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      White House condemns McCarthy for impeachment threats against Merrick Garland – as it happened

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      From 5h agoAs he looks to promote his economic record and turn around negative public approval ratings, Joe Biden announced his administration would work to get all Americans access to low-cost high-speed internet by 2030.“We’re announcing over $40bn to be distributed to 50 states, Washington DC and territories to deliver high speed in places where there’s neither service or it’s too slow,” the president said.“Along with other federal investments, we’re going to be able to connect every person in America to reliable high-speed internet by 2030.”He compared his administration’s push to the rural electrification campaign of Democratic icon Franklin Delano Rosevelt in the 1930s.“Today, Kamala and I are making an equally historic investment to connect everyone in America, everyone in America to … affordable high speed internet by 2030. It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever, because for today’s economy to work for everyone, internet access is just as important as electricity or water, or other basic services.”Joe Biden eased into his re-election campaign with the announcement of a nationwide push to expand high-speed internet, and plans for a speech on “Bidenomics” set for Wednesday. The president’s idea is to campaign for another four years in the White House not with promises of new policies, but rather with a reiteration of the proposals that got him elected in the first place. Meanwhile, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled an openness to impeaching the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, if the US attorney involved in prosecuting Hunter Biden doesn’t speak to the judiciary committee. The House is on recess for the next two weeks or so, but we’ll keep an eye on if that goes anywhere.Here’s what else happened today:
      A White House spokesman condemned McCarthy for threatening to impeach Garland.
      The supreme court ordered Louisiana to draw a new majority-Black congressional district as the fallout from a recent decision concerning the Voting Rights Act continues.
      A top Democratic senator thinks the supreme court’s conservatives know they’ve gone too far.
      The Biden administration plans yet another aid package for Ukraine, while the president said the US had “nothing to do” with the attempted mutiny in Russia over the past weekend.
      There is yet another balloon over Montana, but it’s not suspicious, Norad says.
      The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s trial in Florida on charges of conspiring to store classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, denied a request from the justice department to keep its witness list secret:The justice department can appeal the decision. The decision is one of several expected in the pretrial motions before the start of the proceedings, which are currently scheduled for the middle of August but likely to change.Appointed to the federal bench by Trump, Cannon faced criticism for decisions made in the case prior to his indictment that some analysts saw as partial to the former president.White House spokesman Ian Sams has released a statement criticizing Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy for threatening to impeach the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.Here’s what Sams had to say:
      Speaker McCarthy and the extreme House Republicans are proving they have no positive agenda to actually help the American people on the issues most important to them and their families. The President and his entire Administration are spending this whole week traveling the country to talk about the important economic progress we have made over the last two years – creating more than 13 million jobs as we’ve sparked the strongest recovery of any country in the world – and laying out the Biden plan to put the middle class ahead of those at the very top. Perhaps Congressional Republicans are desperate to distract from their own plan to give even more tax cuts to the wealthy and big corporations and add more than $3 trillion to the deficit, but instead of pushing more partisan stunts intended only to get themselves attention on the far right, they should work with the President to actually put the middle class and working Americans first and expand the historic progress to lower costs, create jobs, boost U.S. manufacturing and small businesses, and make prescription drugs more affordable.
      There is, once again, a balloon flying over Montana – but it’s not a spy balloon, Norad assures us.The US-Canadian air defense force, whose name is an acronym for North American Aerospace Defense Command, says it is aware of the balloon, but does not regard it as suspicious:There is, of course, a political angle to this. Matt Rosendale, a Republican senator from Montana, earlier today attempted to use the balloon’s presence to attack the Biden administration:Joe Biden’s approval rating has seen a slight uptick in recent weeks, but is still pretty bad, Gallup reports.In a survey conducted on 1-22 June, Gallup reports the president’s approval is at 43%, up from the 37% low that his presidency hit in April. That’s not a particularly high rating at all, and the survey also found 54% of American adult respondents disapproved of his job performance.The last time Biden’s approval was above 50% was in July 2021 – before the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Delta wave of Covid-19 that led many Americans to again don masks and avoid large gatherings. Another factor that pushed Biden’s approval lower and kept it there was the wave of inflation that intensified throughout 2021 and 2022, forcing Americans to pay higher prices for essentials like gasoline and food.According to NBC News, “five or six” US Secret Service agents have now testified before the January 6 grand jury.NBC cited two unnamed sources “familiar with testimony”.The special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 is a source of further legal jeopardy for Donald Trump.Twice indicted already, the former president and current Republican frontrunner is widely believed likely to face further indictment by Smith, who has already handed down charges over Trump’s handling of classified information.NBC said: “While the exact content of their subpoenas and appearances is not known, Secret Service agents who were close to Trump on January 6 may be able to confirm, deny or provide more details on a story first told by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the … January 6 committee in Congress.“One year ago, Hutchinson told the committee she heard secondhand that Trump wanted Secret Service agents to drive him to the Capitol to join the rioters, tried to grab the car’s steering wheel and then reached for the ‘clavicles’ of the driver, Secret Service agent Bobby Engel. Trump later denied this account.”NBC also notes that agents may have been asked about what the agency knew and discussed leading up to and during the January 6 attack, in which Trump supporters sought to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win.NBC said the agents who have testified could “inform the grand jury about the extent to which Trump knew about the potential for violence on January 6 and how he responded to threats made against then-Vice President Mike Pence”.Pence is now a competitor for the Republican presidential nomination.Joe Biden was asked earlier, by the Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, if he had ever lied about ever speaking to his son, Hunter Biden, about his business dealings (the subject of Republican attacks passim, and current musings about impeaching the attorney general, Merrick Garland).The president said: “No.”Video is here.Joe Biden has marked the concurrent anniversaries of three supreme court rulings which affirmed the right to same-sex marriage – a right some observers think will soon come under threat from a conservative-dominated court which removed the right to abortion.The president said: “Ten years ago today, the supreme court rulings in United States v Windsor and Hollingsworth v Perry made significant strides laying the groundwork for marriage equality in our country. They were followed two years later, to the day, by the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, finally allowing millions of LGBTQ+ Americans to marry who they love.“These monumental cases moved our country forward, and they were made possible because of the courageous couples and unrelenting advocates in the LGBTQ+ community who, for decades, fought for these hard-won rights.“Last year, I was proud to build on their legacy by signing into law the Respect for Marriage Act … surrounded by many of the plaintiffs from these cases. But more work lies ahead, and I continue to call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, to codify additional protections to combat the increased attacks on the rights and safety of those in the LGBTQ+ community.”Further reading:Fox News announced earlier that Jesse Watters will move into the 8pm prime-time weeknight slot formerly filled by Tucker Carlson.Announcing the full shake-up, Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News, said: “The unique perspectives of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld will ensure our viewers have access to unrivaled coverage from our best-in-class team for years to come.”Here’s some (possibly) unrivaled coverage of Watters’ many unique perspectives over the years, from the progressive watchdog Media Matters for America.It’s a long list, so I’ll just link to it here while listing the subheadings provided:In his own statement, the Media Matters president, Angelo Carusone, explained his group’s view of Watters:“After Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, [Fox Corp co-chair] Lachlan Murdoch said there would be ‘no change’ in the network’s programming strategy. Today, Fox is making good on that promise.“Crowning odious Jesse Watters as the new face of Fox News is a reflection of Fox’s dogged commitment to bigotry and deceit as well as an indication of their desperation to regain audience share. It won’t work, though. Fox’s audience abandoned the network post-Tucker, and those viewers never returned. Jesse Watters’ buffoonish segments of bigotry and culture war vitriol won’t fix that problem for Fox; he’s a liability and a ticking time bomb.“Dominion exposed Fox News for the partisan propaganda operation that it is. Instead of trying to adjust and attempt to establish a beachhead of credibility, the network is going back out to sea by leaning in on their most toxic personalities – like Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters. The network is transparently appealing to the fringes here.“Advertisers and cable providers beware: things at Fox News are about to get a whole lot worse.”Here’s some more reading on Fox News post-Tucker, with contributions from Brian Stelter, a seasoned Fox-watcher formerly of CNN:Joe Biden is easing into his re-election campaign with the announcement of a nationwide push to expand high-speed internet, and plans for a speech on “Bidenomics” set for Wednesday. The idea is to campaign for another four years in the White House not with new promises, but rather with a reiteration of the proposals that got him elected in the first place. Meanwhile, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled an openness to impeaching attorney general Merrick Garland if the US attorney involved in prosecuting Hunter Biden doesn’t speak to the judiciary committee. The House is on recess for the next two weeks or so, but we’ll keep an eye on if that goes anywhere.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The supreme court ordered Louisiana to draw a new majority-Black congressional district as the fallout from a recent decision concerning the Voting Rights Act continues.
      A top Democratic senator thinks the supreme court’s conservatives know they’ve gone too far.
      The Biden administration plans yet another aid package for Ukraine.
      Joe Biden’s push for more affordable high-speed internet access comes as he plans to announce a major theme for his re-election campaign on Wednesday.The president is scheduled to travel to Chicago and speak about the employment and wage gains Americans have seen since he took office, which the White House is calling “Bidenomics”.According to Axios, Biden plans to focus his re-election campaign on the same promises he made when running for his first term in office, rather than announcing a new slate of policies. But the approach is risky, particularly since surveys indicate two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.As he looks to promote his economic record and turn around negative public approval ratings, Joe Biden announced his administration would work to get all Americans access to low-cost high-speed internet by 2030.“We’re announcing over $40bn to be distributed to 50 states, Washington DC and territories to deliver high speed in places where there’s neither service or it’s too slow,” the president said.“Along with other federal investments, we’re going to be able to connect every person in America to reliable high-speed internet by 2030.”He compared his administration’s push to the rural electrification campaign of Democratic icon Franklin Delano Rosevelt in the 1930s.“Today, Kamala and I are making an equally historic investment to connect everyone in America, everyone in America to … affordable high speed internet by 2030. It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever, because for today’s economy to work for everyone, internet access is just as important as electricity or water, or other basic services.”The United States was not involved in the weekend mutiny by Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin against Russian president Vladimir Putin.“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said at the White House event on high-speed internet. “This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”“We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine. But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”The president added that, “We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications for Russia and Ukraine. But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are kicking off a speech where they’ll unveil tens of billions of dollars in investments to improve high-speed internet access across the United States.The Washington Post reports that the Biden administration will spend $42 bn to expand access to the internet, using funds made available by the infrastructure overhaul Congress approved two years ago:Follow along here for the latest on the speech. More

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      ‘Conservative justices? Yeah, in what way?’ Key senator on a supreme court in thrall to special interests

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      The conservative-dominated US supreme court may be undergoing a “course correction” after witnessing a public backlash to its extremist rulings and ethics scandals, Sheldon Whitehouse, chairman of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on the federal courts, has told the Guardian.America’s highest court has made a series of radical decisions, including in the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion one year ago on Saturday, while two rightwing justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have been exposed for failing disclose luxury gifts from billionaires.But with trust in the court collapsing, it has this month defended the Voting Rights Act by ruling in favor of Black voters in Alabama and preserved a law that aims to keep Native American children with tribal families. Both were unexpected victories for Democrats – and a sign that they might finally be awakening to public opinion.“Frankly, I think the recent Alabama decision would have gone the other way had it not been for the blowback on Dobbs,” Senator Whitehouse said in an interview. “The challenge that they’re not ‘conservative’ – they’re captured – and the preposterous behavior of Thomas. That was a pretty heavy course correction. Some of them said, ‘Oh, damn, looks like we’re going have to act like judges for a while. Till this blows over!’”Whitehouse found it strange that the Alabama voters decision rested so heavily on precedent – something that the current justices, three of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, have often been content to ignore.He says: “Where was all that when you were throwing out Dobbs? They have not let precedent get in their way when they’ve wanted the result for quite a while and to have it pop up so flagrantly in the middle of the Alabama case? You guys, that’s funny.”The senator believes that the court’s new sensitivity to public opinion could extend to the upcoming case Moore v Harper, another gerrymandering case in which Republican legislators in North Carolina are asking the court to grant them unfettered power to set rules for voting and elections – a dangerous notion in the era of Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election.“I’ve always thought that was probably a throwaway case for them. If you look at the people who are pitching the case to them, so many of them are under investigation, under indictment, in disbarment proceedings. It’s the whole creepy ‘big lie’ apparatus that came in with that and I’m not sure the court wants to take a look at that crowd and say, yeah, we’re going with them to develop a completely wacky new argument that nobody’s ever accepted as being anything but a fever dream before. That’s just a bad combo.”Whitehouse, 67, has been a senator for Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, since 2007 and is currently chairman of the Senate budget committee. He has spent years delivering speeches on the Senate floor in two series: “Time to Wake Up”, about the climate crisis, and “The Scheme”, about a decades-long plot to remake the supreme court in service to shadowy billionaires and big special interests.One of his “The Scheme” speeches came to the attention of Lawrence O’Donnell, an MSNBC host and former congressional aide, who suggested that the subject would make good podcast material. Whitehouse discovered that the Senate’s own studio could produce it. The first episode of Making the Case offers an accessible history lesson with Congressman Hank Johnson, Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick and Lisa Graves of True North Research.Whitehouse reflects on the new venture while sitting in an airy Capitol Hill office surrounded by photographs of himself with Democratic presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. There are also pictures of Bruce Sundlun, a former governor of Rhode Island and mentor, and President Franklin Roosevelt – with a hand-signed note to Whitehouse’s grandfather, also named Sheldon Whitehouse, who served as a foreign service officer.The senator is speaking just hours before the ProPublica website published an article raising questions about Alito’s failure to report taking a private jet to Alaska for a luxury fishing trip in 2008, provided by a billionaire hedge fund manager whose business interests have come before the court. Whitehouse will tweet in response: “This just keeps getting worse.”ProPublica previously reported that Thomas accepted decades of undisclosed trips from a longtime friend, the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow, that included stays at Crow’s private resort, flights on his jet, and a vacation onboard Crow’s yacht in Indonesia. Crow also purchased property from Thomas and paid private school tuition for a Thomas great-nephew.Opinion polls show that such revelations have shaken public faith in the court as never before. A Quinnipiac poll published this week found that it has a 30% approval rating among registered voters – the lowest since Quinnipiac first asked the question in 2004. This mood has created an appetite for speeches, podcasts and journalistic investigations to lift the curtain on an institution that once seemed above the political fray and beyond reproach.Whitehouse, who wrote about Thomas’s relationship with Crow in a book about dark money and the supreme court, tells the Guardian: “A couple of things are happening and they interact with each other. One is that people are just grossed out by the Harlan Crow/Clarence Thomas revelations.“I checked: in Rhode Island, if you’re a municipal employee, you can have three lunches not exceeding $25 and they have to be reported, and here’s this guy who’s supposedly a judge going on quarter-million-dollar free vacations and not reporting it.”He added: “Then people are beginning to realise that this is not a conservative court. This is a special interests-captured court. But we don’t have a very ready narrative in American society for explaining the difference and we still get people who cover the court and know a fair amount about it saying the ‘conservative’ justices. Yeah, in what way?”In 2022 the court upended precedents at an astonishing clip, curtailing or revoking rights such as abortion and due process while expanding religious rights and rights to carry guns. It twice delivered blows to the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to combat pollution.Whitehouse believes that the term conservative has been “obsolete” since dark money began funding groups such as Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society to handpick justices for the court. “There’s nothing about the way they’re behaving as judges that meets any definition of small ‘c’ conservative.”He continues: “Little by little, the facts of the decisions they’ve been up to are beginning to break through with something more than just them being ‘conservative’. There’s this overlay of who’s in charge behind the scenes. Of course that pops up everywhere, in the amicus briefs, in the dark money behind their confirmations. You can’t make it stop. Harlan Crow intersects with it. And then Dobbs was a clang the gong moment where everybody realised, oh, this is a little not normal.”One fix might lie with Congress. Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, has announced plans to take up supreme court ethics legislation. But in April the chief justice, John Roberts, turned down an invitation from Durbin to testify, citing the “exceedingly rare” nature of such an appearance.Whitehouse comments: “I can understand that he had horrible questions he’d have to answer and, for that reason, he didn’t want to. I very much disagree that his separation of powers argument holds any water at all. That’s pure window dressing for, ‘I just don’t want to come over and have to explain what he did’ – thinking of Thomas. I have some human sympathy for him not wanting to come over and answer questions for his wayward colleague but he was very slippery about the way he did it,” he said.Whitehouse wants Roberts to demonstrate that he is taking the ethics issue seriously and believes he might be pushed to do so by the judicial conference, the policymaking body of the federal courts that has a code of conduct followed by lower court judges. At an awards ceremony last month, Roberts acknowledged that “we are continuing to look at things we can do” to adhere to the highest standards of conduct.But no action by the current court has been as tangible or devastating for millions of people as Dobbs, which resulted in the decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that had in effect legalised abortion nationwide. Alito’s majority opinion stated that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions”. The procedure is now almost completely banned in 14 states.Whitehouse naturally has a podcast episode marking the first anniversary. He reflects: “If you really are going to throw out a decision that stood for so long and matters so much to so many people, you expect that they try to keep within existing law. Instead, they make up a whole new analysis that allows them to get where they want to get – the whole ‘history and tradition’ shtick that they pulled together,” he said.The ruling was a prime example of the court being out of step with public opinion. Republicans paid the price in last year’s midterm elections. Now candidates for president in 2024 are tiptoeing around the issue, with Trump refusing to commit to a national abortion limit and rival Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, facing scrutiny over a six-week ban in his home state.Whitehouse comments: “There’s a huge liability that they’ve opened up for themselves in a party that has hung with the extremists.”The Dobbs decision galvanised activists to demand Thomas’s resignation, push for reforms such as expanding the number of justices and make the case to voters that the supreme court is a defining issue at the ballot box, not merely a nice-to-have.“A lot of the advocacy groups that work in this space – whether it’s environmental groups, civil rights groups, labour groups – have awakened to the nature of the problem at the supreme court and are now taking it on in a whole different way, looking at the dark money, looking at the capture, looking at the mischievous and mysterious briefing just prepared.“Looking at that whole scenario and realising, wow, we got outplayed for about 20 years now and we’re going to have to figure out how to fight back. This can’t be issue 15 for us any longer. This has to be right at the top across a whole array of advocacy areas.” More

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      Senate examines role of ‘dark money’ in delaying climate action

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      The Senate budget committee held a hearing on Wednesday morning to scrutinize the role of oil- and gas-linked “dark money” in delaying climate action – and tearing through local and federal budgets.The hearing was led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has held 10 climate crisis-focused hearings since he took the helm of the budget committee this past February.It follows an inquiry launched by House Democrats in 2021, which focused on big oil’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about the climate crisis.“I am shining a light on the massive, well-documented economic risks of climate change,” said Whitehouse, who has also given nearly 300 speeches about the climate crisis on the Senate floor. “These are risks that have the potential to cascade across our entire economy and trigger widespread financial hardship and calamity.”In his opening remarks, Whitehouse described the well-documented misinformation campaign that fossil fuel interests have waged on the American public.“Beginning as early as the 1950s, industry scientists became aware of climate change, measuring and predicting it decades before it became a public issue,” he said. “But industry management and CEOs spent decades promoting climate misinformation.”Ranking member Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said the hearing was a “missed opportunity to work together on a responsible budget”. He also claimed Democrats obtain “much more secret or dark money than Republicans”.Committee Democrats invited three witnesses. First to the stand was the Harvard history of science professor Naomi Oreskes. “Climate change is a market failure, and market failures require government action to address,” she testified.Fossil fuel interests’ efforts to disrupt climate policy had come at great expense to the US, including not only financial costs, but also human suffering and lives lost, said Oreskes, who has written several books on oil industry misinformation.Christine Arena, former public relations executive at the firm Edelman who now works in social impact film-making, and who was also invited by Senate Democrats, drew comparisons between the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long misinformation campaign and how the tobacco industry tried to cover up the harms of smoking.“Just like the tobacco executives before them, [fossil fuel executives] characterize peer-reviewed science and investigative journalism that illustrates the extent of their deceptions as biased or inconclusive,” said Arena, who is now the founder of Generous Films.Richard Painter, professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School who was chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, was third to testify. A political independent, Painter said Americans should get on board with the push to end climate misinformation no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.“This is not a partisan issue,” said Painter, who was also invited by Whitehouse. “This is about caring, and doing something about a grave threat to the human race.”The last two witnesses were invited by Republican senators. First up was Dr Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who said he believed climate change was real, human-caused and dangerous, but that the Democrats’ concerns were overblown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast to testify was Scott Walker, president of the conservative non-profit Capital Research Center who served in the George W Bush administration as special assistant to the president for domestic policy. “To say that a group uses dark money is like saying the group uses telephones. It’s a universal technology,” he said.He insisted that dark money was not a major problem in American politics. Insofar as it was a problem, he said, the political left took more money than the right.In an interview after the hearing, Oreskes said she suspected the evidence that Democrats take more dark money than Republicans may be based on “cherry-picked” data. “Cherry-picking is a tactic we know climate deniers and skeptics have used for decades,” she said.While being questioned by Whitehouse, Oreskes explained that in the mid-2000s, she and others who wrote about the scientific consensus on the human-caused climate crisis received hate mail and were the targets of official complaints and other attacks.“That experience of being attacked led me to try to understand what these attacks were, who was funding them, who was behind them, and why they were doing it,” she said.Later, Grassley asked Pielke to talk more about the influence dark money has on Democrats. “I can’t explain exactly why your colleagues aren’t willing to look at the dark money ties of their own witnesses,” said Pielke.Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat, addressed these allegations, offering a solution for his Republican colleagues who are concerned about dark money’s influence on Democrats. The Disclose Act, introduced by Whitehouse in the Senate this year, would expose the sources of these clandestine funds for Democrats and Republicans alike, he said. “I would invite my colleagues across the aisle to join us in ending dark money on both sides,” said Merkley. More

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      US government prepares to look into LIV-PGA merger amid sportswashing claims

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      The leader of a US Senate subcommittee is demanding the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf present records about the negotiations that led to their planned merger.Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, sent letters on Monday to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and LIV CEO Greg Norman.“While few details about the agreement are known, PIF’s role as an arm of the Saudi government and PGA Tour’s sudden and drastic reversal of position concerning LIV Golf raise serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the announced agreement,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Monahan.The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) will pour huge sums – confirmed by its governor, Yasir al-Rumuyyan, as running into billions – into a newly formed entity to run top-tier golf. The PIF has assets of more than $700bn and will lead efforts to move Saudi Arabia on from its reliance on its oil assets.Blumenthal, who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he also wanted to hear the tour’s plans to retain its tax-exempt status.Last week, LIV and the tour stunned the golf world by agreeing to merge the PGA Tour and European tour with the Saudi golf interests, while also dropping all lawsuits between the parties. Al-Rumuyyan will join the PGA Tour board of directors and lead a new business venture as its chairman. The PGA Tour itself will remain a tax-exempt entity.It was a move expected to receive scrutiny from US federal regulators and lawmakers, and the launch of a Senate investigation is among the first dominoes to fall.Among the uncertainties is how LIV Golf goes forward after 2023.In his letters to Monahan and Norman, Blumenthal wrote about the skepticism critics hold over the Saudis’ intent “to use investments in sports to further the Saudi government’s strategic objectives.”“Critics have cast such Saudi investments in sports as a means of “sportswashing” – an attempt to soften the country’s image around the world – given Saudi Arabia’s deeply disturbing human rights record at home and abroad,” the letter said.Blumenthal asked for a a huge trove of documents – essentially all communications between LIV and the tour beginning in October 2021 through to the present.Al-Rumayyan said last week that Norman was not apprised of the deal until shortly before it was announced. More

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      Republicans censure senator for backing LGBTQ+ rights and gun control

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      The Republican US senator Thom Tillis has been reprimanded by party officials in his home state of North Carolina after his support of gun control and same-sex marriage.More than 1,000 delegates at the North Carolina Republican party’s annual convention voted behind closed doors on Saturday to censure Tillis, a move that does not affect his elected position but signals strong dissatisfaction with him.“We need people who are unwavering in their support for conservative ideals,” the Republican delegate Jim Forster told the Associated Press about censuring Tillis, who has been willing to break with party stances on LGBTQ+ rights, gun control and immigration policy. “His recent actions don’t reflect the party’s shift to the right – in fact, they’re moving in the exact wrong direction.”Tillis, who has held his Senate seat since 2015, does not apologize for his voting record, according to a statement from a spokesperson for his office.The censure against Tillis comes after Republicans in Texas and Wyoming approved similar measures against federal lawmakers who opposed the preferences of party officials in those states.Texas Republicans in March censured party member Tony Gonzales after the congressman voted in favor of gun control and same-sex marriage, which Americans mostly support.Meanwhile, in 2021, Wyoming Republicans censured congresswoman Liz Cheney for voting to impeach Trump before losing her re-election campaign during a primary last year.Tillis was among just 15 Republicans in the Senate who supported the gun control bill that Joe Biden signed into law last year. The legislation expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs, though – according to the non-partisan Gun Violence Archive – it has not prevented the US from recording nearly 300 shootings with four or more victims so far this year.He also voted in favor of legislation which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial couples. His support for the Respect for Marriage Act came about a decade after he played a pivotal role in the same-sex marriage ban that North Carolina passed in 2012, when he was the speaker of the state’s house of representatives.Tillis also often spoke out against the generally restrictive immigration policies which Donald Trump pursued during his presidency.His voting record on those issues gained him the reputation as one of Capitol Hill’s bipartisan dealmakers. And not every North Carolina Republican agreed with Saturday’s censure.One state senator, Bobby Hanig, said such a divisive action ahead of the 2024 presidential election was unwise.“A mob mentality doesn’t do us any good,” Hanig said. “Senator Tillis does a lot for North Carolina … so why would I want to make him mad?”Another state senator, Jim Burgin, added: “I don’t think we need to be attacking our own. You don’t shoot your own elephants.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      New Hampshire man arrested and charged with death threat to US senator

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      A New Hampshire man was arrested and charged with threatening to kill an unnamed US senator.On Friday, the US attorney’s office for the district of New Hampshire announced that Brian Landry, 66, was charged with threatening to assault, kidnap or murder the senator, “in connection with the official’s performance of official duties”.The charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine up to $250,000.According to the official statement, Landry called a district field office for the senator on 17 May, leaving a voicemail saying: “Hey stupid. I’m a veteran sniper. And unless you change your ways, I got my scope pointed in your direction and I’m coming to get you. You’re a dead man walking, you piece of fucking shit.”Investigators linked the phone call to a number associated with Landry. He admitted calling the office but said he did not recall what he said.Court documents reviewed by NBC revealed that in an interview at Landry’s home on 24 May, he “informed [investigators] that he is extremely angry with certain politicians over their handling of important entitlement programs for veterans”.Landry also said he was upset “after seeing news reports of a lawmaker ‘blocking military promotions’”, NBC reported.The Republican senator Tommy Tuberville, from Alabama, is blocking the promotions of around 200 civilian and uniformed Pentagon leaders.Tuberville opposes a Pentagon policy that pays for service members to travel to obtain abortions and also offers three weeks of administrative leave.In March, the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, criticized Tuberville for blocking the nominations, which he said were “absolutely critical”.“There are a number of things happening globally that indicate that we could be in a contest on any one given day,” Austin said. “Not approving the recommendations for promotions actually creates a ripple effect through the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, also called out Tuberville, saying his delay of the nominations, including for commanders of the US naval forces in the Pacific and Middle East, was “reckless” and could not come at a “worse time”.The charges against Landry reflect growing concern among lawmakers amid a spike in political violence.According to a survey last summer, one in five American adults, approximately 50 million people, think political violence is sometimes justified.Last July, the House sergeant at arms announced that congressmen and women would receive $10,000 to upgrade security at their homes.In October, in San Francisco, the husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked by a man with a hammer.In November, Joe Biden urged Americans to take a stand against political violence, calling on the public to “preserve democracy”. More

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      US debt ceiling deal narrowly passes senate averting catastrophic federal default

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      The Senate narrowly passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.The final vote was 63 to 36, with 46 Democrats and 17 Republicans supporting the bill while five Democrats and 31 Republicans opposed the legislation. Sixty votes were needed to pass the bill.“Tonight’s vote is a good outcome because Democrats did a very good job taking the worst parts of the Republican plan off the table,” the Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said after the vote. “And that’s why Dems voted overwhelmingly for this bill, while Republicans certainly in the Senate did not.”Biden applauded the Senate’s accomplishment and promised to sign the bill as soon as it reaches his desk, with just days to go before the 5 June default deadline.“Tonight, senators from both parties voted to protect the hard-earned economic progress we have made and prevent a first-ever default by the United States,” Biden said in a statement. “Our work is far from finished, but this agreement is a critical step forward, and a reminder of what’s possible when we act in the best interests of our country.”The Senate vote came one day after the House passed the debt ceiling bill in a resounding, bipartisan vote of 314 to 117. The bill – which was negotiated between Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California – will suspend the government’s borrowing limit until January 2025, ensuring the issue will not resurface before the next presidential election.The final Senate vote on the bill capped off a long day in the upper chamber, where lawmakers spent hours considering amendments to the legislation. All 11 of the proposed amendments failed to gain enough support to be added to the underlying bill.Several of the amendments were introduced by Senate Republicans who expressed concern that the debt ceiling bill passed by the House did too little to rein in government spending.As part of the negotiations over the bill, McCarthy successfully pushed for modest government spending cuts and changes to the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs. Those changes were deemed insufficient by 31 Republican senators, who echoed the criticism voiced by the 71 House Republicans who opposed the bill a day earlier.“It doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t do the basic things that it purports to do,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican of Utah, told Fox News on Thursday morning. “In case after case, the cuts that it proposes won’t materialize.”The Senate minority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, supported the bill, even as he acknowledged that lawmakers must take further action to tackle the federal government’s debt of more than $31tn.“The Fiscal Responsibility Act avoids the catastrophic consequences of a default on our nation’s debt,” McConnell said on the floor on Thursday morning. “The deal the House passed last night is a promising step toward fiscal sanity. But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to reel in wasteful government spending is far from over.”As some of their colleagues lamented the state of America’s debt, defense hawks in the Senate Republican conference warned that the legislation does not sufficiently fund the Pentagon, leaving the US military vulnerable in the face of foreign threats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer and McConnell attempted to allay those concerns by entering a statement into the record reaffirming that America stands ready to “respond to ongoing and growing national security threats”.“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the joint statement read. “The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs, nor abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America’s most dangerous adversaries.”The Senate leaders released a second statement aimed at reassuring colleagues who expressed alarm over a provision stipulating that an across-the-board spending cut will be enacted if Congress does not pass all 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. The measure was designed to incentivize Congress members to pass a full budget, which has proven to be a difficult task in recent years, but lawmakers fear the policy will lead to more spending cuts.“We share the concern of many of our colleagues about the potential impact of sequestration and we will work in a bipartisan, collaborative way to avoid this outcome,” Schumer and McConnell said. “The leaders look forward to bills being reported out of committee with strong bipartisan support.”Senate Democrats also lobbied against certain provisions in the bill, namely the expedited approval of the controversial Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, introduced an amendment to remove the pipeline provision from the underlying debt ceiling bill, but that measure failed alongside the 10 other proposed amendments.Despite their personal concerns about the details of the bill, most Senate Democrats, including Kaine, supported the legislation to get it to Biden’s desk and avoid a devastating default that economists warned could result in millions of lost jobs. With the immediate crisis averted, Democrats reiterated their demands to eliminate the debt ceiling and remove any future threat of default.“The fact remains that the House majority never should have put us at risk of a disastrous, self-inflicted default in the first place,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat. “We should prevent the debt ceiling from being used as a political hostage and stop allowing our country to be taken up to the edge of default.” More

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      Biden falls on stage at Air Force Academy ceremony; Senate blocks student relief program – live

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      From 2h agoJoe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.An Oklahoma Republican senator said “I don’t want reality” in a recent hearing on race and education.Martin Pengelly reports:Questioning a witness about childcare and the teaching of race, the Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin said: “I don’t want reality.”The remark prompted laughter in the hearing room.Mullin said he “misspoke” and returned to hectoring his witness about whether a book meant to teach children about racism was appropriate for early learning classes.Mullin is an election denier, former cage fighter and plumbing company owner who sat in the US House before being elected to the Senate last year.His confrontational style has caused comment before. In March, for example, he told a Teamsters leader to “shut your mouth” during a fiery exchange.Mullin’s remark about reality and its uses came on Wednesday in a hearing held by the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee.For more, click here:Donald Trump has responded to President Joe Biden’s fall at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, saying, “I hope he wasn’t hurt,” before adding, “That’s too bad.”Speaking to reporters, Trump said, “Well, I hope he wasn’t hurt. The whole thing is … crazy. You gotta be careful about that … because you don’t want that even if you have to tiptoe down a ramp,” as the crowd responded with applause.Trump went on to recall an incident during his presidency in which he was captured tiptoeing down a ramp next to a general after he gave an address at West Point, New York, in June 2020.Trump’s slow walk at the time prompted widespread concern online over his fitness as president.Recalling the incident, Trump said:
      “That was the best speech I think I ever made and it was pouring rain … and horrible and cold and windy. And they had a ramp that was pure as an ice skating rink and it was like 25 feet long …
      I have nice leather [shoes] … and I said, ‘You know what, general? Get ready, if I grab you, you just get ready ’cause I got this stupid ramp that somebody put up and there’s no stairs, right?’ … So I tiptoe down and I suffered for that. They never covered my speech but the smart people understood that … ”
      He went on to add: “That’s a bad place to fall … That’s not inspiring.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he has “conversations with dead people” every day.Speaking to the Free Press in response to a question about how he thought his late father and former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy, as well as his uncle and the 35th US president, John F Kennedy, would address the country’s issues today, Kennedy replied:“I do meditations every day,” Kennedy said. “That’s kind of the nature of my meditations. I have a lot of conversations with dead people.”He went on to add in a text message, “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom. I get no strategic advice from the dead,” the outlet reported.Kennedy is currently in the presidential race against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination and is a prominent conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic.For more details, click here:A Pride flag was put up over the Wisconsin capitol building on Thursday as part of the state’s show of effort to support LGBTQ+ rights across the country.During a noon ceremony in front of dozens of spectators, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, instructed the flag to be raised and will fly above the state capitol throughout the entirety of June to mark Pride month. The flag flies below the US flag and the Wisconsin state flag.Speaking to spectators, Evers said that he was “jazzed as hell” to be at the ceremony, adding, “You belong here. You are welcome here … It’s a signal that I will always stand with LGBTQ Wisconsinites, including our trans and gender non-conforming kids, and will fight to protect them with every tool and every power that I have,” the Associated Press reports.The flag-raising ceremony comes as LGBTQ+ rights have come under increasing attack from rightwing lawmakers across the country.Joe Biden is on his way back to Washington DC after taking a tumble at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this afternoon.The Associated Press released a photograph of the 80-year-old president climbing the steps to board Air Force One on Thursday afternoon, Biden holding the handrail as he ascends.Aides said Biden was unhurt in the fall.Read more:Another supporter of Donald Trump who took part in the deadly January 6 riot in Washington DC has been sentenced to a lengthy prison term.Roberto Minuta, described by prosecutors as one of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ “most trusted men”, received a four-year term for seditious conspiracy from US district court judge Amit Mehta.Minuta, of Prosper, Texas, was not initially at the Capitol because he was part of a “security detail” for Trump ally Roger Stone, who was attending Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally nearby. But prosecutors said he sped to the scene of the riot in a golf cart once he learned of the breach of the Capitol building.Once inside, he joined a crowd pushing against police and screamed, “This was bound to happen,” CNN reported.Exactly one week ago, Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison, also for seditious conspiracy. It was the longest sentence handed down to date to a January 6 riot participant.“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta told the far-right group’s leader.Joe Biden took a heavy fall on stage on Thursday afternoon at the conclusion of a lengthy ceremony honoring graduating air force recruits in Colorado.The president gave the commencement address at the event, which lasted around five hours. Biden, 80, tripped and fell to the ground as he turned to his left to shake an officer’s hand following his speech.He remained down for several seconds before an air force officer and two Secret Service agents helped him back to his feet. He walked back to his seat unaided after pointing to an item on the stage.White House communications director Ben LaBolt said on Twitter that Biden was unhurt. “He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” he said.Republicans in particular have made an issue of Biden’s age as he seeks re-election next year. He would be 86 at the conclusion of a second term.In April, the White House was reportedly working on a plan to boost support for Vice-President Kamala Harris in the face of the mounting criticism.Biden is no stranger to mishaps. Last year he fell off his bike during a ride in Delaware after catching his foot on a pedal.Punchbowl has details of a Senate deal it says “came together relatively quickly Thursday” to try to get the debt ceiling bill passed in the chamber tonight.A group of Republican “defense hawks”, it says, demanded a public commitment from Senate leadership to take up a spending bill later this year focused on Ukraine and other priorities, including Israel and China.They also reportedly secured a deal with Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to bring up about a dozen appropriations bills they wanted heard before the end of the year.It remains to be seen if a final vote will happen tonight. Schumer is hopeful it will, saying the chamber will “stay in session until we send the bill avoiding default to President Biden’s desk. We will keep working until the job is done.”Senators have voted to block one of Joe Biden’s flagship policy promises, progressing a bill that would repeal his student debt relief program and end the administration’s pause on federal student loan payments.The vote was 52-46 to advance the legislation, NBC reported, with Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Jon Tester (Montana), plus Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, breaking ranks and joining Republicans.The bill, however, will not become law because Biden said in a statement last month that he would veto it.“This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief,” Biden said.“[The bill] would weaken America’s middle class. Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.”Seeking to repeal Biden’s program to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for certain borrowers, the bill passed the House last week 218-203.Its overall fate rests with the supreme court, which is currently weighing the legality of the program Republicans say is an unfair and unnecessary welfare handout.Documents were uncovered last month showing that Republican states fighting the loan forgiveness plan made false claims they would “suffer injuries” or be financially affected, a debt forgiveness campaign group claimed.Read more:Mark Kelly, Democratic senator for Arizona, says he’s a yes on the debt ceiling bill.“It’s ridiculous that, once again, DC has come to the brink of wrecking our economy,” Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut, said in a tweet.Two Republican senators have told CNN that the chamber is looking to wrap up a final vote on raising the debt ceiling tonight, clearing the way for the bill to hit Joe Biden’s desk over the weekend and in plenty of time to avoid a national default.The network reports that Florida’s Rick Scott and Utah’s Mitt Romney both say that’s the goal. Voting on any amendments and a vote on final passage need to be accomplished by the end of the day for that to happen.Additionally, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and Senate majority leader, has said the chamber will remain in session until there’s an outcome.CNN says, however, there’s lingering dissent from certain members.Montana Democrat Jon Tester told the network:
      The debt needs to be addressed, [but] this is the wrong way to address the debt. Just the wrong way. It empowers the folks on the far right and, quite frankly, I don’t think they have the best interest of the country in mind. And I haven’t talked to anybody that’s enamored with this deal.
      A minimum of 60 senators are needed to avoid a filibuster on the bill, which would delay its passage beyond the deadline for the US to avoid defaulting on its payment obligations.Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri have said they will oppose, or are thinking about opposing, the bill, but Schumer and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are hopeful they have the numbers between them to get the bill past the finishing post tonight or tomorrow.The White House has slammed congressional Republicans for demanding that the FBI hand over a document related to Joe Biden, a spokesperson deriding what he called “a silly stunt”.Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, and the Kentucky congressman James Comer demanded the document last month, saying it concerned an unspecified “alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden when he was vice-president to Barack Obama.The FBI did not comply. After threats of congressional action, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, reportedly offered to let the Republicans see the document.According to CNN, the document is connected to work done by Rudy Giuliani for then president Donald Trump in 2020.Trump’s first impeachment arose from the former New York mayor’s attempts to find dirt on Biden in Ukraine.As CNN pointed out, in 2020 Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, told reporters: “We can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.”In comments to Fox News earlier today, Grassley said: “It’s a non-classified document, [Wray] admits it exists.“We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice-President Biden are accurate or not. We’re responsible for making sure the FBI does its job and that’s what we want to know.”Asked if he’d read the document, Grassley, 89, said he had but would not “characterise it” on air.A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, tweeted video of Grassley’s remarks and said: “Wow. Chuck Grassley admits the truth of his and James Comer’s silly FBI form stunt.”Comer is chair of the House oversight committee, one of the Republican-led panels seeking to dig up dirt on the president, his son Hunter Biden and other Democratic targets.In a statement, Sams added: “By congressional Republicans’ own admission, this clearly is not an exercise to get to the truth or uncover facts.“Instead, they are simply staging sad political stunts to push thin innuendo and spread insinuations to attack the president and get themselves booked on Fox News.”Joe Biden has just wrapped up a lengthy commencement address to graduating cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He made no mention of the debt ceiling bill currently working its way through Congress, but touched on other political flashpoints including the war in Ukraine, cooperation with China and the threat posed by artificial intelligence.The president’s remarks included a renewed promise to Ukraine that the US would always stand beside the country, and continue to send military and humanitarian aid as it continues to fight against Russia’s invasion:
      Support for Ukraine will not waver. We always stand up for democracies. Always. I ask you to contemplate what happens if it wavers and Ukraine goes down. What about Belarus? What about the rest of eastern Europe?
      It was an upbeat, inspirational speech from the commander in chief, welcoming graduates to their future careers in the air and space forces:
      The world you graduate into, it is not only changing rapidly, the pace of change is accelerating as well. We’re seeing proliferating global challenges from Russia’s aggression and brutality in Europe, to competition with China, and a whole hell of a lot in between, growing instability, to food insecurity and natural disasters, all of which are being made worse by the existential threat of climate change.
      The threat from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), Biden said, could not be underestimated:
      We’re seeing emerging technologies, from AI and 3D printing, that can change the character of conflict itself. I met in the Oval Office with with leading scientists in the area of AI. Some are very worried that AI can actually overtake human thinking and planning. So we’ve got a lot to deal with, a lot to do.
      From Colorado, Biden is heading back to the White House, hopeful of white smoke later from the Senate after it debates the debt ceiling bill that would stave off a national default.The former Republican congresswoman turned avowed Trump foe Liz Cheney declined to rule out a presidential run of her own earlier, telling a policy conference in Michigan: “I am really focused on making sure that Donald Trump isn’t anywhere close to the Oval Office again.”Cheney also said she would not support Trump’s closest challenger in the Republican primary, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.The daughter of the former congressman, defense secretary and vice-president Dick Cheney is an arch-conservative who nonetheless turned against Trump over his attempted election subversion and incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Defeated by a Trump-endorsed opponent in her Wyoming primary last year, Cheney emerged as a leader of anti-Trump Republicans, playing a prominent role as the House January 6 committee made criminal referrals regarding Trump to the US Department of Justice.Despite his unparalleled legal jeopardy, Trump leads Republican primary polling by around 30 points, with DeSantis a distant second. Cheney has not declared a run but generally scores in the low single figures, with most other candidates, declared or not.Speaking at the Mackinac Policy Conference on Thursday, Cheney added: “People who are willing to deny elections and people who are embracing this cult of personality around Donald Trump … have to be resisted at every stage.”Ron DeSantis “lashed out” at a reporter who asked why he did not take questions from the audience at a campaign event in New Hampshire.The awkward exchange seems bound to add to reports and observations that the Florida governor, a clear but distant second to Donald Trump in Republican primary polling, lacks the warmth and interpersonal skills necessary for retail politicking, the staple of primary season.DeSantis was appearing at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Laconia. Video tweeted by Jonathan Allen of NBC News showed the governor posing for selfies with audience members, a broad smile fixed in place.The reporter – identified by NBC as Steve Peoples of the Associated Press – asked: “Why not take any questions from voters, governor? Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?”DeSantis said: “People are coming up to me, talking to me. What are you talking about? I’m not here talking to people? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me and talking whatever they want to talk about.”Here it is:NBC quoted Vikram Mansharamani, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senate in New Hampshire last year, as calling the decision not to take audience questions “very disappointing”.“We like to hear from candidates and we have questions of our own [as] citizens here in the state,” Mansharamani said.It’s been a mixed bag so far today in US politics.The senate will later on Thursday take up the debt ceiling bill passed on a bipartisan vote in the House last night. Joe Biden is hopeful the measure averting a national default will be on his desk for signing before Monday.Meanwhile, the supreme court has handed down only a smattering of more minor opinions on the opening day of its June “decisions season”. A ruling weakening labor unions’ rights of where and when to call strikes; and another bolstering individuals’ rights to sue pharmacies who overcharge government programs for prescription drugs, came today.Here’s what else is happening:
      Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.
      Biden has marked the beginning of Pride Month with a tweet denouncing “cruel attacks” on LGBTQ+ rights by Republican legislatures and politicians around the country.
      “Months of distrust” inside Donald Trump’s legal team led to the departure of one of the former president’s top lawyers, and weakens his defense against claims he illegally retained classified documents after leaving office.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence will join the crowded race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination next week. Trump, his former boss, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are among those already declared. Chris Christie, the ex-governor of New Jersey, will also announce his run next week, reports say.
      There’s plenty more to come. Please stick with us.Twitter boss Elon Musk is facing a class action lawsuit for insider trading, investors accusing the billionaire of manipulating the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, costing them billions of dollars.According to Reuters, the Manhattan federal court lawsuit filed on Wednesday night says Musk, also chief of SpaceX and Tesla, used Twitter posts, paid online influencers, his 2021 appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live and other “publicity stunts” to trade profitably at their expense through several Dogecoin wallets that he or Tesla controls.Investors say this included when Musk sold about $124m of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog logo, leading to a 30% jump in Dogecoin’s price. Musk bought Twitter in October.A “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud investors, promote himself and his companies, the filing said.Reuters said that Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, declined to comment on the action. A lawyer for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The investors’ lawyer did not immediately respond to a separate request.Musk was the host of Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s glitchy campaign launch for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination on Twitter Spaces last week.It’s not been a good week for Musk, the world’s second richest man. On Wednesday, it was reported the value of Twitter had plummeted two thirds since he bought the social media platform.Read more: More