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    Mitch McConnell refuses to say whether he supports a US national abortion ban

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    Asked whether he supports a federal abortion ban, US Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that he is “not advocating anything at this level”.The Republican, during remarks in a new interview published by NBC’s Meet the Press, stopped short of saying whether or not he supported a 15-week federal ban on abortion with exceptions, but he instead portrayed the issue as “a practical matter” that was too divisive among federal lawmakers to result in a consensus among them.Alluding to comments from 2022 in which he said a national ban was “possible”, McConnell said, “I said it was possible. I didn’t say that was my view. I just said it was possible.”Meet the Press host Kristen Welker pressed McConnell to explain if he supported a federal ban, prompting the Kentucky senator to reply: “The reason I said it was possible is because the supreme court has put this back into the legislative arena. And we’re seeing it play out all across the country. And I think in the end, it’ll reflect the views of these individual states. But I said: ‘Possible’. I didn’t say that was my view.“I don’t think we’ll get 60 votes in the Senate for any kind of national legislation,” he continued, referring to the number of votes needed to end the debate on bills in the Senate and get a vote on them. “I think it’s a practical matter. It’s gonna be sorted out at the state level.”McConnell went on to reaffirm that he believes the issue of abortion access is one that should be decided by individual states after the US supreme court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the federal abortion rights once established by the Roe v Wade case.“I’m not advocating anything at this level,” he said. “It seems to me views about this issue at the state level vary depending where you are. And we get elected by states. And my members are smart enough to figure out how they want to deal with this very divisive issue based upon the people who actually send them here.”McConnell said he also does not think legislation seeking to federalize abortion rights would get the 60 votes it would need to be voted on in the Senate either.In 2022, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham proposed a federal ban that would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks. Following Graham’s proposal at the time, McConnell told reporters: “With regard to his bill, you’ll have to ask him about it. In terms of scheduling, I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMcConnell’s latest interview comes after the supreme court recently heard an abortion rights case centering on how states can decide when to permit emergency abortions. The case involves Idaho, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans and only permits doctors to perform an abortion to save the patient’s life. However, under federal law, doctors are required to stabilize patients’ health if either their life or limb is threatened.The conservative-majority US supreme court, which appeared divided as of Wednesday, is expected to rule on the case in June. More

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      Mitch McConnell: I will fight isolationist Republicans for rest of Senate term

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      Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.The Senate did pass a foreign aid package containing new support for Ukraine in its war with Russia but it remains stalled in the House, where a Trump supporter, Mike Johnson, is speaker.McConnell entered the Senate when Ronald Reagan was president and is an old-fashioned Republican foreign policy hawk. Under his leadership, however, 26 of 49 Republicans voted against the Senate foreign aid bill, which also contained support for Israel and Taiwan.McConnell said his fellow Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul, “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist”. Other loud voices for Trump’s “America first” approach include JD Vance, the first-term senator from Ohio reportedly under consideration to be named Trump’s running mate.Identifying “the most dangerous time for the free world since right [before] the Berlin Wall fell down”, McConnell told WHAS: “What’s made [Republican isolationism] more troublesome is, it seems to me, others are heading in that direction, making arguments that are easily refuted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’re not losing any of our troops – the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting. If the Russians take Ukraine, some Nato country would be next and then we will be right in the middle of it.”Asked if he had spoken to Trump – who he endorsed in March – McConnell said: “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the Senate.”Of the presidential election, McConnell said the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, had “got problems, too”.“Both these candidates don’t score very well with the public,” McConnell said. “One of them’s going to win. What am I going to do? I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn my job over to the next majority leader.” More

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      Mitch McConnell steps down, Donald Trump wins again – podcast

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      Sometimes there are weeks when the news just keeps on coming. This week, the longest-serving US senator, Mitch McConnell, announced he would step down, the US supreme court agreed to take up the claim that Donald Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Congress avoided another government shutdown and Donald Trump continued his winning streak in the Michigan primary.
      In some ways, the Republican party is the exact same one we saw get behind Trump in 2016 and then again in 2020, but there are many out there who see major events such as these as proof that it has changed – irreversibly.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the former Republican strategist and legendary political operative Mike Murphy about the state of the party he once served

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

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      The three Johns: Thune, Cornyn and Barrasso jostle to succeed McConnell

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      There are as many men named John or Jon in the US Senate as there are African Americans and Latinos combined. Three of them are now vying to become Republican leader in the chamber.Mitch McConnell’s announcement on Wednesday that he will step down in November opens the way for a likely contest between senators John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. It is unclear which other senators might jump into the race.The winner may well become majority leader next year, given the favourable map for Republicans in this election cycle. But they will also have to deal with either the return of Donald Trump to the White House or the ruins of another Republican presidential defeat.“I turned 82 last week,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, his voice breaking with emotion. “The end of my contributions are closer than I prefer. Father Time remains undefeated. I’m no longer the young man sitting in the back hoping colleagues remember my name. It’s time for the next generation of leadership.”At nearly 17 years, McConnell was the longest-serving Senate leader in US history, giving potential successors plenty of time to quietly manoeuvre into position for when this day finally came.Thune, 63, the second-ranking Senate Republican, said of McConnell: “He leaves really big shoes to fill … I kind of just want, today, to honour him.” Thune is respected as a powerful fundraiser and experienced political chess player. His bio on Twitter/X says: “Father. Grandfather. Husband. Sports Fan. Avid Outdoorsman. Hates Shoveling Snow.”He has a complicated relationship with Trump. He condemned the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol as “horrific”, pledged to “hold those responsible to account” and described the former president as “inexcusable”. Trump fired back by declaring the senator’s “political career over” and suggested that South Dakota governor Kristi Noem make a primary challenge in 2022. She decided to pass.But on Monday, with timing that now seems less than accidental, Thune endorsed Trump for president in 2024. He still has his work cut out to win the “Make America great again” base, however.Barrasso, 71, is the third-ranking Senate Republican as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and relatively popular with the Republican right. He is known by many as “Wyoming’s Doctor”, according to his official website, which notes that he spent 24 years as an orthopedic surgeon and was named Wyoming Physician of the Year.Barrasso endorsed Trump in January, appearing on the conservative Fox News network to tell Sean Hannity: “We need Donald Trump back in the White House.” He has also supported several “Make America great again” candidates for the Senate, including election denier Kari Lake in Arizona.Cornyn, 72, who was Republican whip from 2013 to 2019, joined with Democrats in 2022 to pass the bipartisan gun safety act, a move that brought a critical backlash in his home state. He not formally announced a leadership bid but gives every appearance of running. He told the Texas Tribune newspaper: “I think today is about Mitch McConnell but I’ve made no secret of my intentions.”Cornyn previously served as a district judge and member of the Texas supreme court, where he ruled with the majority to overturn a lower court ruling that had found Texas’s anti-sodomy laws to be unconstitutional. The former Texas attorney general has also argued that state governments ought to have the power to ban same-sex marriage.Trump endorsed Cornyn in 2019 when the senator was running for reelection but last year Cornyn expressed scepticism about Trump’s chances. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”However, as Trump dominated the primaries, Cornyn endorsed him last month, a week after his Texas colleague Ted Cruz. “To beat Biden, Republicans need to unite around a single candidate, and it’s clear that President Trump is Republican voters’ choice,” he said.There could be other contenders. Bob Good, chairman of the the hardline House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X: “Mitch McConnell stepping down provides a great opportunity for true conservative leadership in the Senate. Sen Rick Scott would make a great Republican leader.”Scott, who challenged McConnell for the leadership and failed after the 2022 midterm elections, told reporters: “I think there’s a better way to run the Senate. So we’ll see what happens in the future.”Perhaps the most honest comment of a day to remember on Capitol Hill came from Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Asked who he was backing for the leadership, he told CNN: “I wouldn’t announce it early anyway because I am hoping to get a lot of free dinners out of the Johns.” More

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      Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in US Senate

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      Mitch McConnell of Kentucky will step down as Republican leader in the US Senate at the end of this year, a move that will shake up US politics yet more in a tumultuous election cycle.McConnell is 82 and the longest-serving Senate leader in history. He is also a highly divisive figure in a bitterly divided America and the subject of fierce speculation about his health after recent scares in public.Aides said the decision to step aside, which McConnell announced on the Senate floor on Wednesday, was not related to his health.“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”From the White House, Joe Biden, who was a senator alongside McConnell for more than 20 years, said: “I’ve trusted him and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything. I’m sorry to hear he’s stepping down.”McConnell was concurrently the subject of reporting about when he will endorse Donald Trump for president in his expected rematch with Biden this year.McConnell and Trump have been at odds since 6 January 2021, when Trump incited supporters to attack Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win. McConnell voted to acquit the former president in his resulting impeachment trial, reasoning he had already left office, but excoriated him nonetheless. Trump responded with attacks on McConnell and racist invective about his wife, the former transportation secretary Elaine Chao.Nor did Trump leave the scene, as McConnell apparently thought he would. Withstanding 91 criminal charges, assorted civil defeats and attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, Trump stands on the verge of a third successive nomination.On Wednesday, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and House impeachment manager, told reporters: “I have a lot of feelings about Mitch McConnell from the second impeachment trial because I felt that he was appalled by what Donald Trump had done, he knew the truth about what Donald Trump had done, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to vote to convict along with seven other Republican colleagues who joined the Democrats.”“I understand [McConnell has] been in a tough situation with Donald Trump taking over his party and I think he’s tried to do what he can but he didn’t show the ultimate courage, which would have been to vote to convict him, to find enough other senators so that we wouldn’t be back in this nightmare again with Donald Trump.”Amid gathering warnings of the threat Trump poses to American democracy, all bar one of McConnell’s leadership team have endorsed Trump regardless. The holdout, Joni Ernst of Iowa, has indicated that she could still do so.“Believe me,” McConnell said in the Senate chamber, “I know the politics within my party at this particular moment in time. I have many faults. Misunderstanding politics is not one of them. That said, I believe more strongly than ever that America’s global leadership is essential to preserving the shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan discussed. As long as I am drawing breath on this earth, I will defend American exceptionalism.”McConnell entered the Senate in 1985, when Reagan was in the White House.“When I got here,” McConnell said, “I was just happy if anybody remembered my name. President Reagan called me Mitch O’Donnell. Close enough, I thought.”McConnell was elected to lead Senate Republicans in 2006. He was majority leader from 2015 to 2021, a momentous term in which he not only coped with Trump but secured three supreme court justices, tilting the court decisively right.He did so by upending Senate rules. First, McConnell refused even a hearing for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s nominee to replace the conservative Antonin Scalia, saying the switch would come too close to an election and voters should indicate the sort of justice they wanted. After Trump won the White House, McConnell filled the seat with the Catholic, corporately aligned Neil Gorsuch.McConnell next oversaw the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, an anti-Clinton operative and aide to George W Bush, to replace Anthony Kennedy. A staunch conservative replaced a frequent swing vote, even after a tempestuous confirmation.McConnell was memorably reported to have said he stood “stronger than mule piss” behind Kavanaugh, despite the claim by Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, that the nominee sexually assaulted her at a high-school party, an allegation Kavanaugh denied.Finally, at the very end of Trump’s term, McConnell abandoned the argument he used to block Garland and rammed the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett on to the court in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a hero to progressives.On Wednesday, Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic strategist, told followers they should “never forget” what McConnell “did to the supreme court and this country”.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said McConnell would “enjoy a tremendous legacy”, not only through his supreme court work, which led to epochal decisions including Dobbs v Jackson, which removed the federal right to abortion, and rulings on gun control and affirmative action every bit as divisive.“McConnell also contributed substantially to Trump’s nomination and confirmation of 54 ideologically conservative appeals court judges and the filling of all 179 appeals court judgeships at one point in Trump’s tenure,” Tobias said. “The last time that the courts had all of the active judges was in the mid-1980s.”McConnell said he still had “enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics. And I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they have become accustomed.”His desire to win back the majority – in a chamber skewed in Republicans’ favour – will fuel his final months as leader. A new leader will be elected in November to take over in January, he said.Leading contenders to succeed McConnell – and to attempt to match his ruthless politicking and powerful fundraising – include his No 2, John Thune of South Dakota, and two more leadership figures, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming. Last November, McConnell defeated a challenge from Rick Scott of Florida.Among Republican tributes, Thune said simply: “He leaves really big shoes to fill.”Among Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, said he and McConnell “rarely saw eye to eye … but I am very proud that we both came together in the last few years to lead the Senate forward at critical moments when our country needed us, like passing the Cares Act in the early days of the Covid pandemic, finishing our work to certify the election on January 6, and more recently working together to fund the fight for Ukraine”.Americans, it seems sure, will remember Addison Mitchell McConnell III in very different ways.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group founded by former Republican operatives, said McConnell would “go down in history as a spineless follower who cowered to a wannabe dictator clown. He chose the power of a tyrant over protecting democracy.” More

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      Mitch McConnell’s time in the Senate will be remembered as sad and cynical | Moira Donegan

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      For a moment, it looked like his face was going to fall off. At a press conference at the Capitol last July, Mitch McConnell, a senator for Kentucky since 1985 and the Senate Republican leader since 2007, abruptly stopped speaking, mid-sentence. He curled his lower lip inward, like a small child about to cry, and his eyes drifted to the side. He gripped the podium tightly and seemed to sway, as if uneasy on his feet. A few seconds later, he recovered, and began answering press questions again, without acknowledging the episode.A few months prior, McConnell, now 82, had suffered a fall, and had been concussed as a result. He’d been away from the Capitol for six weeks. Once, in 2020, he’d appeared with dramatic purple blisters on his hands and around his mouth, which were never explained. There had been rumors of other falls, but that’s all they were – rumors. Maybe, the thinking went, the episode at the press conference was just the after-effects of McConnell’s recent concussion. But then again, maybe not.That was the first time. The second time, McConnell was at another press conference, this one in Kentucky. On 30 August 2023, a reporter asked McConnell for his thoughts on running for re-election; if he were to run again and win an eighth term in 2026, he would be 90 by the end of that term. McConnell at first seemed not to hear the question. When the reporter repeated it, he chuckled, then went quiet. He gaze again veered to the side; his lips curled in.Aides rushed to McConnell and stood closely around him at the lectern, partially obscuring the view of the news cameras. His office later said that he had felt dizzy, and simply paused. A vaguely worded report from a doctor indicated that he was safe to continue working. But neurologists from Yale and UCLA each independently told Slate that they believed that in both incidents McConnell had been having seizures; another, from NYU, also diagnosed seizures in the New York Times.When McConnell announced on Wednesday that he will step down, the move was momentous, historic, a mile marker in the transformation of the Republican party that has played out before our eyes. But no one was probably surprised. It does not seem to have surprised Kentucky Republicans, either: faced with a Democratic governor in Andy Beshear, Republicans in the Kentucky statehouse worked last year to weaken the governor’s customary authority to fill Senate vacancies. It is a move that McConnell would likely have approved of.In one of his first political jobs, when he worked in Gerald Ford’s justice department in the 1970s, McConnell was known as a moderate. He supported abortion rights and labor unions; he had a reputation for a certain compromising pragmatism. As time went on, his pragmatism became less compromising – more hard-nosed and Machiavellian.His party moved steadily rightward, and so did he. By the time he became Senate Republican leader in the 2000s, he was presiding over an upper chamber that was losing its aura of deliberative dignity and becoming rowdier, more partisan, and more acrimonious, like the House. McConnell’s leadership accelerated that trend.He was willing to break legislative norms, alter Senate rules and undermine the spirit of representative democracy in order to get what he wanted. He focused particularly on the federal judiciary: throughout the Obama administration, McConnell organized a blockade of federal judge confirmations. Later, after the 2016 death of Antonin Scalia, he delayed filling the open supreme court seat for months, making a nakedly pretextual claim that Scalia’s death occurred too close to an election.When Donald Trump came into office, McConnell eliminated all remaining filibuster requirements for judicial confirmations in order to cram through Trump’s archconservative judicial nominees, rapidly filling the backlog of vacancies that he had deliberately created during the Obama years. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just weeks before the 2020 election, he ensured that Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed, brakes-screechingly-fast, in the final days before voters went to the polls to expel Trump.Before McConnell, judges nominated by Democratic presidents could conceivably be confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. After McConnell, Senate Republicans no longer acknowledged presidential appointment power, at least not in the instances when the president in question was a Democrat. The result has been a warped and extremist federal judiciary, one stuffed with rightwing partisans and scandal-courting careerists. It is a federal bench that we will have to live with for decades, and it is one crafted in McConnell’s image.For those of us who have watched people we love be robbed of their dignity by the ravages of old age, the visible sight of McConnell’s decline could give us, even in spite of ourselves, pangs of pity for the man. For those of us who grieve what McConnell has made our country into, his succumbing to mortality even from the heights of malignant power can feel like a certain kind of ironic justice, an Ozymandias-like contrast between how much he was able to hurt people and how weak he has been made.To me, there was something in McConnell’s visible decline that recalls the final years of his fellow conservative stalwarts Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who in their old age both reportedly descended into dementia so acute that they could no longer remember having been the leaders of their respective countries.What are we to do with these contrasts – between the contemptible evil of McConnell’s career, and the pitiable frailty of his age? Mostly, I think, we can direct our attention to those victimized by the impact of McConnell’s leadership – who do not have the comfort or the money to receive the quality of healthcare he did, or the opportunity to indulge their vanity by staying in power long after it was time to go.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Republicans’ topsy-turvy take on aid for Ukraine reveals party in thrall to Trump

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      Nearly a decade ago, as Russian troops entered the Crimean peninsula, congressional Republicans were in uproar, blaming Moscow’s land grab on what they claimed was a retreat from American leadership by then president Barack Obama. Loudest among the Republican critics was the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who assailed Obama as a “weak, indecisive leader”.In a pre-dawn vote on Tuesday, Graham joined the majority of Senate Republicans in opposing a foreign aid package that would rush wartime assistance to Ukraine as it approaches the second anniversary of Russia’s full invasion.It was a shocking – if not entirely surprising – turn for one of the chamber’s leading defense hawks and a steadfast Russia critic. But these days Graham has another distinction: he is one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, where the former president – and likely Republican nominee – has been whipping up opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.Just 22 Republican senators broke with Trump to approve the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies – yet another sign of how thoroughly the former president’s America First vision has supplanted the party’s consensus toward internationalism and interventionism.There has long been an isolationist strain among hardline Republicans who contend that investment in foreign entanglements risks bringing the US closer to war and diverts money away from domestic challenges. But then Trump came to power and sidelined the defense hawks, ushering in a dramatic shift in Republican sentiment toward America’s allies and adversaries.Nearly half of Republicans and right-leaning independents said the US was providing too much aid to Ukraine, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted late last year. This share rose sharply from the early stages of the war following Russia’s invasion in February 2022.In his statement on Monday night, Graham insisted that he still supported Ukraine but said unless and until lawmakers turn the $95bn military assistance package into a “loan instead of a grant”, he would oppose it.It echoed comments Trump made over the weekend, in an all-caps social media post addressed to the US Senate, in which he said foreign aid should be structured as a loan, not a “giveaway”. Later in a campaign speech, Trump rattled American allies in Europe when he claimed that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay enough to maintain the security alliance.But in Washington, most Republicans dismissed or downplayed the remark.“I was here when he was president. He didn’t undermine or destroy Nato,” senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who sponsored legislation to block a US president from unilaterally withdrawing from Nato, told reporters. The senator, who built a reputation as a defense hawk, voted against the military assistance measure on Tuesday.The bill, which includes $60bn for Ukraine, divided the Senate Republican leadership. From the Senate floor, Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican, delivered increasingly urgent pleas for his conference to rise to the occasion and support America’s allies, even after his plan to tie border security to foreign aid collapsed, torpedoed by Trump’s opposition.“This is about rebuilding the arsenal of democracy and demonstrating to our allies and adversaries alike that we’re serious about exercising American strength,” McConnell said. “American assistance with these efforts is not charity. It’s an investment in cold, hard US interests.”McConnell’s deputy, John Thune of South Dakota, voted for the measure, while John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No 3 Senate Republican, opposed it. Barrasso has endorsed Trump for president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a floor speech, Senator Rand Paul, who led the effort to delay the measure, accused McConnell, a fellow Republican from Kentucky, of collaborating with Democrats to “loot the Treasury”. He panned McConnell’s argument that bolstering Ukraine’s defense was critical to American national security as “ludicrous”.The Ohio senator JD Vance, another Trump loyalist, claimed the effort to replenish Ukraine’s war chest was a “plot” by the Republican establishment to “stop the election of Donald Trump”. Meanwhile, some arch-conservatives suggested it was time for McConnell to step down.Now the bill goes to the House, where the speaker, Mike Johnson, must tread carefully not to meet the same fate as his prematurely deposed predecessor. Johnson indicated that he was unlikely to bring the measure to the floor for a vote because it lacks border enforcement measures. But just last week he announced that he would refuse to bring a version of the bill that included a border security deal because the Trump-allied hardliners who hold outsized power over his thin majority were wary of handing Joe Biden anything that resembled a political victory.House Democrats and the remaining pro-Ukraine House Republicans are casting about behind the scenes for a solution. But there are many political and logistical hurdles to overcome before a majority bloc not accustomed to working together in the tribal House comes together to circumvent Johnson – and by extension Trump.“If it were to get to the floor, it would pass,” congressman Andy Biggs, a member of the hardline House Freedom caucus and a staunch opponent of the aid package, told a conservative radio host on Tuesday morning. “Let’s just be frank about that.”But until the bill reaches Biden’s desk, Biggs’s admission is cold comfort to American allies waiting for Congress to act. More

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      Mitt Romney: Trump’s call to stonewall Democrats on immigration ‘appalling’

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      Donald Trump’s directive to congressional Republicans to not agree to a deal with Democrats on immigration and border control is “appalling”, Mitt Romney said.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney, the Republican senator from Utah, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday.“And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame [Joe] Biden for it is … really appalling.”Having won in Iowa and New Hampshire and with only the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley still in the race, Trump is the clear favourite for the Republican presidential nomination to face Biden in November.His progress has not been impeded by 91 criminal charges, attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress and assorted civil trials.It was widely reported this week that Trump has sought to dynamite Senate talks for an immigration deal long linked to prospects of a new aid package for Ukraine.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, reportedly acknowledged that Trump’s opposition makes it highly unlikely immigration talks will succeed, given hardline Republicans’ hold on the House and its speaker, Mike Johnson, a far-right congressman from Louisiana.Romney is a former Massachusetts governor who became the Republican nominee for president in 2012 before winning a Senate seat in Utah in 2018.Though he flirted with working for Trump when he won the White House, Romney has since emerged as a constant opponent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe sole Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, for seeking political dirt in Ukraine, Romney was one of seven senators to find Trump guilty in his second such trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.On Thursday, Romney said: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’” More

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      US border policy deal within reach despite efforts by Trump to derail it, senators say

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      Congressional negotiators said a border deal was within reach on Thursday, despite efforts by Donald Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill to derail the talks.With the fate of US aid for Ukraine hanging in the balance, the outlook for border compromise had appeared grim following reports on Wednesday night that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was walking away from a compromise that he suggested could “undermine” Trump’s chances in a November general election against Joe Biden. But by Thursday afternoon, senators involved in the discussions were insisting that the opposite was true: an agreement was within reach and legislative text could be released in the coming days.Referring to Trump as the “nominee”, McConnell reported told Republicans in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday night that “politics on this have changed”, according to a report in Punchbowl News. With Trump as their likely standard bearer, he suggested that it would be unwise to move forward with a bipartisan immigration bill that could possibly neutralize one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” McConnell said, referring to Trump.“That’s like parallel universe shit,” Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina involved in the negotiations, fumed to reporters on Thursday. “That didn’t happen.”It would amount to a surprising about-face for McConnell, a strong supporter of sending aid to Ukraine and no friend of the former president, who has leveled racist broadsides against McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, and mercilessly disparaged the Republican leader as an “old crow”.Walking through the Capitol on Thursday, McConnell told Bloomberg News that the immigration talks were “ongoing”. Later he reportedly assured his confused conference that he was “fully onboard” with the negotiations, and brushed off reports that suggested otherwise.The proposal under discussion in Congress would have changed immigration policy to discourage migration. It would include major concessions from Democrats on immigration in exchange for Republican support on passing military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, a country whose cause the party’s far right has turned against.But the politics of a deal have only become more challenging as Trump consolidates support from Republican officials in what many view as his inevitable march toward the GOP nomination.On social media, Trump implored Mike Johnson, the arch-conservative House speaker, not to accept a deal “unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions and Millions of people”.Failure to strike a deal would have global implications, with the Pentagon warning that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines of its grinding war with Russia risk running out of ammunition. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said the “future of the war in Ukraine” and the “security of our western democracy” depend on Congress reaching an agreement.Biden had requested tens of billions of dollars from Congress to send aid to Ukraine and Israel as well as to allies in the Asia Pacific region. But the funding package has been stalled for months in Congress amid Republican demands for dramatic changes to border policy.View image in fullscreenSenate Republicans who support the border talks said the party should seize the opportunity to address the record rise of people arriving at the US southern border, a situation both parties and the White House have described as a crisis.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” the Utah senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who has pressed his party to approve military aid for Ukraine, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”He continued: “The reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved as opposed to saying: ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven in less contentious times, immigration remains one of the thorniest issues in American politics, and efforts to reform the nation’s outdated system have failed repeatedly. But as an unprecedented number of people fleeing violence, poverty and natural disasters seek refuge at the US-Mexico border, the issue has become top of mind for many Americans who overwhelmingly disapprove of the Biden administration’s handling of the matter.Trump has already made immigration a central issue of his campaign, outlining a draconian vision for his second term that includes mass raids, detentions camps and more funding to build his long-promised wall along the border with Mexico.Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have argued that a bipartisan deal would only serve to give Biden political cover without actually solving the problem. Others argue that the Senate plan was designed to force the hand of the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker is under pressure from the far-right flank of his party not to compromise on the issue.At a press conference earlier this week, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, denounced the proposal, the details of which have not yet been released, as a “stinking pile of crap” that “represents Senate Republican leadership waging war on House Republicans”.Cruz alleged that the negotiators involved cared only about supporting Ukraine and not fixing the issues at the southern border.If a deal falls apart, Schumer and Biden will be forced to look for alternative legislative paths to approving aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But with Republicans demanding border security measures in exchange for their votes, it remains far from certain that tying the aid to must-pass spending bills or bringing it to the floor as a standalone measure would garner the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.The world will likely know soon whether a deal is possible, the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the Democratic negotiators, told reporters on Thursday.“I think the Republican Congress is going to make a decision in the next 24 hours as to whether they actually want to get something done or whether they want to leave the border a mess for political reasons,” he said. More