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      Republican choice for vacated US House seat is surprise boon for Lauren Boebert

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      A Colorado Republican panel made the surprising decision on Thursday night to choose a former mayor, Greg Lopez, to be congressman Ken Buck’s likely replacement until the November general election, a saving grace for Lauren Boebert’s bid for another term in Congress.Lopez will now run as the Republican candidate in the 25 June special election after Buck’s resignation at the same time GOP primary candidates are vying to be the congressman’s successor.The stakes, however, were far higher than keeping Buck’s seat in the US House warmed by a Republican.Of the nine competitors who jostled for the special election nomination, seven also are running in the primary race against Boebert. The far-right representative jumped into the race after a near loss in the seat she now holds.While Lopez is likely to win in the dark red district, he will be a placeholder and plans to step down after the general election winner is sworn into office in January. For two of Boebert’s primary opponents who came in second and third, the special election candidacy would have been a boon.They would have run in two different elections for the same seat, garnering more attention, media coverage and fundraising opportunities. That would have boosted their odds in the primary race where they are otherwise eclipsed by Boebert’s near household name and hefty campaign chest.That tension was palpable throughout the six-hour meeting with six votes on Thursday, which winnowed the field in the special election for Buck’s seat to two options, Lopez and former state senator Jerry Sonnenberg, one of Boebert’s stiffest primary competitors.View image in fullscreenThroughout the evening, there were accusations Buck had intended to kneecap Boebert’s campaign by stepping down early and giving one of her opponents a potential leg up. Boebert pushed the claim, saying in a previous statement: “The establishment concocted a swampy backroom deal to try to rig an election.”Buck denied that was his intention.Boebert sent a letter to delegates before the meeting encouraging them to choose a placeholder, so as not to “influence the regular primary election in a way that would taint the entire process and give this candidate an unfair leg up”.That riled her primary opponents, including the former state senator Ted Harvey.On stage, Harvey lashed back at those who had voted for Lopez after landing the third-most votes.“They didn’t do it to support the candidate Greg Lopez, they did it to support their own candidates who weren’t here tonight. That’s not just putting us at risk, but it’s putting our nation at risk,” Harvey said.Harvey then asked his supporters to throw their weight behind Sonnenberg, one of Harvey’s primary opponents. Sonnenberg barely lost to Lopez in the final vote and seemed to shrug off the loss.“This is not a game for the weak. I understand completely, they made a decision,” he said, gesturing toward the mingling crowd.Lopez is a former mayor of Parker, Colorado, who ran two unsuccessful bids for governor and said he would “do the best job that I can and represent this state to the best of my ability”.This helps keep the field clear for Boebert, who has built a far-right name with a ferocious political style and remains a known, if divisive, quantity among conservatives nationwide.While Boebert has made headlines with scandals, including a tape of her groping and vaping with a date in a Denver theater, she also has garnered endorsements from Donald Trump and a key supporter of the former president, the House speaker, Mike Johnson.Those votes of confidence will probably go far for Boebert in the new district, an expansive sweep of Colorado’s plains where voters overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2020 and her opponents are lesser-known, local Republicans.Boebert moved east to join the race in this district at the end of last year, after she nearly lost her previous, Republican-leaning seat to a Democratic candidate in 2022.The option to district-hop was opened to Boebert after Buck announced last year he would not run for re-election, citing his party’s handling of Trump.Buck abruptly left Congress on 22 March, pointing to the “bickering and nonsense” he said now pervades the US Capitol. More

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      Trump cases: lawyer argues to dismiss Georgia election subversion case; progressive groups call for ‘fair’ hush money trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump’s legal team was in Atlanta to argue that the charges brought by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis against the former president should be dismissed on first amendment grounds. Other defendants have tried unsuccessfully to make that argument, but Judge Scott McAfee wrapped up the hearing without giving any indication of how he may rule – or, perhaps more importantly, when Trump’s trial will actually start. Speaking of trials, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson sent the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer a letter demanding he get started on homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s impeachment trial as soon as the GOP transmits the charges on 10 April. Schumer’s office said the Senate leader plans to do so, but reports indicate that Democrats are considering voting to dismiss the impeachment articles.Here’s what else happened:
      James Comer, one of the House Republican leaders of the attempt to impeach Joe Biden, invited the president to testify before his committee. Don’t expect him to show up.
      Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he spoke with Johnson about Ukraine aid, though no breakthrough on authorizing more funds was announced.
      Progressive groups have written an open letter asking that Trump receive “a prompt and fair trial” in the New York hush-money case.
      Biden called New York City mayor Eric Adams to offer condolences on the death of police officer Jonathan Diller. Trump attended his wake.
      The Republican National Committee wants to know whether new hires think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
      James Comer, the Republican House oversight committee chair and one of the leaders of the campaign to impeach Joe Biden, has invited the president to testify at a hearing about his family’s business dealings.Don’t expect the president to take him up on the offer. When Comer announced last week that he planned to send the invitation, a White House spokesman kept their response succinct: “LOL”.Indeed, the Republican attempt to bring charges against Biden for alleged corruption appears to be in trouble, in part because they haven’t actually proven their allegations, and also because some in their party don’t support the effort. Comer has reportedly signaled to potential donors that he may settle for making a criminal referral to the justice department, rather than continuing to push for the president’s impeachment.In a lengthy letter to Biden, Comer proposed that he appear on 16 April:
      As the foregoing demonstrates, the Committee has compiled evidence -bank records, contemporaneous electronic communications, and witness testimony – showing your awareness, acquiescence, and participation in self-enrichment schemes of your family members.
      As Chairman of the Committee, in addition to requesting that you answer the questions posed in this letter, I invite you to participate in a public hearing at which you will be afforded the opportunity to explain, under oath, your involvement with your family’s sources of income and the means it has used to generate it. As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
      Then there’s the matter of the Senate. Democrats control it by a margin of just one seat, and their best path to maintaining their majority after next year is by getting Joe Biden and two of their senators representing red states re-elected. One of those two is Jon Tester of Montana, where the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports the state’s highest court today struck down voting restrictions passed by its Republican government:In a significant win for voting rights, the Montana supreme court on Wednesday struck down four voting restrictions passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2021.In a 125-page opinion, the state’s highest court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the four laws, passed in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, violate the state constitution. The laws had ended same-day voter registration, removed student ID cards as a permissible form of voter ID, prohibited third parties from returning ballots and barred the distribution of mail-in ballots to voters who would turn 18 by election day.After a nine-day trial, the lower court found that the laws would make it harder for some state residents to register to vote and cast a ballot.A spokesperson for the Republican secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen, who appealed the lower court decision in an attempt to get the laws reinstated, said that she was “devastated” by the supreme court decision.“Her commitment to election integrity will not waver by this narrow adoption of judicial activism that is certain to fall on the wrong side of history,” the spokesperson, Richie Melby, wrote in a statement. “State and county election officials have been punched in the gut.”Mike Johnson’s time as House speaker may not last long – the Republican majority is small, and Democrats have the opportunity to flip the chamber back to their control in November. But there are lots of variables that will affect whether they are able to do that, including which congressional maps are used in which states. Today in South Carolina, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports that Republicans scored a win in an important redistricting case:A federal court will allow South Carolina Republicans to use their congressional map for the 2024 election, it said on Thursday, despite an earlier finding that the same plan discriminates against Black voters. The decision is a big win for Republicans, who were aided by the US supreme court’s slow action on the case.In January 2023, a three-judge panel struck down the state’s first congressional district, which is currently represented by Nancy Mace, a Republican. The judges said legislative Republicans had impermissibly used race when they redrew it after the 2020 census. As part of an effort to make it more solidly Republican, lawmakers removed 30,000 Black voters from the district into a neighboring one. Republicans argued that they moved the voters to achieve partisan ends, which is legal. The district was extremely competitive in 2020, but Mace easily won the redrawn version in 2022.The ruling is a significant boon to House Republicans, who are trying to keep a razor-thin majority in Congress’s lower chamber this year.In a post on X, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he spoke with Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who has refused to say whether he will allow a vote on another round of military aid for the country.Zelenskiy said he updated Johnson about the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, and continued: “In this situation, quick passage of US aid to Ukraine by Congress is vital. We recognize that there are differing views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed, but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor.”Here’s more:Democrats around the US have enjoyed startling electoral successes through campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights, just this week even taking a state seat in deep red Alabama.Marilyn Lands won that race after, in the words of our report, making “Alabama’s abortion ban and access to contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF) central to her campaign, speaking openly about her own previous abortion experience in a TV ad that featured her saying that it was ‘shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago’”.Today, Lucas Kunce, a Missouri Democrat hoping for an upset win over Josh Hawley, a prominent far-right presence in the US Senate, follows suit with a new campaign ad.In the short ad, headlines (including one from the Guardian) about Hawley’s refusal to back legislation protecting IVF and support for an anti-IVF judge appear on screen as Jessica, described as “a Missouri mother”, says:
      After years of trying and disappointment and struggle and health scares, I just had this beautiful baby and I held her and I just like knew I was meant to be her mom. Now there are efforts to ban IVF and Josh Hawley got them started. Josh Hawley has proven that he won’t protect ATF and he would let politicians make me a criminal. I want Josh Hawley to look me in the eye and tell me that I can’t have the child that I deserve.
      Kunce said: “Jessica and her family matter. Josh Hawley has built his career on a control-obsessed crusade to outlaw reproductive healthcare. It’s now a threat to IVF and to women in Missouri. We can’t risk giving Hawley’s crusade another six years in the US Senate.“This race is going to be about freedom. In Missouri, we’re tired of Big Brother elites like Josh Hawley telling us how to live and criminalising our freedoms.”Hawley’s wife, Erin Hawley, is a prominent lawyer in reproductive rights cases who this week argued before the supreme court that mifepristone, an abortion pill, should be banned.Here’s more on that case, from Melissa Segura and well worth a lunchtime read:Officials at the US Department of Defense are having preliminary “conversations” about how to stabilize Gaza with a peacekeeping force when, at some point, the current conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Palestinian territory, comes to an end, Politico reports.The US news outlet is reporting that Pentagon chiefs are talking about options, including the possibility that the Pentagon would help fund either “a multinational force or a Palestinian peacekeeping team”.The report points out that no options include US troops serving on the ground in the Gaza area, citing two Pentagon and other Biden administration officials, who won’t be named by Politico because of the highly-sensitive nature of the discussions.The outlets suggests any US funding “would go toward the needs of the security force and complement assistance from other countries”.Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where significant sections of the population are facing imminent starvation, in a significant legal rebuke to Israel’s claim it is not blocking aid deliveries.Illinois Democrat Sean Casten’s not holding back about the right-wing majority House impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and impatiently expecting a trial in the Senate.“Reminder that MTG [Marjorie Taylor Green], Clay Higgins and Andy Biggs are all named impeachment managers. If you want to make the @HouseGOP look like the clown show it is on national television, this is how you do it,” the congressman posted on X/Twitter.Arizona Republican Andy Biggs had also posted, saying Mayorkas was “derelict in his duty” to secure the US-Mexico border.The House and Senate are on a two week recess at the moment.Reuters adds that: Federal officials including presidents, who are impeached by the House are subject to a trial in the Senate to determine whether they should be removed from office.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s office issued a statement saying that senators will be sworn in as trial jurors the day after the articles are delivered. However, the Democratic-led chamber is highly unlikely to vote to remove Mayorkas from office.Some more details and reactions coming through on Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s demand that the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, schedule the trial of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “expeditiously” after his impeachment last month. The speaker will transmit the articles of impeachment on April 10.Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins getting very “we the people”…And, from the White House:Donald Trump’s legal team was in Atlanta to argue that the charges brought by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis against the former president should be dismissed on first amendment grounds. Other defendants have tried unsuccessfully to make that argument, but Judge Scott McAfee wrapped up the hearing without giving any indication of how he may rule – or, perhaps more importantly, when Trump’s trial will actually start. Speaking of trials, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson sent the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer a letter demanding he get started on homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s impeachment trial as soon as the GOP transmits the charges on 10 April. Schumer’s office said the Senate leader plans to do so, but reports indicate that Democrats are considering voting to dismiss the impeachment articles.Here’s what else is going on:
      Progressive groups have written an open letter asking that Trump receive “a prompt and fair trial” in the New York hush money case.
      Joe Biden called New York City mayor Eric Adams to offer condolences on the death of police officer Jonathan Diller. Trump plans to attend his wake.
      The Republican National Committee wants to know if new hires think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
      Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer responded to Mike Johnson’s letter by saying they’d get the ball rolling on the impeachment trial as soon as House Republicans send the charges over.“As we have said previously, after the House impeachment managers present the articles of impeachment to the Senate, senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray will preside,” Schumer’s office said in a statement.There’s plenty they are not saying, including whether they’ll actually go through with holding the trial, or quickly vote on a motion to dismiss the charges, as Democrats are reportedly considering doing.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has demanded the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer schedule the trial of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “expeditiously” after his impeachment last month.“As Speaker and impeachment managers of the US House of Representatives, we write to inform you that we will present to you upon the Senate’s return, on April 10, 2024, the duly passed articles of impeachment regarding Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. We urge you to schedule a trial of the matter expeditiously,” Johnson and the 11 Republican impeachment managers wrote in a letter sent today to Schumer.They continued:
      We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold this trial. The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible. To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.
      House Republicans alleged Mayorkas has mismanaged security on the border with Mexico, but Senate Democrats have shown no interest in removing him from office. They are reportedly considering dismissing the charges without holding a trial, and Schumer has said the allegations were ginned up at the behest of Donald Trump:
      This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans. The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.
      House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime.
      House Republicans failed to show he has violated the Constitution.
      House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense.
      This is a new low for House Republicans.
      Congress is currently out of Washington DC, with the Senate and House set to resume on 8 and 9 April, respectively.A coalition of progressive groups has released an open letter calling for Donald Trump to receive “a prompt and fair trial” in New York, where he faces charges related to making hush money payments prior to the 2016 election.Earlier this week, the judge overseeing that case set 15 April as its start date, making it the first of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial. The other three cases remain mired in pre-trial motions and appeals, and it is unclear if verdicts will be reached in any prior to the November presidential election.“The facts alleged in the indictment recount much more than a sordid soap opera and corporate malfeasance; they also describe conduct that should matter to anyone who cares about democracy, voter information, and meaningful voter choice,” reads the letter, which was signed by 17 groups organized into the Not Above the Law coalition, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, MoveOn and Indivisible.In New York, Trump stands accused of channeling funds from his business to adult actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence on extra-martial affairs ahead of the 2016 election. He allegedly described the payments as legal costs, which New York prosecutors say broke the law.The groups say this amounted to an “instance of election interference” that “might also be understood as an early sign of Trump’s antipathy for voters, which surfaced again in behavior culminating in the January 6th violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”They continue:
      If the rule of law is to remain meaningful, no one — not even a former president — should be allowed to be above the law, and all the Trump criminal trials must play out. The first of these trials is important. We, the undersigned organizations, stand united in our desire for a prompt and fair trial that goes wherever the facts and the law lead. The undersigned organizations also express our hopes that as the Manhattan trial unfolds, the full context for the charges is made clear and understandable to the American public. Our nation deserves nothing less. More

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      Ted Cruz, US senator mocked for flight to Cancún, seeks airport police escorts

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      The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, who achieved viral infamy in 2021 when he was seen at Houston airport for a flight to Cancún even as his state faced a historic and deadly spell of cold weather, this week moved a step closer to securing police escorts for lawmakers at airports.Under an amendment to the Federal Aviation Authority Reauthorization bill introduced by Cruz, members of Congress and other prominent officials, and some family and staff members, will be offered security escorts if they are deemed “currently … or previously … the subject of a threat, as determined by such applicable federal protective agency”.If passed by the House and Senate, the bill will fund the FAA for four years.But given Cruz’s scrape with viral fame over his flight to Mexico in February 2021 – a trip to join a family vacation he abandoned after one day, admitting his “obvious mistake” as tweets and memes proliferated – the senator faces criticism and mockery over his attempt to secure security guards for future airport trips.“Cancún Cruz wants to flee Texas in secret,” said Lose Cruz, a Democratic political action committee supporting Colin Allred, an NFL player turned US congressman now challenging Cruz for his Senate seat.Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, an anti-Republican Texas group, said: “Ted Cruz is still chapped over being caught sneaking to Cancún. He can’t get a damn thing done to improve the border or keep kids safe, but Ted figures out how to get private security covered by taxpayers. Self-serving. Soulless. Worthless.”Insisting the amendment was needed, Cruz told Politico of “serious security threats facing public officials”, adding: “It’s important that we take reasonable measures to keep everyone safe.”There have been prominent cases of lawmakers being accosted at airports. But Kevin Murphy, of the Airport Law Enforcement Agencies Network, told Politico Cruz’s amendment would prove “a burden to airport police agencies” he said were not adequately funded.Melissa Braid, a spokesperson for Senate commerce committee Republicans, among whom Cruz is the ranking member, told the Dallas Morning News: “The airport security amendment was drafted in a bipartisan manner to address the growing number of serious threats against justices, judges, public officials and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.“It passed out of committee unanimously by voice vote and was included in the Senate’s bipartisan FAA Reauthorization bill.“With rising security incidents at airports, this amendment ensures that when law enforcement determines a threat exists, reasonable security measures will be taken to keep everybody safe.”Still, Cruz’s trip to Cancún seems sure to play a prominent campaign role.Earlier this week, Allred said: “We don’t need to ask where Ted Cruz stands when he’s challenged. We know. He stood in the airport lounge waiting to fly to Cancún while Texans froze in the dark. It’s time for him to go on a permanent vacation from the Senate.” More

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      Joe Lieberman, former US senator and vice-presidential nominee, dies at 82

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      The former US senator Joe Lieberman, who ran as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in the 2000 election and became the first Jewish candidate on a major-party ticket for the White House, alongside presidential candidate Al Gore, has died at the age of 82.Lieberman died in New York due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. He was a Connecticut senator for four terms.Lieberman took one of the most controversial arcs in recent US political history. Though he had the status of a breakthrough candidate for America’s Jewish community as Gore’s running mate, his support for president George W Bush’s Iraq war heralded a rightward journey that saw him anger many Democrats.Lieberman sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 but his support for the war in Iraq doomed his candidacy with voters, amid increasing anger at the invasion and its bloody aftermath. It also meant Lieberman was rejected by Connecticut’s Democrats when he ran for a fourth Senate term there in 2006.However, in what he said was a vindication of his positions, he kept his Senate seat by running as an independent candidate, with substantial support from Republican and independent voters.By 2008, Lieberman was a high-profile supporter of Republican senator John McCain in his bid to defeat Democrat Barack Obama’s quest to become America’s first Black president.Thus Lieberman did manage to both impress and offend people across party lines. He expressed strong support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes that often won him praise of many Democrats, and he frequently fit mould of a north-east liberal. He played a key role in legislation that established the US Department of Homeland Security.He was also the first national Democrat to publicly criticize President Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He scolded Clinton for “disgraceful behavior”, earning the ire of his party – though his position has become much more standard in the wake of the #MeToo movement.As he sought a political home outside Democratic politics, Lieberman’s close friend in the Senate John McCain was leaning strongly toward choosing him as vice-president for the 2008 Republican ticket, but Lieberman’s history of liberal policies were seen as too unpopular for McCain to pull off such a move with his conservative base. He plumped for Sarah Palin instead.In announcing his retirement from the Senate in 2013, Lieberman acknowledged that he did “not always fit comfortably into conventional political boxes” and felt his first responsibility was to serve his constituents, state and country, not his political party.Harry Reid, who served as Senate Democratic leader, once said that while he didn’t always agree with the independent-minded Lieberman, he respected him.“Regardless of our differences, I have never doubted Joe Lieberman’s principles or his patriotism,” Reid said. “And I respect his independent streak, as it stems from strong convictions.”After leaving the Senate, Lieberman joined a New York law firm and took up company boards – as is common for retiring senators. But his public positions continued to be a mish-mash of liberal and rightwing views.View image in fullscreenHe endorsed Donald Trump’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and was a public supporter of Trump’s rightwing education secretary Betsy DeVos – a hated figure for many liberals. But at the same time, he endorsed Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 in their runs for the White House.Lieberman continued to push his message of compromise with his 2021 book The Centrist Solution, comparing far-right extremists to progressive leftists in a Guardian interview at the time, saying: “The divisive forces in both of our two major parties have moved further away from the centre. But I believe those more extreme segments of both parties are in the minority in both parties.”He also said he was optimistic that “more mainstream, centrist elements” in the Republican party would take over again.He remained active in recent years as the founding chairman of No Labels, an organization to encourage bipartisanship but which is currently exploring backing a third-party bid for the presidency as Trump and Biden face off again. Faced with criticisms that the group’s efforts could boost Trump’s chance at victory, Lieberman said last year he did not want to see Trump re-elected, but that he believed Democrats would fare better if Biden was not running. In recent weeks, No Labels has struggled to find a candidate as ballot deadlines near.Lieberman grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father operated a liquor store. He was the eldest of three siblings in an Orthodox Jewish family. A Yale law school graduate, Lieberman went on to serve as Connecticut attorney general in 1983, before defeating the incumbent Republican, Lowell Weicker, to earn his Senate seat in 1988.Tributes poured in from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday night. Chris Murphy, a US senator from Connecticut, said in a statement that his state was “shocked by Senator Lieberman’s sudden passing”, adding: “In an era of political carbon copies, Joe Lieberman was a singularity. One of one. He fought and won for what he believed was right and for the state he adored.”Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and oldest sitting senator at 90, recalled working with Lieberman on whistleblower initiatives, saying in a statement: “Joe was a dedicated public servant working [with] anyone regardless of political stripe.”Gore published a tribute praising Lieberman as a “truly gifted leader, whose affable personality and strong will made him a force to be reckoned with”, recounting his former running mate’s support of the 1960s civil rights movement.Obama wrote that he and Lieberman “didn’t always see eye-to-eye”, but commended the former senator for supporting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the passage of the Affordable Care Act: “In both cases the politics were difficult, but he stuck to his principles because he knew it was the right thing to do.”Paul Harris and the Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Trump says he would testify in hush money trial; court lowers bond in fraud case to $175m for now – as it happened

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      Asked if he would testify in his defense at the hush-money trial, Donald Trump said yes.“I would have no problem testifying. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said.He was then asked if he was worried that a conviction would hurt his presidential campaign.It could “make me more popular because the people know it’s a scam”, Trump replied. “It’s a Biden trial.”The former president has inhabited the witness stand before, including in author E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial earlier this year:Donald Trump will go to trial on 15 April in New York City on charges related to making hush-money payments, after a judge rejected his attorney’s arguments that prosecutors had committed misconduct and the trial should be delayed, or canceled outright. The decision raises the possibility that the former president could be convicted or exonerated of one of the four sets of criminal charges he faces before the November presidential election – which could upend the campaign. However, things could still change. Trump says he’ll appeal the ruling, and scored a win at an appeals court in a separate matter earlier today, when his attorneys managed to get the bond he must produce in his civil fraud judgment reduced, and his payment date delayed.Here’s what else happened today:
      The supreme court will on Tuesday hear a case brought by a conservative group against abortion pill mifepristone, which Joe Biden’s allies warn is a preview of a second Trump administration’s aspirations.
      Before the appeals court ruling, Trump came close to blowing his deadline to produce at $454m bond, which he said he was struggling to find backers for.
      The UN security council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after the United States abstained.
      Trump encouraged Israel to wrap up its invasion of Gaza, warning that it was risking its international reputation.
      Biden mocked Trump after he gave himself an award for golfing at his own club.
      In an interview with a conservative publication, Donald Trump encouraged Israel “to finish up your war” in Gaza and warned “you’re losing a lot of the world”.Trump’s comments came the same day as the United States allowed the UN security council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, reversing months of obstruction. Joe Biden has seen some Democratic supporters defect recently over his support for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and earlier this month, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused him of inhibiting peace and called for Israel to hold new elections.In an interview with Israel Hayom, which is owned by the family of Sheldon Adelson, a conservative mogul and supporter of both Trump and Netanyahu who died in 2021, Trump expressed support for Israel’s response to the 7 October attack.“I would act very much the same way as you did. You would have to be crazy not to,” he said.But he also criticized Israel for harming its reputation, as images of destroyed infrastructure and dead civilians poured out of Gaza:
      You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can’t have this going on. And I will say, Israel has to be very careful, because you’re losing a lot of the world, you’re losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done.
      With the supreme court set to weigh a conservative challenge against abortion pill mifepristone, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports on a study showing more and amore Americans are relying on the medication to end their pregnancies:In the six months after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, roughly 26,000 more Americans used pills to induce their own at-home abortions than would have done so if Roe had not fallen, according to a new study.Published on Monday in Jama, one of the leading peer-reviewed medical journals in the United States, the study comes ahead of a key Tuesday hearing at the US supreme court at which the justices will hear oral arguments in a case that could determine the future of a major abortion pill, mifepristone.Pills are used in 63% of all abortions within the US healthcare system, and the study suggests they are being used by even more people than previously known in order to evade abortion restrictions that now blanket much of the US.Analyzing data from abortion pill suppliers who operate outside of the US healthcare system, the study provides a rare window into the growing practice known as “self-managed abortion”. Although definitions of self-managed abortion can vary, the practice generally refers to abortions that take place outside the formal healthcare system, without the aid of a US-based clinician.Ahead of the supreme court’s hearing on Tuesday on the availability of a widely used abortion pill, Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren warned that a future Trump administration would seek to ban abortion nationwide.Warren said the case brought by a conservative group, which centers on the drug mifepristone, highlighted the stakes of the 2024 election.“Republicans have gone to the courts acting as if they know better than the scientific experts at the FDA about the safety of medication abortion,” she said today on a press call organized by the Biden campaign. “What does that tell us? Donald Trump and Maga Republicans are prepared to use every tool in their toolbox to control women’s bodies: banning abortion nationwide, ending access to IVF and even attacking contraception access.”Julie Chavez Rodriguez, manager of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, said they planned to make abortion a central theme, noting that Democrats had performed strongly in elections where the issue was on the ballot. The campaign, she said, would keep reminding voters that it was Trump who laid the groundwork to overturn Roe v Wade with his appointment of three conservative supreme court justices.Mini Timmaraju, the CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Trump’s support of a national abortion ban at 15 or 16 weeks of pregnancy would backfire.“A 15-week abortion ban is still an abortion ban,” she said on the call. “And as we showed in Virginia, Americans hate abortion bans, they will not fall for it, they will not stand for it.”Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a statement attacking Donald Trump after a weekend the former president spend awarding himself while struggling to secure a bond for his civil fraud conviction.“Donald Trump is weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for president,” said James Singer, a spokesman for the Biden-Harris campaign.“His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda. America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”National security spokesman John Kirby has just wrapped up his part of the press briefing at the White House and left the room, leaving press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre handing questions about congressional matters now involving the stuck legislation over aid to Ukraine.Kirby said of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s canceling of the high level delegation visit to the White House tomorrow for talks on Gaza:“It’s disappointing, we would have preferred to have had that meeting.”Kirby said that Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant is currently at the White House for a long-scheduled visit, meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan.“Humanitarian assistance will be on the agenda,” Kirby emphasized.He said that the US abstained in the UN security council resolution vote this morning calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages by Hamas, which controls Gaza.“We chose to abstain [rather than veto] because it did not include language condemning Hamas,” Kirby said. And it did link a ceasefire to a hostage deal. The US put forward a ceasefire resolution last Friday but it was more conditional than the one it abstained on today. The US resolution last week was vetoed by Russia and China.Kirby added: “Hamas could solve all these problems right now by putting down their arms and releasing the hostages.”Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant is in Washington, meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan today and will meet with US defense secretary Lloyd Austin tomorrow.My colleague Julian Borger wrote earlier that after the vote at the UN [this morning], the office of Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a planned visit to Washington by two of his ministers, intended to discuss a planned Israeli offensive on the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, which the US opposes. The White House said it was “very disappointed” by the decision. However, a previously arranged visit by the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, went ahead.US national security spokesperson John Kirby said just now at the White House press briefing underway that Israel was still “a friend and ally” and that the US was still supplying Israel with aid and weapons.But the US is adamant that Israel should not only agree to a ceasefire tied to a hostage deal but should not invade Rafah, the city closest to Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which is packed with more than 1.5 million desperate Palestinians who fled the military operation that has decimated a lot of Gaza further north.“We have the same concerns about a ground offensive in Rafah that we had yesterday and the day before,” Kirby said.The Israeli military bombed parts of Rafah overnight.National security spokesperson John Kirby just spoke to the press about the US abstaining on the vote at the UN security council in New York earlier today calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza.“Our vote does not represent, repeat, does not represent, a shift in our policy,” he said.Kirby added: “We wanted to get to a place where we could support this resolution.”The US did not support it because it did not contain language condemning Hamas, he said.He was just asked about Israel then cancelling the high-level diplomatic delegation visit to the White House tomorrow.“We are kind of perplexed by this,” he said. He said it was a non-binding resolution at the UN so does not hamper “Israel’s ability to go after Hamas”.He emphasized that the US has not changed its policy, no matter what the Israeli government is implying.The White House press briefing is running later than originally scheduled today.Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is due to be joined in the west wing briefing room by national security spokesperson John Kirby.Jean-Pierre usually deals with most of the domestic issues while Kirby deals with foreign policy issues.The situation in Russia after the probable-Islamic State attack last Friday night at a concert hall and the latest on Israel-Gaza will be prominent on the agenda.The US abstained on a UN security council vote on an immediate ceasefire and hostage release earlier today, following which Israel cancelled its diplomatic government visit to Washington to discuss Rafah.The briefing is getting underway now.Donald Trump will go to trial on 15 April in New York City on charges related to making hush-money payments, after a judge rejected his attorney’s arguments that prosecutors had committed misconduct and the trial should be delayed, or canceled outright. The decision raises the possibility that the former president could be convicted or exonerated of one the four sets of criminal charges he faces before the November presidential election – which could upend the campaign. However, things could still change. Trump says he’ll appeal the ruling, and scored a win at an appeals court in a separate matter earlier today, when his attorneys managed to get the bond he must produce in his civil fraud judgment reduced, and his payment date delayed.Here’s what else is going on:
      Before the appeals court ruling, Trump came close to blowing his deadline to produce at $454m bond, which he said he was struggling to find backers for.
      The UN security council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after the United States abstained.
      Trump gave himself an award at his own golf club, drawing mockery from Joe Biden.
      Asked if he would testify in his defense at the hush-money trial, Donald Trump said yes.“I would have no problem testifying. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said.He was then asked if he was worried that a conviction would hurt his presidential campaign.It could “make me more popular because the people know it’s a scam”, Trump replied. “It’s a Biden trial.”The former president has inhabited the witness stand before, including in author E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial earlier this year: More

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

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

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      US Senate passes $1.2tn spending package to avert government shutdown

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      The Senate has passed a $1.2tn package of spending bills, a long overdue action nearly six months into the budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.The vote was 74-24. It came after funding had expired for government agencies at midnight, but the White House sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress would pass the legislation and the president would sign it on Saturday.“Because obligations of federal funds are incurred and tracked on a daily basis, agencies will not shut down and may continue their normal operations,” the White House statement said.Prospects for a short-term government shutdown had appeared to grow Friday evening after Republicans and Democrats battled over proposed amendments to the bill. Any successful amendments to the bill would have sent the legislation back to the House, which had already left town for a two-week recess.But shortly before midnight Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced a breakthrough.“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we have just reached an agreement to complete the job of funding the government,” Schumer said. “It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal. It wasn’t easy, but tonight our persistence has been worth it.”The news came hours after the House voted 286 to 134 to pass the bill, which will fund the departments of state, defense, homeland security and others through September.Biden has already said he will sign the bill “immediately” once it reaches his desk. The president signed a spending bill covering the rest of the federal government earlier this month, so all agencies are now funded for the rest of the fiscal year, eliminating any threat of a shutdown until October.The bill’s approval brings an end to a tumultuous appropriations process that forced Congress to pass four stopgap funding bills, known as continuing resolutions, since the fiscal year began in October. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Democratic chair of the Senate appropriations committee, praised the lawmakers who helped bring the process to a close but lamented the considerable delay in reaching a resolution.“It should never have taken us this long to get here,” Murray said in a floor speech on Friday. “We should not teeter on the verge of a shutdown and lurch from one CR to another.”The Senate vote came down to the wire. Members had to unanimously agree on fast-tracking the bill’s passage, and some Republicans raised objections to the expedited process, insisting on taking up amendments to the proposal.Senator Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, attacked congressional leaders for releasing the lengthy bill in the early hours of Thursday morning and holding a final vote one day later.“Why are we up against a deadline? Because they didn’t give us the 1,000-page bill until 2.30 in the morning on Thursday,” Paul said in a floor speech. “You think we ought to read it? You think we ought to know what’s in it?”Paul warned the bill was “teeming with about $2bn worth of earmarks at a time when we can’t afford the additional debt”, calling on colleagues to block the proposal.Rejecting that line of criticism, the senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Senate appropriations committee, reminded colleagues that members of both chambers spent months negotiating over funding levels.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Every single bill – each and every one of them – was subject to robust debate and amendments. Many of them passed unanimously,” Collins said. “No one can say that they were not available for scrutiny, since we reported the last of them from committee way back in July.”Murray blamed hard-right Republicans for repeatedly jeopardizing the federal government’s functionality and urged her colleagues to “learn from the hard lessons of the past few months about how we do get things done in a divided government”.“The far-right elements who forced this dysfunction claim to care a lot about fiscal responsibility, but the constant chaos that they create is the opposite of fiscal responsibility,” Murray said. “Working together, focusing on solutions, solving problems for people back home: that is the responsible way to get things done.”With Associated Press More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene files motion to remove House speaker Mike Johnson

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