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    Trump withdraws embattled candidate for top federal prosecutor in DC

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    Donald Trump on Thursday said he would look for a new candidate for the role of top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, after a key Republican senator said he would not support the loyalist initially selected for the job.The president had in January appointed Ed Martin, a former Missouri Republican party chair and ardent supporter of Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, as interim US attorney in Washington DC, an office that oversees both felony prosecutions in the capital city as well as many national security cases.Martin had quickly made clear he intended to use the role to defend Trump, writing on social media that the office would act as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers” and saying he would not hire graduates of schools that practiced the diversity policies the president has vilified.Interim US attorneys must leave the role after 120 days unless they are confirmed by the Senate. Earlier this week, Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who serves on the chamber’s judiciary committee, said he would not advance Martin’s nomination, denying the GOP the votes needed to get his nomination through the committee.Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump called Martin “a terrific person” but said “he wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought”.He added: “He wasn’t rejected, but we felt it would be very, it would be hard. And we have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.”Tillis, who will be a prime target of Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, cited Martin’s support for Trump’s pardon of January 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office.“I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January the sixth, and that’s probably where most of the friction was,” Tillis told reporters at the Capitol.“If Mr Martin were being put forth as a US attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.”The top judiciary committee Democrat, Dick Durbin, welcomed Martin’s withdrawal.“Mr Martin’s record made it clear that he does not have the temperament or judgment to be entrusted with the power and responsibility of being US attorney for the District of Columbia. I’m relieved to see that his nomination will be withdrawn by the White House,” Durbin said in a statement.Earlier this month, National Public Radio reported on ties between Martin and Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter whom federal prosecutors called a “Nazi sympathizer”. Martin had told the Senate “I am not close with him”, despite appearing with Hale-Cusanelli at events and praising him.Martin is known for being active on X and, shortly after Trump announced the withdrawal of his nomination, posted what appears to be a doctored photo of himself dressed as the pope.

    This story was amended on 8 May 2025 to correct that Ed Martin was appointed in January, not February. More

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      Bernie Sanders urges Paramount not to ‘capitulate’ to Trump by settling 60 Minutes suit

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      The senator Bernie Sanders and his Democratic colleagues are urging Paramount Global not to settle Donald Trump’s $20bn lawsuit against 60 Minutes, saying such a decision would “capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism”.In a letter co-signed by eight senators, Sanders urged controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and Paramount Global’s board to reconsider settling with Trump for as much as $75m to end his lawsuit against CBS News over its editing of last year’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.Trump sued CBS News last November, alleging that the network’s interview with Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign was edited to frame her in a positive light and thus amounted to “election interference”.During the finalized interview, Harris was asked whether Benjamin Netanyahu listened to US advice. She replied of the Israeli prime minister: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”An alternative edit shown in pre-broadcast promotions showed Harris delivering a longer response.In Trump’s court filing, his lawyers alleged that “CBS and other legacy media organizations have gone into overdrive to get Kamala elected”.In Tuesday’s letter, Sanders, alongside the Democratic senators including Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Jeffrey Merkley, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey called Trump’s lawsuit “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment”.“It has absolutely no merit and it cannot stand,” they said, condemning Trump’s lawsuit as “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him”.The senators praised Paramount Global’s initial decision to file two motions to dismiss Trump’s case, which the company said “is without basis in law or fact”. However, the senators said that the company’s reported decision to settle with Trump is “unfortunately … a grave mistake”.“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press. It will only embolden him to shake down, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like,” the senators wrote.“Stand up for freedom of the press and our democracy,” they added.Speaking to the Washington Post, a source familiar with the situation said that Redstone had recused herself from discussions about a potential settlement though she previously “shared her desire for some sort of resolution” with Paramount Global’s board.The senators’ letter comes as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks against US media, with the president denouncing CNN and MSNBC as “illegal” while ordering the US Agency for Global Media – the parent company of Voice of America – to be eliminated.Last week, Trump also signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. In response to Trump’s accusations of the outlets’ having leftwing bias, NPR and PBS have both said they are looking at legal options. More

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      Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

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      One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More

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      Senate Democrats to mark Trump’s ‘100 days from hell’ with marathon speeches

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      Democratic senators will on Tuesday mark Donald Trump’s 100th day in office with marathon floor speeches intended to highlight his administration’s failures, seizing on his divisive tariff policy and attacks on the judiciary to argue he was not joking when he mulled governing as “a dictator”.Republicans, meanwhile, praised the president’s actions over the first 100 days, though the House speaker, Mike Johnson, acknowledged “some bumps along the road” he described as the necessary byproduct of the radical changes Trump campaigned on.The 100-day milestone has given Trump’s allies and enemies alike in Congress an opportunity to reflect on his presidency, which Democrats, confined to the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives at least through next year, argue has accomplished little besides haphazardly dismantling important federal agencies and rendering precarious a previously robust economy.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been 100 days from hell,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader.“Donald Trump is not governing like a president of a democratic republic. He’s acting like a king, a despot, a wannabe dictator. Remember that during the campaign, he indicated that he’d be a dictator just on day one. But everything we’ve seen so far shows he wants to be a dictator for much, much longer.”Democrats are looking to regain their popular support after underperforming in November, when voters nationwide sent Trump back to the White House with Republicans in full control of Congress.Earlier this month, New Jersey’s Cory Booker spent 25 hours on the Senate floor condemning Trump in a record-breaking speech, while on Sunday, Booker and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, were out for more than 12 hours on the Capitol steps, condemning the GOP’s plans for a huge bill that will extend tax cuts and pay for mass deportations, potentially by cutting social safety net programs.The tactics have been compared to those of the civil rights and other protest movements, and on Tuesday, Schumer said Democrats would hold the Senate floor “until late tonight to mark these dismal 100 days by speaking the truth”.“What is the truth? The truth is this: no president in modern history has promised more on day one and delivered less by day 100 than Donald Trump. In record time, the president has turned a golden promise into an economic ticking timebomb. It’s getting worse every day, and he calls it progress.”Republicans have taken the opposite view of Trump’s record, promoting his moves to ban diversity initiatives in the government and elsewhere, crack down on transgender rights, block immigrants from crossing the border and attempt to step up deportations as “promises made, promises kept”.“We’re just getting started, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re so excited,” Johnson told reporters.But opinion surveys have found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk into the negative at a point earlier than his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, whose presidency wound up mired in public discontent. The plunge in popularity for a president who just over five months ago became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades is viewed as a consequence of his disruptive approach to implementing tariffs, and his administration’s attacks on a judiciary that has sought to temper some of his policies.“There’s some bumps along the road. I mean, we’re changing everything,” Johnson replied, when asked about the president’s approval ratings.“The last four years was an absolute unmitigated disaster, and we got to fix it all. So when you’re doing that, it’s disruptive in a way.” More

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      Dick Durbin won’t seek re-election after nearly three decades in US Senate

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      Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the US Senate, announced he will not seek re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a Senate career that spans nearly three decades.The 80-year-old Illinois senator, who has served since 1996, posted on social media that he plans to leave office in 2027 when his term expires – meaning there will be an open primary for his replacement in the midterms.“I truly love being a United States Senator, but in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch,” Durbin said in a video statement on X.As Senate Democratic whip and ranking member on the judiciary committee, Durbin’s departure represents a significant loss of clout for Illinois. His exit will vacate one of the most powerful positions in Washington and end a career marked by his influence over national policy and directing federal funding to his home state.The veteran lawmaker cited his age as a primary factor in the decision, noting that he would be 88 by the end of a potential sixth term. The news of his retirement was first reported by WBEZ and the New York Times.“It’s time,” Durbin told WBEZ. “You observe your colleagues and watch what happens. For some of them, there’s this miraculous ageing process where they never seem to get too old.”It is not a total surprise, as speculation of his retirement began to trend in Washington earlier this month after his federal financial report showed he raised just north of $42,000 this first quarter of this year, a paltry sum for a politician interested in holding his position in the midterms.Still, Durbin’s announcement is expected to trigger intense competition among Illinois Democrats eager to take his seat. The potential list of successors includes the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has pooled a $19m campaign fund. Representatives Lauren Underwood and Robin Kelly are also considered possible candidates.His departure could provide an opening for Republicans to contest the seat, though Illinois has trended Democratic in recent elections. The last Republican senator from Illinois was Mark Kirk, who lost his re-election bid to Tammy Duckworth in 2016. More

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      ‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails

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      Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student, and Khalil, a graduate of Columbia, have been detained for more than a month since US immigration authorities took them into custody. Neither have been accused of criminal conduct and are being held in violation of their constitutional rights, members of the delegation said.The delegation included representatives Carter, Bennie Thompson, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Senator Ed Markey, and Alanah Odoms, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. They visited the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, where Öztürk is being held, and traveled to the Central Louisiana Ice processing center in Jena to see Khalil.They met with Öztürk and Khalil and others in Ice custody to conduct “real-time oversight” of a “rogue and lawless” administration, Pressley said.Their detention comes as the Trump administration has staged an extraordinary crackdown on immigrants, illegally removing people from the country and seeking to detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech that it considers adverse to US foreign policy.“It’s a national disgrace what is taking place,” Markey said. “We stand right now at a turning point in American history. The constitution is being eroded by the Trump administration. We saw today here in these detention centers in Louisiana examples of how far [it] is willing to go.”McGovern described those being held as political prisoners. He said: “This is not about enforcing the law. This is moving us toward an authoritarian state.”Late last month, officials detained Öztürk, who co-wrote a piece in a Tufts student newspaper that was critical of the university’s response to Israel’s attacks Palestinians. The 30-year old has said she has been held in “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane” conditions in a Louisiana facility and has had difficulty receiving medical treatment.Öztürk was disappeared when she was detained, Pressley said, adding that she was denied food, water and the opportunity to seek legal counsel. Khalil missed the birth of his first child, she said. She described Donald Trump as a dictator with a draconian vision for the US.“They are setting the foundational floor to violate the due process and free speech of every person who calls this country home, whatever your status is,” she said. “It could be you tomorrow for suffering a miscarriage. It could be you tomorrow for reading a banned book.”Those in custody are shaken and were visibly upset and afraid, the delegation said. They have said they are not receiving necessary healthcare and that the facilities are kept extremely cold.“We have to resist, we have to push back. We’re a much better country than this,” McGovern said.Earlier this month a judge ruled that Khalil, who helped lead demonstrations at Columbia last year and has been imprisoned for more than a month, is eligible to be deported from the US.The Trump administration has argued that Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the US and child of Palestinian refugees, holds beliefs that are counter to the country’s foreign policy interests.On Monday, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont met with Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia student who was detained while at a naturalization interview. More

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      Maryland senator meets Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador amid battle over US return

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      The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Ábrego García’s wife “to pass along his message of love”.The lawmaker did not provide an update on the status of Ábrego García, whose attorneys are fighting to force the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the US.It was not clear how the meeting was arranged, where they met or what will happen to Abrego Garcia. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted images of the meeting minutes before Van Hollen shared his post, saying: “Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”Bukele continued mockingly: “Kilmar Ábrego García, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ and ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” The tweet ended with emojis of the US and El Salvador flags, with a handshake emoji between them.The meeting came in the hours after Van Hollen said he was denied entry into an high-security El Salvador prison while he was trying to check on Ábrego García’s wellbeing and attempting to push for his release.The Democratic senator said at a news conference in San Salvador that his car was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint about 3km from the Terrorism Confinement Center, or Cecot, even as they let other cars go on.“They stopped us because they are under orders not to allow us to proceed,” Van Hollen said.Donald Trump and Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send Ábrego García back, even as the Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake and the US supreme court has called on the administration to facilitate his return.Trump officials have said that Ábrego García, a Salvadorian citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Ábrego García has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.Van Hollen’s trip has become a partisan flashpoint in the US as Democrats have seized on Ábrego García’s deportation as what they say is a cruel consequence of Trump’s disregard for the courts. Republicans have criticized Democrats for defending him and argued that his deportation is part of a larger effort to reduce crime.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a news conference on Wednesday with the mother of a Maryland woman who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.Van Hollen told reporters on Wednesday that he met with Vice-President Félix Ulloa, who said his government could not return Ábrego García to the United States.“So today, I tried again to make contact with Mr Ábrego García by driving to the Cecot prison,” Van Hollen said on Thursday.Van Hollen said Ábrego García has not had any contact with his family or his lawyers. “There has been no ability to find out anything about his health and wellbeing,” Van Hollen said. He said Ábrego García should be able to have contact with his lawyers under international law.“We won’t give up until Kilmar has his due process rights respected,” Van Hollen said. He said there would be “many more” lawmakers coming to El Salvador.New Jersey senator Cory Booker is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.While Van Hollen was denied entry, several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted on Tuesday evening that he’d visited the prison where Ábrego García is being held. He did not mention Ábrego García but said the facility “houses the country’s most brutal criminals.”“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.Missouri Republican Jason Smith, chair of the House ways and means Committee, also visited the prison. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump” the facility “now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans”.The fight over Ábrego García has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants – whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes – and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside San Salvador. That prison is part of Bukele’s broader effort to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele popular at home.Human rights groups have accused Bukele’s government of subjecting those jailed to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment”. Officials there deny wrongdoing. More

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      Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García

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      Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Ábrego García’s condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents.The state department has confirmed that Ábrego García is held in El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and despite the US supreme court last week saying the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return to the United States, the president refuses to do so.“We were in the gray zone before this. But if the Trump administration continues to thumb its nose at the federal courts in this case we’re in, we’re clearly in constitutional crisis territory,” Van Hollen said.In a hearing on Tuesday, federal judge Paula Xinis criticzed justice department officials for not complying with the supreme court’s order, saying “to date, nothing has been done”. She gave the government two weeks to produce details of their efforts to return Ábrego García to US soil.It’s unknown how far Van Hollen, who has represented Maryland since 2017, will get in El Salvador. While its government has welcomed homeland security secretary Kristi Noem to Cecot, Van Hollen said it has not responded to his request to visit the prison, where rights group have warned of abuses and and squalid conditions.“We’ve made those requests of the government of El Salvador, and I hope they will agree to meet to discuss Mr Ábrego García’s situation, and let me see him so I can report back to his family in Maryland on his wellbeing,” the senator said.“This is a Maryland man. His family’s in Maryland, and he’s been caught up in this absolutely outrageous situation where the Trump administration admitted in court that he was erroneously abducted from the United States and placed in this notorious prison in El Salvador in violation of all his due process rights.”Van Hollen this week sent a letter to El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States requesting to meet with Bukele when he was in Washington, but received no response, prompting the senator to plan travel to the country. Last week, Democratic House representative Adriano Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, also asked Bukele to meet with Ábrego García at Cecot.During his appearance alongside Trump in the Oval Office, Bukele rejected releasing Ábrego García from custody, saying: “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.”Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers arrested and deported Ábrego García last month, even though an immigration judge had in 2019 granted him “withholding of removal to El Salvador”, a protected status for people who feared for their safety if returned to their home country. The Trump administration has accused him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, which Ábrego García’s attorneys have denied, noting that the allegation is based on a single informant who said he belonged to a chapter in New York, despite him never living there.The arrest comes as Trump presses on with plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which have seen him clash with judges nationwide. The supreme court last week upheld his administration’s use of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members, but ruled they were also entitled to due process to challenge their removals.Van Hollen said that the case of Ábrego García marks a turning point for the Trump administration because the president is refusing to follow an order from the nation’s highest court – something Democrats have long warned he will do.“What they have not overtly done previously is outright defy a court order,” Van Hollen said. “They’ve slow-walked court orders, they’ve tried to parse their words based on technicalities, they’ve not outright defied a court order. In my view, this now clearly crosses that line.” More

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      Senator Chuck Grassley grilled at Iowa town hall over ‘shameful’ Trump policies

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      The Republican senator Chuck Grassley struggled to control a town hall meeting on Tuesday as constituents erupted in anger over border security policies and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation practices.The 91-year-old Republican lawmaker from Iowa is the latest elected official to get grilled by a packed room of constituents. Attendees in the Republican state were concerned about the treatment of asylum seekers stemming from the president’s approach to immigration enforcement.“I believe very strongly in my Christian faith. I preach on Sundays,” said one attendee, “Turning away people who have come here for asylum is one of the most shameful things we are doing right here.”The attendee pressed Grassley on whether he would take action to ensure the United States better follows international law and upholds “the ideals of our country to be a place of hope for others”.Grassley responded that he would “welcome refugees, I would welcome people seeking asylum”. On Tuesday morning, Trump had posted on Truth Social that border crossings hit an all-time low in March.Tensions escalated further when another constituent accused Trump of ignoring the supreme court order regarding Kilmar Armando Ábrego García. Ábrego’s deportation to El Salvador despite supreme court intervention has become a rallying point for immigration advocates, who cite it as evidence of the administration’s willingness to flout judicial authority.In the White House press conference on Tuesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called Ábrego a “human trafficker and gang member”.“The president doesn’t care,” one attendee at Grassley’s town hall shouted. “He’s got an order from the supreme court and he’s just said: ‘No, screw it.’”Multiple attendees reminded Grassley, who has held his Senate seat since 1981, of his constitutional oath of office, with one asking whether the senator was acting upon that oath. The crowd grew increasingly frustrated as Grassley attempted to explain his position.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m trying to recapture the constitutional authority of article 1, section 8,” Grassley responded, referencing a bipartisan bill he introduced aimed at addressing what he called “mistakes that Democratic Congress has made in 1963”.Grassley’s confrontational town hall comes as many Republican lawmakers have largely abandoned the practice of holding in-person constituent meetings during their congressional recess. The retreat from public forums follows other heated exchanges where Republican lawmakers faced sometimes abrasive criticism over issues like proposed budget cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and what they see as the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.While Grassley continues his 45th annual 99-county tour of Iowa, only a handful of Republicans, including the representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Byron Donalds, have publicly announced plans for similar events. More