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      Senator ‘disappointed’ in staffer allegedly filmed having sex in hearing room

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      The US senator Ben Cardin said he is “angry” and “disappointed” in a now-former staffer who allegedly recorded himself having sex in a Capitol Hill hearing room.Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Maryland Democrat declined to elaborate on either the ex-staffer or the episode, video of which was leaked. But Cardin said he considered the entire sequence “a breach of trust”.“It’s a tragic situation, and it’s presented a lot of anger and frustration,” he added. “I’m concerned about our staff, and the way that they feel about this, and the Senate staff.”Cardin also said US Capitol police were investigating the tryst and the footage.The senator would not confirm the ex-staffer’s identity or whether he had been fired. Cardin would only comment that he is “no longer a Senate employee”.After the initial report in the Daily Caller, a rightwing news site, Cardin’s office released a statement saying that one of its staffers – Aidan Maese-Czeropski – was “no longer employed by the US Senate”. Maese-Czeropski later posted a statement on his LinkedIn account which read: “This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda.“While some of my actions in the past have shown poor [judgment], I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace,” Maese-Czeropski’s statement added, according to CBS. “Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.”Maese-Czeropski’s LinkedIn statement has since been deleted.The video addressed by Cardin showed two men having sex, apparently after hours, in Hart 216, a room that was empty at the time but has hosted Senate judiciary committee hearings, US supreme court nomination hearings and the 9/11 commission.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar – in whose seat the men in the video were having sex – told Hill journalists that Cardin’s office “is dealing with it” and that she believed the staffer involved had actually been fired.Her fellow Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia jokingly told reporters searching for Cardin on Monday to “leave that beautiful man alone”. Republican US senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another judiciary committee member, sarcastically asked if the chamber was “locking the doors now”, adding after a positive reply: “We do? Thanks.”Cardin announced in May that he would retire at the end of his third Senate term in early 2025. Before joining the Senate, he had spent 20 years in the US House. More

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      Senate eyes vote on Ukraine aid and border security as House adjourns – as it happened

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      The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”Here’s what else is happening today:
      Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
      Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
      A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
      That’s it from me today. Here’s what happened in US politics on this relatively sleepy Friday:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, met with senators on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      Negotiators are reportedly hoping to reach a deal on the package as early as Sunday, but it will likely take more time to draft text of a bill. That text will then be closely scrutinized by lawmakers of both parties as well as immigrant rights groups.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, but jurors have not yet reached a decision on what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to the former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’s lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that the supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will be back on Monday for more updates from Washington.Following a 90-minute meeting with the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, this morning, one of the Democratic negotiators in the immigration talks, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed optimism about the direction of the negotiations.“It’s a very aggressive goal to get this on the floor next week, but there’s a lot of good faith in that room,” Murphy said, per Punchbowl News. “There are still disagreements. We continue to work at it.”Meetings are expected to continue this afternoon and into the weekend, as the Senate hopes to hold a vote next week on a supplemental funding package.Congress has taken steps to restrict public access to records related to UFOs, the Guardian’s Richard Liscombe reports:If the truth about UFOs is out there, the American government doesn’t want you to see it yet.Just months after US space agency Nasa appointed a research director of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and promised more transparency about what it knows, the US Congress has acted to throttle the flow of information that ultimately reaches the public.Measures to create a presidential commission to review UFO records, and to order the Department of Defense to declassify certain “records relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)”, were stripped from the sweeping defense policy bill that passed Congress on Thursday with bipartisan support.What was left were provisions ordering the National Archives to collect reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence”, but giving various government departments broad authority to keep the records secret.Read the Guardian’s full report:While many hard-right Republicans remain staunchly opposed to sending more money to Ukraine, one prominent Democrat warned that their rhetoric risked empowering dictators.In response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington earlier this week, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican of Georgia, accused the Ukrainian president of “begging for your money”.“How much money will Washington spend to slaughter an entire generation of young Ukrainian men as Washington fights it’s proxy war with Russia?” Greene said Tuesday. “Shame!”Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, responded to the comment today, attacking Greene for promoting the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.“No sweeter Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin than statements like this,” Hoyer said. “Our inaction warms the heart of dictators and despots across the globe.”Joe Biden will “have an LBJ moment” and decide not to run for re-election next year, the leftwing academic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West has predicted.“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” West told Politico. “Biden – I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”West was referring to the moment on 31 March 1968 when Lyndon B Johnson, in office since the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963, announced that he would not seek re-election.Already the oldest president ever sworn in, Biden is 81 and would be 86 at the end of a second term. In polling, clear majorities say he is too old.Read the Guardian’s full report:In a moment of levity before the holidays, comedian Conan O’Brien visited the White House press briefing room and chatted with reporters.“They won’t let me take questions,” O’Brien joked. “But, boy, I have the answers to everything.”O’Brien explained that he was visiting the White House because he is a “huge history buff slash nerd” who has toured the building a number of times.Watch the full clip:A Senate deal to overhaul border policies could be unveiled as early as Sunday, sources told Semafor. But it remains unclear how quickly senators can compile the text of a bill, which will be closely scrutinized by immigration groups.One of the chief negotiators, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, told reporters that they were “making progress” in their talks and would hold more meetings this afternoon and over the weekend.The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, has already indicated he wants to hold a vote on a supplemental funding package next week, and he has delayed the chamber’s holiday recess to accommodate a potential vote.Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, is imploring the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to call the chamber back to session if the Senate passes a supplemental funding package.In a letter sent to Johnson today, Hoyer argued the House must act swiftly if the Senate reaches a deal on Ukraine aid and border policy changes.“As Members return to their districts for the holidays and the people of Ukraine and Israel continue to wait anxiously for supplemental aid, I write to urge you to call the House back within 72 hours of the Senate passing legislation to provide additional assistance to our allies,” Hoyer wrote.“We ought to have secured these vital resources for our allies months ago. There is no cause that demands the attention of this Congress more than the preservation of democracy, freedom, and our national defense.”So far, Johnson has shown little interest in calling members back from their holiday recess, saying yesterday: “The House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”The US supreme court has refused to overturn an Illinois ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, Michael Sainato reports:The court rejected the request, made by a gun shop and a national gun rights group in an appeal of a lower court’s decision not to allow a preliminary injunction to block the law.A previous injunction request was also denied by the supreme court in May 2023. As is customary, the justices did not comment on their denial of the injunction.The latest request came from a firearms retailer owned by Robert Bevis in Naperville and the National Association for Gun Rights.In November 2023, a US appeals court upheld the Illinois assault weapons ban, rejecting appeals that challenged the law by claiming it violated the second amendment of the US constitution.Read the Guardian’s full report:Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was spotted on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, as jurors weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that supreme court Justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was seen leaving Capitol Hill after meeting with senators to continue talks over a potential deal on border policy changes.The cabinet secretary did not answer reporters’ questions as he left the Capitol, per Punchbowl News, so it is unclear what (if any) progress was made in the negotiations.The conservative supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to approve without changes a 98-page draft of the opinion that would remove the federal right to abortion that had been guaranteed for nearly 50 years, the New York Times reported.According to the paper, Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that struck down Roe v Wade, from 1973, circulated his draft at 11.16am on 10 February 2022.Citing two people who saw communications between the justices, the Times said: “After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinise it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words.“But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes.”Three other conservatives – Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh – signed on in the following days.Read the Guardian’s full report: More

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      Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

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      The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a proposed resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance.It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president, Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by Democrats on Capitol Hill.Citing the killing of nearly 19,000 people and wounding of more than 50,000 in Gaza since Hamas’s brutal 7 October attack, Sanders said it was time to force a debate on the bombing that has been carried out by the rightwing government of the Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US government’s “complicity” in the war.“This is a humanitarian cataclysm, and it is being done with American bombs and money. We need to face up to that fact – and then we need to end our complicity in those actions,” Sanders said in a statement.If passed, the resolution would force the US state department to report back to Congress any violations of internationally recognized human rights caused by “indiscriminate or disproportionate” military operations in Gaza, as well as “the blanket denial of basic humanitarian needs”.The state department would also have to report back on any actions the US has taken to limit civilian risk caused by Israeli actions, a summary of arms provided to Israel since 7 October, an assessment of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza, and a certification that Israeli security forces have not committed any human rights violations.“We all know Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack began this war,” Sanders said. “But the Netanyahu government’s indiscriminate bombing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the Congress must demand answers about the conduct of this campaign. A just cause for war does not excuse atrocities in the conduct of that war.”Any such resolution would have to clear the Senate but only require a simple majority. It would also have to pass the House and be signed by the White House.The resolution includes details about the extensive use of US arms, including massive explosive ordinance, such as Mark 84 2,000lb bombs and 155mm artillery, and includes “credible findings” by human rights monitors and press organizations about the use of US arms in specific strikes that killed a large number of civilians.If the resolution were to pass, the administration would have 30 days to produce the requested report. After it is received, Congress would under US law be able to condition, restrict, terminate or continue security assistance to Israel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCongress has not requested such a resolution since 1976.Sanders has come under pressure from progressive Democrats to support calls for a ceasefire. Instead, the senator has previously called for a “humanitarian pause” to allow more aid into Gaza.In a letter to Biden this week, Sanders called on the US president to withdraw his support for a $10.1bn weapons package for Israel, which is contained in a proposed supplemental foreign aid package, and for the US to support a UN resolution it has previous vetoed demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. More

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      Congress passes defense bill authorizing biggest pay rise for troops in 20 years

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      Congress passed a US defense policy bill on Thursday that authorizes the biggest pay rise for troops in more than two decades, while leaving behind many of the policy priorities that social conservatives were clamoring for.Lawmakers have been negotiating a final bill for months. Some of the priorities championed by social conservatives were a no-go for Democrats, so negotiators dropped them from the final product to get it over the finish line.The bill passed the House on Thursday by 310 to 118, with 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats opposing it. It passed the Senate a day earlier, by a vote of 87-13. House opponents were more vocal about their concerns than in the Senate. It now goes to the president, Joe Biden, to be signed into law.Most notably, the bill does not include language blocking the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy and restricting gender-affirming healthcare for transgender service members and dependents.Republicans prevailed, however, in winning some concessions on diversity and inclusion training in the military. For example, the bill freezes hiring for such training until a full accounting of the programming and costs is completed and reported to Congress.The bill sets key Pentagon policy that lawmakers will attempt to fund through a follow-up appropriations bill. Lawmakers were keen to emphasize how the bill calls for a 5.2% boost in service member pay, the biggest increase in more than 20 years.The bill authorizes $886bn for national defense programs for the current fiscal year that began 1 October, about 3% more than the prior year.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the bill would ensure “America’s military remains state of the art at all times all around the world”.The bill also includes a short-term extension of a surveillance program aimed at preventing terrorism and catching spies. But the program has detractors on both sides of the political aisle who view it as a threat to the privacy of ordinary Americans.The extension continues a program that permits the US government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence.US officials have said the tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions and other national security threats. It has produced vital intelligence that the US has relied on for specific operations, such as the killing last year of the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.But the administration’s efforts to secure reauthorization of the program have encountered strong bipartisan pushback. Democrats such as the senator Ron Wyden, who has long championed civil liberties, have aligned with Republican supporters of the former president Donald Trump to demand better privacy protections for Americans and have proposed a slew of competing bills.The White House called for swift passage of the defense bill, saying it “provides the critical authorities we need to build the military required to deter future conflicts while supporting the servicemembers and their spouses and families who carry out that mission every day”.On Ukraine, the bill includes the creation of a special inspector general for Ukraine to address concerns about whether taxpayer dollars are being spent in Ukraine as intended. That is on top of oversight work already being conducted by other agency watchdogs.On China, the bill establishes a new training program with Taiwan, requires a plan to accelerate deliveries of Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Taiwan, and approves an agreement that enables Australia to access nuclear-powered submarines, which are stealthier and more capable than conventionally powered vessels.Dozens of House Republicans balked because the bill would keep in place a Pentagon rule that allows for travel reimbursement when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. The Biden administration instituted the new rules after the supreme court overturned the nationwide right to an abortion, and some states have limited or banned the procedure.Tommy Tuberville, a Republican senator, had for months blocked the promotion of more than 400 senior military leaders over his objections to the policy. More

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      Milking it: bill aims to bring dairy staple back to US schools

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      “Let them drink milk!”A bipartisan bill to allow US schools to serve whole milk, in addition to low-fat options, is garnering support, as some call the attempts to bring back the dairy staple a waste of time.The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk and 2% milk during lunchtime.Both dairy options were phased out in 2010 after the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandated that schools serve 1% or fat-free milk to meet health guidelines aimed at combating childhood obesity, according to Where the Food Comes From.The Whole Milk Act comes as alternative dairy options like soy and oat milk have maintained their popularity. Plant-based dairy or protein is popular among 38% of US adults, according to Mintel, a market research group.While the bill has gained bipartisan support, some legislators criticized the legislation as a waste of time.Pennsylvania representative Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat, condemned legislators for spending time to advance the milk bill versus addressing the gun violence epidemic.“The American people are crying out for Congress to act, and yet the House of Representatives is using its precious time to debate chocolate milk,” Scanlon said.Democratic congressman Mike Thompson of California echoed the need for Congress to address gun violence instead of attempting to bring back whole milk.“I spent the entire weekend in my district and not one person came to me to change the law on chocolate milk,” Thompson said, adding that gun violence remains a leading cause of death among children and teens.Opponents of the bill have also said that low-fat options currently offered in schools already are already nutritionally sufficient, minus the saturated fat.Meanwhile, Republican representatives from all swaths of the country spoke in support of the act and the urgent need to bring whole milk back into schools.Wisconsin representative Derrick Van Orden decried plant-based dairy such as soy and almond milk as “not real milk”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Milk comes from a mammal,” Van Orden said.Illinois representative Mary Miller called the previous removal of whole milk from schools a facet of “radical Obama administration policies led by Michelle Obama”, referencing the former first lady’s campaign to end childhood obesity.North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx evoked Santa Claus’s affinity for cookies and milk to advocate for a return of whole milk in schools.“The nutrients in whole milk … provide the fuel Santa needs to travel the whole globe in one night. Whole milk is the unsung hero of his Christmas journey,” Foxx said.Some Democrats also spoke in support of the pro-whole milk legislation.Kim Schrier, a Democrat representative from Washington and the bill’s co-sponsor, said that more milk options would encourage children to avoid more sugary drink options at lunchtime.“I would much rather have children drinking milk, even whole milk, than juice,” said Schrier, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

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      Clarence Thomas pressured to recuse himself from Trump immunity case

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      Senate Democrats are pressuring the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from deciding whether Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while president.Democrats have argued that Thomas poses a potential conflict of interest because his wife, Ginni Thomas, has previously supported Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, the Hill reported.During her testimony to the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection in 2022, Ginni Thomas said she still believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.Following the 2020 election, Ginni Thomas also texted Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and told him to contest the election results, accusing Biden and Democrats of “attempting the greatest Heist of our History”.The Illinois senator Dick Durbin, who is chair of the Senate judicial committee, has called for Thomas’s recusal, arguing the relationship between Trump and the Thomas family is unclear.“There are so many unanswered questions about the relationship of the justice and his family with the Trump administration that I think in the interests of justice, he should recuse himself,” Durbin said to the Hill.Durbin later told CNN that Thomas should “think twice” and recuse himself from the case.“There’s been enough information raised about Mr Thomas and his spouse that he ought to think twice about recusal in this case,” Durbin said.The Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal echoed the calls. Blumenthal told the Hill that the supreme court would be deciding on if Trump can be tried for attempting to overturn the results of 2020 election, which involves “Jan 6, which involved [Thomas’s] wife”.Special counsel Jack Smith asked the supreme court on Monday to decide if Trump can be criminally prosecuted. The supreme court quickly responded to say it would, and gave Trump until 20 December to reply. The earliest the court would consider the motion is 5 January, when the justices have their next scheduled private conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSmith’s move came amid fears that Trump’s trial could be indefinitely delayed, if as expected Trump appeals a decision from a federal judge on Friday that rejected his immunity claims. The judge in that case, Tanya Chutkan, denied Trump’s motion for dismissal, opening up the possibility for him to appeal to the DC circuit court and if necessary the US supreme court.“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” Smith’s filing said.“Only this court can definitively resolve them.” More

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      Zelenskiy struggles to get US Republicans to back $61bn Ukraine military aid package

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy has struggled to persuade US Republicans to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine on a trip to Washington DC, with objectors insisting on White House concessions on border security as a condition for a deal.The Ukrainian president addressed members of the Senate in a closed 90-minute meeting on Tuesday morning, but afterwards key Republicans repeated that they wanted to see a crackdown on immigration between the US and Mexico in return for supporting the package.Speaking afterwards, Lindsey Graham, a senator for South Carolina, told reporters that he had told Zelenskiy that the problem was “nothing to do with you”. He added: “I said: ‘You’ve done everything anybody could ask of you. This is not your problem here.’”The senior Republican went on to accuse the White House of having failed to tackle the southern border issue and called for “the commander in chief” – Joe Biden – to become personally involved in the negotiations.Senate Republicans last week blocked an emergency aid package primarily for Ukraine and Israel after conservatives complained at the exclusion of immigration policy changes they had demanded as part of the package.Zelenskiy sought to reassure senators concerned about whether US military aid would be wasted because of corruption, Mike Rounds, a Republican, told CNN, and that Ukraine needed more air defence systems to support its counteroffensives.Senior Democrats, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the lack of progress. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, said “The one person happiest right now about the gridlock in Congress is Vladimir Putin. He is delighting in the fact that Donald Trump’s border policies are sabotaging military aid to Ukraine.”The Ukrainian president then moved on to a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat House minority leader, and after that with the recently elected Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who has been relatively sceptical about further financial support for Ukraine.After their meeting, Johnson complained that the White House was asking Congress to approve the spending of billions of dollars “with no appropriate oversight, without a clear strategy to win”.Johnson added that “our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security first” but he also insisted that the US did stand with Zelenskiy “against Putin’s brutal invasion”.Zelenskiy posted a picture on X, formerly Twitter, of him addressing senators, saying he had had “a friendly and candid conversation”. He emphasised the importance of US military aid in his country’s fight against Russia.Moscow said it was watching developments closely. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said that “tens of billions of dollars” already provided by Washington had failed to turn the tide of war and more money would make little difference. Zelenskiy’s authority was being undermined by the failures, he added.Congress is due to break for the year on Friday and there appeared little prospect of a breakthrough that would allow a funding package to be passed before then – meaning that negotiations will have to pick up in the new year at a time when the amounts available to Ukraine are running short.Last week, Shalanda Young, the White House’s director of the office of management and budget, said that the Pentagon had used up 97% of the $62.3bn Ukraine allocations previously authorised by Congress, while the state department has none of its $4.7bn remaining.Zelenskiy is due to hold a private meeting with Biden and a joint press conference in the afternoon. The White House has previously signalled it is willing to make concessions on the Mexico border issue as it tries to get the funding package through.Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said Russia believes that “a military deadlock through the winter will drain western support for Ukraine”, ultimately handing Moscow the advantage.Newly declassified US intelligence concluded that the war had cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, amounting to nearly 90% of the personnel it had before the war, started in February 2022.In Ukraine, the country’s biggest mobile phone network, Kyivstar, was badly hit on Tuesday by what appeared to be the largest cyber-attack of the war with Russia so far. Phone signals, the internet and some of Kyiv region’s air alert system were knocked out, in an attack that the company’s chief executive was “a result of” the war with Russia.Ukrainian sources indicated that the attack was not financially motivated, but destructive in nature, and it was unclear who precisely was responsible. The country’s SBU intelligence service said it was investigating whether the attack had been directed by one of Russia’s intelligence agencies. More

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      The Squad review: AOC, the rise of the left and the fight against dark money

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      Ryan Grim’s sprawling new book is called The Squad, but it is about much more than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive allies in the US House. It does provide mini-biographies of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, but it should have been called The Squad and Its Enemies, given the amount of space it devotes to their adversaries.Grim also gives a blow-by-blow replay of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and extremely detailed accounts of how Joe Biden’s infrastructure and domestic spending bills finally made it through Congress.The book seems to have been written at great speed without much time for editing. At times that makes it a little hard to follow. For example, on page 30, we learn that Justice Democrats, an organization founded in 2017 to elect “a new type of Democratic majority in Congress”, suddenly pulled out of AOC’s first race because she wasn’t raising enough money herself.“She was crushed and considered dropping out,” Grim writes. But then, two pages later, we learn that Justice Democrats “just went all in and just diverted it all” to AOC. “We stopped raising money for anybody else,” an organizer explains.There are small, easily checkable errors. The Rayburn House Office Building, we’re told, was “built in the 1950s during the postwar boom”. Actually its cornerstone was laid in 1962 and the building opened in 1965.Grim is a big fan of hard-left, hard-edged judgments against middle-of-the-road Democrats. On the very first page, we are told of the “rubble of the Obama administration’s pivot to austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis”. Nine pages later, Obama is accused of encouraging more home foreclosures “to keep the bailed-out banks alive”.According to Grim, the present House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has a “visceral hatred toward the radical left”; gets “roughly half” of his campaign money from corporate political action committees; and has the additional sins of being a “vocal supporter of charter schools”, an ally of the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and a supporter of Hillary Clinton.Grim is on more solid ground when he attacks the Problem Solvers, a group that “claimed it would solve problems by bringing together moderate Democrats and reasonable Republicans for common sense solutions” but whose primary goal is to block “tax increases on private equity moguls and hedge fund executives” who funded dark money groups linked to No Labels, the “centrist” group threatening to run a third-party candidate for president, potentially hurting Joe Biden and helping Donald Trump.Grim offers very long sections about the debilitating effects of dark money on the entire political system, and the negative effects of the extremely large amounts spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the rest of the lobby for Israel. He is at his best when he describes Washington alliances that are mostly invisible to casual students of the Capitol scene. There is a long narrative about Josh Gottheimer, a former Clinton intern and speechwriter turned New Jersey congressman elected with the support of Aipac, a Problem Solvers founder .Gottheimer’s most important ally is Mark Penn, a key Hillary Clinton strategist and the former head of the PR powerhouse Burson-Marsteller. Gottheimer, a congressional champion of Israel, was paradoxically aided by Penn’s longtime work for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates “built an alliance with the Israeli lobbying operation in Washington”, Grim explains. “Israel won Arab cred from the two autocracies even as its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory were rapidly expanding. And the autocracies were helped by association with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies.”“Israel and the Arabs standing together is the ultimate ace in the hole,” an Israeli embassy official tells the author.Because of this unholy alliance, Gottheimer became one of the “top recipients of cash” from lobbyists and lawyers working for Saudi Arabia in his first re-election cycle.We also learn in detail how the mere threat of opposition by Aipac in his Florida congressional primary transformed Maxwell Frost’s position on the Middle East. The young Democrat had signed a pledge to “heed the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) and called for “an end to US political, military and economic support to Israel, and to all military security and policing collaborations”. But after Richie Torres, a New York Democrat, befriended Frost, the Floridian ended up “a candidate who wanted no strings attached to military aid to Israel” and who considered BDS “extremely problematic and a risk to the chances of peace and a two-state solution”.Stories like this lend credence to the judgment of Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who survived her own “near-death experience” at the hands of the Israel lobby. She tells Grim she knows people deterred from running for office “because this is a topic that they know will bury them. There’s absolutely a chilling effect”.Lee continues: “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars.” This also “deters other people from ever wanting to get into it. So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities are just no longer centered in our politics”.As Grim demonstrates convincingly, that is one of the many big costs the US pays thanks to the gigantic role of dark money in its politics.
      The Squad is published in the US by Henry Holt & Co More