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      ACLU hails supreme court’s mifepristone decision: ‘This fight is far from over’ – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has released the following statement on the supreme court’s decision to uphold mifepristone:
      Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom. It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.It does mean that mifepristone, or medication abortion, remains available and approved. Women can continue to access this medication – approved by the FDA as safe and effective more than 20 years ago. But let’s be clear: attacks on medication abortion are part of Republican elected officials’ extreme and dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide … The stakes could not be higher for women across America.
      It is just past 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The supreme court has rejected a bid to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone. The decision overturned an appeals court ruling that would have restricted mail-order prescriptions of the common abortion drug. The nation’s highest court arrived at the decision unanimously, in turn marking a win for reproductive rights across the country.
      Joe Biden released the following statement on the supreme court’s decision to uphold mifepristone: “Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom. It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.”
      The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the supreme court’s decision on mifepristone, saying: “The supreme court just unanimously rejected a request by anti-abortion extremists to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, a safe and effective medication used in most abortions nationwide.”
      Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill for the first time since the January 6 insurrection in 2021. Trump was invited to address House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club and also meet with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters.
      Ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Capitol Hill, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy. But make no mistake – Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls.”
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.When voters are asked to sum up Joe Biden in one word, the most popular response is “old”, according to a survey by polling firm JL Partners.Facing the same question with regard to Biden’s election-challenger Donald Trump, the word “criminal” comes up more than any other.The poll also found that voters expect Trump to perform better in the first presidential debate later this month in Atlanta. Some 70% expect “Biden to mess up his words” and 49% even expect “Biden to forget where he is”.Responding to the findings at a panel discussion in Washington on Thursday, political consultant and pollster Patrick Ruffini said: “This age issue for Biden really ties into voter perceptions of his competence and his ability to get things done.“I think why that has proven to be a such a devastating issue for him, that has really underlied the failure to message around accomplishments, is that when people look at him they don’t see somebody who is going to [have] the ability to do a whole lot to actively change the course of events in a potential second term.”JL Partners, using a representative sample size of 500 people and conducting fieldwork on 10 and 11 June, asked: “Thinking about anyone alive today, who would be your dream President?” In the resulting word cloud, “Donald Trump” loomed largest, followed by “Obama” – a combination of both Barack and Michelle.Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, joined the Biden campaign press call and warned that anti-abortion advocates would likely pursue other means to block access to mifepristone after the supreme court’s decision.“Regardless of today’s ruling, Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to ban medication abortion nationwide,” Timmaraju said.“They want to try and use executive power to jail doctors and patients for sending or receiving abortion medication in the mail, and they could extend that strategy to try to jail those mailing anything intended for producing abortion.”Anti-abortion advocates have already tried to argue that the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-obscenity law, bans the mailing of abortion-related materials, and Trump could use that strategy to threaten reproductive rights across the country, Timmaraju said.“The road ahead is long. The fight to restore rights will be hard,” she told reporters. “But we know President Biden and Vice-President Harris are on our side. So that’s why I’m so proud to be fighting alongside them.”Joe Biden’s campaign officials celebrated the supreme court’s ruling preserving access to the abortion medication mifepristone, but they emphasized that the case was “only one tactic in a broader relentless strategy to strip away access to reproductive freedom”.“If Trump regains power in November, Trump’s allies will be ready to deploy their plans to ban abortion access nationwide without the help of Congress or the court,” Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on a press call.“President Biden is going to make Donald Trump answer for the state of reproductive rights in this country. There’s so much at stake in 2024, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows it.”As the country marks two years since Roe v Wade was overturned, Rodriguez indicated that Biden would make the issue of abortion access a central focus of the first general election debate, which will take place later this month.“That’s the contrast we will continue to highlight leading into the debate, using the Dobbs anniversary as another core inflection point,” Rodriguez said.Here are some images coming through the newswires from Capitol Hill, where Donald Trump made his first visit since the January 6 riots in 2021:The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said that the Trump meeting was “entirely positive”, Punchbowl News reported.McConnell specified that he and Trump “got a chance to talk”, adding that their meeting was policy focused.The meeting between McConnell and Trump is the first time the two have spoken since December 2020.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has issued a statement declaring that Republicans will win the White House, Senate and House of Representatives after he and other party members hosted Donald Trump.Johnson said that Trump brought “an extraordinary amount of energy and excitement and enthusiasm” during the morning meeting.Johnson said: “We believe we are going to win back the White House, and the Senate, and grow the House majority, and when we do that, we will not waste a moment.”The House speaker promised an “aggressive agenda” with the new Congress in January. So far, such an agenda could look like pushing far-right legislation around immigration, gun control and other policies.Hello, US politics readers, it’s been a busy morning in Washington with an important decision from the US supreme court relating to reproductive rights and the first visit to Capitol Hill by Donald Trump since some of his extremist supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.We’ll have much more news for you coming up.Here’s where things stand:
      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hailed the supreme court’s decision on mifepristone, while warning: “This fight isn’t over. Anti-abortion politicians have already pledged to continue their efforts in this case to deny people access to medication abortion.”
      Joe Biden took a similar stance and said, in part: “Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom. It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.” He additionally warned of “Republican elected officials’ extreme and dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide”.
      The US supreme court has rejected a bid to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, with a unanimous decision from the nine-member bench that, essentially, the plaintiff did not have standing. FDA-approved mifepristone therefore continues to be available.
      Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill for the first time since the January 6 insurrection in 2021. Trump was invited to address House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club and also meet with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters.
      A crowd of reporters, protesters and aides gathered outside the Capitol Hill Club. Former House speaker and sitting California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said Trump’s visit was with the “mission of dismantling our democracy”.
      The Democratic National Committee has echoed similar sentiments as other Democratic leaders including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris following the supreme court’s decision on mifepristone.In a statement on Thursday, the DNC said:
      The supreme court’s unanimous ruling that the Maga extremists who sued the FDA in an attempt to ban medication abortion nationwide lacked standing does not change the dire stakes of this election for reproductive freedom.
      It does not change the fact that because of Trump, millions of women in states across the country cannot access the health care they need. It does not change the fact that Trump bragged about overturning Roe and thinks women suffering extreme physical, mental, and emotional harm because they can’t access reproductive health care is a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’
      And it does not change the fact that if elected, Trump and his allies want to effectively ban abortion nationwide with or without the help of Congress and the courts … The only way to stop the Maga movement’s attacks on our freedoms is to turn out the vote in November to win Democratic majorities in Congress and reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris – who will never stop fighting to guarantee women in every state have access to the care they need.
      In a statement on the supreme court’s ruling, Kamala Harris said that it “does not change the fact that millions of American women are today living under cruel abortion bans because of Donald Trump”.The vice-president went on to add:
      Nor does this ruling change the threat to medication abortion. We know the Trump team has a plan to try to end access to medication abortion and carry out a Trump abortion ban in all 50 states, with or without Congress, if they get the chance. We cannot and will not let that happen.
      The contrast is stark: while Trump relentlessly attacks reproductive freedoms, President Biden and I will never stop fighting to protect them. Americans have repeatedly made it clear they want more freedom, not less, and they will make their voices heard at the ballot box once again this November.
      The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the supreme court’s decision on mifepristone, saying:
      The supreme court just unanimously rejected a request by anti-abortion extremists to impose medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, a safe and effective medication used in most abortions nationwide.
      This fight isn’t over. Anti-abortion politicians have already pledged to continue their efforts in this case to deny people access to medication abortion.”
      Joe Biden has released the following statement on the supreme court’s decision to uphold mifepristone:
      Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom. It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.It does mean that mifepristone, or medication abortion, remains available and approved. Women can continue to access this medication – approved by the FDA as safe and effective more than 20 years ago. But let’s be clear: attacks on medication abortion are part of Republican elected officials’ extreme and dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide … The stakes could not be higher for women across America.
      Washington’s Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal echoed similar sentiments as other Democrats following the supreme court’s mifepristone decision.In a tweet on X, Jayapal wrote:
      This is a massive victory for abortion access, but there is no question – we must codify access to reproductive care nationwide. More

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      Lindsey Graham vows to block Democrats’ supreme court ethics bill

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      The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, said that he will block Democrats’ attempts to pass an ethics bill to rein in the US supreme court.Graham told NBC News that he “will object” to the bill on Wednesday, meaning it will not move forward on its legislative journey.The Senate judiciary committee chairman, Dick Durbin, from Illinois, told reporters that Senate Democrats were working to unanimously move the bill forward, the Hill reported. Durbin co-authored the bill with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.“We’re planning on making a move on the floor this week to move the ethics bill for the supreme court,” Durbin said.It follows a series of scandals focusing on the rightwing justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in relation both to gifts and to their capacity to serve with political neutrality.Durbin added that “new evidence” might emerge concerning ethics on the supreme court, elaborating that the evidence “relates to the ethical considerations from some of the justices for gifts they’ve taken and not reported”, the Hill reported.US representatives have also criticized what they call a “crisis of legitimacy” affecting the court.While speaking at a round table on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on Tuesday, the New York progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the court has been captured and corrupted “by money and extremism”.“A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government,” she said.The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was also at Tuesday’s round table, said: “The highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards.”In recent weeks, Alito has faced calls to recuse himself from election-related cases and for a broader investigation after a flag associated in modern times with the far right was reportedly flying above one of his homes.And Alito, along with his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, came under additional scrutiny after Alito said that one side in the US’s partisan left versus right ideology battle “has to win”, in remarks captured in a secret recording.Martha-Ann also criticized the LGBTQ+ Pride flag, as heard in the same recording.Thomas has repeatedly faced criticism for failing to disclose in the official record that he took lavish vacations paid for by the conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, ProPublica first reported. Thomas belatedly disclosed the luxury trips for the court record last week.Public confidence in the court has also swiftly fallen in the last year to near record lows, according to polling from Gallup. More

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      Mayorkas insists immigration order not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, defended both the timing and substance of Joe Biden’s new executive order to restrict immigration at the southern border, as the president faces criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the measure.The order, issued on Tuesday, tells officials to shut down asylum requests once the average number of encounters between legal ports of entry reaches 2,500 or more. If the number of encounters falls to 1,500 or fewer for seven consecutive days, the border would reopen two weeks later.During an interview on ABC News’s This Week, host Martha Raddatz noted that crossings had never reached the threshold of falling to 1,500 or fewer during Biden’s presidency – and Mayorkas declined to say whether he expected it to happen before election day.Mayorkas declined to give a concrete timeline on when to expect border crossings to meet the targeted threshold. Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans earlier this year over his handling of the border, but the charges were quickly dismissed by the Senate.“We are at a very early stage. Implementation, as you noted, has just begun,” Mayorkas told Raddatz on Sunday. “It’s early, the signs are positive. Our personnel have done an extraordinary job in implementing a very big shift in how we operate on the southern border.”Some Democrats have assailed the order as essentially a revival of the Trump administration’s asylum ban, which was struck down by federal courts. Biden also criticized the measure when he was a candidate for president.Mayorkas insisted on Sunday that the executive order was not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise.“What the president said then is what we are living today,” he said. “We are allowing individuals to access asylum through the ports of entry, pursuant to a program that we developed. We are allowing people to access asylum if they come from the countries of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”Republicans have dismissed the policy as insufficient and an election-year stunt. “This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire. And the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little, too late,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, said last week. But the Republican criticism comes after Republican senators twice blocked a sweeping bipartisan border security bill. Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s presidential election, had lobbied against the measure.Mayorkas defended the timing of the executive order, which came four months after the border bill first failed. He said the administration would have preferred for Congress to act.“The bipartisan deal was rejected once. We pressed forward again. It was rejected a second time. And then we developed this and have implemented it and we are at an early stage,” he said. “And let’s not minimize the significance of this move and the significance of operationalizing it. And it requires the cooperation of other countries which we have secured.” More

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      Businessman testifies he promised Bob Menendez up to $250,000 in bribes

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      A New Jersey businessman took his star turn on the witness stand on Friday in the bribery case against US senator Bob Menendez, telling a jury he believed he had a $200,000-$250,000 deal in 2018 for the Democrat to pressure the state attorney general’s office to stop investigating his friends and family.Jose Uribe testified in Manhattan federal court in the afternoon, providing key testimony against Menendez and two other businessmen charged in a conspiracy along with Menendez’s wife. Next week, Menendez’s lawyers will get to cross-examine the naturalized US citizen.“Next week we get the truth,” Menendez said just before stepping into a car that carried him away from Manhattan federal court, where he has been on trial for the last month.Uribe, 57, who pleaded guilty to charges in a March cooperation deal, was the star witness for the government in its bid to win a conviction against the senator, who once held the powerful post as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. He was forced out of the position after he was criminally charged last fall.Menendez, 70, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted gold bars, cash and a luxury car in return for doing favors for the businessmen. Two businessmen and Menendez’s wife, Nadine Menendez, also have pleaded not guilty. Nadine Menendez’s trial has been postponed until at least July after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.Uribe testified that he had been close friends with Wael Hana, who is on trial with Menendez, when Hana told him in early 2018 that New Jersey state criminal investigations swirling around the trucking business of a friend of his and Uribe’s own insurance business could be largely put to rest if he was willing to spend $200,000 to $250,000.Uribe said Hana told him that he would go to Nadine Arslanian (her name before she married the senator), who had begun dating Menendez that year, and then “Nadine would go to Senator Menendez”, although Uribe did not testify about how the couple could resolve multiple investigations.Uribe said he held a 13 July 2018 political fundraiser for Menendez, which the senator attended, raising $50,000. He said he attended an afterparty with Menendez and Arslanian that included cocktails, along with “some laughs, some jokes and some dancing”, but there was no mention of the work he expected Menendez to do on his behalf.View image in fullscreen“It was a crowded and loud place,” Uribe said.He said his confidence that the deal was working faded in the fall when an investigator from the attorney general’s office asked to interview his employee.“I was not happy,” he said.Assistant US attorney Lara Pomerantz showed jurors a series of text messages between Uribe and Hana in which Uribe pressed his friend to get the senator to stop the criminal investigations.“Please be sure that your friend knows about this,” Uribe wrote to Hana in one text.Pomerantz asked whom he was referring to as “your friend”.“Senator Menendez,” Uribe responded. Hana, according to the texts, responded: “I will.”Hana arranged for Uribe to have dinner with Menendez and Arslanian at a restaurant in October 2018, but Uribe testified there was no mention of the deal.“Nothing was discussed there of value, I will say,” Uribe testified. “It was a … pointless meeting.”Uribe said he began communicating directly with Nadine Arslanian in March 2019 and promised that he would buy her a car if she delivered on the deal to get the senator to shut down New Jersey criminal investigations.“She agreed to the terms,” he said.When the prosecutor asked Uribe what he understood the terms of the deal to mean, he said he understood that Nadine Arslanian would contact Menendez and get him to use his “influence and power to do anything possible to stop and kill” the investigations.On Thursday, former New Jersey attorney general Gurbir Grewal testified that Menendez in an early 2019 telephone call and in a September 2019 office meeting tried to talk to him about a criminal investigation. Grewal said he followed his policy and refused to do so, telling Menendez to contact defense lawyers so they could reach out to trial-level prosecutors or the judge.Uribe, of Clifton, New Jersey, pleaded guilty in March, saying during his plea that he gave Nadine Menendez a Mercedes-Benz in return for her husband “using his power and influence as a United States senator to get a favorable outcome and to stop all investigations related to one of my associates”.Uribe was accused of buying the luxury car for Nadine Menendez after her previous car had been destroyed when she struck and killed a man crossing the street. She did not face criminal charges in connection with that crash. More

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      Andy Kim wins Democratic primary in race for Bob Menendez’s Senate seat

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      Democratic congressman Andy Kim has won New Jersey’s Senate primary, putting him in strong position for the general election in the blue-leaning state, though the win comes a day after Democratic senator Bob Menendez filed to run as an independent amid his federal corruption trial.Menendez, who has denied allegations that he accepted bribes to promote the interests of the Egyptian government, has chosen not to seek the Democratic Senate nomination. Kim’s win comes after a bruising battle that led New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy to withdraw from the race in March.But Menendez has not opted out of the Senate race entirely, as he officially filed for re-election as an independent candidate on Monday, allowing him to continue raising money, which can be used to help cover his hefty legal bills, but his chances of victory in November appear non-existent. According to a poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University last month, Menendez is only attracting 6% or 7% of the vote in hypothetical general election match-ups.In the Republican Senate contest, hotelier Curtis Bashaw defeated Mendham Borough mayor Christine Serrano Glassner.Bashaw centered his campaign in part on ending “one-party monopoly” in New Jersey, where state government is led entirely by Democrats, and on sending a conservative to Washington. It’s unclear whether that message will resonate with general election voters, who have not elected a Republican to the Senate in more than five decades. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 1 million in New Jersey.Menendez’s legal troubles have also jeopardized the political future of his son, freshman congressman Rob Menendez. Hoboken’s mayor, Ravi Bhalla, has launched a primary challenge against Rob Menendez in New Jersey’s eighth congressional district, and the two candidates have nearly matched each other in fundraising hauls. Though Rob Menendez has not been implicated in his father’s alleged crimes, Bhalla has focused his campaign messaging on the need to crack down on corruption and to “return power to the people”. The winner of the primary is overwhelmingly favored to win the general election in November, as the Cook Political Report rates the district as solidly Democratic.New Jersey voters were also picking House candidates, with some of the most closely watched races having some tie to Menendez.In the eighth district, US representative Rob Menendez, the son of Senator Menendez, won his Democratic primary over Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.Rob Menendez said Bhalla’s heavy focus on his father showed he was afraid to take on the representative directly.Menendez, an attorney and former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey commissioner, first won election in northern New Jersey’s eighth district in 2022, succeeding Albio Sires.He has been a lonely voice of support for his father amid his legal woes.The eighth district includes parts of Elizabeth, Jersey City and Newark.In the third district, Assemblyman Herb Conaway won the Democratic primary to succeed Kim.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBeyond New Jersey, four other states – Iowa, Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota – and Washington DC have primary elections on Tuesday. In Iowa, two House Republicans – Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the first district and Randy Feenstra in the fourth district – have drawn primary challenges. Feenstra’s district is viewed as safely Republican in the general election, but the Cook Political Report rates Miller-Meeks’ seat as likely Republican, creating a potential opportunity for Democrats in November.In Montana, the Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, faces a primary challenger, and the winner of that race will likely compete against first-time Democratic candidate Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive turned gun industry critic, in November. But Busse will face an uphill battle in the gubernatorial race, as Donald Trump won Montana by 16 points in 2020.Despite Montana’s Republican leanings, Democratic incumbent Jon Tester is keeping the Senate race close as he seeks a fourth term. In the general election, Tester will likely compete against Republican Tim Sheehy, a businessman and former Navy Seal who is widely expected to win his party’s Senate nomination on Tuesday.New Mexico’s incumbent Democratic senator, Martin Heinrich, is running unopposed in his primary, and he will go on to face off against Republican Nella Domenici, former chief financial officer of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. The Cook Political Report rates New Mexico’s Senate race as solidly Democratic, but one of the state’s House races is viewed as among the most competitive in the nation. Freshman Democratic congressman Gabe Vazquez will have a rematch against former Republican congresswoman Yvette Herrell in New Mexico’s second congressional district, after he defeated the then incumbent by less than one point in 2022. Both Vazquez and Herrell are running unopposed in their primaries, so they are already gearing up for the general election.While much attention will be paid to congressional primaries on Tuesday, all five voting states and Washington DC will simultaneously hold their presidential primaries as well. Biden and Trump have already secured enough delegates to lock up their parties’ nominations, but the results on Tuesday will offer some of the first insight into Republican primary voters’ views following the former president’s felony conviction in New York last week.Although former UN ambassador Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican presidential primary in March, she has continued to win support in recent contests. In Maryland’s Republican presidential primary last month, Haley won nearly 23% of the vote. Leaders of both parties will be watching closely to see how Haley’s vote share might rise – or fall – after Trump’s conviction, and her performance could offer significant clues about the electorate heading into the general election.Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Benjamin Netanyahu set to address joint session of US Congress for fourth time

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      Benjamin Netanyahu is set to become the first foreign leader to address a joint session of the US Congress four times, despite deep differences with the Biden administration.The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that a date for his address to Congress had yet to be set, but that it would not take place on 13 June as had been reported, due to a Jewish holiday.The formal invitation came from congressional leaders of both parties within hours of Joe Biden’s disclosure of the terms of a new peace proposal for Gaza endorsed by Israel. Over the weekend, however, Netanyahu played down the significance of any Israeli concessions in the new plan, and insisted that any proposal for a lasting ceasefire without the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing force would be a “non-starter”.He also has suggested that Israel was under obligation only to carry out the first of the peace plan’s three phases, which may increase Hamas’s reservations of a deal. The White House says it is waiting for an official response from Hamas on the proposal.Netanyahu had earlier defied Biden by adamantly opposing any steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and by pressing ahead with an offensive on the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, despite repeated appeals not to from the Biden administration.Before this month’s scheduled appearance, Netanyahu was the only foreign leader apart from Winston Churchill to be accorded the honour of an address to a joint sitting of Congress three times. With his fourth address, he will outdo even Churchill in the record books.The invitation to Congress is a reminder than while Biden is seeking to influence Israeli politics to forge a peace agreement for Gaza and a broader long-term settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu also has the means to sway US politics – and possibly hurt Biden’s re-election chances if he were to accuse the president of being insufficiently supportive.Netanyahu used an address to Congress in 2015 to speak out against the efforts of then President Barack Obama to reach an agreement with Tehran on Iran’s nuclear programme. The Israeli prime minister was highly critical of Biden last month when the president stopped a delivery of heavy bombs to Israel forces. More

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      Bob Menendez: Democratic senator charged with bribery set to run as independent

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      Senator Bob Menendez has reportedly procured enough signatures to run for re-election as an independent, even while the incumbent Democrat faces bribery charges over his alleged work promoting the interests of the Egyptian government.NBC News reported on Thursday that Menendez secured the 800 signatures needed by 4 June to appear on the November ballot, although the senator’s team hopes to collect as many as 10,000 signatures before the Tuesday deadline.Menendez’s presence on the ballot could complicate Democrats’ efforts to hold on to the Senate seat, although Joe Biden won New Jersey by 16 points in 2020. New Jersey will hold its congressional primaries on Tuesday, and Congressman Andy Kim is expected to easily win the Democratic Senate primary. If Kim is victorious, he will face off against one of the four Republican Senate candidates in November.“People are fed up with a broken political system that only benefits the well-off and well-connected and fuels corruption,” Anthony DeAngelo, senior adviser to Kim, said in a statement. “Voters deserve better, and they’ll have a chance to vote for change next week and this November.”Menendez’s hopes for a victory in November appear bleak. A poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University last month showed Menendez receiving just 6% or 7% of the vote in hypothetical general election match-ups. But Menendez’s candidacy will allow him to fundraise for donations that can be used to help cover his lawyers’ bills, as campaign finance filings show the senator has already spent at least $2m on legal services.The news of Menendez’s candidacy comes as his bribery trial, which began this month, continues to unfold in Manhattan. Menendez has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes – including gold bars, a luxury car and almost half a million dollars in cash – as he promoted Egypt’s interests in his influential role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee.Following his indictment last year, Menendez stepped down as committee chair, but he has rejected demands for his resignation. More than 30 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, including fellow New Jerseyan Cory Booker, have now called on Menendez to resign.Menendez has maintained his innocence, but in a video shared in March, he acknowledged that the legal turmoil would prevent him from seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s Senate race.“Unfortunately the present accusations I am facing, of which I am innocent and will prove so, will not allow me to have that type of dialogue and debate with political opponents that have already made it the cornerstone of their campaign. New Jerseyans deserve better than that,” Menendez said.“I am hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election.” More

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      Senate Republicans block bipartisan border security bill for a second time

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      Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill for a second time, part of an attempt by Chuck Schumer to flip the script on immigration – a major political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats in this year’s election.The 43-50 vote was far short of the necessary 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. Republicans, who have repeatedly demanded Democrats act on the border, abandoned the compromise proposal at the behest of Donald Trump who saw it was a political “gift” for Biden’s re-election chances.In bringing the proposal to the floor, Democrats hoped the doomed effort would underline their argument that Republicans are not serious about addressing the situation at the US border with Mexico, an issue that polls show is a major concern among voters.“To those who’ve said for years Congress needs to act on the border,” said Schumer, the Senate majority leader, in a floor speech before the vote. “This bipartisan bill is the answer, and it’s time show we’re serious about fixing the problem.”Democrats had spent the days leading up to Thursday vote hammering the message that the president and his party are trying to solve the issue, but have been thwarted by Republicans following Trump’s lead.“Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a statement. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.”Biden trails Trump in national and battleground-state surveys. Voters trust the former president over Biden to tackle the border issue by a wide margin, according to several recent surveys, with immigration often ranking as a top concern.In February, after months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators had unveiled an immigration compromise – legislation Republicans said was necessary to unlock their support for a foreign aid package that included assistance to Ukraine.The legislation, which would have made major changes to immigration law and received endorsements from the National Border Patrol Council and the US Chamber of Commerce, initially appeared to have the support to pass. But then Trump denounced the plan as weak and demanded his allies in the Senate abandon it. They quickly followed his lead.When it came to the floor, the measure failed in a 50-49 vote, far short of the 60 ayes needed to move forward. All but four Republicans opposed it. They were joined by a group of liberal and Latino Democrats who argued that the approach was too punitive and failed to include relief for immigrants who have lived and worked in the US for years.“The Senate border bill once again fails to meet the moment by putting forth enforcement-only policies and failing to include provisions that will keep families together,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a statement this week, urging a vote against the bill, which none of its members were involved in negotiating. They called on Congress to pass legislation to protect Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to the US as children, and to expand work visas.No Republican voted for the bill this time around. Instead Republicans accused Schumer of holding a “show vote”, aimed at protecting Democrats’ narrow majority ahead of this year’s election.“This is not trying to accomplish something. This is about messaging now,” Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who helped negotiate the border deal, said earlier this week. “This is trying to poke Republicans rather than try to actually solve a problem.”Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona who negotiated the compromise with Lankford, also opposed Schumer’s move, which she called an act of “political theater”.“To use this failure as a political punching bag only punishes those who were courageous enough to do the hard work in the first place,” she said in a floor speech on Thursday.Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, both Republican senators, also changed their vote, opposing the measure after supporting it in February. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the lone Republican senator to vote in favor of advancing the bill.But the bill also lost support from Democrats, among them Cory Booker, the senator of New Jersey, and Laphonza Butler of California. The liberal senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Alex Padilla of California again voted against it.In a statement, Booker said he voted for the bill in February in part because it included “critical foreign and humanitarian aid”, which was passed as a standalone package last month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I remain committed to pursuing commonsense, bipartisan legislation to modernize our immigration system so that it aligns with our most fundamental values,” he said.The White House had lobbied Republicans in advance of the vote. Biden on Monday spoke to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, urging them to “stop playing politics and act quickly to pass this bipartisan border legislation”, according to a White House summary of the conversations.“You caused this problem,” McConnell said he told Biden during their call, while urging the president to reinstate Trump-era immigration policies. “Why don’t you just allow what the previous administration was doing?” McConnell said he told the president.Since the bill’s failure in February, Biden has taken a series of executive actions to stem the flow of migration and speed up the asylum process, which can take months or even years. But the administration has maintained there are limits to what the president can do unilaterally.“Only Congress can fix our broken immigration system,” the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said in a statement after the vote. “I urge Congress to do so. In the meantime, we will continue to enforce the law with full force with the limited resources we have.”In advance of the vote, Schumer repeatedly acknowledged that he did not expect all 51 members of the Democratic caucus to support it. Johnson had already declared it “dead on arrival”.In a statement, the speaker called the procedural vote an “election year Hail Mary” by Democrats and said the onus was on the president to “use his executive authority to finally secure the border and protect American families”.The measure was designed to clamp down on illegal border crossings, which reached record levels last year, though the overall numbers have dropped in recent months. Among its provisions, the bill proposes provisions that would make it more difficult to seek asylum in the United States, while expanding detention facilities and speeding up the deportation process for those who enter the country unlawfully.It would also institute a new emergency authority that would in effect close the border if the number of migrants encountered by immigration officials averaged more than 4,000 people a day at the border over the course of one week. The authority would be triggered automatically if the average surpassed 5,000 a day or if 8,500 try to enter unlawfully in a single day.Democrats have emphasized the aspects of the bill they say would curtail fentanyl smuggling, which has led to a drug overdose epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. Despite Republican claims, illicit opioids are overwhelmingly smuggled over the border by US citizens, not migrants.The White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a memo released on the eve of the vote: “Congressional Republicans have to choose: will they again decide that politics is more important than stopping fentanyl traffickers and saving the lives of innocent constituents? Joe Biden knows where he stands.” More