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      Who benefits as Christie ends presidential bid before Iowa caucus? – podcast

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      Hours before Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis took to the debate stage in Iowa on Wednesday night, more than 1,000 miles away in New Hampshire Chris Christie shocked his supporters by announcing he was dropping out of the race. The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate to consistently attack Donald Trump, in a field of Republicans trying to beat the former president, all the while keeping his base sweet.
      With only three days until the Iowa caucus, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Elaine Kamarck about who is most likely to come out on top

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

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      Trump accuses judge and Letitia James of bias in surprise court address during fraud trial closing arguments – live

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      Prosecutors for the New York attorney general, Letitia James, have reiterated that they would like to see a $370m penalty and lifetime ban from the real estate business for Donald Trump in his civil fraud trial, the Messenger reports:They said the weighty penalty was necessary because Trump kept breaking the law even after authorities began investigating his business practices:Prosecutors with the New York attorney general’s office are delivering their closing arguments at Donald Trump’s New York fraud trial.Trump left the building after delivering a bizarre impromptu rant, which was cut off by the judge, who called for a lunch break.State attorney Kevin Wallace said that Trump’s lawyers relied on expert testimony, rather than witness testimony or documented evidence, to bolster their arguments. At one point, Wallace put up a presentation slide that showed the 11 expert witnesses the defense had called during the trial. He noted that many of the expert witnesses were purposely shown limited evidence, and a handful of them were close allies of Trump.“They cannot argue that Trump’s triplex was in fact 30,000 sq ft,” Wallace said. “Or that unsold units at Trump Park Avenue weren’t rent stabilized.”Wallace also argued that the loans the Trump Organization received with the inflated financial statements were “critical to the business” and the business was strapped for cash in the mid-2010s as the company pursued renovation of properties and Trump was running for president.“They could have cut costs or sell assets, but these interest rates were vital to the operation of the company,” Wallace said, adding that Trump was also able to run for president with the loans bolstering his company. “They didn’t have to choose between their priorities.”Arguments in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial have now resumed, MSNBC reports, and will probably conclude soon:Hunter Biden is being arraigned in Los Angeles today on federal tax charges recently filed against him. Expect to hear plenty about this from Republicans as Joe Biden’s re-election campaign continues:Hunter Biden is expected to be arraigned on Thursday on federal tax charges in a Los Angeles courthouse.Biden, who has a home in Malibu, is expected to plead not guilty to nine tax-related charges that were filed in December. Three of the charges faced by Joe Biden’s son are felony counts, and he could face up to 17 years in prison if found guilty.“The defendant engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4m in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” the 56-page indictment said, adding that Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills”.Hunter Biden is expected to plead not guilty.Closing arguments in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial are now paused while the court takes a brief recess, the Messenger reports.Here’s the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe and Lauren Aratani with a recap of what has happened so far today:Back at Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, his attorney Chris Kise has repeatedly interrupted Kevin Wallace, who is delivering closing arguments on behalf of the New York attorney general, Letitia James.It appears to be a tactic on Kise’s part. From MSNBC:Donald Trump has been spending quite a bit of time in court lately, and plans to continue doing so, even though he is also campaigning for president.In remarks this afternoon, after going on a tirade against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and Judge Arthur Engoron during the closing arguments of his civil fraud trial and then leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would attend all of his trials in person:That is potentially quite a lot of court proceedings. Trump has been indicted four times at the state and federal level, and is also embroiled in multiple civil suits. He will have to balance these legal matters with his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination – which polls show he is the favorite to do – and beat Joe Biden in the November general election.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has condemned a recent wave of threats targeting elected officials and judges.Her comments at the daily White House press briefing came after a bomb squad was dispatched to the home of judge Arthur Engoron this morning, ahead of the start of the closing arguments in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial.“We condemn any violence or threats against any judges … or anyone. … We are going to continue to be steadfast about that,” Jean-Pierre said.Lawyer for the former president have spent today making Trump’s case before Engoron, who will decide whether Trump will be fined as much as $370m for falsifying financial statements to inflate his net worth.Ahead of the hearing, police in Nassau county on Long Island said they responded to a security incident at Engoron’s residence at 5.30am. Engoron and his staff have been frequent targets of vitriolic criticism from Trump throughout the case, and his office has been bombarded with death threats.More on that here:New York attorney general Letitia James’s prosecutors have now started delivering their closing arguments in Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, the Messenger reports:Lawyer Kevin Wallace is telling the court that the former president’s arguments in his defense were based on facts already known to be invalid. Trump is not in the room, the Messenger says, having left after his unexpected tirade at the conclusion of his side’s closing arguments:John Kirby was also questioned on the hospitalization of the US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and why the White House was not informed in a timely manner that the Pentagon chief transferred his authority to his deputy.On Thursday, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog said a review will be conducted surrounding the secrecy of Austin’s health condition and why the defense department waited days to inform the White House about the transfer of authority.Austin is still hospitalized. He is being treated for complications from prostate cancer surgery.Kirby said the lack of communication was a learning opportunity and that it shouldn’t have happened.Meanwhile, as South Africa formally accuses Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the United Nations’ top court, John Kirby, spokesperson for the US national security council, answered questions about the war in Gaza in a White House press briefing.When asked if the US will accept any penalties or punishments handed down by the international court, Kirby said: “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals here. We’ve made our position clear.” He said the Biden administration sees “no indication Israel is violating laws surrounding armed conflict”.He was also asked about the timeline of the US’s pleas to Israel to de-escalate the violence in Gaza, to which he responded: “You’ll have to talk to the IDF.”The Guardian is also running a global live blog on Israel’s war in Gaza and the wider situation in the Middle East, which you can follow here.After hours of closing arguments by his attorneys, Donald Trump went on a surprise tirade in the Manhattan courtroom where his civil fraud trial is being held, accusing Judge Arthur Engoron and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, of bias against him. He then left the courtroom, and prosecutors now are expected to deliver their final statements in the case that could see Engoron impose severe penalties on the former president and his co-defendants.Here’s a look back at the day so far:Donald Trump walked out of the courtroom after excoriating both New York attorney general Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron for the civil fraud accusations against him, MSNBC reports: More

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      Nikki Haley emerges from TV debate as Trump’s nearest rival as Iowa vote looms

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      The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley emerged from the last televised debate before the Iowa caucuses clearly Donald Trump’s strongest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, boosted by the withdrawal of Chris Christie, the only explicitly anti-Trump candidate to register significantly with voters.Voting begins in Iowa on Monday, before New Hampshire stages its primary a week on Tuesday. Haley has closed on Trump in New Hampshire and has hopes of seizing second place in Iowa at the expense of the rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.Nonetheless, the Trump camp remains bullish as the Iowa vote looms after having maintained hefty leads in the polls for months. On Wednesday night, one senior aide said the campaign “couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves” events in the Des Moines debate, delighting in the spectacle of the former US president’s rivals slogging it out on the CNN stage while Trump – who continues to refuse to debate – took an easy ride at a Fox News town hall.“If you watched any part of the ‘JV’ debate this evening, you see two campaigns that are beating the living hell out of each other,” Chris LaCivita told reporters after Haley fiercely debated DeSantis, while Trump performed on his own elsewhere.“Then you have a Donald Trump commercial that shows up and he’s talking about Joe Biden … we couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves.”“JV” stands for “junior varsity” – a designation for college athletes below first-team standard. At Drake University, Haley said, “I wish Donald Trump was up on this stage” but spent most of her evening fighting DeSantis, regardless of Trump’s whopping Iowa lead.Fox gave Trump an easy ride. On a network which has paid $787.5m to settle one lawsuit arising from his stolen election lie and faces other such threats, the subject never came up. Nor did Trump’s legal problems arising from that lie, including 17 criminal charges regarding election subversion. Nor were Trump’s other 74 criminal charges, for retention of classified information and hush-money payments, high on Fox’s agenda.Tim Miller, a Republican operative turned anti-Trump activist and writer for the Bulwark, a conservative Never-Trump website, delivered a withering assessment of the Fox News town hall.Describing “one big primetime infomercial for the frontrunner”, Miller described Trump’s hosts, the “‘straight news’ reporters Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum”, sitting “beside the disgraced former president listening to his Catskills stand-up bit and giggling like a couple of undergrads after a 5mg weed gummy”.Trump did not avoid every pitfall. Seeking to thread a particularly tricky needle, he questioned the harshness of abortion bans supported by Haley and DeSantis. But he also crowed that “for 54 years, [conservatives] were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it”.The remark drew applause from the Fox audience but delight from Democrats, given how the supreme court’s removal of the federal right to abortion last year (actually 49 years after Roe, the ruling which guaranteed the right) and other attacks on healthcare rights have fueled Democratic wins at the polls. Up and down the ballot, abortion is set to be a key election issue this year.Tommy Vietor, a former staffer to Barack Obama, posted Trump’s remark to social media and said: “Biden campaign is going to feature this in about a billion dollars’ worth of ads.”DeSantis, meanwhile, has spent hundreds of millions on his campaign but is widely seen to be in deep trouble, needing a strong second in Iowa to avoid having to drop out. He also stood to lose more than Haley from Christie’s decision earlier on Wednesday to bring an end to his own campaign.The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate to run on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, regardless of Trump’s hold on Republican voters.Ending his campaign in New Hampshire, the libertarian-minded state on which he pinned his hopes, Christie said: “Anyone who is unwilling to say that [Trump] is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”Haley and DeSantis have begun to attack Trump as caucus day looms but not in strong terms and while still reserving their harshest fire for each other. Christie also had harsh if unscripted words for both his rivals, in comments apparently picked up by accident on a hot mic before his speech was streamed.“She’s gonna get smoked and you and I both know it,” Christie said, presumably referring to Haley. “She’s not up to this.”He also said: “DeSantis called me, petrified that I would –” before the audio cut out.The remarks, which CNN confirmed were directed at Wayne MacDonald, Christie’s New Hampshire campaign chair, pointed to harsh political realities.Haley is clear in second in New Hampshire and has been reducing Trump’s lead. Most polling indicates Christie supporters will now turn her way. But Haley remains well behind Trump, particularly in her own state, South Carolina, which will be third to vote. Campaign wisdom says candidates who cannot win their home state cannot hope to win over their whole party.DeSantis is well behind Trump in Florida and everywhere else. He would certainly have reason to be “petrified” that Christie’s withdrawal will ensure Haley becomes the only competitor to Trump with any notion of viability at all.The DeSantis and Haley campaigns did not immediately comment. More

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      Elise Stefanik wants to be Trump’s running mate. That’s unfortunate | Margaret Sullivan

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      Elise Stefanik is having a moment. If she were a song on the Billboard chart, she’d have a bullet next to her name to show the speed of her trajectory.In recent weeks, the New York congresswoman has claimed credit for the demise of two major university presidents (those at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania), after she led the bullying about campus antisemitism during a congressional hearing.“Two down,” she gloated on X, formerly Twitter, after Harvard’s Claudine Gay stepped down.Last weekend, Stefanik had a star turn on NBC’s Meet the Press, in which she provided one of those quotes that goes ‘round the world for its sheer outrageousness. She echoed Donald Trump’s sympathetic characterization of those who are being prosecuted for storming the US Capitol, in some cases assaulting police officers.“I have concerns about the treatment of the January 6 hostages,” she told Kristen Welker.And when asked whether she’d like to be Donald Trump’s running mate – and potentially the next vice-president of the United States – Stefanik didn’t exactly turn away in disgust.“I’ve said for a year now I’d be honored to serve in the next Trump administration,” was her less-than-coy response.The conservative Washington Examiner found all of this a winning formula.“Elise Stefanik is running for VP and she’s winning,” read its recent headline. The writer enthused: “She was poised, confident and well-prepared. Most importantly, she didn’t give an inch when defending Trump on any issue.”And that quality is what really wins points with the former president, as with every mob boss: vociferous, unquestioning loyalty. Being willing to do what’s necessary.Compare Stefanik’s situation to that of former Republican congresswoman: Liz Cheney of Wyoming – not long ago a leading figure in the House of Representatives. In fact, she was the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, succeeded by none other than Stefanik.Defeated in her 2022 primary by a Trump-endorsed candidate, Cheney has left politics for now, though she hasn’t ruled out a third-party bid for president this year.For the past few years, Cheney has made it her business to try to hold Trump accountable. As the vice-chair of the House January 6 committee, she told the hard truths about how he tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraged the Capitol insurrection. In doing so, she alienated most of her party – and earned the eternal hatred of its de facto leader.Whatever one may think of her staunchly conservative positions on important issues, including abortion rights (she celebrated the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade), it’s hard not to respect Cheney when it comes to Trump. She’s been brave, dignified and relentless in standing up for American democracy and for the foundational idea of governmental checks and balances.Most recently, Cheney has been clear in public statements that she thinks the former president – whom she says she voted for twice – should be barred from the ballot in November.“There’s no question in my mind that his action clearly constituted an offense that is within the language of the 14th amendment,” she said at a recent event at Dartmouth College.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNo surprise that Cheney’s words and actions have earned Trump’s ire, and brought out the nastiness that’s never far from the surface.“I mean, Liz Cheney’s a sick person,” Trump has said, calling her and former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger “far worse than any Democrat that ever lived”. A Trump spokesman told the New York Times she is “a loser”, interested only in promoting her book, which he said “should be repurposed as toilet paper”.Yes, it sure is a classy gang that Stefanik hopes to help lead. Is she up to the task?It looks that way.“Can anyone name a more noxious politician?” asked Columbia University journalism professor Bill Grueskin, after Stefanik’s all-caps “two down” tweet about the college presidents.There are a couple of contenders for the title, but she may have it nailed.That Stefanik is a rising star – and Liz Cheney a pariah – says it all about Republican politics today.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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

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

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      Republican Chris Christie suspends presidential bid

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

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

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

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

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