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      Republican debate: Haley and DeSantis clash on immigration and Ukraine but absent Trump is the winner – as it happened

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      Just days away from the Iowa caucuses, when the first voters will make their picks for a Republican presidential nominee, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis exchanged bitter barbs and often circuitous criticisms in a debate that yielded few memorable points.Meanwhile, Donald Trump carried on as usual in a televised Fox News town hall, comfortable in his spot as the top candidate.Thanks for following along. And stay tuned for more updates and analysis across the Guardian.Closing thoughts from each candidate are …“We can’t run under a banner of pale pastels of warmed-over corporatism, the likes of which is practice by Nikki Haley,” said Ron DeSantis, trying once again to make “pale pastels” stick as an insult.“We can’t go through four more years of chaos,” said Haley. Though her real catch-phrase tonight was “Desantislies.com”.A question about climate change, and what each candidate is willing to do about it, has – as expected – yielded little useful information.DeSantis promised to tear up the “Biden’s green new deal” while Haley said she opposed “extremes” in policy and transitioned the conversation over to the topic of crime.Last summer, during the first Republican presidential debate, a pointed question from a young activist elicited slightly more interesting results. Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis, asked candidates what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy. None of the candidates at that time raised their hands to affirm that climate change was real.Demonstrating a careful balancing act, DeSantis both defends and critiques Trump, saying that the former president is being wrongly prosecuted but also, “if Trump is the nominee, it is going to be about Jan 6”.Haley, meanwhile, said that no president should be immune from all prosecution, but as she tends to do, cast her self as a leader who could restore civility after too much “chaos” surrounding Trump.With Chris Christie out of the running, there’s no one where willing to overtly or forcefully take down Trump. The resulting debate has been an odd, largely disengaging slog for for a silver medal.Meanwhile, on the debate stage, abortion has just come up.And DeSantis has started by questioning whether Trump and Haley are adequately pro-life. But he also mentioned that Republicans need to do a better job of highlighting support for mothers.“Republicans need to do a better job of lifting up folks who are having children,” he said. “It’s very difficult to raise kids in this environment. You need to help with medical care, you need to help with affordability and we need to help with education choice. You got to be pro life for the whole life.”In an implicit acknowledgment about how extreme anti-abortion restrictions are alienating voters, he claimed that abortion opponents do not support criminalizing women. That’s not quite right, as the Guardian has reported. Bills in state legislatures have proposed prosecuting women for seeking abortion care.Haley, meanwhile, said of Trump and DeSantis: “These fellas don’t know how to talk about abortion.“We’re not going to play politics with this issue any more. We’re going to treat it like the respectful issue that it is and the tropes that you want,” she said.Over at the Trump town hall, the former president is taking credit for ending the right to abortion.That’s a notable stance for the GOP frontrunner, at a time when it’s become increasingly clear that extreme anti-abortion policies are alienating voters. More than a dozen states could ultimately vote on abortion in 2024. And voters have already enshrined rights to abortion in state constitutions in Ohio, Arizona and Florida.My colleague Lauren Gambino reported recently:
      The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade delivered Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation. But in the year and a half since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling has also become one of their biggest political vulnerabilities.
      Over the last 18 months, voters have favored abortion rights in seven consecutive ballot measures, including in conservative states. Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections while Democrats scored off-year election wins in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Virginia – results that again emphasized the enduring power of abortion rights.
      “With abortion, there’s really a kind of catch-22 for Republicans,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis and a leading expert on the history of abortion in the US. “On the one hand, you have a lot of base Republican voters who really care about opposing abortion and on the other you have a huge group of something like 70% of Americans who don’t like abortion bans.”
      The crossfire has gotten away from the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, struggling to rein in DeSantis shouting over Haley.“I think I hit a nerve,” Haley said.Over on Fox News, which is airing the Trump town hall, the former president was pressed on his recent warning that “it’ll be bedlam in the country” if he loses the election.Co-host Bret Baier asked: “Can you say tonight that political violence is never acceptable?”Trump replied: “Well, of course that’s right. And of course, I’m the one that had very little of it.”Later Trump offered some idle speculation on the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. “I think it was done out of incompetence,” he said, “I believe that a scientist went out, said hello to his girlfriend, and that was the end of that. She died and then people started dying all over the place.”After a short break, we’re on to the issue of Ron DeSantis’s battle with Disney, following the company’s condemnation of Florida’s “don’t say gay” law.DeSantis was asked whether it aligns with conservative values to antagonize businesses. The Florida governor doubled down on his choice to go after the company for “trans-ing” kids, repeating a slew of baseless talking points about what education, parental and medical support for transgender children entails. “Most corporate Republicans would have caved. I stood and I fought,” he said.Haley accused DeSantis of supporting Disney until they came out against his policies. “When they went and criticized him he got thin-skinned and suddenly started to fight back,” she said.Here’s more context on DeSantis’s beef with Disney:The candidates are divided on Ukraine, and tonight reiterated views they’ve expressed before.Haley is for the US supporting Ukraine which she said is is “a pro-American, freedom-loving country”.DeSantis is against sending more money to Ukraine, preferring to “ focus on our issues here at home”.Both candidates are for sending aid to Israel. More

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      Republican Chris Christie suspends presidential bid

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      The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he announced on Wednesday evening.“It is clear to me tonight that there is not a path to win the nomination,” he said at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire.The former New Jersey governor, who also ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2016, when he lost out to Donald Trump, has been struggling in the polls for weeks and had failed to qualify for the last GOP debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating contest of the 2024 race for the White House.He had always stood out as the Republican candidate with the most overtly critical viewpoint of the policies and character of Donald Trump.He has yet to endorse a rival and was heard publicly on an apparent inadvertent “hot mic” before he took the stage in New Hampshire predicting that one, almost certainly Nikki Haley, will “get smoked” in the race for the nomination and that a “petrified” Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, had called him, while a person he was talking to was heard predicting that the struggling DeSantis would not last beyond next week’s Iowa caucuses. Haley and DeSantis are the closest contenders behind the solid frontrunner, Trump.The hot-mic comments were widely heard on a YouTube audio livestream before Christie’s event began, with the audio being cut abruptly after a few seconds.Appearing before a subdued crowd at the town hall event a few moments later, Christie said: “This race has always been bigger than me.” And he warned the US against re-electing Donald Trump to a second term.“If we put him back behind the desk at the Oval Office, and a choice is needed to be made about whether to put himself first or you [the public] first, how much more evidence do you need? He will put himself first,” Christie said.He had earlier said that if Trump had been president when Islamist terrorists attacked the US on 9/11, “he would have [gone] to the bunker” instead of taking charge to protect the country.Christie said that “this is a fight for the soul of our party” and – echoing a campaign message Joe Biden, the Democratic president, has said many times – he added “and the soul of our country.”He said that if Trump ultimately becomes the Republican nominee, the moment that was going to happen could be traced back to the GOP debate in Milwaukee last August when all the other candidates present – Trump was absent – except Christie himself raised their hands when asked if they would still nominate someone if they had a criminal conviction.If Trump became president again, the US “will remain angry … remain divided”, Christie said.Christie’s exit removes from the race the only candidate willing to base his campaign on attacking Donald Trump, the former president who faces 91 criminal charges arising from his conduct since entering politics, including his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as well as provoking multiple civil cases and moves to remove him from the ballot in states including Colorado and Maine.A longtime Trump ally and adviser since endorsing him in 2016, Christie stayed loyal even after Trump nearly killed him with Covid-19, only to turn after Trump incited the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a recent campaign ad, Christie said: “Eight years ago when I decided to endorse Donald Trump for president, I did it because he was winning, and I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president. Well, I was wrong, I made a mistake.”On the campaign trail, Christie focused on attacking Trump from the debate stage and on campaigning in New Hampshire.Long seen as suspect by hardline Republican voters, largely over his past as governor of an east coast, predominantly Democratic state, he could not make much of an impact.Christie’s failed presidential campaign in 2016 and scandal-tainted record in office – in 2013, he became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal over political payback – also worked against him.In further details of the apparent hot-mic incident, which was widely reported on social media and in US news outlets, Christie was heard saying to an unknown individual: “She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it … She’s not up to this.”He was assumed to be referring to Haley as he then mentioned fundraising numbers that resemble Haley’s. She is the former governor of South Carolina and formerly the Trump-appointed US ambassador to the United Nations.Christie could then be heard saying “DeSantis called me, petrified” and an unknown person responding that DeSantis is “probably getting out after Iowa”.Christie had not, immediately after announcing his campaign suspension, commented on the hot-mic incident. More

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      Hunter Biden makes appearance at his own contempt of Congress hearing

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      Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, as Republicans on the US House oversight committee convened to consider a resolution to hold the president’s son in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony.Appearing with his attorney Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden sat silently in the front row as the committee chair and vice-chair delivered opening statements to a hearing that would be dominated by partisan bickering.“We will not provide Hunter Biden with special treatment because of his last name,” said James Comer, the Republican chair, from Kentucky. “All Americans must be treated equally under the law. That includes the Bidens.”Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Democratic vice-chair, hit back by reminding Republicans Hunter Biden offered to testify in public. Raskin also noted that Republicans including the House judiciary chair, Jim Jordan, defied subpoenas issued by the January 6 committee.“We are here today because the chairman has bizarrely decided to obstruct his own investigation and is now seeking to hold Hunter Biden in contempt after he accepted the chairman’s multiple public offers to come answer the committee’s questions under oath before the American people,” Raskin said.The hearing descended into chaos as Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, called Hunter Biden “the epitome of white privilege” for, she said, “spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed”.“What are you afraid of?” Mace said. “You have no balls. I think that Hunter Biden should be arrested right here right now and go straight to jail.”The notion of Biden being “afraid” to face House Republicans struck Democrats as absurd, given his presence in the room. Jared Moskowitz, from Florida, interrupted Mace to say: “If the gentlelady wants to hear from Hunter Biden, we can hear from him right now, Mr Chairman. Let’s take a vote and hear from Hunter Biden. What are you afraid of?”Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a Black Democrat, took issue with Mace’s invocation of white privilege.“I can’t get over the gentlelady from South Carolina talking about white privilege,” Crockett said. “It was a spit in the face, at least of mine as a Black woman, for you to talk about what white privilege looks like, especially from that side of the aisle.”Mace pointed to a previous role as the ranking Republican on the civil rights subcommittee and said she took “great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country”.As Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican from Georgia, was speaking, Hunter Biden left the room. Greene, who in a previous hearing showed what appeared to be a sexually explicit picture of Biden, claimed he was “afraid of my words”.Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, defended Biden, saying: “I think it’s really interesting to hear the gentlelady from Georgia speak about Hunter Biden leaving, when she is the person that showed nude photos of Hunter Biden in this very committee room.”When Greene attempted to enter evidence into the record, Raskin protested that Democrats had not seen it, saying: “In the past, she’s displayed pornography. Are pornographic photos allowed to be displayed in this committee room?”Greene said her evidence was not pornographic. Raskin said: “OK, well, you’re the expert.”Outside, Lowell told reporters: “Republican chairs … are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold somebody in contempt who has offered to publicly answer all their proper questions. The question there is, what are they afraid of?”Republicans are targeting Biden as part of attempts to portray his father as corrupt and secure his impeachment, as an expected election rematch with Donald Trump looms. Republicans have however presented no evidence that Joe Biden profited from his son’s dealings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn early December, Hunter Biden, 53, defied a subpoena for testimony in private, instead appearing in front of reporters on Capitol Hill.“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said then. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”On Monday, Comer and Jordan released their contempt resolution and an attendant report. They said Biden’s “willful refusal to comply with our subpoenas constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to the appropriate United States attorney’s office for prosecution.”Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanour criminal offence. As described by the Congressional Research Service, “a witness suffers no direct legal consequence from House or Senate approval of a contempt citation, though a variety of political consequences may [follow]. If the individual is prosecuted and convicted, violations … are punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment ‘for not less than one month nor more than 12 months’.”Hunter Biden is already in extensive legal jeopardy. In September, he was indicted in Delaware on three federal charges related to his purchase and ownership of a handgun while experiencing (and lying about) addiction. Facing a sentence of up to 25 years, he pleaded not guilty.In December, he was indicted in California on nine tax charges carrying a maximum sentence of 17 years. Arraignment is scheduled for Thursday.Democrats have attempted to make news of their own, releasing a report detailing at least $7.8m in payments from 20 countries to Trump business concerns during his four years in power. Comer called that report “beyond parody” and said: “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses but the Bidens do not.”In December, Hunter Biden said: “There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen …“I have made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded. For that, I am responsible. For that, I am accountable. And for that, I am making amends.” More

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      Judge bars Trump from presenting own closing arguments in fraud trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will be barred from his reported aim to deliver his own closing argument on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial.Judge Arthur Engoron had reportedly been prepared to allow the former president, in a highly unusual move, to address the court tomorrow in addition to his lawyers doing so.But fresh news now being reported by the Associated Press – Engoron has “rescinded permission”.Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. She claims his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him secure business loans and insurance.An attorney for Trump informed Engoron earlier this week that Trump wished to speak during the closing arguments, and the judge approved the plan, according to one of the two people who spoke to the AP.Read more about the case from the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani, who had a great report from last weekend, here.As Republicans convened to weigh holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for not appearing for a deposition, the president’s son seized the spotlight by showing up unannounced at the House oversight committee room. It was something of a stunt, but succeeded in pulling media attention away from the hearing, and giving Democrats an opportunity to accuse the GOP of hypocrisy, since Biden’s attorney said he would have been willing to testify then, if asked. In New York City, Donald Trump was briefly set to personally deliver closing arguments at his civil fraud trial tomorrow, until judge Arthur Engoron said no.Here’s what else happened today:
      Conservative Republicans blocked the consideration of legislation on the House floor, in protest of speaker Mike Johnson’s government spending deal with Democrats.
      Joe Biden finally saw tentative improvement in his polling in a key swing state.
      Democrats of color blasted Republican Nancy Mace, who accused Hunter Biden of exhibiting “white privilege”.
      A group of constitutional law experts wrote an open letter saying that impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas simply because Republicans disagree with his policies is unjustifiable.
      Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania became the first House Democrat to call on Lloyd Austin to resign as defense secretary for not promptly telling the White House he had been hospitalized.
      Chris Deluzio, a freshman House Democrat from Pennsylvania and Iraq war veteran, has called on defense secretary Lloyd Austin to resign after he waited several days to notify the White House that he had been hospitalized.“I have lost trust in Secretary Lloyd Austin’s leadership of the Defense Department due to the lack of transparency about his recent medical treatment and its impact on the continuity of the chain of command. I have a solemn duty in Congress to conduct oversight of the Defense Department through my service on the House Armed Services Committee. That duty today requires me to call on Secretary Austin to resign,” Deluzio said.The White House has said Joe Biden has confidence in Austin, who remains hospitalized:Meanwhile, in Iowa, two of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination will debate this evening, though frontrunner Donald Trump will not be joining them, the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports:Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will face off one-on-one in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday night in their fifth and most high-stakes attempt to take support away from Donald Trump before Monday’s Iowa caucus, the country’s first state primary election.The former president has repeatedly declined to debate his party’s opponents, and will again forgo this debate, instead participating in a town hall hosted by Fox News, also in Iowa.Unlike the prior debates, this one was not coordinated by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which decided in December to stop hosting GOP debates for the rest of the primary season.The RNC debates narrowed the field of Republican contenders to five, and CNN’s debate requirement that candidates poll at 10% in at least three national or Iowa-based surveys has left only Haley, DeSantis and Trump qualifying. Chris Christie, Trump’s most vociferous critic among the Republican contenders, did not make the cut, but will likely qualify in New Hampshire.House Republicans’ bad day just got worse, after conservative lawmakers disrupted a procedural vote in protest at speaker Mike Johnson’s deal with Democrats to fund the government:A vote on a rule to bring multiple pieces of legislation up for consideration just failed, and the House’s Republican leadership then announced there would be no votes for the rest of the day.It was the latest disruption for the House GOP, after Hunter Biden upstaged an oversight committee hearing convened this morning to hold him in contempt by showing up unexpectedly. That gave Democrats the opportunity to claim the majority does not actually want to hear from the president’s son about allegations of corruption. Just take it from the spokesman for the committee’s Democrats:After months of worrying poll numbers, Joe Biden has received some tentatively good news in the form of a just-released Quinnipiac University survey showing the president ahead of Donald Trump in must-win state Pennsylvania.Biden garnered 49% support against Trump’s 46% in what Quinnipiac said was the first time that the president led in their surveys of the swing state. Trump was ahead of Biden in two previous polls the university commissioned, though the university noted the race remained “too close to call”.Biden carried Pennsylvania when he was first elected in 2020, while Trump had won it in 2016.When Hunter Biden turned up before the House oversight committee today, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace accused him of exhibiting “white privilege”.That comment did not sit well with at least two Democratic lawmakers on the panel, who excoriated Mace’s choice of words. Here’s Jasmine Crockett of Texas:And New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:In response to Florida’s Republican representative Byron Donalds who asked Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin whether he has ever stayed at a Trump hotel, Raskin replied:
      “I would never stay at a Trump hotel. I’ve got too much self-respect and a concern for hygiene.”
      Raskin’s comments came as he offered to take Donalds “up on his challenge to see whether the Trump hotel in Washington, the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, the Trump hotel on Fifth Avenue, the Trump hotel on UN Plaza, the four of the more than 500 businesses that we got documentation for, whether they actually had the same level of business coming from Saudi Arabia, the communist bureaucrats of China … the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, India, Egypt … ”“We will make that comparison about what was done before if you get the chairman to call off the ban on further documents,” he added, referring to House oversight committee chairman James Comer.Last Thursday, a report published by Democrats from the House oversight committee found that Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8m in payment from 20 countries during his presidency.In an email New York judge Arthur Engoron sent to Donald Trump’s lawyer Chris Kise on Wednesday surrounding Trump’s closing arguments, Engoron wrote:
      “Dear Mr. Kise,
      Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow.”
      Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.For the full story, click here:Donald Trump’s real estate empire is facing peril.For 11 weeks, the inner workings of his company have been discussed at a New York fraud trial. A judge has already decided Trump committed fraud. He will rule on punishment later.Trump’s companies could lose their New York licenses, making it nearly impossible for him to run his real estate business. He is also facing a vast fine – state lawyers made the case for a $370m penalty on Friday – which could force the company to sell off its properties.At this point, prosecutors and Trump’s defense team have rested their cases. Closing arguments are set to take place on Thursday.The last three months offered Trump and his lawyers their chance to defend Trump in court against accusations that he purposely exaggerated his net worth on government documents. Instead, they worked to uphold the shimmering portrait Trump has painted of himself for the last 40 years. The story that gave Trump celebrity and, ultimately, the White House could lead to the downfall of his company.A scathing pre-trial summary judgment made the trial an uphill battle for Trump’s team. Issued on 26 September, less than a week before the trial started, the ruling said documents submitted by prosecutors showed Trump had committed fraud. The ruling is currently under review by an appellate court, but if upheld, Trump will lose his business licenses, severely curtailing his real estate business in New York.You can read more here.Donald Trump will be barred from his reported aim to deliver his own closing argument on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial.Judge Arthur Engoron had reportedly been prepared to allow the former president, in a highly unusual move, to address the court tomorrow in addition to his lawyers doing so.But fresh news now being reported by the Associated Press – Engoron has “rescinded permission”.Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. She claims his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him secure business loans and insurance.An attorney for Trump informed Engoron earlier this week that Trump wished to speak during the closing arguments, and the judge approved the plan, according to one of the two people who spoke to the AP.Read more about the case from the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani, who had a great report from last weekend, here.House Republicans today condemned Alejandro Mayorkas during the opening hearing in the impeachment process they’ve instigated against the homeland security secretary over record numbers of migrants making unauthorized entry across the US-Mexico border.Mark Green, the Republican chairman of the committee leading the impeachment effort, said in opening remarks that Mayorkas had intentionally encouraged illegal immigration with lax policies, Reuters reports.But congressman Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the committee, called the impeachment effort a “circus sideshow” crafted by Republicans “to try to distract from their own failures” to address border security.The impeachment effort is the culmination of years of Republican criticism of Joe Biden’s border management and the president’s moves to reverse some of the harshest policies of Donald Trump.“The secretary’s actions have brought us here today, not ours,” Green said at the hearing, calling Mayorkas “the architect of the devastation” at the border.Not only Democrats across both congressional chambers but also Senate Republicans have questioned the attempt to remove Mayorkas over a policy dispute, which legal experts say does not satisfy the high standard for impeachment.Border security is a core issue for Republican base voters and the party has intensified its criticism of the Biden administration in the run-up to 5 November election.The only cabinet secretary to ever be impeached was Ulysses Grant’s secretary of war in 1876 following allegations of corruption – demonstrating the exceptional nature of today’s proceedings.More on Thompson:It’s been a lively morning on Capitol Hill, to say the least. And there is a lot more action to come so stay with us as we bring you the US political news as it happens.Here’s where things stand:
      Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing, as Republicans on the US House oversight committee convened to consider a resolution to hold the US president’s son in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony over his business interests.
      Appearing with his attorney, Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden sat silently in the front row of the hearing room as the chair and vice-chair of the oversight committee delivered their opening statements.
      After Hunter Biden walked into the House oversight committee hearing room in Washington, Republican Nancy Mace laid into him, prompting objections from Democrats. “Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That’s my first question,” she said.
      Meanwhile, in a separate proceeding, House Republicans leading the homeland security committee were barreling ahead with efforts to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, part of a broader effort to make immigration and border security a defining issue of this year’s presidential election. The committee was holding its first hearing in the process, but Mayorkas was not attending.
      A group of constitutional law experts has written an open letter saying that impeaching Mayorkas simply because Republicans disagree with his policies is unjustifiable.
      The Republican campaign against Hunter Biden centers on allegations that his father, president Joe Biden, benefited illicitly from his business dealings overseas.The GOP has turned up no proof of such ties. What they have discovered is that, per the testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, he would sometime put his father on speakerphone during business meetings, but their conversations were casual.As he was departing the House oversight committee room, Hunter Biden was asked why he had his father talk to his clients. Here’s what he had to say:According to Reuters, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell spoke briefly to reporters about why the president’s son made an unexpected appearance in the House oversight committee’s audience.“We have offered to work with the House committees to see what and how relevant information to any legitimate inquiry could be provided,” Lowell said after Biden left the hearing room.“Our first five offers were ignored. And then in November, they issued a subpoena for a behind-closed-doors deposition, a tactic that the Republicans have repeatedly misused in their political crusade to selectively leak and mischaracterize.” More

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      Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis to face off in Iowa Republican debate

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      Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will face off one-on-one in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday night in their fifth and most high-stakes attempt to take support away from Donald Trump before Monday’s Iowa caucus, the country’s first state primary election.The former president has repeatedly declined to debate his party’s opponents, and will again forgo this debate, instead participating in a town hall hosted by Fox News, also in Iowa.Unlike the prior debates, this one was not coordinated by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which decided in December to stop hosting GOP debates for the rest of the primary season.The RNC debates narrowed the field of Republican contenders to five, and CNN’s debate requirement that candidates poll at 10% in at least three national or Iowa-based surveys has left only Haley, DeSantis and Trump qualifying. Chris Christie, Trump’s most vociferous critic among the Republican contenders, did not make the cut, but will likely qualify in New Hampshire.Vivek Ramaswamy, the rightwing tech entrepreneur who has billed himself as a youthful Maga answer to Trump and has peddled in conspiracy theories, including claiming the January 6 Capitol riot was an “inside job”, did not qualify. Ramaswamy, who has spent the most time in Iowa out of all the candidates, has said he will instead participate in a Des Moines taping of a podcast with the rightwing commentator Tim Pool.Florida governor DeSantis has thrown his campaign resources into Iowa before the caucuses, including visiting each of the state’s 99 counties.“I’d be a better president as a result of going through this,” DeSantis said wearily during an Iowa press conference.Meanwhile, Haley, who garnered the endorsement of the heavy-hitting, Koch-backed conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, could see a boost in Iowa as well. (The organization has promised to knock on doors for the former US ambassador to the UN every day ahead of the 15 January caucuses.)skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf DeSantis and Haley are fighting neck and neck, it is likely for second place. Polls show Trump holding an increasingly commanding lead in Iowa in the weeks before the caucuses – despite putting fewer campaign resources into the early primary than his opponents.If DeSantis fails to eat into Trump’s share of Iowa voters, his campaign – which has faltered repeatedly among gaffes and staffing shakeups – could shutter before he sees another primary. More

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      House Republicans move forward to impeach homeland security head

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      House Republicans barreled ahead with their effort to impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his handling of the US’s southern border, as their party attempts to make immigration a defining issue of this year’s presidential election.The House homeland security committee launched the impeachment proceedings on Wednesday, with Republicans charging that Mayorkas has been derelict in his duty to secure the US-Mexico border amid a sharp rise in migration while Democrats and administration officials assailed the inquiry as a “sham” and a “political stunt”.“This is not a legitimate impeachment,” said Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the panel. Echoing constitutional experts and conservative legal scholars, Thompson added: “You cannot impeach a cabinet secretary because you don’t like a president’s policy.”At Wednesday’s hearing, titled Havoc in the Heartland: How Secretary Mayorkas’ Failed Leadership Has Impacted the States, the panel’s chairman, Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, declared that he had a “duty” to pursue impeachment against Mayorkas, arguing in a combative closing statement that it was the appropriate punishment for the secretary’s “piss-poor performance” controlling the flow of migration and drugs into the US.He charged that Mayorkas, a former federal prosecutor, had “brazenly refused to enforce the laws passed by Congress” and has “enacted policies that knowingly make our country less safe”. As a result, Green said, Republicans were left with “no reasonable alternative than to pursue the possibility of impeachment”.The investigation into Mayorkas’s handling of the nation’s borders is being led by the House homeland security committee, as opposed to the House judiciary committee, which typically oversees impeachment proceedings but is presently consumed by Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.If Republicans are successful, Mayorkas would be the first cabinet secretary impeached in nearly 150 years.Yet across the Capitol, Mayorkas has emerged as a central figure in the bipartisan Senate negotiations over how to respond to the rise in migration at the US border with Mexico. It creates an odd juxtaposition in which House Republicans are trying to impeach an official with whom Senate Republicans are working to try to strike a border security deal.Record numbers of people are arriving at the southern US border each day, though crossings have recently fallen. The influx, as many as 10,000 arrivals on peak days, has strained border patrol resources as well as the public services in many cities and towns across the country.The situation at the US-Mexico border is an acute political vulnerability for the president, who has been unable to stem the flow of people from across the western hemisphere traveling north to escape violence, political upheaval, poverty and natural disasters.Unease among some House Republicans over their effort to impeach Biden despite a failure to uncover any evidence of misconduct has appeared to only strengthen the party’s appetite for bringing articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.In November, shortly after Republicans elected Mike Johnson as their new speaker after the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia attempted to force a snap impeachment of Mayorkas. Eight House Republicans joined with Democrats to block the effort, instead sending her resolution to the House homeland security committee.Now, as the problems at the border deepen and polling shows Republicans with a clear advantage on the issue of immigration and border security, some of those Republicans appear newly willing to support the impeachment effort.Green has indicated that he hopes to move quickly with the impeachment proceedings. But with their razor-thin majority, House Republicans would need near-total unanimity to levy articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.If the House impeaches Mayorkas, it is extremely unlikely two-thirds of the Senate, narrowly controlled by Democrats, would vote to convict him.Austin Knudsen, one of three Republican state attorneys general who testified before the panel on Wednesday, said Montana was on the frontline of the fentanyl crisis, accusing the Biden administration’s border policies of having “poured gasoline on this fire”.Knudsen, along with Gentner Drummond of Oklahoma and Andrew Bailey of Missouri heralded the hardline enforcement actions taken by Donald Trump and blamed the current challenges on Biden’s decisions to stop future construction of his predecessor’s border wall and end of Covid-19 era policy to swiftly expel migrants. (Several miles of the border wall have been built since Biden took office.) Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has vowed even more draconian measures if he is elected to a second term.In her line of questioning on Wednesday, Greene, who sits on the homeland security panel, asked each Republican witness if he believed Mayorkas should be impeached. They agreed unequivocally that he should be.Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat of New York who was the lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment, scoffed at their determination, arguing that the attorneys general were not experts on the matter of impeachment and all had joined a lawsuit suing the Biden administration over its border policies.“We have Republicans suing Secretary Mayorkas to stop him from implementing his policy to address the issues at the border. And now we’re going to impeach him because you say he’s not addressing the issues at the border,” Goldman said. “Which do you want?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFrank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri school of law and author of the book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump who counts Bailey, the Missouri attorney general, as a former student, was the lone voice of dissent on the panel. He argued that Mayorkas’s conduct did not rise to level of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, far from it.“If the members of the committee disapprove of the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, the constitution gives this Congress a wealth of legislative powers to change them,” he said. “Impeachment is not one of them.”During the hearing, Democrats readily acknowledged the challenges at the border, but said impeaching Mayorkas was not the solution. They implored Republicans to work with them to overhaul the nation’s outdated immigration system, expand work permits and increase funding for border agents.Representative Delia Ramirez, a Democrat of Illinois, said it was Republicans, not Democrats, who were failing to take the “humanitarian crisis within our borders seriously”.“Impeachment will not make our borders any safer for our communities or for asylum-seekers and it will not address the conditions across Latin America that motivate families to migrate across the jungles and deserts to our southern border,” she said.Several conservative lawmakers are unhappy with the direction of the bipartisan Senate talks, demanding Congress go further to restrict asylum laws. Some are threatening to block a funding bill and risk a government shutdown if Congress fails to take up Republicans’ hardline border security demands.Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican of New York who represents a district carried by Biden in 2020, was emphatic that the proceedings were about accountability and not political theater. He cited comments by the Democratic leaders in his state who have pleaded for more federal help to deal with the migrant crisis in New York.“This isn’t a narrative,” he said. “It’s not one created by Republicans.”In a memo released ahead of the hearing, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) slammed the proceedings as a “baseless political attack” and a distraction from the efforts underway to find “real solutions” to fix the nation’s beleaguered immigration system.The agency highlighted comments made by Republican lawmakers and conservative legal scholars who disagreed that Mayorkas had committed impeachable offenses.And contrary to Republican claims of an “open” border, the DHS memo said that agents had removed or expelled more than 1 million individuals encountered at the border in both fiscal years 2022 and 2023, with more removals in 2022 than any previous year. It estimated that the annual rate of apprehensions under the Biden administration was 78%, “identical” to the rate under the Trump administration.They also noted increased efforts in stopping the flow of fentanyl, noting that the agency has “stopped more fentanyl and arrested more individuals for fentanyl-related crimes in the last two years than in the previous five years combined”.“This unprecedented process, led by extremists, is harmful to the Department and its workforce and undercuts vital work across countless national security priorities,” the memo said. “Unlike like those pursuing photo ops and politics, Secretary Mayorkas is working relentlessly to fix the problem by working with Republican and Democratic Senators to find common ground and real solutions.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Totally baseless’: Trump denounced for Nikki Haley ‘birther’ lie

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      A leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for “playing the race card” by propagating the “totally baseless” claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter,” Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC.“I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by those claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”The term “birther” was coined to describe racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, the first Black US president, which Trump seized on as he established a presence on the political far right.In 2016, as he ran for president himself, Trump also attempted to raise doubts about Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who was then his chief rival.Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother American. He was born in Hawaii. Cruz’s father was Cuban and his mother American. He was born in Canada and moved to Texas when young.The 14th amendment to the US constitution – the same text under which Colorado and Maine now seek to remove Trump from the ballot for inciting an insurrection – says “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” are citizens. It was introduced after the civil war, conferring citizenship on people once enslaved. The constitution requires that a presidential candidate must be a resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old, and a “natural-born citizen”.As described in Haley’s autobiography, her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India”. Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972, a US citizen at birth. Her father became a US citizen in 1978, her mother in 2003. Haley was governor of her home state from 2011 to 2017, then ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president.In the race for the Republican nomination, Haley has surged in polling. She has done particularly well in New Hampshire, cutting Trump’s lead to single digits. Trump still dominates in Iowa, the first state to vote next week.On Tuesday, Trump re-posted to his Truth Social platform a post from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site, which cited Paul Ingrassia, a New York Young Republican and “constitutional scholar”, as saying Haley was disqualified.In his own post, Ingrassia cited “great investigative work by Laura Loomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972”. Loomer, a far-right, Islamophobic, white-supremacist Florida activist who has run unsuccessfully for Congress, is an ardent Trump supporter.Experts agree Haley is qualified to be president, simply because she was born on US soil. Campaigning on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants.His post about Haley was condemned across the US media – and the political spectrum.Charles Gasparino, a Fox Business correspondent, said: “The problem with Donald is that he goes disgustingly low and not just against real enemies.”John Avlon, a CNN political analyst, said: “Trump’s lies are cut and paste: now he’s going birther on Nikki Haley – after trying the same attack on Obama, Harris and Cruz.”Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents from India and Jamaica. Trump sought to cast doubt on her eligibility for office during the 2020 election. More

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      in Elections

      Trump warns of ‘bedlam’ if criminal cases bar him from White House

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      There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”Trump claims he is a victim of political persecution.Prosecutors say he committed 91 criminal offenses, regarding federal election subversion (four charges); state election subversion (13, in Georgia); retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair (34, in New York).Trump also faces civil trials over his business affairs and a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Arising from his incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 – an attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests – Trump also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has appealed removal in Maine in that state. An appeal against his removal in Colorado will be argued at the US supreme court.On Tuesday, Trump chose to attend an appeals hearing in his federal election subversion case, listening as his lawyers argued he enjoys immunity for anything done while president.One judge asked if a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6, an elite special forces unit, “to assassinate a political rival”.For Trump, D John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general, said a president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before being prosecuted for any such action.Trump was impeached (for a second time) for inciting the Capitol attack. Republicans in the Senate ensured he was acquitted.Representing Jack Smith, the special counsel, James Pearce said Trump’s lawyers were proposing “an extraordinarily frightening future”.Speaking to reporters, Trump referred to speeches by Biden around the January 6 anniversary, saying of the charges against him: “When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming he did “nothing wrong, absolutely nothing”, he nonetheless repeated his claim: “If it’s during the time [in office], you have absolute immunity.”A reporter asked: “You just used the word ‘bedlam’. Will you tell your supporters now, ‘No matter what, no violence’?”Trump walked away.Polling shows a criminal conviction may reduce Republican support for Trump. The trial in the federal election subversion case is due to begin on 4 March, in the middle of the GOP primary. As in other cases, Trump’s appeal is widely seen as an attempt to delay proceedings.His prediction of “bedlam” stoked widespread alarm.Maya Wiley, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, alluded to Republican endorsements of Trump when she said his “warnings” were “heard by too many as calls to action. Every Republican should come forward and repeat these simple and unequivocal words: ‘Political violence is never acceptable … it has no place in the democracy. None.’ This isn’t a game.”Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg News, a longtime Trump-watcher, recapped remarks in court and added just one word: “Fascism”. More