines.
      We have to resolve that here in Buffalo, that from this tragedy, will come hope, in light, in life. It has to. And not on our watch… the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. The America we love will endure.
      May the souls of the fallen rest in peace and rise in glory.The president said Americans had a duty to call out the hatred and racial bigotry behind the massacre in Buffalo, and countless other mass shootings. Then he turned to gun laws, and a call for Congress to pick up the baton:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The venom of the haters and their weapons of war… the violence in the words and deeds that stalk our streets, our stores, our schools. This venom, this violence, cannot be the story of our time. We cannot allow that to happen.
      Look, I’m not naive. I know tragedy will come again. It cannot be forever overcome. It cannot be fully understood either.
      But there are certain things we can do. We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. We passed pass the crime bill last time and violence went down. Shootings went down.
      You can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up. Biden went on the address the peril he said the US is in, if urgent action is not taken:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The American experiment and democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in a danger this hour.
      Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.
      To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people, not making distinctions.Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.Joe Biden has just begun his remarks at the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives on Saturday.“We’ve come to grieve with you,” the president said, after being introduced by first lady Jill Biden.“The feeling like there’s a black hole in your chest, you’re suffocating, you’re unable to breath. The anger, and the pain, the depth of a loss that’s so profound”.Biden is naming the victims one by one, and telling his audience a little about them.He is expected to move on shortly to a call for Congress to tighten gun laws. More

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      Senate to vote on $40bn Ukraine aid bill initially blocked by Rand Paul – as it happened

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      Joe Biden might finally score a victory for his Ukraine aid package as early as Wednesday after the Senate made moves on Monday to overcome the resistance of Republican holdout Rand Paul and set up a final vote.Minority leader Mitch McConnell downplayed Paul’s objections during his weekend visit to Kyiv with a group of fellow Republican senators, telling reporters that a bipartisan push involving an “overwhelming majority of Republicans in Congress” would nudge the $40bn package over the line.The Senate will move to invoke cloture, the ending of formal debate on a bill, later today, which would set up a floor vote probably on Wednesday.McConnell, according to Punchbowl’s Daily Punch podcast, said Paul’s resistance, and his demand for an inspector general to assess the impact of the aid package, was actually part of a healthy process..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}There’s always been isolationist voices in the Republican party. There were prior to world war two. That’s perfectly alright. This is a debate worth having, it’s an important subject. I think one of the lessons we learned in world war two was not standing up to aggression early is a huge mistake.Biden originally asked for $33bn for his latest Ukraine package last month, with $20bn for military supplies, $8.5bn in economic aid and $3bn for humanitarian relief.Lawmakers beefed up the amount for the military spending and humanitarian components by $3.4bn each, but despite initial optimism of speedy approval, the bill’s progress has crawled.It received overwhelming bipartisan backing in a 368-57 vote in the House last week, after Biden backed down on his insistence that it be coupled to a Covid-19 relief package opposed by Republicans.Read more:Senator Rand Paul single-handedly holds up $40bn US aid for UkraineRead moreWe’re closing the US politics blog now. The US Senate is edging closer to passing Joe Biden’s $40bn package of military, humanitarian and economic aid to Ukraine after a hold-up last week by Republican senator Rand Paul.It’s been a busy day:
      New White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made her historic debut at the briefing room podium, calling out the hatred and bigotry behind the Buffalo mass shooting.
      Joe Biden paid tribute to retired police officer and nine other victims of the Buffalo massacre, and will visit the city tomorrow with first lady Jill Biden.
      Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis said his administration intends to take over the running of Disney’s government after stripping the company of autonomy for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris landed in Abu Dhabi with a US delegation for the funeral of United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
      Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican congresswoman and member of the bipartisan panel investigating the 6 January insurrection, accused Republican leadership of enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism”, following the tragedy in Buffalo.
      Please join us again tomorrow, and remember you can follow developments in the Ukraine conflict on our live news blog here.Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration would “continue to call out” anybody promoting the racist “great replacement theory” the Buffalo killer cited as a justification for the mass shooting, but would not be drawn into “a back and forth on names and who said what”.Senior Republican and conservative figures including congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Fox News host Tucker Carlson are under scrutiny for promoting the discredited conspiracy theory that immigration threatens white values and western civilization.Jean-Pierre was asked why she would not call out individuals:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If a person has a white supremacy kind of extremism, we need to call that out. It doesn’t matter who it is. I’m not going to speak or call out any individual names.
      [The president] is determined to make sure that we fight back against the forces of hate and evil and violence. That’s what we’re going to continue to call out, but we reject hatred and extremist ideologies.Before taking reporters’ questions, Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged the significance of her appointment as White House press secretary..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I am acutely aware that my presence at this podium represents a few firsts. I am a Black, gay, immigrant woman, the first of all three of those to hold this position. I would not be here today if it were not for generations of barrier-breaking people before me. I stand on their shoulders.
      This room, this building, belong to the American people. We work for them. It’s not about me. It’s about them. On Jen [Psaki]’s first briefing, she made clear that the president’s, and her priority, was to bring truth and transparency back to this briefing room.
      Jen did a great job at that and I will work everyday to continue to ensure we are meeting the president’s high expectation of truth, honesty, and transparency.
      The press plays a vital role in our democracy. And we need a strong and independent press, now more than ever. We might not see eye to eye here in this room all the time, which is okay. That give and take is so incredibly healthy, and it’s a part of our democracy.Karine Jean-Pierre’s first White House press briefing is under way a little later than scheduled, and she is paying tribute to the victims of Saturday’s mass shooting in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives.“I want to take a moment to recognize the lives lost and forever changed in Buffalo,” she said, before reading out the names and ages of those killed and a few details about them. She started with Aaron Salter, 55, the retired Buffalo police officer and security guard at Tops Friendly Market, who fired at the gunman but was struck and killed himself in the exchange. Joe Biden earlier paid his own tribute, and Jean-Pierre said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We recognize their lives today. And those lost and affected by gun violence this weekend in Houston, in Southern California, Milwaukee and communities across the country.Jean-Pierre said the president and first lady Jill Biden will visit Buffalo on Tuesday:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}[They will] meet with families of the victims, first responders and community leaders, they will comfort the families of the 10 people whose lives were senselessly taken in this horrific shooting, and they will express gratitude for the bravery of members of law enforcement and other first responders who took immediate action to try to protect and save lives.The federal food and drug administration (FDA) is set to announce action on baby formula imports as soon as this afternoon to ease a chronic nationwide shortage, Reuters reports.FDA commissioner Robert Califf told NBC News he does not expect the shortage of the critical baby product to last until the end of year, adding in a later appearance on CNN that he expects the situation to gradually improve in the coming weeks.He did not provide a preview of what the measures would be.Legislation introduced to the House on Monday seeks to ease restrictions on imports of formula from south America and Europe, and the surgeon general Vivek Murthy has just been on CNN saying that safety would be a priority:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The one thing the FDA will not compromise on in terms of these imports are the quality and safety of the products, and so they are setting up a process to be able to ascertain the quality of the ingredients, and the process in which these products are made to ensure that they’re safe.The White House said it was continuing talks with the major formula manufacturers to identify logistical hurdles and provide any transportation support that could help them and major retailers get formula to where it is needed, Reuters says. A historic moment is about to take place in the White House briefing room, where the newly appointed Karine Jean-Pierre is set to make her debut at the podium as the first Black press secretary.Jean-Pierre’s appointment was announced earlier this month after Joe Biden’s only previous press secretary to date, Jen Psaki, said she was standing down.Jean-Pierre, a political analyst, was Kamala Harris’s chief of staff during the vice-president’s presidential campaign in 2020 and served on Barack Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. She was also an adviser and spokesperson for MoveOn.org, a progressive political action committee.She is the first Black person and first out gay person in the role. We’ll bring you coverage as she speaks.Read more:Biden names Karine Jean-Pierre press secretary as Jen Psaki steps downRead moreFlorida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has revealed who he’s going to place in charge of the Disney government he moved to abolish over the company’s resistance to his “don’t say gay” bill: himself.At an event in Sanford, close to Disney’s Orlando theme park empire, on Monday, DeSantis laid out a new plan for the future of the company’s autonomous Reedy Creek development district, which was to have ceased to exist next summer.Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature quickly acceded to his wish to pass legislation abolishing Reedy Creek in a special session last month, but failed to properly look at the economics involved.Critics have pointed out that absorbing Reedy Creek into two local authorities per state law would likely land local taxpayers with an additional $1bn in debt burden, so DeSantis has had a rethink. Now, according to the Orlando Sentinel, instead of abolishing Reedy Creek, he says he wants the state government he heads to take it over, and is working on an alternative proposal for the legislature later this year.“I’d much rather have the state leading that effort than potentially having local government [in charge],” DeSantis said Monday, according to the Sentinel.“Disney will have to follow the same laws that every other company has to follow in the state of Florida. They will pay their share of taxes, and they will be responsible for paying the debts.”State will likely take over Disney World’s Reedy Creek, DeSantis says https://t.co/H7eBZTRX2S pic.twitter.com/DZOJnLJDJU— Orlando Sentinel (@orlandosentinel) May 16, 2022
      DeSantis, seen as a likely Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 election, has been feuding with Disney, the state’s largest private employer, over the “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.Disney, which is noted for the diversity of its workforce, known as cast members, angered DeSantis by halting political donations and pledging to help overturn the law.Vice-President Kamala Harris has landed in Abu Dhabi and disembarked Air Force Two, while on her visit leading the presidential delegation to the United Arab Emirates.The White House pool reports that Harris was greeted on the tarmac by a group of UAE and US officials. Among those already in the country from the US and greeting Veep were secretary of state Antony Blinken, defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Barbara Leaf, the national security council’s top Middle East and North Africa specialist. She is being accompanied on the trip also by climate envoy John Kerry and CIA director Bill Burns, among others.I am traveling to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates to express condolences on the passing of the President of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. I will emphasize the importance our partnership and the desire to further strengthen our ties.— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) May 15, 2022
      Harris’s official purpose on the visit is to offer condolences on the death of the president of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who suffered a stroke in 2014, and was 73.She is meeting with the new president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who has been regarded as the de facto leader of the country in recent years. Harris spoke out strongly yesterday against the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, where the suspect has published white supremacists screeds.She said: “Racially motivated hate crimes are harms against all of us.”Our hearts are broken and we grieve for the victims of the horrific act of gun violence in Buffalo. Doug and I are praying for those who lost loved ones. Racially-motivated hate crimes are harms against all of us. We must do everything to ensure that our communities are safe.— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) May 15, 2022
      She said more on the tarmac on her way to Abu Dhabi, including:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In our country we have to recognize that we may very well be experiencing an epidemic of hate towards so many Americans.
      That is wrong. It is taking on a level of violence in the case of what happened in Buffalo and we’ve seen it in other places in our country.
      And we all must speak out against it. I think we all have to know that this is something that we have to not only speak about, but we’ve got to do everything in our power as a nation to stop it, to stop it.
      There’s too much at stake. We should be working at it and thinking about it, not hating one another.”Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has tightened a citywide curfew for young people, a day after she restricted access by unaccompanied minors to downtown’s Millennium Park following the weekend shooting death of a 16-year-old boy near “The Bean” sculpture at the park, the Associated Press reports.The citywide weekend curfew for minors now will begin each night at 10pm, instead of the 11pm curfew in place since the 1990s, Lightfoot said.As a City, we must ensure that our young people—no matter what neighborhood they are from or are hanging out in—have safe spaces to congregate, and that in those spaces, they are peaceful and protected from harm. https://t.co/aVK2I8UA5k— Lori Lightfoot (@LoriLightfoot) May 16, 2022
      At Millennium Park, which is a popular stop for tourists and Chicago residents, minors will not be allowed in the park after 6pm Thursday through Sunday without an adult..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We need to make sure they are safe and importantly that our young people understand and respect basic community norms, respect for themselves, respect for each other, and we must ensure that every one of our residents and visitors no matter who they are or where they come from or how old they are are able to safely enjoy our public space.
      My interest is not rounding up young people and throwing them in the back of a wagon… [but] we’re not going to hesitate to take action.On Sunday, police announced that a 17-year-old boy who was taken into custody following Saturday evening’s shooting had been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and aggravated battery.Another teen, who was allegedly armed with a ghost gun, a weapon that does not have a serial number and can’t be traced, was arrested in connection to the shooting, police said.In total, 26 minors and five adults were arrested during the gathering in the park on Saturday evening.Hundreds of people were at the park earlier Saturday as part of demonstrations around the US against the recently leaked draft opinion that suggests the US Supreme Court is prepared to overturn the nationwide right to abortion afforded by the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v Wade.As @chicagosmayor has made clear.All youth are still welcome in Millennium Park.After 6pm on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, young people must be accompanied by a responsible adult.— Ryan Johnson (@Ryan_Johnson) May 16, 2022
      There’s been a stream of US politics news so far today and there will be more to come. The new White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, will hold her first briefing in the role today, expected at 2.30pm ET. Meanwhile, here’s where things stand:
      Joe Biden has paid tribute to the retired police officer, Aaron Salters Jr, 55, who was shot dead in Saturday’s Buffalo grocery store mass shooting that killed 10.
      The latest, massive, $40 billion US aid package for Ukraine could be passed by Congress this Wednesday. The bill has bipartisan support but was held up last week by libertarian Republican Rand Paul, of Kentucky.
      Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican congresswoman and member of the bipartisan panel investigating the insurrection on Jan 6 2021 by extremist Trump supporters, has accused Republican leadership of enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism”, following the tragedy in Buffalo. More