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      Mitch McConnell should step down as Senate minority leader after freezing, GOP senator says

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      Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Republican leader in the US Senate who suffered a public health scare this week, should step down from the role he has filled since 2007, an unnamed GOP senator said.McConnell, from Kentucky, remains “intellectually sharp” on “a whole host of issues including baseball”, the anonymous senator told NBC News.But they added: “People think that he’s not hearing well. I think that he is just not processing.”At a news conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, McConnell stopped talking mid-sentence, standing mutely for 23 seconds until he was led away from reporters.He returned to say: “I’m fine.”The moment sparked worries about McConnell’s mental fitness, especially after he was hospitalised and treated for a concussion and a broken rib after a fall in March and amid reports of “multiple” falls this year, including a slip on a snowy day in Finland. McConnell had polio as a child, affecting his gait as an adult.On Thursday, NBC, which reported a fall at Reagan airport this month – described as a “face plant” by one witness – said Republicans were publicly backing McConnell to carry on.“I don’t know how much longer he will want to serve, but I support him as long as he wants the job,” said John Cornyn of Texas, a possible successor.But NBC also said other Republicans, speaking off the record, were not quite so sure.The anonymous senator told NBC “I kind of do” think McConnell should step down.“I’d hate to see it forced on him,” the senator said. “You can do these things with dignity, or it becomes less dignified. And I hope he does it in a dignified way – for his own legacy and reputation.”The senator also told NBC McConnell was relying more on his lieutenants, John Barrasso of Wyoming and John Thune of South Dakota.“Lately … he’s not the go-to guy for, ‘How are things going?’ … It’s been noticeable in the last few weeks.”On Friday, McConnell’s office said he planned to serve his full term, which would runs through 2026, when he would turn 84.McConnell’s freeze was just the latest reminder that the most US leaders are much older than many in other democracies.Joe Biden, 80, is the oldest ever president, nearly two decades older than the median age of world leaders, which Pew Research found to be 62. While Biden is younger than President Paul Biya of Cameroon, who at 89 is the oldest head of state, the US president could be a grandfather to Gabriel Boric, the president of Chile, or Sanna Marin, who stepped down as prime minister of Finland last month. Both are 37.Biden is, however, years younger than some members of Congress.McConnell is not the oldest senator. The Vermont independent Bernie Sanders is 81, the Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley is 89 and the California Democrat Dianne Feinstein is 90.At a Senate hearing on Thursday, Feinstein had to be prompted by a fellow senator and a staffer after appearing to misunderstand a point of procedure. Calls for Feinstein to retire have multiplied after she was absent from Washington for an extended period this year. She has said she will complete her term.Many lawmakers in Congress are in their 70s. The median age of the Senate is 65.3, the website FiveThirtyEight calculated, the oldest ever, versus a median age of 38.8 in the US as a whole. At 64, the Senate has the seventh-highest average age of any global parliamentary body, the Inter-Parliamentary Union calculates, ahead of countries with older populations including Japan, Italy and Greece.Biden’s age has raised questions about whether he should stand for a second term. The president recently fell on stage in Colorado, walks with a careful gait and is prone to verbal slips. He may face Donald Trump, 77, at the polls in 2024. Polling shows many Americans think neither should run.Asked about Biden’s age, the White House points to accomplishments including the 2020 election victory, helping Democrats stave off losses in 2022 and getting legislation through Congress.
      Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Trump, DeSantis and top Republican candidates to share stage at Iowa event

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      Nearly every major Republican presidential candidate will share a stage in the early voting state of Iowa on Friday night, as Donald Trump continues to dominate in the polls despite his numerous legal liabilities.Thirteen candidates will appear at the Iowa Republican party’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner fundraiser, giving them an opportunity to address donors and local party leaders with less than six months left before the state’s crucial caucuses.Trump has cemented his lead in Iowa, even as the former president braces for a third criminal indictment. According to a Fox Business poll taken this month, Trump has the support of 46% of likely Iowa caucus-goers, giving him a 30-point advantage over his closest rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.DeSantis will also deliver remarks at the Lincoln Dinner on Friday, offering the governor an opportunity to reset his faltering campaign. DeSantis recently cut a third of his campaign staff, and was forced to cancel two fundraising events last weekend due to lack of donor interest. According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polls, DeSantis’s support among likely Republican primary voters has dipped by roughly 8 points since the beginning of the month.DeSantis’s recent stumbles appear to have emboldened some of his primary opponents to go on the attack against the governor. Speaking to reporters in Iowa on Thursday, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina criticized DeSantis over his support for new educational standards in Florida requiring middle school teachers to tell students that enslaved people learned skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit”.“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” said Scott, who is the only Black Republican serving in the Senate. “It was just devastating. So I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.”Scott’s primary prospects look to be on the rise, as polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, another early voting state, show him in third place behind Trump and DeSantis. But Trump remains the candidate to beat, as the former president leads DeSantis by 37 points in FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polls.Trump has maintained his frontrunner status even in the face of mounting legal threats. The former president was informed this month that he is a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, suggesting an indictment could be on the horizon. On Thursday, Smith also filed a superseding indictment in Florida, expanding the scope of charges against Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump has already pleaded not guilty to a third set of criminal charges in New York, and prosecutors in Georgia may soon indict the former president for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the battleground state.Trump will probably address the charges against him on Friday, as he has taken any opportunity to denounce the four criminal investigations as “witch-hunts”. Trump’s primary opponents have struggled in their attempts to address the indictments, torn between supporting a former president who remains popular with the Republican base and highlighting a major vulnerability of the current frontrunner for the nomination.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked last week about the news that Trump is a target in Smith’s investigation of election interference efforts, DeSantis said the then-president “should have come out more forcefully” when a group of his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.“But to try to criminalize that, that’s a different issue entirely,” DeSantis said. “We want to be in a situation where you don’t have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail, and that unfortunately is what we’re seeing now.” More

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      Why do Republicans hate the Barbie movie? – podcast

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      Moviegoers flocked to cinemas last weekend for the highly anticipated release of two of the year’s biggest movies – Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. But conservatives have slated Barbie for being, among other things, too ‘woke’, anti-men and even … Chinese propaganda.
      Is the outrage real or is it just another example of politics employing a culture war to rally the base? Jonathan Freedland and Amanda Marcotte try to figure it out

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

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      Mitch McConnell fell earlier this month, before freezing mid-sentence this week

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      Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, suffered an initially unreported fall earlier this month, before a very public health scare this week revived questions about his age and fitness.On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters at the US Capitol, the 81-year-old appeared to freeze for nearly 20 seconds. Another Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, a doctor, then escorted his leader away from the cameras.Only four months ago, McConnell, who suffered from polio as a child, affecting his gait, fell and sustained a concussion, leading to a prolonged absence from Capitol Hill.On Wednesday, he returned to work and told reporters he was “fine” shortly after his incident. An aide told reporters McConnell “felt lightheaded and stepped away for a moment. He came back to handle Q and A.”But NBC News then reported that McConnell also tripped and fell earlier this month, suffering a “face plant” while disembarking a plane at Reagan airport, according to an anonymous witness.Another source told NBC McConnell now uses a wheelchair as a precaution in crowded airports. McConnell did not comment on the NBC report.As Republicans relentlessly claim Joe Biden, 80, is too old to be president, McConnell’s freeze and news of another fall revived questions about his own age.After McConnell’s awkward moment in front of reporters, Helaine Olen, a Washington Post columnist, said: “I hope Mitch McConnell has a quick recovery, but both Democrats and Republicans need to hold honest discussions about how age is not just a number.”From the right, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth group, said: “The stamina and health of elected leaders has become a major problem in American politics.”Naming McConnell alongside Biden, the Democratic congresswoman and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (83), and two Senate Democrats, Dianne Feinstein of California (90) and the Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman (53 but having suffered a stroke and sought treatment for depression), Kirk added: “These politicians have been entrenched or installed by corrupt party structures, but they are too old or too feeble to run the country. Resign.”On the record, however, Republican senators expressed support for McConnell. One senator told NBC McConnell was “definitely slower with his gait” but said that in party meetings, the minority leader “doesn’t address” his age and his health.McConnell, a ruthless partisan warrior who has described himself as “stronger than mule piss”, entered the Senate in 1984, when he was 42. He has led Republicans since 2007, in the majority between 2015 and 2021, a spell which saw him oversee the rightwing capture of the supreme court among other successes.Returning to work on Wednesday, McConnell said Biden, a Senate colleague for 24 years, had called.“The president called to check on me,” McConnell said. “I told him I got sandbagged.”That was a reference to the fall Biden, 80, suffered last month at the US air force academy in Colorado, and the president’s subsequent joke to the press. More

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      Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell freezes during remarks to reporters – video

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      The Kentucky senator stopped speaking for about 20 seconds during a press event at the US Capitol. He was ushered away from the podium but later returned to the press conference and answered questions. McConnell, 81, was out of the Senate for almost six weeks earlier this year after falling and hitting his head. His office later said he suffered a concussion and fractured a rib More

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      Mitch McConnell abruptly stops mid-sentence during press conference

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      The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, briefly left his own press conference on Wednesday after stopping his remarks mid-sentence and staring off into space for several seconds.McConnell approached the podium for his weekly press conference and began speaking about the annual defense bill on the floor, which he said was proceeding with “good bipartisan cooperation”. But he then appeared to lose his train of thought, trailing off with a drawn-out “uh”.He then appeared to “freeze” and stared for about 20 seconds before his colleagues in the Republican leadership, who were standing behind him and could not see his face, took his elbows and asked if he wanted to go back to his office.He did not answer, but slowly walked back to his office with an aide and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a former orthopedic surgeon who is the No 3 Republican in the Senate. McConnell later returned to the press conference and answered questions from the press.Asked about what happened, McConnell said he was “fine”. He did not elaborate.A McConnell aide said he felt light-headed and stepped away for a moment. The aide requested anonymity to speak about the senator’s health.McConnell, 81, was out of the Senate for almost six weeks earlier this year after falling and hitting his head. His office later said he suffered a concussion and fractured a rib. His speech has recently sounded more halting, prompting questions among some of his colleagues about his health.After the press conference, Barrasso told reporters that he “wanted to make sure everything was fine” and walked McConnell down the hall.Barrasso said he has been concerned since McConnell was injured earlier this year, “and I continue to be concerned”.But when asked about his particular concerns, Barrasso said: “I said I was concerned when he fell and hit his head a number of months ago and was hospitalized. And I think he’s made a remarkable recovery, he’s doing a great job leading our conference and was able to answer every question the press asked him today.” More

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      Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to tax and gun charges amid uncertainty over previous plea agreement – as it happened

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      From 4h agoThe president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
      Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
      After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
      This blog has closed. Read more about the Hunter Biden story here:Hunter Biden went to a federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware to formally accept an agreement with prosecutors, which was expected to resolve the long-running investigations into his conduct. But in a surprise move, the presiding judge turned down the deal and ordered the two parties to make changes, delaying the resolution of the case. It was also revealed that federal investigators are continuing a separate inquiry into his business activities – a fact welcomed by the GOP, which has been looking to prove that Joe Biden and his son are corrupt. Back in Washington DC, Republican lawmakers aggressively questioned homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who may soon be the target of impeachment, while elsewhere, lawmakers tried to determine if the US government has found evidence of aliens.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mayorkas defended his handling of the southern border from criticism by the GOP, saying his security strategy “is working”.
      The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to their highest level in 22 years in their ongoing campaign to stop inflation.
      Rudy Giuliani admitted that statements he made about two Georgia election workers alleging they perpetrated fraud in the 2020 election were false.
      At the last minute, a top House Republican tried to derail the plea agreement federal prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden.
      Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, briefly appeared unable to speak at a press conference. He had suffered a concussion in April.
      As chair of the House oversight committee, James Comer has led the campaign of investigations into Joe Biden’s administration, and particularly his son Hunter Biden.In a statement released after the surprise in today’s court hearing, which resulted in a federal judge rejecting, for now, a plea deal between Hunter and federal prosecutors, Comer said the agreement should be taken off the table for good:
      Today District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal. But let’s be clear: Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash. Last week we heard from two credible IRS whistleblowers about the Department of Justice’s politicization and misconduct in the Biden criminal investigation. Today, the Department of Justice revealed Hunter Biden is under investigation for being a foreign agent.
      The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has more on today’s developments in Hunter Biden’s long-running legal troubles:Reporters on the scene shared more details about the health scare involving Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican.CNN says an aide to the leader downplayed the difficulty he suddenly experienced in speaking to the press earlier today, nothing he later took their questions:Senate Republican conference chair John Barrasso later said he was “concerned” about McConnell, but did not think his health was deteriorating:We have just passed hour five of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s appearance before the House judiciary committee, where, as the Guardian’s Mary Yang and Joan E Greve report, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly made clear they believe he is failing at his job and should be impeached. Here is their rundown of the hearing so far:Republican lawmakers grilled Alejandro Mayorkas, the embattled US secretary of homeland security, during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing on Wednesday.Mayorkas, who has been the target of a GOP-led congressional investigation over his handling of the US-Mexico border, faced a series of tough questions regarding his tenure as head of the department, which broadly oversees US immigration and border policies. The hearing came as some House Republicans have threatened to impeach Mayorkas, the first Latino and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, over his alleged mismanagement of the border.Mayorkas offered a pre-emptive rebuttal to Republicans’ attacks in his opening statement, noting that unlawful crossings at the southern border have decreased by more than half compared with the peak before the end of the pandemic-era policy known as Title 42.The health of senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is back under scrutiny after an alarming moment during a Republican press conference this afternoon in which he abruptly stopped speaking and had to be led away.Video of the incident was posted to Twitter by NBC congressional reporter Frank Thorp, who said the Kentucky senator, 81, “appeared to be unable to restart talking”.McConnell was hospitalized in April after suffering concussion when he tripped and fell during a private dinner at a hotel in Washington DC. In 2019, he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture.Thorp said that McConnell was led off by his friend and colleague John Barrasso, Republican senator for Wyoming, and later returned to watch the conclusion of the press conference.Asked what had happened, McConnell reportedly said: “I’m fine”.The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a 22-year high on Wednesday as it continued its fight against rising inflation, my colleague Dominic Rushe writes.The decision to increase rates by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 5.25% to 5.5% comes after the Fed paused its rate-rising cycle last month.US inflation has now declined for 12 straight months and is currently running at an annual rate of 3%, down from over 9% in June last year. The Fed has raised rates from near zero in an attempt to cool the economy and bring prices down.The US economy has remained robust despite the 11 rate rises the Fed has now implemented – its most aggressive rate-rising cycle in 40 years. Hiring has slowed but remains strong and the unemployment rate is still close to a record low.Read the full report here:Republicans are very pleased that a federal judge rejected Hunter Biden’s plea deal today.Here’s the view from an attorney for the GOP-controlled House committee that made a last-minute attempt to disrupt the deal:The Biden administration has generally avoided the topic of Hunter Biden, and at her ongoing briefing to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre preempted all questions about the president’s son:The president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
      Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
      After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
      Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to federal tax and gun charges, after a plea deal that was intended to resolve the allegations fell apart in court, Reuters reports.The plea came after the federal judge presiding over the hearing in Wilmington, Delaware said she needed more time to evaluate the deal reached by the president’s son with prosecutors. Prior to the hearing, Biden had agreed to admit guilt to the tax charges, and avoid the gun charge as long as he satisfied certain conditions as part of the deal with the government. More

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      A strong whiff of desperation surrounds threats to impeach Biden | Margaret Sullivan

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      The setting was inevitable, and the personalities predictable.On a Fox News interview (where else?) conducted by Sean Hannity (who else?), the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, floated the idea on Monday that House Republicans should move toward impeaching President Biden.Unhampered by the lack of evidence of presidential malfeasance, McCarthy took the leap that the Republican party’s right wing has long been craving.“This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry,” he told his eager media helper, one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies.So what are the purported reasons for an impeachment inquiry? Both involve Hunter Biden, the president’s undoubtedly troubled and troubling son.The first claim is that Joe Biden, while vice-president, participated in his son’s influence peddling. That Hunter did engage in influence peddling for personal profit is a fair claim. Did he suggest that his father, the veep, was willing to go to bat for foreign companies or governments? Not proven but not hard to believe. But that is a far cry from impeachable wrongdoing by Biden himself. (Hunter Biden never worked in the White House, let’s recall, unlike certain opportunistic Trump family members.)Trump’s more incendiary claims that Joe Biden “received millions of dollars” from foreign sources appears to be made up out of whole cloth; the House oversight committee has been investigating Biden for months with little to show for it.The second claim is that Hunter Biden got a sweetheart deal from the current justice department, resulting in his recent guilty pleas on misdemeanor charges of tax evasion. Although two former Internal Revenue Service representatives told the House committee that they thought a justice department investigation was hamstrung because of political interference, and that Hunter Biden committed felony-level offenses, no evidence of Joe Biden’s malfeasance has emerged. In fact, in an unusual move, the justice department is allowing David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US attorney who led the Hunter Biden investigation, to testify – presumably to counter the notion that the Biden administration hobbled his investigation.As for the Republicans’ excited touting of a potential witness who would somehow produce proof of the president’s corruption, that went up in flames when it was revealed that the would-be witness himself was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2022 (long before his present accusations surfaced) of brokering arms deals with China and Iran. Oh, yes, and he’s a fugitive from justice.In the wake of that mess, the Maryland Democrat and committee member Jamie Raskin was blunt: “This Inspector Clouseau-style quest for something that doesn’t exist has turned our committee into a theater of the absurd, an exercise in futility and embarrassment.”Even the former Trump insider, the Ukrainian-born American businessman Lev Parnas, once assigned to find wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine, agreed. In a letter to the chairman of the House committee, Parnas wrote that “there has never been any factual evidence, only conspiracy theories” about such claims.Stop the charade, he urged. “The narrative you are seeking for this investigation has been proven false many times over by a wide array of respected sources. There is simply no merit to investigating this matter any further.”But McCarthy and company have no intention of taking that advice. They are, after all, playing to the Trump-controlled base of a Republican party that has gone off the rails – with the dedicated help of the rightwing media and the incessant normalization of the mainstream press.And they are playing to a powerful audience of one: the twice-impeached Trump himself, frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Meanwhile, things are – from the perspective of their boss – going a little too well for incumbent Biden.Inflation is under control. Unemployment is extremely low. Real wages are up.“Doesn’t it seem like everything’s breaking Biden’s way lately?” Nate Cohn of the New York Times asked recently, even while noting that Biden’s approval numbers remain low. They have ticked up recently and they may rise more as the reality of an improved economy penetrates public opinion.Such good news for Trump’s biggest political adversary is unacceptable. Thus, the desperate measure.The “impeach Biden” movement should be seen for what it is: a maneuver to distract from Trump’s own legal troubles, as investigations mount over election meddling, misuse of classified documents and his role in fomenting the January 6 insurrection.It’s also an effort to confuse those Americans who have trouble sorting fact from fiction.“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” the great social critic, Hannah Arendt, warned in the 1950s.“And with such a people,” she added ominously, “you can then do what you please.”That’s what is scary about McCarthy’s move this week. The Republican effort to impeach Biden is desperate and misguided – but that doesn’t mean it won’t be politically effective.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More