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      Liz Cheney says ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel ‘enabled’ Trump’s ‘criminality’

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      The Republican National Committee chair turned NBC politics analyst Ronna McDaniel “enabled criminality and depravity” with her support for Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former congresswoman Liz Cheney said as controversy swirled over McDaniel’s new career in media.“Ronna facilitated Trump’s corrupt fake elector plot and his effort to pressure Michigan officials not to certify the legitimate election outcome,” Cheney, a Republican who was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee, wrote on social media.“She spread his lies and called January 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’. That’s not ‘taking one for the team’. It’s enabling criminality and depravity.”McDaniel – a member of the powerful Republican Romney family who reportedly dropped the name at Trump’s behest – became RNC chair in 2017.In February 2022, the RNC said Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the other anti-Trump Republican on the committee that investigated the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, were engaged in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”.Cheney lost her seat in Congress later that year. Kinzinger chose to retire.McDaniel was eased out of the RNC last month, to be replaced in part by Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law.McDaniel’s move to NBC was announced last week. On Sunday, she appeared on Meet the Press, the flagship politics show.Characterising her support for Trump’s election fraud lies as “taking one for the whole team”, she said she did “not think violence should be in our political discourse” and that Biden won “fair and square” – but still claimed it was “fair to say there were problems [with battleground state elections] in 2020”.A former Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, issued an on-air protest.“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” he told the current host, Kristin Welker, “because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination”.Monday brought more reports of staff discontent – and its open expression by two of the network’s biggest names.On Morning Joe, the MSNBC show that often sets the Washington agenda, co-host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said: “We’ve been inundated with calls this weekend, as have most people connected with this network, about NBC’s decision to hire” McDaniel.“We learned about the hiring when we read about it in the press on Friday. We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Miss McDaniel’s role in Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone.”Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski, said: “To be clear, we believe NBC news should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage.“But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier. And we hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on Morning Joe in her capacity as a paid contributor. Here’s why.”There followed a compilation of McDaniel’s comments about the 2020 election, which Brzezinski called “exhausting”.Disquiet was also reported over McDaniel reportedly being paid $300,000.“Across MSNBC they have been cutting contributors,” an unnamed host told Politico. “So everyone’s like, what the fuck? You found 300 for her?” More

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      Linda L Bean, LL Bean heiress who backed Trump, dies aged 82

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      Linda L Bean – a granddaughter of the famed outdoor retailer LL Bean who became an entrepreneur, philanthropist and Republican activist – has died. She was 82.Bean died on Saturday, her business manager, Veronika Carlson, confirmed in a written statement on Sunday. No cause was given.Her support for Donald Trump when he won the presidency in 2016 prompted some on the political left to call for a boycott of her family’s clothing company. But a statement from Carlson said Bean also “was known for her amazing work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit as well as her pride and dedication to her home state of Maine and LL Bean, the company her grandfather founded”.“Our hearts go out to her family and friends,” Carlson’s statement said.Bean’s grandfather, Leon Leonwood Bean, founded the company in 1912. It grew through its popular catalogue, offering durable products such as rubber-bottomed boots that came with a lifetime guarantee.Linda Bean served on the company’s board for nearly half a century. She also bought lobster dealerships, founded the Perfect Maine Lobster brand in 2007, and owned general stores, inns and vacation rentals on Maine’s central coast, where she lived in Port Clyde.She helped lead the effort to have Maine’s lobster industry certified as sustainable in 2013 by a London-based non-profit, the Marine Stewardship Council – a certification that was pulled in 2022 over concern about harm to whales.Her philanthropic efforts included supporting LifeFlight of Maine medical helicopters and the Maine Botanical Gardens at Boothbay, as well as promoting the life of the early 20th-century illustrator and artist NC Wyeth – the father of the famous painter Andrew Wyeth – and preserving the family’s properties.“Linda Bean loved the state of Maine. Its coastal communities, islands, and art, particularly by the Wyeths, had a special place in her heart,” the Republican US senator Susan Collins said in a written statement on Sunday. “Linda also was an astute businesswoman who promoted Maine lobster through her restaurants. Many a time while waiting for my plane in Portland, I had a cup of her famous lobster stew at her airport restaurant.”Bean was also a big donor to Republican causes and twice campaigned unsuccessfully for Congress, in 1988 and 1992. She ran as an opponent of abortion rights, gay rights legislation and gun control, and she believed in cutting taxes to spur the economy.She also supported efforts to repeal a Maine law outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation, and she urged the Department of Defense to overturn Obama-era policies allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military.In 2017, the Federal Election Commission said Bean made excessive contributions to a political action committee she bankrolled to support Trump’s presidential campaign. That prompted some liberal groups to call for a boycott of LL Bean – which she described as harassment by “a small kernel of hardcore bullies out on the left coast, west coast, in California, trying to control what we do, what we buy, what we sell in Maine”.Trump came to her defense – the Republican urged his supporters to buy the company’s products.“While her politics did not align with mine, Linda and I found common ground in our mutual love of our home state, of the coast of Maine and our working waterfronts, of Maine inspired art and of the perfect Maine lobster roll,” the state’s governor, Janet Mills, a Democrat, said in a written statement. “I enjoyed her company and admired her business acumen.”No information about survivors was immediately available. More

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      Ousted House speaker McCarthy says Johnson shouldn’t fear losing job: ‘I don’t think they could do it again’

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      The embattled speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, should not be “fearful” of the motion to remove him filed by the far-right extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene, said Kevin McCarthy – who last year became the first speaker ejected by his own party when another extremist, Matt Gaetz, moved against him in the same way.“Speaker Johnson is doing the very best job he can,” McCarthy told CBS on Sunday, two days after Greene filed her motion. “It’s a difficult situation, but the one [piece of] advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is: do not be fearful of a motion to vacate. I do not think they could do it again.”“They” – the Trumpist far-right of a far-right party – did it to McCarthy in October. Gaetz, from Florida, filed a motion to vacate the speakership – a move made possible by concessions won when the right put McCarthy through 15 votes to secure the speaker’s gavel nine months before.McCarthy, from California, told CBS Gaetz had been “trying to stop an ethics complaint”.“It was purely Matt coming to me trying [to get] me to do something illegal to stop the ethics committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became a speaker.”Gaetz was investigated by the House ethics committee over allegations of sexual misconduct also subject to investigation by the US Department of Justice. The congressman denies wrongdoing.Gaetz’s motion to eject McCarthy was supported by seven other Republicans and succeeded when Democrats declined to vote to keep the speaker in place.Johnson succeeded McCarthy after three Republican leadership figures – Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer – failed to gain sufficient support, in a more-than-three-week process that left the House leaderless.Johnson has now passed two spending bills with Democratic support, keeping the federal government open but committing what was McCarthy’s chief sin in the eyes of the right.Greene was not among the Republicans who moved against McCarthy but on Friday she moved against Johnson. Rightwing Republicans expressed frustration with Johnson but many also reproved Greene. Congress left Washington for a two-week recess without Greene bringing the motion up for a vote.Republicans have a two-vote majority, soon to dwindle to one. Democrats are seen as likely to support Johnson should Greene press ahead and try to remove him but also likely to extract concessions for doing so, most prominently including Johnson allowing a vote on new funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia.In line with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president seeking a second term in the White House, Johnson has refused to bring to the floor a Ukraine aid package which passed the Senate with bipartisan support.McCarthy, who left Congress last year, told CBS: “I don’t think the Democrats will go along with [Greene’s motion]. Focus on the country. Focus on the job you’re supposed to do, and actually do it fearlessly. Just move forward.“We watched what transpired the last time. You went three weeks without Congress being able to act. You can’t do anything if you don’t have a speaker. I think we’ve moved past that. We’ve got a lot of challenges.“Those are the issues the country is actually looking [at], on the economy and others. If we focus on the country and what the country desires, I think the personalities can solve their own problems.” More

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      Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together

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      Donald Trump’s getting the band back together. But this time they come with political baggage, conspiracy theories and, in some instances, criminal convictions.The former US president’s old acolytes are returning to the fold, eager to exert influence on his bid for the White House and have their say in a potential second administration. That poses a headache for his election campaign team, whose efforts to run a disciplined operation can be upended at any moment by the mercurial Trump.“Trump always wants to feel comfortable about the people who surround him and what better way to do that than to get the band back together?” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC. “We could look forward to the greatest hits ad nauseam.”If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Trump’s speaks volumes. There was uproar in 2022 when when the rapper Kanye West brought the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.Trump’s inner circle includes the far-right representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat turned rightwing media personality and outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine; and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who has pushed the “great replacement” theory and claimed that the 6 January 2021 insurrection was an inside job.Since Trump secured the Republican nomination for president earlier this month, several “Make America great again” (Maga) alumni have sought to regain his patronage or rejoin his team. It is a cast of characters with a chequered history.Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, could return as a campaign adviser later this year, according to the Washington Post newspaper. The job discussions have largely centred around the Republican national convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for Trump’s campaign, the report said.Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020, seven months after he was released to home confinement, sparing the Republican operative from serving the bulk of his seven-and-a-half-year prison term for federal tax evasion and bank fraud.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile the New York Times reported that Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, could also play a role at the convention. Lewandowski was ousted from a pro-Trump political action committee in 2021 after a major donor’s wife accused him of inappropriate behaviour.Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the MSNBC network: “Manafort coming back in is to set up control of the convention so that there are no slippages. You’ve got Lewandowski and others who are keen political operatives for Trump that will be out and about enforcing a strategy that will take no prisoners.“I don’t think people appreciate exactly what we’re going to be in for. This campaign is going to be very difficult on the country because these folks are all about one thing and one thing only: Donald Trump’s absolute return to power.”Meanwhile Roger Stone, a self-proclaimed dirty trickster who has been a friend and ally of Trump for 30 years, still speaks to him occasionally and was spotted at the Super Tuesday victory party at Mar-a-Lago. Stone was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and sentenced to 40 months in prison before the then president commuted the sentence.The rapper Kurt Jantz, professionally known as Forgiato Blow, was also at the Super Tuesday event. His Maga songs have been criticised for homophobia and glorifying violence and he has suffered social media bans. Blow said: “He’s the American dream. I supported Trump since 2015. I was one of the people early about it. At first it was just about Trump being a boss but he’s a rapper’s dream: beautiful wife, amazing mansion that we’re in right now. At the end of the day, that’s what everybody wants.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe rush of would-be influencers eager to whisper unsolicited advice into Trump’s ear is making life difficult for his otherwise unexpectedly professional campaign led by the longtime political operatives Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who find themselves attempting to play gatekeeper.Christina Bobb, a lawyer and former One America News Network (OAN) host who amplified Trump’s false claims of election fraud, faced questions over her competence at the campaign. She has been diverted to the RNC as senior counsel for “election integrity”.Trump reportedly wanted to hire the far-right activist Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe and former Republican candidate for Congress, but Wiles managed to block the move, according to the Axios website.Charlie Sykes, a conservative columnist and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “In a normal world, a presidential candidate would not get within a zip code of Laura Loomer. Now she’s showing up at Mar-a-Lago. And, of course, they can be relied upon to attack any other conservative that does not engage in the kind of rhetoric that Trump engages in.”But Trump continues to speak by phone to some without the knowledge of his campaign. Their indulgence is seen by critics as an ominous indicator that, should he return to the White House, Trump would make appointments based only on loyalty and Maga credentials, a break from his first term when figures such as the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and defence secretary, Jim Mattis, sought to rein him in.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: Trump has made it clear that he was disappointed and fed up with the Washington establishment, as he calls it, and so he’s got a group of henchmen and women who will do his bidding, who don’t feel bound by the law or being liked and respected outside their core.“These are the foot soldiers in Trump’s authoritarian army. They will do whatever it takes to win and we’ve seen it; this is not speculation. They put out the playbook in 2020 and we’d be foolish not to expect that playbook to be used in 2024.” More

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      The Exvangelicals review: fine study of faith under fire in the age of Trump

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      Sarah McCammon’s new book about “exvangelicals” like herself is a powerful memoir of her complicated journey away from Christian fundamentalism. Because she experienced it from the inside, she is also able to give the rest of us one of the best explanations I have ever read of how so many Americans became part of the non-reality-based cult that remains so stubbornly addicted to the insanities of Donald Trump.Brought up by rigorous evangelicals equally opposed to abortion and in favor of corporal punishment of their children, McCammon grew up inside a religious bubble supposedly designed to protect everyone within it from the evils of a secular world.Now 43 and national political correspondent for NPR, she was born at the dawn of the Reagan administration, which also marked the beginning of the alliance between religious extremism and the Republican party.The number of Americans who identified as evangelical or born again peaked in 2004, when it reached 30%. McCammon’s parents, though, came of age at the height of the Vietnam war and the sexual revolution. Like millions of others who felt unhinged by the chaos, they cast aside the “love ethos” of their youth, replacing “drug culture and anti-war protests” with “praise choruses” and the teachings of religious reactionaries such as James Dobson.The McCammons took Dobson’s teachings very seriously, especially his book Dare to Discipline, which taught them to spank babies as young as 15 months and to use “a small switch or belt” which should be seen by the child as an “object of love rather than an instrument of punishment”.As the historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez has explained, McCammon’s generation grew up during the creation of “a massive industry of self-reinforcing Christian media and organizations” and a media network that functioned “less as a traditional soul-saving enterprise and more as a means by which evangelicals … maintained their own identity.” Or as DL Mayfield, another writer born into an evangelical family, put it: “Being born into white evangelicalism as marketers were figuring out how to package and sell Christian nationalism … was really bad timing.”The literal interpretation of the Bible McCammon grew up with of course required the rejection of evolution. Everything, including “our understanding of basic scientific facts” had to be “subordinated to this vision of scripture”. By pulling their children out of public schools, parents could guarantee that “they could graduate from high school without ever taking a course on evolution or sex ed” and then move “seamlessly to a four-year Christian college with the same philosophy”.View image in fullscreenEvolution had been invented by scientists so they could reject God’s authority and construct “a world … where they were free to pursue their sinful lusts and selfish desires. What other motive could the there be” for dismissing the story of Adam and Eve?The real-world consequences of this indoctrination include a Republican party blithely unconcerned with the effects of global warming. As Jocelyn Howard, an exvangelical interviewed by McCammon, observes: “When you’re taught that science is basically a fairytale … then why would you care if the world is burning around us … The world around us doesn’t matter, because this is all going to burn like in Revelations anyway.”By distancing so many evangelicals from mainstream thought, their leaders created “a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories that can be nearly impossible to eradicate”. As Ed Stetzer, an evangelical pastor and executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center told FiveThirtyEight: “People of faith believe there is a divine plan – that there are forces of good and forces of evil … QAnon is a train that runs on the tracks that religion has already put in place.”Part of the time, McCammon manages to remember her youth with humor, particularly in a passage describing a discussion of the meaning of “oral sex” with her mother, inspired by the release of Ken Starr’s report about Bill Clinton’s interactions with Monica Lewinsky, an intern at the White House.“I think,” said the author’s mother, “if you have Jesus, you don’t need oral sex.”McCammon can’t remember how she responded but she has been “telling that story for decades when people ask me to describe my childhood”.The first cracks in her evangelical faith began when she spent a semester as a Senate page and befriended a fellow page who was a Muslim.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Do you believe that because I’m Muslim I’m going to hell?” he asked.“Suddenly,” McCammon writes, “everything that felt wrong about the belief system I had been told to promote crystalized in my mind. All she could muster in response to his question was, ‘I don’t know. I think it’s between you and god.’”By the time she graduated from college, McCammon “was exhausted from trying to get my brain to conform to the contours of the supposed truth I‘d been taught. Why did certain types of knowledge seem forbidden, and why were only our experts to be trusted?”Her solution was to choose a career in journalism: “I craved a space to ask questions about the way the world really was, and the freedom to take in new sources of information. Journalism required that: it honored the process of seeking truth and demanded the consideration of multiple points of view.”This book is an elegant testament to how well McCammon has learned her craft. The hopeful message she leaves us with is that her own journey is being replicated by millions of others in her generation, many finally convinced to abandon their faith because of the racism and xenophobia embraced by evangelicals’ newest and most unlikely savior: Trump.Since 2006, evangelical Protestants have experienced “the most precipitous drop in affiliation” among Americans, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, shrinking from 23% in 2006 to 14% in 2020. In November, we will learn if that is enough to keep democracy alive.
      The Exvangelicals is published in the US by St Martin’s Press More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene files motion to remove House speaker Mike Johnson

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      The far-right Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor-Greene filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker on Friday but did not pull the trigger on a move that would probably pitch Congress into a repeat of chaos seen last October, when the right ejected Kevin McCarthy.Speaking after Johnson relied on Democratic votes to pass a $1.2tn spending bill and avoid a government shutdown, Greene said her motion was meant as “more of a warning than a pink slip” because she did not want to “throw the House into chaos”.Claiming to be a Republican “member in good standing”, Greene said her motion was “filed, but it’s not voted on. It only gets voted on [when] I call it to the floor for a vote.”Speaking to a scrum of reporters on the Capitol steps, she said: “I’m not saying that it won’t happen in two weeks or it won’t happen in a month or who knows when. But I am saying the clock has started. It’s time for our conference to choose a new speaker.”Congress goes into recess on Friday and returns in two weeks’ time.Greene said she had not discussed her motion with the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. But even without Trump’s involvement, it was the latest dramatic expression of House Republicans’ inability to govern themselves.McCarthy became speaker in January 2023, but only after 15 rounds of voting as the pro-Trump far right hauled him over the coals.In October, another far-right Republican, Matt Gaetz of Florida, used a concession won in that January battle by introducing a motion to vacate, ultimately gaining the support of seven colleagues (not including Greene) and achieving the first ever ejection of a speaker by his or her own party.The deeply religious Johnson succeeded McCarthy as a candidate acceptable to the far right, but only after more than three weeks as three members of Republican leadership – Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer – failed to gain sufficient support.Greene said on Friday there was “no time limit” on her new motion to vacate.“It doesn’t have to be forced, and throw the House into chaos. I don’t want to put any of our members in a difficult place like we were for three and a half weeks [in October]. We’re going to continue our committee work. We’re going to continue our investigations.”Greene has played a prominent role in one such investigation, an oversight committee attempt to impeach Joe Biden over alleged corruption involving his son – an effort that has descended into political farce.Johnson, meanwhile, must operate with a tiny majority – set to decrease yet further after Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin said he would quit in April – and a right wing as restive as ever. Friday’s shutdown-averting spending bill was the second the speaker has passed with Democratic support.Gaetz moved against McCarthy over the same issue but said on Friday he did not support Greene’s motion to remove Johnson.“If we vacated this speaker, we’d end up with a Democrat,” Gaetz said. “When I vacated the last one, I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with the Democrat speaker. And I was right. I couldn’t make that promise again.”Other rightwingers criticised Greene. Clay Higgins, from Louisiana, said: “I consider Marjorie Taylor Greene to be my friend. She’s still my friend. But she just made a big mistake … To think that one of our Republican colleagues would call for [Johnson’s] ouster right now … it’s abhorrent to me and I oppose it. I stand with Mike Johnson.”McCarthy lost the speaker’s gavel because Democrats chose not to come to his aid. Johnson appears more likely to keep Democrats onside.Tom Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from New York, told CNN: “It’s absurd [Johnson is] getting kicked for doing the right thing, keeping the government open. It has two-thirds support of the Congress and the idea that he would be kicked out by these jokers is absurd.”But Democratic support may come with a price. In alignment with Trump, Johnson has blocked aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia. On Friday, an unnamed Democrat told Politico: “If we get some Ukraine aid package, that might be part of a deal.”Raj Shah, a former Trump White House aide and Fox News executive now Johnson’s spokesperson, said: “Speaker Johnson always listens to the concerns of members, but is focused on governing.”Greene said Republican voters did not “want to see a Republican speaker that’s held in place by Democrats”. Asked if she thought a speakership fight was a good idea in an election year, she said: “Absolutely … because, dammit, I want to win that House, I want to win the White House, I want to win the Senate and I want to restore this country back to greatness again.”Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, told reporters of Greene’s motion: “It’s a joke, she is an embarrassment. We will have a conversation about it soon.” More

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      Republican House majority goes from bad to worse as another lawmaker announces early leave – as it happened

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      Republican congressman Mike Gallagher announced he will resign his seat on 19 April, further winnowing down the GOP’s already slim control of the House.Gallagher had earlier this year announced plans not to seek re-election, but now says he will leave his seat early, dropping the Republicans’ slim majority to 217 seats, with Democrats holding 213 seats. That means Republicans can only lose one member on votes that Democrats oppose unanimously.“After conversations with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position as a member of the House of Representatives for Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District, effective April 19, 2024,” Gallagher said in a surprise statement.He noted that he “worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline” and “my office will continue to operate and provide constituent services to the Eighth District for the remainder of the term.”The good news for Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is that his chamber managed to pass legislation to prevent a partial government shutdown that is set to begin at midnight. The bad news is that the bill was supported by more Democrats than Republicans, and rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene subsequently introduced a motion to kick him out of the speaker’s chair. Greene took issue with his approach to government spending, and specifically his collaboration with Democrats, but noted she viewed the motion as “a warning”, and did not say when she would call it up for a vote. House lawmakers are now heading out for a two-week recess, and the saga will likely continue after they return. As for the government shutdown threat, it’s now up to the Democratic-led Senate to pass the House’s bill, which Joe Biden says he will sign. They are expected to do that later today.Here’s what else happened today:
      Republican congressman Mike Gallagher announced he would leave Congress next month, dropping the GOP’s House majority down to just one seat.
      At least two Democrats reportedly said they would not be on board with removing Johnson as speaker.
      Russia and China vetoed an attempt by the United States to win UN security council approval of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
      Donald Trump has reportedly unveiled a new funding strategy that will see donations channeled to a group that is paying his substantial legal bills.
      Trump’s social media firm is going public after a shareholder voter, meaning the ex-president will soon be $3b richer.
      Georgia Republican congressman Mike Collins won a reputation for tweeting his way through the chaotic weeks following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker in October, and has maintained his sense of humor as the GOP majority shrinks to one seat:That is, of course, a reference to the troubles Boeing has had with some of its planes lately.Meanwhile, Politico reports that soon-to-be-former congressman Mike Gallagher was recently sending his fellow lawmakers a certain book and cryptic note, both of which make a lot more sense now:Meanwhile, the government funding saga is far from over. The Senate must now approve the bill that the House passed earlier today. Politico reports that the chamber’s Democratic leader has invoked cloture on the measure, but that would only allow a vote on Sunday, and the government would partially shutdown at midnight tonight:In a speech on the Senate floor earlier today before the House passed the bill Schumer made clear he does not want that to happen:
      Democrats and Republicans have about thirteen hours to work together to make sure the government stays open. That’s not going to be easy. We will have to work together – and avoid unnecessary delays.
      This morning, the House will move first on the funding package, and as soon as they send us a bill, the Senate will spring into action. To my colleagues on both sides: let’s finish the job today. Let’s avoid even a weekend shutdown. Let’s finish the job of funding the government for the remainder of the fiscal year.
      There is no reason to delay. There is no reason to drag out this process. If Senators cooperate on a time agreement, if we prioritize working together – just as we did two weeks ago – I am optimistic we can succeed.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre offered well wishes to the Princess of Wales following her announcement that she has been diagnosed with cancer:We have a live blog covering that breaking story out of the UK, and you can read it here:Recall that Mike Johnson became House speaker after eight Republicans joined with every House Democrat to vote Kevin McCarthy out of the job.If Marjorie Taylor Greene could assemble a line up like that again, Johnson’s speakership would be at real risk. But CNN reports that at least two Democrats aren’t interested in playing along, perhaps signaling a broader shift in sentiment among the caucus.Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger indicates that if Johnson allowed a vote on aid to Israel and Ukraine, she’d be in favor of keeping him around:New York’s Tom Suozzi, who was not around in October, when McCarthy was booted, said he wouldn’t support the effort either:Asked at the ongoing White House press briefing about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to remove Mike Johnson as speaker of the House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre managed to simultaneously say nothing, and everything.“We’re just not going to speak to what’s going on with the leadership,” she said, at the tail end of a lengthy reply that amounted to a recitation of Joe Biden’s accomplishments.But Jean-Pierre could not resist making light of the latest troubles Republicans are having hanging on to Congress’s lower chamber.“I guess … get your popcorn, sit tight,” she said, as she concluded her answer.The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of retaining classified documents disclosed that she had granted some requests by special counsel prosecutors to withhold discovery materials from the former president – but had reserved making a decision on others.In an eight-page order, US district judge Aileen Cannon wrote that she had allowed special counsel Jack Smith to substitute summaries or make redactions to two categories of classified documents that Trump was entitled to have access to through the discovery process.Cannon also disclosed that she had allowed prosecutors to entirely withhold a third category of documents neither “helpful nor relevant” to Trump’s defense theories – the legal standard to withhold discovery in national security cases – and reserved ruling on a fourth category of documents.Trump was indicted last year for retaining national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, under the Espionage Act, meaning the case is proceeding to trial under the complicated and sequential steps laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.To protect against unnecessary disclosure of national security cases, under section 4 of Cipa, prosecutors can request to withhold certain classified documents from defendants.Cannon granted prosecutors’ requests to give Trump summaries of category 3 documents (classified documents related to a potential trial witness) and to keep away from Trump all documents in category 4 (classified documents which Cannon did not identify but wrote were not helpful or relevant to Trump).Cannon disclosed in her order that she had reserved ruling on some of the documents because they were tied up in a separate motion filed by Trump requesting additional discovery materials about bias within the US intelligence community that would help his defense.The concession was significant because it indicated Cannon had still not decided what to do with Trump’s sweeping request for more discovery, which Trump’s lawyers filed more than two months ago, and appears to increasingly be contributing to major delays in the case.Republican congressman Mike Gallagher announced he will resign his seat on 19 April, further winnowing down the GOP’s already slim control of the House.Gallagher had earlier this year announced plans not to seek re-election, but now says he will leave his seat early, dropping the Republicans’ slim majority to 217 seats, with Democrats holding 213 seats. That means Republicans can only lose one member on votes that Democrats oppose unanimously.“After conversations with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position as a member of the House of Representatives for Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District, effective April 19, 2024,” Gallagher said in a surprise statement.He noted that he “worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline” and “my office will continue to operate and provide constituent services to the Eighth District for the remainder of the term.”In the latest twist in the power struggle between the right-wing leaders of Texas and the federal government, a group of migrants got into a struggle with Texas National Guard troops under the control of the governor yesterday – while they were waiting to turn themselves in to federal border patrol agents to request asylum.In footage that dominated morning news TV in the US on Friday, ABC reported that border agents said that troops under state control were trying to corral and apprehend a group of migrants stuck behind one of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s razor wire fences in El Paso, which was installed as part of Abbott’s controversial Operation Lone Star program.The people were on US soil and the fence was on public land, ABC reported.Speaking to the El Paso Times, migrants said that Texas national guard soldiers were forcefully pushing them back behind the fencing in US territory. In a caption accompanying a video of the border unrest, Mexican journalist J Omar Ornelas wrote, “Hundreds of migrants were pushed south of the concertina wire in the middle of the night by Texas National Guard. Hours later they again breached the concertina and made a rush for the border wall in El Paso, Texas.”During the unrest, some migrants appeared to raise their hands in surrender while others ran to the federal border wall. Customs and Border Patrol later said the group had been moved elsewhere for processing.Earlier this week, Texas was thrust into a state of confusion after an appeals court blocked a controversial new state law that would allow local police to arrest anyone that they believe entered the US illegally – a jurisdiction typically granted to federal immigration authorities, not local police. The freeze came just hours after the US supreme court allowed the law to go into effect.The good news for Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is that his chamber managed to pass legislation to prevent a partial government shutdown that is set to begin at midnight. The bad news is that the bill was supported by more Democrats than Republicans, and rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene subsequently introduced a motion to kick him out of the speaker’s chair. Greene took issue with his approach to government spending, and specifically his collaboration with Democrats, but noted she viewed the motion as “a warning”, and did not say when she would call it up for a vote. House lawmakers are now heading out for a two-week recess, and the saga will likely continue after they return. As for the government shutdown threat, it’s now up to the Democratic-led Senate to pass the House’s bill, which Joe Biden says he will sign. They are expected to do that later today.Here’s what else is going on:
      Russia and China vetoed an attempt by the United States to win UN security council approval of a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
      Donald Trump has reportedly unveiled a new funding strategy that will see donations channeled to a group that is paying his substantial legal bills.
      Trump’s social media firm is going public after a shareholder voter, meaning the ex-president will soon be $3b richer.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has issued an upbeat statement on the government funding measure, saying it enacted some conservative policies and was the best-case scenario for the GOP, considering Democrats control the Senate and White House.“House Republicans achieved conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts while significantly strengthening national defense. The process was also an important step in breaking the omnibus muscle memory and represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government,” the speaker said.He did not comment on the motion to remove him as the House’s leader, which was filed by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene.Marjorie Taylor Greene has tweeted an image of her resolution to remove fellow Republican Mike Johnson as speaker:It does not appear to be privileged, meaning it does not have to be voted on before lawmakers depart for their two-week recess, which they are scheduled to do later today.Asked earlier about her timeline for the removal push, Greene said the motion is “filed but it’s not voted on. It only gets voted on until I call it to the floor for a vote.”She did not say when she will do that.Marjorie Taylor Greene listed a ream of grievances against Mike Johnson, much of which centered on his approach to funding the government.She noted that, since become speaker in late October, he allowed votes on short-term measures to keep the government open, and gave lawmakers less than 72 hours to consider the just-passed legislation to prevent a partial shutdown that would have begun at midnight.Greene did not like any of that:
      This is a betrayal of the American people. This is a betrayal of Republican voters. And the bill that we were forced to vote on forced Republicans to choose between funding to pay our soldiers and, in doing so, funding late-term abortion. This bill was basically a dream and a wish list for Democrats and for the White House. It was completely led by Chuck Schumer, not our Republican speaker of the House, not our conference, and we weren’t even allowed to put amendments to the floor to have a chance to make changes to the bill.
      Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol, rightwing Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene confirmed she has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker, but described it as “a warning” rather than an attempt to boot him.The Georgia lawmaker cited Johnson’s approach to funding the government, and criticized him for working with Democrats.“I filed a motion to vacate today, but it’s more of a warning and a pink slip,” she said. “I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the House in chaos, but this is basically a warning and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the house that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.”We have yet to hear rightwing Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene explain why she wants to remove Mike Johnson as speaker of the House.But it may have something to do with his cooperation with Democrats to prevent a partial government shutdown. More Democrats than Republicans supported the just-passed $1.2tn funding measure that authorizes spending in federal departments where it has not already been approved:Rightwing lawmakers have made clear that Republican leadership should not work with Democrats. In fact, it was a similar scenario that led to Kevin McCarthy’s removal as House speaker in October. He struck a deal with the Democratic minority to prevent a shutdown, and days later was out of the job:The House has approved a $1.2tn government funding bill that will prevent a partial shutdown, with 286 votes in favor against 134 opposed.The Senate is expected to vote on the bill later today, and Joe Biden has said he will sign it. More

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      Republican House majority to shrink as Mike Gallagher steps down

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      The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives is set to dwindle further with the early exit of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party.A former US marine who twice deployed to Iraq, Gallagher, 40, is a relatively moderate voice in party at the mercy of the far right.He had already announced his decision to retire but in a statement on Friday he said: “After conversations with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position … effective 19 April. I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline.”The announcement came shortly after Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, an extremist even in a party held hostage by its far right, responded to the passage of a Democrat-backed funding bill by filing a motion to remove Mike Johnson, the speaker from Louisiana.Allies said Gallagher was pushed to the exit by such behaviour, according to Politico, particularly the right’s ejection of Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last October.Friday was also the last day in Congress for Ken Buck of Colorado, a rightwinger nonetheless disillusioned by intra-party chaos who also chose to bring forward his intended retirement.After Buck’s departure, Republicans will control the House 218-213. Once Gallagher is gone, Johnson will only be able to afford to lose one vote if Democrats hold together.Under Wisconsin elections law, Gallagher’s seat will not be contested until November.On Friday, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, told reporters: “It’s tough, but it’s tough with a five-seat majority, it’s tough with a two-seat majority, one is going to be the same. We all have to work together. We’re all going to have to unite if we’re going get some things done.”In a caucus dominated from without by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, that seems highly unlikely.Last month, Gallagher was one of three House Republicans who voted against the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, an effort widely seen not to meet the threshold for charges of high crimes and misdemeanours but meant to boost Republican messaging on immigration in an election year.Mayorkas will almost certainly escape conviction and removal by the Democratic-held Senate.Soon after voting against the Mayorkas impeachment, Gallagher announced his plan to retire.“Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old,” he said. “And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election.”On Friday, Gallagher cited his work chairing a select committee on China and said “four terms serving north-east Wisconsin in Congress has been the honour of a lifetime and strengthened my conviction that America is the greatest country in the history of the world”. More