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      Robert Hur says he ‘did not exonerate’ Biden and refuses to rule out role in a Trump administration – as it happened

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      In his opening statement, former special counsel Robert Hur defended his descriptions of Joe Biden’s memory and its relevance in his report as “necessary, accurate and fair”.Hur said:
      There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the president’s memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information “willfully” – meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind.
      Hur said that for that reason, he had to “consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial”. He added:
      My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.
      Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events. In his opening statement, Hur defended his descriptions of Biden’s memory issues and the relevance of them to his investigation and in his report as “necessary, accurate and fair”.
      Appearing before the House judiciary committee, Hur said his investigation into Biden “did not exonerate” the president despite declining to charge him.
      Hur declined to rule out accepting a role in a potential second Trump administration. Hur was appointed as a US attorney by Donald Trump in 2017.
      A transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden shows the president repeatedly said he never meant to retain classified information after he left the vice-presidency, but he was at times fuzzy about dates and said he was unfamiliar with the paper trail for some of the sensitive documents he handled.
      Ken Buck, the hard-right Republican congressman of Colorado, announced he will leave Congress at the end of next week, putting the GOP’s wafer-thin majority in the House in further jeopardy.
      The Pentagon will send a new military aid package for Ukraine worth $300m, the White House announced, the first such move in months as fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition.
      The White House’s announcement that the US will send a new military aid package for Ukraine worth $300m marks the first such move in months as fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition.It comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions, and after months of statements from US officials that the it wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided the additional replenishment funds.The aid announcement comes as Polish leaders are in Washington to press the US to break its impasse over replenishing funds for Ukraine at a critical moment in the war. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, met on Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate and was to meet with Joe Biden later in the day.Donald Trump’s second White House chief of staff tried to stop him from praising Adolf Hitler in part by trying to convince the then president that Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, was “a great guy in comparison”.“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” the retired marine general John Kelly told Jim Sciutto of CNN in an interview for a new book.
      I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing. I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.’
      Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, was homeland security secretary in the Trump administration before becoming Trump’s second chief of staff. Resigning at the end of 2018, he eventually became a public opponent of his former boss.Kelly told Sciutto it was “pretty hard to believe” Trump “missed the Holocaust” in his assessment of Hitler, “and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theatre” of the second world war. But I think it’s more … the tough guy thing.”Trump’s liking for authoritarian leaders, in particular Vladimir Putin of Russia, is well known. His remarks to Kelly about Hitler – like his former practice of keeping a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed – have been reported before.The Biden campaign is feeling good about Robert Hur’s testimony before the House judiciary committee today, a campaign official has told CNN.After nearly five hours, the House judiciary committee has adjourned its meeting and former special counsel Robert Hur has been released.Reaction is coming in to the announcement that Colorado Republican representative Ken Buck is leaving Congress before the end of the month.One GOP-er called it “alarming”.Buck announced last November that he wouldn’t stand for re-election but gave no indication then that he would leave before the end of his term. He cited the dysfunction of Congress in general but also slammed the Republican party as it “continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen” by Joe Biden from Donald Trump.Buck is currently questioning Robert Hur in the judiciary committee hearing.The House judiciary committee hearing has resumed in the questioning of now-former special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Joe Biden’s having kept hold of classified documents after he left office as the US vice-president.Hur concluded that the US president should not be punished, which enraged Republicans, but justified that decision by saying, essentially, that a jury would find Biden too forgetful, because of his age, to be able to conclude that he committed a crime.“I stand by every word in the document,” Hur said in testimony at the hearing.National security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the fresh consignment of $300m of weapons that the US is dispatching to Ukraine won’t last long.The weaponry including artillery ammunition will “maybe only last for a couple of weeks”, Sullivan said during a media briefing at the White House.Meanwhile, the outgoing Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, has just urged the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to hold a vote in the lower chamber on the stalled bill that supplies new aid to US allies Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, Reuters reports.The US Senate gave final approval to a $95bn wartime aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other American allies, including Taiwan, last month and sent the bill to the Republican-controlled House, where it screeched to a halt amid rightwing opposition.Sullivan has left the west wing briefing room now and White House the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is answering questions that focus more on US domestic topics.The Pentagon will rush about $300m in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, the Associated Press reports.The relatively small input will happen even though the US military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10bn to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced a little earlier.It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of replenishment funds, but overdrawn.The announcement comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions and efforts to get fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition. US officials have insisted for months that the United States wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided additional replenishment funds, which are part of a large supplemental package stalled in Congress.National security adviser Jake Sullivan, in announcing the $300m in additional aid:
      When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back.
      The aid announcement comes as Polish leaders are in Washington to press the US to break its impasse over replenishing funds for Ukraine at a critical moment in the war. Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, met on Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate and was to meet with Joe Biden later in the day.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has so far refused to bring the $95bn package, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, to the floor.Republican congressman Ken Buck of Colorado is leaving Congress short of his elected term, he announced within the last half hour.Buck is a hard-right representative. He had already announced that he would not seek re-election but now he’s leaving much sooner, putting the GOP’s wafer-thin majority in the House in further jeopardy.Here’s the congressman’s post on X/Twitter:The congressional hearing for former special counsel Robert Hur to be questioned about his report into Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents after leaving the vice-presidency has taken a recess for lunch. There are some unrelated votes to be taken in the House and the hearing will resume after those this afternoon but without an exact time given.Here’s where things stand:
      National security adviser Jake Sullivan is now briefing the media in the west wing, and will be followed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. We’ll bring you highlights.
      Robert Hur declined to engage in Republicans’ questions at the hearing in front of the House judiciary committee about whether Joe Biden is “senile”. Asked whether he found that Biden was senile, after interviewing the US president at length about how he hung on to classified documents after his vice-presidency, Hur said: “I did not. That conclusion does not appear in my report.”
      Hur said he “did not exonerate” Biden in his report. Hur interrupted Pramila Jayapal, the Democrat congresswoman from Washington, when she said Hur’s report amounted to a “complete exoneration” of the president. Hur shot back: “I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in my report.”
      Hur declined to rule out accepting a role in a potential second Trump administration. Hur was appointed as a US attorney by Donald Trump in 2017. Trump is running for re-election to a second term as a Republican president.
      In his opening statement, Hur defended his descriptions of Joe Biden’s memory issues and the relevance of them to his investigation and in his report as “necessary, accurate and fair”.
      Hur is testifying before the House judiciary committee as a private citizen after leaving the justice department. According to a report by the Independent, Hur arranged his departure from the justice department to be official as of Monday, 11 March.
      Jerry Nadler, the Democrat House judiciary committee ranking member, began his opening statement at the hearing by saying that House Republicans are “desperate to convince America that white conservative men are on the losing end of a two-tiered justice system, a theory … that has no basis in reality”. Nadler opined that Biden “probably committed a verbal slip or two” in his interviews with Hur. More

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      Divided Washington state to choose Biden or Trump: ‘Everything seems a mess right now’

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      Had he heard it, Joe Biden would surely have been delighted by Bianca Siegl’s comment – and the fact she barely paused before making it.“Of course I will be voting on Tuesday,” says the 47-year-old, speaking at a farmers’ market in Seattle’s University district. “If Trump were to get elected, it would be incredibly dangerous for the world and for my family.”After Nikki Haley suspended her campaign following disappointing results on Super Tuesday and the US president made an unusually partisan and pugnacious State of the Union address, America is in general election campaign mode. While polls show up to 70% of people do not want to see a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump it appears that is set to happen. As the campaigns step up their efforts, Washington state holds its presidential primary on Tuesday. Selections for local legislators and federal lawmakers get made in the summer, so Tuesday is solely a choice for voters to show their preference between the 77-year-old former president and the 81-year-old incumbent.Tina Sutter is also backing Biden. The 46-year-old registered nurse says she tends not to get involved in politics as it does not make a “lot of difference”. Things are complicated by the fact her parents support Trump, and she “cannot speak to them about politics”. She is not voting on Tuesday, but will definitely do so in November.“Trump is terrifying and everybody needs to make sure we don’t go through that again,” she says. Her policy priorities are reproductive rights, social justice and the environment, all areas in which she believes Trump would move the nation backwards.Washington state’s heartland is famous for its fruit farms and being the nation’s largest producer of apples, so cities such as Seattle and Tacoma are known for markets where city residents are hours away selecting from apples such as Cosmic Crisp, Fuji and other less common varieties. Eastern and central Washington are more conservative than the west – the state’s two GOP-held congressional districts, the fifth and the fourth are in the east – and the markets can be a rare coming together of people who live on either side of the Cascade Mountains. At the same time, politics per se tends to be avoided.In 2020, exit polls showed more than 90% of Black women voted for Biden. But a 63-year-old stall holder who asks to be identified as Marylynn P says she is not prepared to say who she is voting for.“Everything seems a mess right now,” she says. “But there seemed to be [less undocumented immigration and] people pouring into our cities under Trump.”Trump certainly has his supporters, and they tend to be very committed indeed.Loren Culp, a former police chief, was backed by him in 2022 to oust the Republican congressman Dan Newhouse, one of 10 GOP “traitors” in the House who voted to impeach Trump over January 6. (While Newhouse held his seat, another Washington member of Congress who voted against Trump, Jaime Herrera Beutler, lost hers albeit to a Democrat, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who saw off a Trump-backed military veteran, Joe Kent.)Speaking from Goldendale in the south of the state, Culp says he is convinced Trump will win a second term.Biden rarely campaigns in Washington; the last Republican president to win the state was Ronald Reagan, but he comes for private fundraising events and to tap into the wealth of liberal-leaning tech-rich millionaires.In 2020, Biden beat Trump here 58 to 39, and a poll posted recently by the website FiveThirtyEight puts Biden leading Trump 54 to 38.Yet Biden may not have things entirely without a bump. As in Michigan and Minnesota, where 100,000 and 45,000 people respectively voted as “uncommitted”, activists in Washington are looking to send a similar protest message over the administration’s support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians.Most Washington voters cast ballots by mail once they are sent out in late February. The first release of results in the state typically skews more conservative than the electorate as a whole, then moves farther to the left over time as more results from later mail returns and same-day voting comes in.Rami Al-Kabra, the deputy mayor of the city of Bothell and an organizer for the uncommitted group, says “enough is enough”.“We need to do more than just calling and protesting in the streets. As Americans, the most precious tool we have is our right to vote.”Al-Kabra, who believes he is the only elected Palestinian American official in the state, added: “And in Washington, we have this uncommitted delegates option to leverage this.”Professor James Long, a political scientist at the University of Washington, says he will be watching how many vote “uncommitted”. Though he suspects some of those “uncommitted voters” will “return home” in November, there could be a number on Tuesday who want to express dissatisfaction.“We don’t have as large a pro-Gaza, or pro-Palestinian, cause as in Michigan, but we have a lot of people on the left,” he adds.While the Guardian spoke to several Democrats who said they would prefer a younger candidate than Biden, nobody said they had thought about picking “uncommitted”.Many said they felt the election of 2024 was too important to do anything that might weaken Biden’s chances.Roger Tucker, 68, a retired architect who was browsing the stands with his wife, Becky, 65, a former university administrator, said: “If Trump is in office for another four years, he’s going to be more powerful than before and less worried that people are going to push back on him.” More

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      Trump says pardoning Capitol attackers will be one of his first acts if elected again

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      Donald Trump has said one of his first acts if given a second presidency would be to pardon the insurrectionists who carried out the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, referring to them as “hostages” in a Truth Social post on Monday night.“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote.Though he has long said he will dismiss charges against the rioters if elected, the post is the closest Trump has come to saying that pardons for the Capitol attack rioters is a first-day priority, along with oil and gas drilling as well as a crackdown at the US-Mexico border. Trump’s post came after he has implied that he plans to be a “dictator” on his first day back in office if returned to the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.“We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity at a town hall event in December when asked if he would be a dictator. “After that, I’m not a dictator.”Trump has emphasized his “drilling” plans on the campaign trail as a way to highlight the inflation that has been seen during Biden’s presidency.The Truth Social post is not the first time Trump has referred to those prosecuted for participating in the riots meant to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral victory as “hostages”. The former president has been using the term for months in attempts to downplay the attack that left 140 police officers injured and has been linked to nine deaths.In January, a Republican-appointed federal judge – during sentencing proceedings for a January 6 attacker – said that “in my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream”.“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into public consciousness,” Judge Royce Lamberth wrote.Since the Capitol attack, 1,358 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged for participating in the riot, and many have been convicted, according to the justice department. Nearly 500 have been charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, with many convicted as well.Trump himself was supposed to face trial for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. But the supreme court in April is planning to hear arguments over whether the former president is immune to prosecution.The January 6 insurrection was likely on Trump’s mind on Monday night after the Republican-led House committee investigating the attack released a report that said four former White House employees contradicted a part of ex-aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s behavior before the attack.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA dramatic part of Hutchinson’s testimony, which she gave in public in 2022, included her reports that an irritable Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his car after Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol after he gave a speech to supporters before the attack. Hutchinson said that another former White House staffer had told her that Trump tried to grab the wheel.But the committee’s new report said: “None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about president Trump’s lunging for the steering wheel.”Instead, an unnamed Secret Service agent told the committee that while Trump was insistent on going to the Capitol, and had clear irritation in his voice when talking to his agents, Trump never grabbed for the wheel.Hutchinson, through her lawyer, has said that she will not “succumb to a pressure campaign from those who seek to silence her”. More

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      Biden budget plan details his vision: tax breaks for families and lower deficit

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      Joe Biden took another swipe at Donald Trump on Monday as the president revealed his $7.3tn budget proposal for 2025 that offers tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, a smaller federal deficit and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.Biden made the remarks in an afternoon appearance in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire. Referring to the former president as “my predecessor”, as he did repeatedly during last week’s fiery State of the Union speech, Biden slammed Trump for “making $2tn in tax cuts” during his single term, and “expanding the federal deficit”.“I’m not anti-corporation. I’m a capitalist man. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” he said. “A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great.”Unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law, the proposal for fiscal 2025 is an election-year blueprint about what the future could hold if Biden and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November. The president and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, with plans to provide the fine print on Monday.If the Biden budget became law, deficits could be pruned $3tn over a decade. Parents could get an increased child tax credit. Homebuyers could get a tax credit worth $9,600. Corporate taxes would jump upward, while billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%.Biden also wants Medicare to have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years.The president also called on Congress to apply his $2,000 cap on drug costs and $35 insulin to everyone, not just people who have Medicare. He is also seeking to make permanent some protections in the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire next year.All of this is a chance for Biden to try to define the race on his preferred terms, just as the all-but-certain Republican nominee, Trump, wants to rally voters around his agenda.Trump, for his part, would like to increase tariffs and pump out gushers of oil. He called for a “second phase” of tax cuts as parts of his 2017 overhaul of the income tax code would expire after 2025. The Republican has also said he would slash government regulations. He has also pledged to pay down the national debt, though it is unclear how without him detailing severe spending cuts.“We’re going to do things that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said after his wins in last week’s Super Tuesday nomination contests.The Republican US presidential candidate, speaking in an interview on CNBC, also called for action on popular US entitlement programs, including cuts, and indicated he was not likely to curb use of cryptocurrencies.Asked about concerns over increased political polarization on the nation’s financial stability, Trump said he was concerned about Fitch’s 2023 downgrade but dismissed the credit rating downgrade’s ties to the January 6 riot at the Capitol.Trump’s comments are his first extended remarks on his economic plans since he became the party’s likely nominee following last week’s “Super Tuesday” primary elections, setting up a rematch with President Joe Biden in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis tariff plan has spurred talk of inflation, and US treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said it would raise costs for American consumers.“I think taxes could be cut, I think other things could happen to more than adjust that. But I’m a big believer in tariffs,” Trump told CNBC, saying they help American industries when they are “being taken advantage of” by China and other nations.“Beyond the economics, it gives you power in dealing with other countries,” he said, adding that he was not concerned about any possible retaliatory tariffs if he were to regain the White House.Asked about Medicare, Social Security and Medicare programs and the nation’s spending and deficits, Trump told CNBC: “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management.”House Republicans on Thursday voted their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts, reducing $8.7tn in Medicare and Medicaid expenditures. Biden has pledged to stop any cuts to Medicare.“The House’s budget blueprint reflects the values of hard-working Americans who know that in tough economic times, you don’t spend what you don’t have – our federal government must do the same,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said in a statement.Meanwhile, Congress is still working on a budget for the current fiscal year. On Saturday, Biden signed into law a $460bn package to avoid a shutdown of several federal agencies, but lawmakers are only about halfway through addressing spending for this fiscal year. More

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      Biden says US needs fair tax code to ‘make this country great’ in speech on $7.3tn budget plan – as it happened

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      Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Joe Biden revealed a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal, offering tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Here’s what is in Biden’s budget proposal.
      Biden travelled to the swing state of New Hampshire, as he tried to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week. “Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2tn tax breaks, because that’s what he (Trump) wants to do,” Biden said of Donald Trump. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make it fair.”
      House Republican leadership called Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline”, a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, speaker Mike Johnson, majority whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      Marcia Fudge, the housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, resigned. Fudge, 71, announced she will step down from her post later this month “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, as she called for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start 25 March.
      Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, the former Trump adviser, must report to prison on 19 March to begin a four-month sentence for defying the House January 6 committee, his lawyers said.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose story of being sex trafficked as a child was used in Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal speech said her horrific ordeal was misused by the Republican senator.
      Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.
      The White House unveiled a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal on Monday, offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.The proposal is unlikely to pass the House and the Senate, but it represents Joe Biden’s policy vision for a potential second four-year term if he and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November.Here’s what is in it:
      Raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%
      Making billionaires pay at least 25% of their income in taxes
      A 39.6% marginal rate applied to households making over $1m
      Raising tax rate on US multinationals’ foreign earnings from 10.5% to 21%
      Bringing back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners
      Fund childcare programs for parents making under $200,000 annually
      Funnel $258bn to building or preserving two million homes
      Creating a new tax credit for first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 over two years and providing a $5,000 annual mortgage relief credit for two years.
      Provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for workers
      Eliminating origination fees on government student loans
      Providing about $900bn for defense
      Funding to expand personnel and resources at the US southern border, including
      In addition, the president said in his State of the Union address that Medicare should have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years. Aides said his budget does not specify how many drug prices would be subject to negotiations.Biden’s proposed budget would raise tax revenues by $4.9tn over 10 years, including more than $2.7tn in tax hikes on businesses and nearly $2tn on wealthy individuals and estates, according to the US treasury.A coalition of youth voters on Monday gave Joe Biden’s re-election campaign a welcome shot in the arm amid swirling concerns over the president’s age and mental acuity.The endorsement from 15 groups of mostly gen Z and young millennial voters was announced to mark the launch of Students for Biden-Harris, an initiative from the campaign designed to recapture the support of younger voters who helped propel Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who at 27 is the youngest member of the House, will serve on its national advisory board and host its first meeting in Washington DC on Thursday. The organization will hold regular virtual and in-person meetings around the country as it seeks to build a network of chapters, many on university and college campuses. Frost said in a press release announcing the coalition:
      Young voters were crucial in delivering the election for President Biden and Vice-President Harris in 2020, and they will be just as consequential in 2024.
      It is part of a wider White House outreach to younger voters, whose support for Biden, 81, and Harris has become more lukewarm as their first term has progressed, research suggests.Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Joe Biden has just taken the stage in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he is about to speak about the economy, health care and prescription drug prices.The address comes after he sent his aspirational 2025 budget to Congress, following his return on Monday morning to Washington from Delaware, and then flew to the New England swing state.Biden is on a push to hit the campaign trail, trying to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week, in the face of criticisms that he is too old and doddery to run for reelection.Out of the gate he is hailing his plan, under the Inflation Reduction Act, to cap the total that seniors on Medicare pay for prescription drugs at $2,000 a head per year.“We beat Big Pharma,” he said of the US pharmaceutical industry.Hello, US politics blog readers, Joe Biden has arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, shortly after presenting his desired budget to Congress. He’s due to make remarks at 2.30pm ET on, according to the White House, on “lowering costs for American families”. Later he has an election campaign event, as he continues with his plans to hit the campaign trail hard in the wake of his State of the Union speech last Thursday, as he tries to sell votes on his reection.Here’s where things stand:
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge, 71, has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and retire after fighting for more affordable housing and reduced homelessness in the US.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start March 25.
      House Republican leadership called Joe Biden’s budget, just presented to Congress, “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      The US president unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Biden’s 2025 fiscal year budget includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000 and effoprts to bring more drug costs down.
      Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, has been ordered to report to a Miami prison on 19 March to begin serving a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September 2023 of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose experience as a victim of human sex trafficking that Alabama Senator Katie Britt appeared to have shared in the GOP response to the State of the Union, slammed the lawmaker and accused her of inaccurately using her story to highlight the Biden administration’s border control policies, even though her plight was experienced during a previous, Republican administration.
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, accompanying her news with a call for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.She also appeared to time her announcement so that she could step away before the 2024 presidential election reaches its most intense phases this summer and fall, calling the election season, in an exclusive interview with USA Today “crazy, silly”.Fudge, 71, intends to return to her home state of Ohio after 22 March and continue life as a private citizen, rather than running for any other public office, she told USA Today in an exclusive interview.
      “It’s time to go home. I do believe strongly that I have done just about everything I could do at HUD for this administration as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election,” she told the outlet.
      Fudge said affordable housing should be a nonpartisan focus.
      It is not a red or blue issue. Everybody knows that it is an issue…an American issue.’’
      She told USA Today that under her tenure at the agency, since the start of the Biden administration, she worked to improve its role in supporting families with housing needs, helping people experiencing homelessness and boosting economic development in communities.Joe Biden issued a statement praising Fudge.
      Over the past three years she has been a strong voice for expanding efforts to build generational wealth through homeownership and lowering costs and promoting fairness for America’s renters. Thanks to Secretary Fudge, we’ve helped first-time homebuyers, and we are working to cut the cost of renting. And there are more housing units under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years.”
      Joe Biden’s budget proposal for 2025 includes a $4.7bn emergency fund for border security to enable the department of homeland security to ramp up operations in the event of a migrant surge, NBC reported.The contingency fund would allow the department to tap into funds as an as-needed basis when the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southern border tops a certain threshold, according to the report. That threshold is unspecified in the document.The request is likely to fall on deaf ears among congressional Republicans, who have already refused to fund $13.6bn the Biden administration asked for in an emergency supplemental request aimed at responding to a record high number of migrants crossing the border.Biden’s budget also asks for $405m to hire 1,300 more border patrol agents, $1bn for aid to Central America to address the root causes of migration, and nearly $1bn to address the backlog of over 2.4m pending cases in US immigration courts.Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity.Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.The trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said the claim of a pressure campaign was “fictitious” and argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.The supreme court last month agreed to take up the claim that Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. It is scheduled to hear arguments in that case during the week of 22 April.The House Republican leadership have issued a statement calling Joe Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”.The president’s budget is “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik reads.
      While hardworking Americans struggle with crushing inflation and mounting national debt, the President would increase their pain to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars to advance his left-wing agenda.
      Biden aides said their budget was realistic and detailed while rival measures from Republicans were not financially viable.“Congressional Republicans don’t tell you what they cut, who they harm,” AP reported White House budget director Shalanda Young as saying.
      The president is transparent, details every way he shows he values the America people.
      House Republicans voted on Thursday on their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts. The White House called the plan unworkable.Joe Biden unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal aimed as election-year pitch to voters that would offer tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.Biden’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year that starts in October includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000, forcing those with wealth of $100m to pay at least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government negotiate to bring more drug costs down, Reuters reported.Meanwhile, the government would bring back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners, fund childcare programs, funnel $258bn to building homes, provide paid family leave for workers, and spends billions on violent crime prevention and law enforcement.The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Biden also renewed his demand for funding on border security, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other national security issues that has been stalled by Republican congressional leadership for months.White House budgets are always something of a presidential wishlist, and Biden’s proposal is unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law. Biden and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday, AP reported.Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon”, a rightwing meme mean to disparage Biden.Dinah Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, told the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news site:
      Political violence of any kind is vile and wrong, and we cannot afford to brush it under the rug when others encourage it.
      Sykes called for state Republican leaders to take action against those responsible. Mike Brown, the Kansas Republican party chair, told the Kansas City Star he was not at the event, which was not organised by the state party, though he sent emails to promote it. Mike Kuckelman, a former state Republican chair, condemned the event.Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.Trump, in an interview with CNBC, described the numerous judgments against him in New York as “the most ridiculous decisions … including the Ms Bergdorf Goodman, a person I’d never met.” He added:
      I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued. From that point on I said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, what this is.
      Trump was referring to Carroll, who in 2019 first publicly accused the former president of raping her in the changing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store.On Saturday during a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump said Carroll “is not a believable person” and blamed the lawsuit on “Democratic operatives”. He said:
      Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her.
      Carroll’s lawyer has raised the prospect of a new lawsuit, the New York Times reported. In a statement this morning, Roberta A Kaplan, said:
      The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years. As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client.
      Donald Trump “will not give a penny” to Ukraine if he is re-elected US president, the far-right Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said after a controversial meeting with Trump in Florida.“He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told state media in Hungary on Sunday.
      Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.
      According to Orbán, Trump has a “detailed plan” to end the Ukraine war, which began two years ago when Russia invaded. Calling Trump “a man of peace”, Orbán said:
      If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war is over. And if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone can’t finance this war. And then the war is over.
      This would likely mean Ukraine losing the war to Russia. Long seen to demonstrate deference towards and enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Trump recently suggested that if re-elected he would encourage Russia to attack US allies he deemed not to contribute enough to the Nato alliance.Orbán and Trump met at Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend. More

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      Biden gets campaign boost from coalition of youth voters

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      A coalition of youth voters on Monday gave Joe Biden’s re-election campaign a welcome shot in the arm amid swirling concerns over the president’s age and mental acuity.The endorsement from 15 groups of mostly gen Z and young millennial voters was announced to mark the launch of Students for Biden-Harris, an initiative from the campaign designed to recapture the support of younger voters who helped propel Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who at 27 is the youngest member of the House, will serve on its national advisory board and host its first meeting in Washington DC on Thursday. The organization will hold regular virtual and in-person meetings around the country as it seeks to build a network of chapters, many on university and college campuses.“Young voters were crucial in delivering the election for President Biden and Vice-President Harris in 2020, and they will be just as consequential in 2024,” Frost said in a press release announcing the coalition.It is part of a wider White House outreach to younger voters, whose support for Biden, 81, and Harris has become more lukewarm as their first term has progressed, research suggests.A Harvard Youth poll in the fall found that only 49% of respondents aged 18 to 29 “definitely” planned to vote in the 2024 election, down from 57% at the same point four years ago; and that Biden’s approval rating among that group stood at only 35%.On the issues that concern young voters most, including the climate emergency, gun violence, abortion, education and protecting democracy, a plurality of voters said they trusted neither Biden nor Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee.Speculation that young voters may abandon Biden this time around has prompted action. A partially self-mocking $30m TV and digital ad blitz was launched at the weekend, featuring Biden talking up his experience as an asset.“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret. But I understand how to get things done for the American people,” the president said in one ad, which also included an outtake of Biden laughing and calling himself “young, energetic, and handsome”.In a controversial move last month, the Biden campaign joined TikTok, the social media platform among the most used by younger generations. The controversy centered on the subject of potential security concerns over the app’s Chinese ownership.Later this month, Harris will talk about the administration’s efforts to combat gun violence during a visit to Parkland, Florida, birthplace of the March for Our Lives youth movement following the 2018 murders of 17 students and staff in one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings.“Gen Z has grown up hiding under desks, looking for the nearest exits in movie theaters, and worrying about being shot in our neighborhoods,” Aaliyah Eastmond, a Parkland survivor and co-founder of Team Enough, the youth-led arm of gun control advocacy group Brady, said in a press release.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Fearing our lives could be cut short by gun violence is our daily reality, and this has long been the reality for Black and Brown youth. We need elected officials who will take on the [National Rifle Association], put our lives before gun lobby profits, and end the gun violence epidemic that is killing our youth.”Most of the 15 groups, which also include College Democrats of America, Dream For America, the Newtown Action Alliance, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Students Demand Action and Voices of Gen-Z, offered Biden and Harris ringing endorsements.Notably, even some that expressed reservations said they were still willing to support Biden’s re-election.“Young Americans know that while no candidate is perfect, progress will be possible under a second term of the Biden-Harris administration,” said Sam Weinberg, executive director of Path to Progress.“While we endorse President Biden and vice-president Harris, and want to see them remain in the White House, we also pledge to continue demanding justice here, at home, and around the world, and to push the administration to live up to the values of our generation.” More

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      Buttigieg defends Biden’s age: ‘What matters is the age of a leader’s ideas’

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      Top Democrats came to Joe Biden’s defense on Sunday, emphasizing the president’s viability for re-election amid his colleagues’ worries that voters see him as too old – concerns compounded by Donald Trump’s lead over him in recent polls.On ABC This Week, host George Stephanopoulos pointedly asked Biden’s transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg: “How can an 81-year-old incumbent be the candidate of change? It’s so critical in presidential elections.”Buttigieg replied that Biden’s administration had focused on “issues that matter most to newer generations”, including addressing the climate crisis, supporting LGBTQ+ rights and pushing to restore the federal abortion rights that Roe v Wade had established before the conservative-dominated US supreme court eliminated them in 2022.“What matters most is the age of a leaders’ ideas,” Buttigieg said.Buttigieg’s comments came as voters’ views on Biden’s age continue being a growing liability for his re-election campaign. A recent ABC/Ipsos poll found that 86% of Americans thought him too old to serve another term. Sixty-two percent thought the same about Trump, who is 77 – and 59% of voters think both are too old.Those numbers prompted Biden’s camp to kick off a $30m ad campaign in swing states with a spot directly addressing the president’s age. “Look, I’m not a young guy,” he says in the spot. “But I understand how to get things done for the American people.”Georgia’s Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock also defended Biden’s chances in the swing state despite signs that many voters there have turned away from him, saying, “It’s still early in this election season.”Warnock’s comments on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union referred to a Fox News poll showing Trump leading by eight percentage points in Georgia. The poll also showed that a quarter of Black voters there now favor the former president.“I can tell you, as somebody whose name has been on the ballot five times in three years, I know a little something about Georgia voters,” Warnock said. “We’ve seen both of these men serve in the White House. Their choice is clearly Joe Biden and Georgians get it right for Joe Biden, just as they got it right for me.”CNN host Jake Tapper suggested third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr could be a spoiler after he claims to have gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot in Georgia in November. Tapper said Biden defeated Trump in Georgia in 2020 by fewer than 12,000 votes. But Warnock argued there was still time for Biden to secure the state again.The Democratic House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also addressed Black voters’ seemingly fading support of Biden. During Jeffries’s appearance on Face The Nation, host Margaret Brennan noted that Biden’s support among Black voters had fallen from 90% in 2020 to 76%.Nonetheless, Jeffries said Black voters would understand that Biden “has delivered over and over and over again on issues of concern”, including by helping bring on the lowest Black unemployment rate in decades as well as making historic investments in Black colleges and universities.“I’m confident at the end of the day … the overwhelming majority of African Americans, Caribbean Americans, Black voters throughout the country, will support president Biden,” Jeffries said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBrennan separately asked Senator Bernie Sanders whether he could good “in good conscience” ask fellow progressives who oppose Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Gaza to support the president.The US has provided billions of dollars in financial aid to Israel’s military as Biden has exalted the country’s right to defend itself after the 7 October attack by Hamas that reportedly killed more than 1,200 Israelis. But the president has condemned the humanitarian crisis set off by Israel’s subsequent military strikes in Gaza, which have reportedly killed more than 30,000.Sanders said the US “cannot be complicit in this mass slaughter” and called on Biden to withhold funds from Israel’s military if the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, continued exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But Sanders said voters must pick Biden if they favored protecting the climate, preserving bodily autonomy and eliminating income inequality.“So you’re asking voters to put [Gaza] aside?” Brennan said.Sanders responded: “Not put this aside – but fight continuously to change Biden’s policy on Gaza.” More

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      Biden says he regrets using term ‘illegal’ to describe Laken Riley murder suspect

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      Joe Biden said Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Meanwhile, the Democratic president’s all-but-certain 2024 Republican rival, Donald Trump, blasted Biden’s immigration policies and blamed them for Riley’s death while at a rally attended by her family and friends.Biden expressed remorse after facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the US illegally.“I shouldn’t have used illegal – it’s undocumented,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart taped in Atlanta, where he was meeting with small business owners and holding a campaign rally.Trump, campaigning in Rome, Georgia, at the same time, assailed Biden for the comments.“Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to loud jeers and boos. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s murder has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who have seized on frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border during a record surge of migrants entering the country. A person from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.The former president was joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, her sister and friends and met with them before he took the stage.In a speech that lasted nearly two hours, Trump hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week.Trump alleged that Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country”.Trump, who had made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, has repeatedly vowed to mount the largest deportation in the nation’s history if he wins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe contrasted his rhetoric with Biden’s, remarking: “I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant.”He also accused Biden of having “no intention of stopping the deadly invasion that stole precious Laken’s beautiful American life”.Yet Biden earlier this year bucked activists within his party by agreeing to make changes to US immigration law that would have limited some migration. The deal that emerged would have overhauled the asylum system to provide faster and tougher enforcement, as well as given presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed. It also would have added $20bn in funding, a huge influx of cash.The changes became part of a short-lived bipartisan compromise that Republican lawmakers quickly killed after Trump made his opposition known.After the deal’s collapse, Biden has been considering taking executive action to try to curtail migration. But he’s expressed frustration that his lawyers have yet to devise options that they believe can pass muster with federal courts. Biden, instead, has insisted that Congress take up the measure again, trying to flip the script on Republicans and arguing they are more interested in being able to talk about the issue in an election year than taking action to fix it. More