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      Speaker Johnson says decision coming ‘very soon’ on Biden impeachment – as it happened

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      The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden.His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden.Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea.The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today:The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to the GOP pressing on. Republicans have been showing off evidence they say proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says Biden merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night.Here’s what else happened:
      The White House said Biden would veto the House GOP’s proposal to send Israel security assistances while slashing funding to the IRS, and Senate leader Chuck Schumer said he would not bring the bill up for a vote anyway.
      Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process.
      Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection.
      Indiana’s supreme court found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made about an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old rape survivor.
      Indiana’s supreme court has found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made to Fox News about a doctor in the state who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had traveled from Ohio, the Indianapolis Star reports.The incident was one of the first high-profile examples of the fallout from the supreme court decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to ban abortion entirely. In Ohio, a state law immediately went into effect that cut off access to the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, but it was later halted by a court ruling.The Indiana supreme court took issue with Rokita’s description of Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist, as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor – with a history of failing to report” in a Fox News interview in July 2022. In September, the supreme court’s disciplinary commission filed charges against Rokita, saying he violated professional conduct rules, and three of the state’s five supreme court justices agreed in today’s ruling. The court has ordered that Rokita receive a public reprimand and pay a $250 fine, though the two justices who dissented said the punishment was too lenient.Ohio voters will next week decide on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution. Here’s the latest on that, from the Guardian’s Carter Sherman:The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, now says the House GOP’s Israel aid proposal will not be put up for a vote in his chamber:That means that even if the House approves the bill, the Senate will not send it to Joe Biden’s desk – whose administration said he will veto it anyway.Joe Biden would veto a proposal by House Republicans to send military aid to Israel while slashing funding for the IRS tax authority, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at today’s briefing.“The president would veto an only Israel bill. I think we’ve made that clear,” Kirby said.Biden last month requested a $106b security measure to help Israel respond to Hamas’s terrorist attack, shore up Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s invasion and improve border security. Led by speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans responded by offering to approve Israeli security assistance, while considering funding for Ukraine and the southern border at a later date. Johnson has billed cutting the IRS as a way to pay for the cost of the foreign assistance, but an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office yesterday found it would actually cost the government money because it would lower tax revenues.The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that a call by Joe Biden on Wednesday evening for a pause in fire by both Israel and Hamas in Gaza “does not mean we are calling for a general ceasefire”.At the daily press briefing from the west wing, Kirby asked rhetorically whether the White House thought a strategic and temporary “pause by both sides” was a good idea to help facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the evacuation of foreign citizens and hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel on 7 October. Kirby answered himself: “You betcha we do.”He went on to explain why the US is willing to accept Qatar’s assistance with the passage of Americans and hostages out of Gaza, despite the small Arab country’s harboring of Hamas members, including the leader Ismail Haniyeh. Reporters questioned Kirby about this at the daily briefing at the White House moments ago.“Qatar has lines of communication with Hamas that almost no-one else has,” Kirby said.A reporter asked why the US was not asking Qatar to hand over the Hamas chief. Kirby said the US was busy working with Qatar on evacuations “and we are also helping Israel go after Hamas”.Kirby also said the US supports pauses in hostilities, not just a single pause. This is a point he’s made before.Kirby said the White House “has not seen evidence that Hezbollah is ready to go full force”. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group, said it had attacked 19 positions in Israel on Thursday evening in the latest escalation on Israel’s northern border. The Guardian’s report is here.The Guardian’s global live blog with all the details on the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war is here.Antony Blinken has urged Russia to hold to its commitment not to resume nuclear weapons testing, Reuters reports.The secretary of state said the US is deeply concerned by Moscow’s planned action to withdraw its ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT).“Unfortunately, it represents a significant step in the wrong direction,” Blinken said in a statement released by the state department.The latest development happened this last month, when, the Guardian’s Julian Borger reported, a senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow will revoke its ratification of the CTBT, in a move Washington denounced as jeopardising the “global norm” against nuclear test blasts.Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the international nuclear agencies in Vienna, was speaking after Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow might resuming testing for the first time in 33 years, signalling another downward turn in relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.Ulyanov said on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Russia plans to revoke ratification (which took place in the year 2000) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.“The aim is to be on equal footing with the #US who signed the Treaty, but didn’t ratify it. Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.”The US signed the CTBT in 1996 but the Senate did not ratify the treaty. Successive US administrations however have observed a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons.Any Russian nuclear test would be the first since 1990, the last conducted by the Soviet Union. Renewed testing by a nuclear superpower would undo one of the principal advances in non-proliferation since the cold war.Since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and other Russian officials have frequently drawn attention to the country’s nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, in an attempt to deter other countries from helping Ukraine resist the invasion.The US has been able to get 74 Americans with dual citizenship out of Gaza, Joe Biden said at the White House a little earlier, one day after evacuees began crossing into Egypt, Reuters reported.Meanwhile the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, talked to reporters before leaving Washington for a flight to Israel and said the US is determined to prevent escalation of the war there on all fronts, including southern Lebanon, the West Bank or elsewhere in the region.He will be talking to the Israeli government “and partners” in the region, he said.You can follow more details on all the developments in the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war in our global live blog, here.This post was updated at 2.56pm ET to reflect a clarifying detail in a later wire piece by Reuters to specify that the 74 dual citizens Biden referred to were Americans with dual citizenship.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to them pressing on. The GOP has been showing off evidence it says proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says the president merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night.Here’s what else is going on:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process.
      Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection.
      All signs point to the House GOP continuing its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.Yesterday, the oversight committee, one of three bodies tasked with handling the effort, published an infographic purporting to show how the president received money from a Chinese company that was funneled through his family members:They even have an image of the check:The White House replied by saying that the money was a loan repayment to Biden from his brother, James, and it all took place in the period after Biden concluded his term as vice-president, and before he returned to the White House in 2021.As Ian Sams, the Biden administration spokesman handling the GOP’s inquiries, put it:This post has been corrected to say Biden received the loan repayment from his brother James.The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden.His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden.Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea.The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today: More

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      Bannon used Confederate code words to describe Trump speech, book says

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      The far-right Donald Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon used Confederate code words linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to describe a speech by the former US president before his historic first criminal indictment, a new book says.On 6 March this year, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney then widely expected to bring charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby making Trump the first former president ever criminally indicted.Trump told his audience: “I am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”In a forthcoming book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, writes: “When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his ‘Come Retribution’ speech.“What I didn’t realise was that ‘Come Retribution’, according to some civil war historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage – and eventually assassinate – President Abraham Lincoln.”Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. The president died the following day.Karl is the author of two bestsellers – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – about Trump’s rise to the presidency, time in the White House and defeat by Joe Biden.In his third Trump book, excerpted in the Atlantic on Thursday, Karl quotes from a 1988 book, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and Assassination of Lincoln.“The use of the key phrase ‘Come Retribution’ suggests that the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south,” the authors write. “Bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list.”Bannon, Karl writes, “actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech.“Trump’s speech was not an overt call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success ‘is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever,’ Trump said. ‘This is the turning point.’”In Karl’s estimation, the “Come Retribution” speech “was a turning point for Trump’s campaign” for re-election.Trump began his 2024 campaign sluggishly but then surged to huge leads over his Republican party rivals in national and key-state polling, despite a charge sheet now totaling 91 criminal counts and two civil trials, one over his business practices and one concerning a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarl writes: “The [federal] trial date for the charge of interfering in the 2020 election has been set for 4 March [2024]; for the hush-money case, it’s 25 March; for the classified-documents case, it’s 20 May.“As election day approaches and [Trump] faces down these many days in court, he will be waging a campaign of vengeance and martyrdom. He will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms – ‘the final battle’ – knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House. Or he can lose and go to prison.”Bannon is quoted as saying: “Trump’s on offense and talking about real things. The ‘Come Retribution’ speech had 10 or 12 major policies.”But, Karl writes, “Bannon knew that the speech wasn’t about policies in a traditional sense. Trump spoke about whom he would target once he returned to power.“‘We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,’ Trump said. ‘We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House.“‘And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.’” More

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      Trump gloats over retirement of Republican who attacked election lie

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      Donald Trump welcomed the news that Ken Buck, a prominent conservative who criticized his party for questioning the validity of Joe Biden’s election win, will quit Congress at the next election, crowing: “Good news for the country!”Buck, from Colorado, announced his retirement on MSNBC on Wednesday and said he was “disappointed that the Republican party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rely on the January 6 narrative and political prisoners from January 6 and other things”.In the wake of the 2020 election many expected Republicans to move past Trump, but subsequently – and despite multiple indictments – Trump has in fact solidified his grip on the party and is now the overwhelming favorite to be its 2024 presidential nominee. The departure of figures like Buck only makes Trump’s control more complete.Trump, the originator and chief perpetuator of the election fraud lie, which he used to incite the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, used his Truth Social platform to call Buck “a weak and ineffective Super RINO if there ever was one”, using the acronym for “Republican in name only”.Buck, 64 and a former federal prosecutor, is a stringent conservative who has nonetheless emerged as a Trump critic, as the former US president faces 91 criminal charges (including state and federal election subversion) and civil trials.In August, Buck called the Georgia electoral subversion case against Trump, under racketeering law, “a nuclear bomb where a bullet would have been appropriate”.Buck also made those remarks to MSNBC, which Trump has long called “MSDNC”, a reference to the Democratic National Committee and the network’s liberal stance.On Wednesday, Trump said Buck “knew long ago he could never win against MAGA [Trump’s campaign slogan, ‘Make America great again’], so now he is … auditioning for a job at Fake News CNN, MSDNC, or some other country-destroying leftwing outlet.”In his August remarks, Buck said his Colorado constituents were split over Trump, many believing the former president was “being treated unfairly”.In Congress, he said, it was “difficult” being a Republican when “the news is constantly about Donald Trump and these indictments and his actions during a time of the election and until and after 6 January 2021. And so I think that it is difficult to break through that noise right now and try to get a positive message.”In October, Buck opposed the candidacy for House speaker of Jim Jordan of Ohio, a prominent Trump supporter. That stance, Buck said, prompted death threats and eviction from a constituency office.In a video posted to social media on Wednesday, Buck repeated his message to his party.“Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponisation of our justice system. These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law.”Buck also said he did not plan to leave the Republican party. He would not say he would not support Trump for president, saying only a “Trump-Biden redo” would present “a very difficult decision”. More

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      Book bans and school bathrooms: Republicans to test power of ‘parents’ rights’ movement in Virginia

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      It was a career-ending gaffe, or at least has come to be seen that way. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” said Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe during a 2021 Virginia gubernatorial debate with his Republican rival, Glenn Youngkin.The line was replayed endlessly in attack ads, and handed Youngkin a gift for the central plank of his election campaign: “Parents matter.” He prevailed in a state that Joe Biden had won a year earlier. Now Youngkin is seeking to repeat the trick on 7 November on behalf of Republicans in elections for Virginia’s state assembly.The modern-day “parents’ rights” movement has roots in grievance over schools’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including long closures and mask mandates. Republican messaging subsequently pivoted to cultural divides that have sparked clashes around instruction of topics related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity.Conservative political action committees also funnelled millions of dollars to school board races, backing candidates who oppose what they see as ultra-leftist ideology in public schools. The once obscure boards have become acrimonious battlegrounds debating everything from book bans and critical race theory to “patriotic” history lessons and transgender students’ use of school bathrooms.But the electoral potency of such issues among suburban voters is increasingly being questioned. On a national level Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who built his candidacy around “anti-wokeness”, has failed to catch fire in the Republican presidential primary election. Now the limitations of the message will be put to the test in Virginia.Danica Roem, a member of the Virginia house of delegates bidding to become the first transgender member of the state senate, said in an interview: “The closing message of the Republican running against me [Bill Wool] is transphobia, transphobia, transphobia. Between him and the supporting organisations, my face ended up in black and white negative mailers 20 times this campaign and they’ve done weeks of negative TV. We expect them to go hard negative at the end of this campaign.“Everything they’re doing right now is just based on, ‘Oh my God, you support trans kids wanting to play with their friends. Oh my God, you support not forcibly outing trans kids against their will when it’s not safe at home. Oh my God, you’re soft on crime because you’re trying to protect trans people or whatever.’ They just come up with the stuff over and over and over again. They’re putting a lot more money into the same message that lost the last three campaigns against me, and I expect the same result is going to play out this November 7.”Virginia is a political laboratory that will be watched closely by both major parties ahead of next year’s elections for the White House and US Congress. It was home to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, founding fathers who owned enslaved people on sprawling estates, and the Confederate generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who sought to preserve slavery at the cost of the Union.The south lost the civil war but Virginia remained a haven of Jim Crow laws that maintained racial segregation. By the 1990s, however, the state had elected the first African American governor in the US. The expansion of Washington DC spilled into northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to be immigrants, college-educated and liberal.The state’s tilt towards Democrats looked assured with the 2013 election of McAuliffe as governor followed by Ralph Northam in 2017. The state government passed some of the strictest gun laws, loosest abortion restrictions and strongest protections for LGBTQ+ people in the south. It also legalised marijuana for adult recreational use and abolished the death penalty.But Youngkin, along with the lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears, and attorney general, Jason Miyares, and their parents’ rights offensive disrupted that narrative. Youngkin said after their victory that they had shown a winning path for Republicans to talk about education, an issue for which he said they have “historically been a bit on our heels”.As governor, Youngkin has issued an executive order to ban “inherently divisive” topics from school curriculums, signed a law allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates and enacted a set of model policies for the treatment of transgender students that reversed protections put into place by Democrats. He set up a “tip line” for parents to report supposedly divisive practices in schools only for it to be quietly abandoned a few months later.Next month’s election could indicate whether parents’ rights is a flash in the pan or something more permanent. Rich Anderson, chair of the Republican party of Virginia, insisted: “Those issues that were on the table that played a role in the election of Youngkin, Sears and Miyares are still at play today.“I’ve met not only Republican parents, but Democratic parents and independent parents who are concerned about biological male access to their daughters’ bathrooms and locker rooms. It’s a very complex issue. It is still playing mightily in the state and so I think that it is going to play a very prominent role in the election.”The parents’ rights movement has called for schools to remove certain books dealing with race or sexuality. Anderson added: “The narrative that comes from the Democrats is about banning books. There’s no attempt to ban books. It’s simply to have age-appropriate reading materials in the libraries in our public school system.“The parents have, in fact, a significant say about the materials that are maintained there and accessible by other students. It’s not about book banning. It’s about making sure that age-appropriate materials are present in the libraries and age-appropriate subjects are taught to their children.”On the campaign trail, many Republicans are styling themselves as defenders of Virginia schoolchildren against a leftwing ideology that promotes social justice activism, negative racial history and gender fluidity over academic achievement.Paul Lott, a Republican candidate for the house of delegates from Ashburn, said: “There should be no reason why my child at eight, nine, 19 should be able to go into a school library and check out material without my consent that can’t be broadcast on television, can’t be broadcast on the radio, and they can’t even get into a movie to see.”Lott continued: “What’s happened these days is they’re starting to use public education as a way to try to sidestep due process and that’s not OK. All the various things that we know in popular law – a kid can’t get a tattoo before age 18 without parental consent. How can they consent to a puberty blocker when they can’t get a tattoo?Among the flashpoints in Virginia has been Thomas Jefferson high school for science and technology, frequently cited as among the best public schools in the nation. Activists argued that the Fairfax county school board introduced an admissions policy that unfairly discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans, a claim upheld by a federal judge but overturned on appeal. For decades Black and Latino students have been underrepresented at the school while Asian Americans made up more than 70% of the student body.The battle for school boards has also turned nasty with screaming matches and even arrests. Juli Briskman, a supervisor seeking re-election in Loudon county, northern Virginia, said several school board members there have received racially motivated death threats, while the head of an LGBTQ+ equality group had to move out of the county. “It’s just been heinous,” she commented.“The number of of transgender athletes we have in the county is very small. Why don’t we pick on the minority population? Just to make themselves feel bigger? These kids are going through enough. Some of these kids don’t have supportive parents and then they’re made to feel like they can’t be themselves in school? That’s horrible.”Briskman cited recent surveys showing that parents’ rights are “fading a little bit” as an issue. “Folks in Loudoun county didn’t believe this messaging in the first place. Biden crushed it here. Youngkin lost by 11 points. I’m just hoping that this year will finally just put this all to bed and prove that the values of Loudoun county are values of inclusiveness and non-discrimination. And just stop with the culture wars.”Indeed, there are warning signs for the utility of parents’ rights at the ballot box. Hundreds of activists elected to local school boards largely fell short when running for Congress in last year’s midterm elections. Despite big-money backing from conservative groups such as the 1776 Project Pac and Moms for Liberty, the candidates’ message failed to resonate with moderate voters.Teachers’ unions and liberal grassroots groups have been fighting back with money and messaging of their own, casting conservative activists as fearmongers intent on turning parents against public schools, marginalising LGBTQ+ students and distracting voters from unpopular policies.They also believe that such tactics will be outstripped by Democratic energy around abortion rights. They are quick to point out that, should Republicans maintain control of the house and flip control of the senate, Youngkin will be able to enact an extreme rightwing agenda that includes a 15-week ban on abortion.Abhi Rahman, communications director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said: “The biggest issues that matter to people, Democrats are pretty much aligned on the way that people want these issues to go. Republicans demonise books and schools and trans people, gay people. It shows you that Virginians are better than this and that’s why Democrats are going to win in November.”Roem, the house delegate running for the 30th district of the Virginia state senate, suggests that the most effective antidote is pointing to a tangible legislative record. Her campaign slogan is “Fixing roads, feeding kids” whereas, she notes, her predecessor Bob Marshall often pushed culture war talking points during 26 years in office.“If they think that the voters are going to become more favourable to that messaging just because they have more money behind it, it’s going to end up being a very nice contrast for us to say, hey, look, we are focused on improving your day-to-day quality of life. They’re focused on trying to either take your rights away or to make the lives of trans kids more miserable.” More

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      Johnson ‘not surprised’ his proposal to cut IRS budget to fund Israel would cost taxpayer money – as it happened

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      NBC News caught up with Mike Johnson, who chalked up the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s determination that his Israel aid proposal would actually cost taxpayers money to the machinations of Washington:Punchbowl News separately caught two rightwing senators heading into Johnson’s office, and report they are expected to support his bill:But it is the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who will decide whether the measure comes to the floor, and he has said he will not do that.Five House Republican lawmakers from New York are pressing on with their effort to expel George Santos, the congressman who admitted to lying about large parts of his résumé and who is also facing federal charges. A vote on their expulsion resolution is expected this evening, though it’s unclear if it will reach the two-thirds majority necessary for passage. The chamber’s ethics committee has meanwhile announced it will provide an update regarding its investigation into Santos by 17 November, while some worry that kicking him out of his seat before he is convicted will set a bad example.Here’s what else happened:
      The House will also consider resolutions to censure far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, proposed aiding Israel by cutting the IRS’s budget, but that will just make the effort even more expensive for taxpayers, Congress’s nonpartisan budget analyst found.
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, endorsed using an unusual procedure to get around Republican Tommy Tuberville’s blockade of military promotions.
      A new analysis shows Democrats appear to have the edge in winning back control of the House next year.
      The Florida judge handling Donald Trump’s trial over the classified documents charges signaled she may delay the case.
      We’ve talked plenty about the resolution to expel George Santos on this blog today, so let’s dive in to the dueling efforts to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib and far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.Greene introduced the resolution targeting Tlaib, one of two Muslims in the House and the only Palestinian American, accusing her of antisemitism and participating in an insurrection:Greene is an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election, and has taken part in efforts to downplay the severity of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The insurrection she accuses Tlaib of participating in was a protest in a House office building where hundreds of people were arrested in what organizers described as planned acts of civil disobedience. Tlaib spoke to the protesters before they entered the building, which, unlike the Capitol building that rioters stormed on January 6, is open to the public.Tlaib, who is a vocal opponent of Israel’s government and its treatment of the Palestinians, rejected the charge of antisemitism in a statement:The same day Greene introduced her resolution to censure Tlaib, Vermont Democrat Becca Balint introduced a separate resolution to censure the Georgia congresswoman, accusing her of spreading racist conspiracy theories, Islamophobia and also being antisemitic:Ever since assuming the majority in the House at the start of the year, Republicans have moved to retaliate against Democrats who attracted their ire. The party censured Adam Schiff, a prominent Donald Trump antagonist, and booted Ilhan Omar, the second Muslim in the chamber and a prominent progressive, off the foreign affairs committee.The House is expected to vote on whether to expel Republican congressman and admitted fabulist George Santos sometime after 6.30pm this evening, Democratic whip Katherine Clark’s office has announced.Lawmakers will also consider resolutions to censure far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib.Congress’s lower chamber is currently in session, with lawmakers debating several pieces of legislation proposed in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel last month. Speaking of which, we have a separate live blog covering the latest events in the spiraling conflict, and you can follow it here:At a hearing in Florida today, federal judge Aileen Cannon seemed open to extending legal deadlines in Donald Trump’s classified documents case, potentially delaying his trial.Opening arguments in the case are set to start in May 2024, but Cannon noted that timetable could conflict with the former president’s trial on separate charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election, which is scheduled to begin in March.In addition to those federal cases, Trump has also been indicted in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election there, and for falsifying business documents in Manhattan.For more details, here’s our rundown of Trump’s legal problems:Meanwhile in New York City, the civil fraud trial of Donald Trump and his family members is continuing. Donald Trump Jr may at some point today take the witness stand in the proceedings, in which a judge is determining what penalties to impose after finding the Trump family committed fraud in their organization’s business practices.We have a live blog covering the latest in the case, which could potentially lead to the dismantling of the former president’s business empire. Follow along here:Another House Republican has decided against standing for re-election next year.Ken Buck told MSNBC he won’t stand again to represent his eastern Colorado district:A member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus, Buck made waves in September when he penned a Washington Post column saying he did not believe impeaching Joe Biden was a good idea.His district is seen as strongly Republican, and Democrats will have an uphill battle to claim the vacant seat in 2024.In cricket – and stick with me here – the “corridor of uncertainty” is a channel just outside off stump, which bowlers try to ply and in which batsmen must decide whether to play a shot or leave the ball alone, weighing up risk in the blink of an eye.In Congress, the corridors of uncertainty might be said to be any corridors in which Manu Raju, chief congressional correspondent for CNN, might decide to linger, thereby to catch congressmen and women and senators for a quick question about the issue of the day.Today, Raju, a master of the form, has been asking Republican senators about the proposal from the House GOP, newly under speaker Mike Johnson, to split Israel aid from Ukraine aid and to target the Internal Revenue Service for linked cuts. Here are some results:Rick Scott, Florida: “We have a Republican majority in the House. And so we have to listen to what they want to do.”Josh Hawley, Missouri: “I think it’s notable that [Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell] is standing with [Democratic majority leader Chuck] Schumer against the Republicans. [It’s] a mistake.”Lindsey Graham, South Carolina: “I like paying for things but in emergencies, we normally don’t. Democrats could put a ‘pay-for’ that I would disagree with. So when it gets over here, we’ll hopefully put a package together that includes Israel, Ukraine and border security.”Raju, to camera: “So that last comment from Lindsey Graham is a significant one, saying he’s concerned about including those measures to suddenly pay for that Israel package, saying that typically is not done on Capitol Hill and considering the number of concerns about the precedent it would set if that were to happen time and time again. On the other side of the equation, concerns about the sky-high national debt.“So that is the tension that is now playing out within the Republican party, but in the middle of all this is: what is the future of Israel aid? What’s the future of Ukraine [aid]? No one knows for certain how this will play out amid major concerns … both of those issues could get stalled or potentially fall by the wayside.”In a Guardian exclusive, Dharna Noor reveals plans for climate groups to tour the US, pushing for a Green New Deal …One year after the passage of the much-lauded Inflation Reduction Act, a coalition of organizers and representatives are relaunching the push for a Green New Deal with a national tour.“The Inflation Reduction Act was the largest climate investment in US history,” said John Paul Mejia, a national spokesperson for the youth-led climate justice organization the Sunrise Movement, one of the groups hosting the tour. “But for the next 10 years, we should work to make [it] the smallest by winning stuff that’s much larger.”The tour, which kicks off with an event in Michigan this month, will aim to showcase widespread support for even bolder federal climate action, and will feature Green New Deal champions including Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and the representatives Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and Summer Lee alongside local advocates. It will be led by the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of progressive environmental groups that includes the Sunrise Movement, Greenpeace and Climate Justice Alliance, social justice organizations such as People’s Action and the Movement for Black Lives, and the liberal-left Working Families political party.Supporters are calling for stronger executive action as well as the passage of a suite of proposals in Congress.“With our Green New Deals for public schools, housing, cities and more, we can make historic investments that transform our communities by repairing damage done by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis and giving every person the resources they need to thrive,” said Bowman.The Green New Deal – a plan to rapidly and fairly decarbonize the US economy and create millions of jobs in the process – swept the US progressive political scene during Donald Trump’s presidency. The Sunrise Movement in 2018 held sit-ins on Capitol Hill calling for its implementation, and months later, Markey and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled an official resolution fleshing out the proposal.The ambitious, sweeping vision hinged on the idea that tackling the climate crisis could entail the remaking of US society to be more just, prioritizing communities most affected by inequality, climate disasters and pollution. It sharply contrasted with previous national decarbonization plans, such as the failed 2009 attempt to create a cap-and-trade system for planet-heating pollution known as Waxman-Markey.“During that Inconvenient Truth era, climate advocacy was very technocratic in some ways,” said Kaniela Ing, the national director of the Green New Deal Network and a former Hawaii state legislator, referring to the 2006 documentary on the climate crisis by the former US vice-president Al Gore. “But the Green New Deal was about how all these things are connected, how climate is connected to schools, better infrastructure … things that people actually want.”Read on…The new Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, is “dangerous”, the former Wyoming congresswoman and January 6 committee vice-chair Liz Cheney said, considering Johnson’s role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.“He was acting in ways that he knew to be wrong,” Cheney told Politics Is Everything, a podcast from the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “And I think that the country unfortunately will come to see the measure of his character.“… One of the reasons why somebody like Mike Johnson is dangerous is because … you have elected Republicans who know better, elected Republicans who know the truth but yet will go along with the efforts to undermine our republic: the efforts, frankly, that Donald Trump undertook to overturn the election.”Johnson voiced conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s victory in 2020; authored a supreme court amicus brief as Texas sought to have results in key states thrown out, attracting 125 Republican signatures; and was one of 147 Republicans who voted to object to results in key states, even after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021, a riot linked to nine deaths and which has produced thousands of arrests and hundreds of convictions, some for seditious conspiracy.Cheney was one of two anti-Trump Republicans on the House January 6 committee, which staged prime-time hearings and produced a report last year. She lost her seat to a pro-Trump challenger. The other January 6 committee Republican, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose to quit his seat.Like Kinzinger, Cheney has written a book. She has also declined to close down speculation that she might run for president, as a representative of the Republican establishment – her father is Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary and vice-president – determined to stop Trump from seizing the White House again.Johnson ascended to the House speakership last month, elected unanimously after three candidates failed to gain sufficient support to succeed Kevin McCarthy, who was ejected by the far-right, pro-Trump wing of his party.Johnson’s hard-right, Christianity-inflected views and past positions have been subjected to widespread scrutiny.Cheney told Larry Sabato, her podcast host and fellow UVA professor, that Johnson “was willing to set aside what he knew to be the rulings of the courts, the requirements of the constitution, in order to placate Donald Trump, in order to gain praise from Donald Trump, for political expedience.“So it’s a concerning moment to have him be elected speaker of the House.”Five House Republican lawmakers from New York are pressing on with their effort to expel George Santos, the congressman who admitted to lying about large parts of his résumé and is also facing federal charges. A vote on their expulsion resolution could come as soon as today, though it’s unclear if it will reach the two-thirds majority necessary for passage. The chamber’s ethics committee has meanwhile announced it will provide an update regarding its investigation into Santos by 17 November, while some worry that kicking him out of his seat before he is convicted will set a bad example.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, proposed aiding Israel by cutting the IRS’s budget, but that will just make the effort even more expensive for taxpayers, Congress’s non-partisan budget analyst found.
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, endorsed a push to use an unusual procedure to get around Republican Tommy Tuberville’s block of military promotions.
      A new analysis shows Democrats appear to have the edge in winning back control of the House next year.
      NBC News caught up with Mike Johnson, who chalked up the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s determination that his Israel aid proposal would actually cost taxpayers money to the machinations of Washington:Punchbowl News separately caught two rightwing senators heading into Johnson’s office, and report they are expected to support his bill:But it is the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, who will decide whether the measure comes to the floor, and he has said he will not do that.The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, announced he will support deploying an unusual procedure to circumvent Republican senator Tommy Tuberville’s months-long blockade of more than 300 military promotions.The Alabama lawmaker has since February been holding up promotions of hundreds of top officers in the armed forces in protest of a new Pentagon policy intended to help service members access abortions. Democrats and some Republican have expressed outrage at the move, saying it harms national security.According to the Hill, Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed is proposing a standing order resolution that will allow Congress’s upper chamber to approve military promotions as a group through the end of next year. However, it needs 60 votes to pass, and Democrats only control 51 seats in the chamber, meaning at least nine Republicans must sign on.It’s unclear if that support exists yet, but in a speech on the chamber’s floor, Schumer said he will put the resolution up for a vote.“Yesterday, my colleague Senator Reed, chairman of the armed services committee, introduced a resolution that will allow the Senate to quickly confirm the nominations that are currently being blocked by the Senator from Alabama,” said Schumer, adding he had moved for the Senate to hold time-consuming floor votes on three military promotions that Tuberville had been blocking.“The resolution will be referred to the rules committee, and when the time comes, I will bring it to the floor of the Senate for consideration.”Here’s video of his remarks: More

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      Republican to quit House citing party’s reliance on ‘lie’ of stolen 2020 election

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      A leading conservative congressman announced his retirement, in large part because his Republican party “continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen”.“I have decided I’m not going to seek re-election,” Ken Buck of Colorado told MSNBC on Wednesday, after news that Kay Granger of Texas, the longest-serving Republican congresswoman, will also step down next year.“I always have been disappointed with our inability in Congress to deal with major issues and I’m also disappointed that the Republican party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rely on the January 6 narrative and political prisoners from January 6 and other things,” Buck said.“If we’re going to solve difficult problems, we’ve got to deal with some very unpleasant truths or lies and make sure that we project to the public what the truth is.”Donald Trump’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud dominates the Republican party.The new House speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, played a key role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, authoring an amicus brief in a supreme court case that sought to throw out swing state results and joining 146 other Republicans in objecting to such results even after Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Buck was asked about his own support for Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who last month attracted more votes for speaker than Johnson but was brought down by Trump’s opposition.Buck said: “Well, Tom and I both voted to certify the electors. It was a decision that I think was the right decision under the constitution.“Mike [Johnson] went to the supreme court with a challenge to the election. I think going to the courts is one thing. Trying to move the mob from the Mall up to the House floor and interrupting the congressional proceeding is a whole different issue.”Buck reported receiving death threats, after he opposed the candidacy for speaker of Jim Jordan of Ohio, a pro-Trump extremist.“Civility in politics generally is less now than it was before,” Buck said. “The ability to deal with major issues – you know, the sustainability of Medicare, social security, other big issues – we’ve got to address [those] and we can’t keep worrying about the last election. We’ve got to focus on where we’re going to take America in terms of policy.”Buck said he did not plan to leave the Republican party. Also, despite his disgust over election denial and January 6, and despite the threats he received, he would not say he would not support Trump if he wins the presidential nomination next year, 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials notwithstanding.A “Trump-Biden redo” would present “a very difficult decision”, Buck said, adding: “I am not thrilled with either one of those candidates and I will just see what happens down the road.” More

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      Liz Cheney calls new House speaker ‘dangerous’ for January 6 role

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      The new Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, is “dangerous” due to his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the former Wyoming Republican congresswoman and January 6 committee vice-chair Liz Cheney said.“He was acting in ways that he knew to be wrong,” Cheney told Politics Is Everything, a podcast from the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “And I think that the country unfortunately will come to see the measure of his character.”She added: “One of the reasons why somebody like Mike Johnson is dangerous is because … you have elected Republicans who know better, elected Republicans who know the truth but yet will go along with the efforts to undermine our republic: the efforts, frankly, that Donald Trump undertook to overturn the election.”Johnson voiced conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s victory in 2020; authored a supreme court amicus brief as Texas sought to have results in key states thrown out, attracting 125 Republican signatures; and was one of 147 Republicans who voted to object to results in key states even after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol.The events of 6 January 2021 are now linked to nine deaths, thousands of arrests and hundreds of convictions, some for seditious conspiracy. Trump faces state and federal charges related to his attempted election subversion (contributing to a total 91 criminal counts) yet still dominates Republican presidential primary polling.Cheney was one of two anti-Trump Republicans on the House January 6 committee, which staged prime-time hearings and produced a report last year. In Wyoming, she lost her seat to a pro-Trump challenger. The other January 6 Republican, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose to quit his seat.Like Kinzinger, Cheney has now written a memoir, in her case titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. She has also declined to close down speculation that she might run for president as a representative of the Republican establishment – her father is Dick Cheney, the former defense secretary and vice-president – attempting to stop Trump seizing the White House again.Johnson ascended to the speakership last month, elected unanimously after three candidates failed to gain sufficient support to succeed Kevin McCarthy, who was ejected by the far-right, pro-Trump wing of his party.The new speaker’s hard-right, Christianity-inflected statements and positions have been subjected to widespread scrutiny.Cheney told Larry Sabato, her podcast host and fellow UVA professor: “Mike is somebody that I knew well.”“We were elected together [in 2016]. Our offices were next to each other, and Mike is somebody who says that he’s committed to defending the constitution. But that’s not what he did when we were all tested in the aftermath of the 2020 election.“In my experience, and I was very, deeply involved and engaged as the conference chair, when Mike was doing things like convincing members of the conference to sign on to the amicus brief … in my view, he was willing to set aside what he knew to be the rulings of the courts, the requirements of the constitution, in order to placate Donald Trump, in order to gain praise from Donald Trump, for political expedience.“So it’s a concerning moment to have him be elected speaker of the House.” More

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      Blinken meets with Johnson at Capitol amid disagreement over Israel and Ukraine aid – as it happened

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      Reporters at the Capitol caught secretary of state Antony Blinken leaving his meeting with Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson this afternoon:Now to see what progress their conversation made have produced towards resolving the disagreement between Johnson and the Democrats over Joe Biden’s proposal for about $100b in military aid for Ukraine and Israel, as well as to bolster the southern border. Johnson’s counteroffer is around $14b in aid for Israel alone that will be paid for by cutting the budget of the IRS – a non-starter for Democrats.The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, made his conservative bona fides clear yesterday when he proposed a bill that would send about $14bn in aid to Israel and pay for it by cutting funding to the IRS tax authority. The White House responded by accusing Johnson of “politicizing national security”, and today, its Democratic allies in the Senate said the speaker’s proposal will not fly. What’s not clear is if the political will exists to approve the combined $106bn Joe Biden wants to spend on both Israel and Ukraine’s defenses and US border security. Johnson and secretary of state Antony Blinken met at the Capitol to discuss the president’s funding request, but we don’t know yet if a compromise is within reach.Here’s what else happened today:
      Blinken’s testimony to a Senate committee considering the foreign military aid request was interrupted repeatedly by protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
      Biden and China’s president Xi Jinping will meet in San Francisco next month, the White House confirmed.
      Arab Americans appear to be turning on Biden over his steadfast support of Israel.
      A small but bipartisan group of House lawmakers asked Johnson to bring the Biden administration’s request for aid to Israel and Ukraine up for a vote.
      Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, traveled to China to tackle rising tensions, but instead ended up tackling a child.
      Also at her press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Dean Phillips, the Democratic congressman who last week announced he would challenge Joe Biden for the party’s presidential nomination.As you might expect, Jean-Pierre was mum about his candidacy, only reminding the press that Phillips was a supporter of most of Biden’s policies.Indeed, the third-term Minnesota lawmaker hasn’t said much about what he disagrees with the president about, instead pitching his candidacy as a response to Biden’s low poll numbers and advanced age.Here’s the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang with more about Phillips’s campaign:
      The little-known Democratic congressman Dean Phillips has launched a campaign to challenge sitting President Joe Biden, leaving many of his supporters and colleagues confused, if not outright upset.
      After weeks of speculation and behind-the-scenes manoeuvreing, Phillips finally publicly announced he’s running in an interview on CBS.
      He filed paperwork in New Hampshire on Friday morning and posted a lengthy explanation of his bid for the presidency on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying his campaign would focus on the economy and safety, but also generational change.
      “I didn’t set out to enter this race,” he wrote. “But it looks like on our current course, the Democrats will lose and Trump will be our president again. President Biden is a good man and someone I tremendously respect. I understand why other Democrats don’t want to run against him, and why we are here. This is a last-minute campaign, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and courage is an important value to me.”
      At her briefing this afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden and China’s president, Xin Jinping, would meet in San Francisco:The two leaders last met in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia. Biden recently invited Xi to the November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the northern California city, and, given Jean-Pierre’s comment, it seems he accepted the invitation.Here’s more on what we can expect from the meeting, which was preceded by several rounds of high-level diplomacy between the countries:US Capitol police confirmed to the Guardian’s US politics live blog that 12 people were arrested for disrupting Antony Blinken’s testimony to the Senate appropriations committee today.The US secretary of state spoke to the panel about the Biden administration’s request for more than $100b in security assistance to Ukraine and Israel, as well as to fortify the border with Mexico. As his testimony began, he was repeatedly interrupted by protesters organized by the antiwar group Code Pink, who called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Democrats announced plans to issue subpoenas to three wealthy Republicans who were involved in organizing luxury trips for conservative supreme court justices, sparking an ethics scandal:Senate Democrats plan to subpoena Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and conservative activist Leonard Leo to quiz them about their roles in organizing and paying for lavish perks for justices on the hard-right wing of the US supreme court.The announcement by Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee came on Monday amid a storm of controversy that has blown up in recent months about conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito not only accepting but also not disclosing free travel and other luxury favors provided or facilitated by influential public figures.The supreme court is now being pressed to adopt an ethics code – a move that has been publicly endorsed by three of the nine justices amid the rows about ethical controversies, including the risks of outside influence corrupting the court.The committee could act as soon as next week to authorize Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the panel’s chairman, to issue subpoenas to Crow, Leo and another wealthy donor, Robin Arkley II.Reporters at the Capitol caught secretary of state Antony Blinken leaving his meeting with Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson this afternoon:Now to see what progress their conversation made have produced towards resolving the disagreement between Johnson and the Democrats over Joe Biden’s proposal for about $100b in military aid for Ukraine and Israel, as well as to bolster the southern border. Johnson’s counteroffer is around $14b in aid for Israel alone that will be paid for by cutting the budget of the IRS – a non-starter for Democrats.Gavin Newsom has finished his weeklong trip to China, which was meant to tackle rising tensions between the two nations and push for climate crisis solutions. But some of the headlines the Democratic California governor garnered were less about tackling diplomacy – and more about tackling a child.Viral footage shows Newsom playing basketball with a group of children for a photo-op, and in the process appearing to stumble while dribbling and then falling on top of a boy.Rightwing media and critics of the governor have had a field day with the clip of Newsom “steamrolling” and “plowing through a small child”. “CA. GOV NEWSOM DESTROYS KID” was probably not a news line that Newsom, with his widely reported presidential ambitions, was hoping for.Fortunately, however, the LA Times reports that the “cringey moment… didn’t cause injuries”.Read more on the substance of Newsom’s trip here:Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers has engaged in a courtroom fight with the state’s Republican-controlled legislature for its alleged obstruction of basic government functions, including delivery of pay raises for university employees that were previously approved.Evers says it’s “just bullshit” and “a bridge too far” that lawmakers were holding out on 35,000 University of Wisconsin employees, and is taking his lawsuit direct to the state’s supreme court, the Associated Press reports.“You can’t do that. That’s why we’re suing and that’s why we’re going to win,” Evers said at a news conference in Madison on Tuesday, accusing Republicans of also blocking state conservation programs, updates to the state’s commercial building standards and ethics standards for licensed professionals.Wisconsin senate majority leader Devin LeMahieu and assembly speaker Robin Vos, both Republicans, did not immediately return emails seeking comment on Tuesday, the AP said.The legislature included a 6% pay raise for university employees over two years in the state budget passed earlier this year that Evers signed, but the measure will not be finalized until signed off by a Republican-controlled committee of legislative leaders.Vos has said he opposes spending at the university because of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.Tucker Carlson “got too big for his boots” at Fox News and was fired in part for alienating “large swaths” of the company, according to a revelatory new account of the downfall of the network’s biggest star.Carlson, a rightwing conspiracy theorist who was dismissed in April despite his status as the most-watched cable TV personality, believed himself to be irreplaceable, the journalist Brian Stelter says in his new book Network of Lies, reported on Tuesday by Vanity Fair.But ultimately Carlson’s escalating toxicity, which included an undercurrent of white supremacy and a penchant for demeaning women and minorities, led Lachlan Murdoch, the then chief executive of Fox Corp, to pull the plug, the book says.“He committed the cardinal Fox sin of acting like he was bigger than the network he was on,” Stelter said.“His brand, weird as it was, revolved around the idea that he could call anyone the C-word, or anything else, at any time. He could say anything, do anything, and never be held accountable, so long as he commanded the attention and affection of millions.“Carlson was believed to have Trump-like hypnotic power over the GOP base. He was believed to be irreplaceable. But that impression was, in large part, a creation of Carlson’s. In truth, Carlson had alienated so many people, instigated so many internal and external scandals, fanned so many flames of ugliness, that his firing was inevitable.“That’s why Fox dropped Carlson. It wasn’t one thing. It was everything,” Stelter writes, as excerpted exclusively by Vanity Fair.Read the full story:Joe Biden calls Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell a good friend, and the pair appear to see eye to eye over passing an aid package that includes help for Israel and Ukraine.On the chamber floor just now, McConnell made the same argument as the president did in his address to the nation earlier this month, linking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Hamas attacks on Israel, and calling them a threat to global democracy and peace.“The threats facing America and our allies are serious and they’re intertwined. If we ignore that fact, we do so at our own peril,” he said.Politico has this report highlighting how McConnell’s stance on aid for both countries puts him at odds with new speaker Mike Johnson and a slew of other House Republicans.Some of the discomfort has spread to the senate, where McConnell is facing increased pushback from a number of colleagues on the right over his efforts to keep aid for Israel and Ukraine together, according to The Hill.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson made his conservative bona fides clear yesterday when he proposed a bill that would send about $14b in aid to Israel and pay for it by cutting funding to the IRS tax authority. The White House responded by accusing Johnson of “politicizing national security”, and today, its Democratic allies in the Senate made clear the speaker’s proposal will not fly. But it’s unclear if the political will exists for the approximately $106b Joe Biden wants to spend on both Israel and Ukraine’s defense, as well as border security. Johnson is reportedly speaking with secretary of state Antony Blinken about the request today, and we’ll keep an eye out for what comes out of that.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Blinken’s testimony to a Senate committee considering the foreign military aid request was interrupted repeatedly by protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
      Arab Americans appear to be turning on Biden over his steadfast support of Israel.
      A small but bipartisan group of House lawmakers asked Johnson to bring the Biden administration’s request for aid to Israel and Ukraine up for a vote.
      Joe Biden’s definitive backing of Israel in its conflict with Hamas and invasion of Gaza appears to be costing him support among Arab American voters, the Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:Arab American support for Joe Biden has fallen in the wake of his response to the latest bout of violence between Israel and Hamas, a new poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows. The same poll showed a sharp increase in reports of discrimination against members of the community.Following Hamas’s deadly 7 October attacks, which killed 1,400 Israelis, Biden has repeatedly proclaimed the US’s “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel, which has responded by tightening its blockade and bombarding the Gaza Strip. More than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in the coastal territory.According to AAI, that response has prompted a “dramatic plummeting of Arab American voter support for President Biden”. There are roughly 3.7 million Arab Americans in the US.“Support among Arab American voters for Biden has plummeted from 59% in 2020 to 17% today,” the poll analysis said.Secretary of state Antony Blinken and Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will talk today about the White House’s request for more than $100b in aid to Ukraine and Israel, and to fortify US border security, Politico reports:The newly elected Republican leader appears far from accepting the Democratic administration’s demands for a large package aimed at supporting two of Washington’s key allies while responding to the surge of people crossing into America from Mexico. We’ll see if any progress is made in their conversation.A small group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers has released a letter calling on the GOP House speaker Mike Johnson to allow a floor vote on a measure to send aid to Ukraine and Israel, and improve US border security.Johnson yesterday proposed a bill that would send about $14b in security assistance to Israel while cutting funding to the IRS. The White House and Senate Democrats have already rejected it, arguing that cutting the tax authority’s budget is irresponsible, and any legislation must also fund Kyiv’s defense against Russia’s invasion.The letter was signed by Republican Joe Wilson, who chairs House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, as well as Democrats Marcy Kaptur, Brad Schneider and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.You can read the letter in full here, and here’s the gist of its argument:
      The United States must help secure Israel and the greater Middle East, Europe, and the IndoPacific so that our future generations can live free from the threats of totalitarianism and religious extremism. America can and will rise to these challenges. Although the vast majority of the price in blood and treasure will be born by our allies, Congress must do its part to make sure the citizen soldiers defending Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan have what they need to protect their democracies, and by extension, our national security.
      That is why we beseech you not to separate aid for Israel’s fight to rescue its hostages and secure its borders from Ukraine’s fight to do the same, or from Taiwan’s efforts to deter a war. All are crucial priorities for the United States. The introduction of offsets, or the potential deferral of our commitments, threatens not only our national interest, but also our long-term fiscal health. It is far better and less costly in blood and treasure to ensure Russia, Iran, and Hamas are defeated in their current wars than it will be if they achieve strategic victories against Ukraine or Israel. More