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

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tomorrow in addition to his lawyers doing so.But fresh news now being reported by the Associated Press – Engoron has “rescinded permission”.Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.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

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      Antony Blinken warns Houthis of ‘consequences’ for attacks on Red Sea ships – video

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      The US secretary of state, has warned the Houthis that there would be ‘consequences’ for the Yemeni rebel group’s apparent attack on western warships in the Red Sea. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain during his tour of the Middle East, Antony Blinken said: ‘All I can tell you is that as we’ve made clear, and many other countries make clear, there will be consequences for the Houthis’ actions.’

      Blinken also called on Iran to cease its support for Houthis, as the group continued its blockade of Israel-linked and Israel-bound ships passing through the Red Sea More

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      Fani Willis subpoenaed in divorce case involving Trump prosecutor

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      Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.The motion claimed that the alleged relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade resulted in “the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers”.“Willis has benefited substantially and directly, and continues to benefit, from this litigation because Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf,” the motion states.“He will continue to be incentivized to prosecute this case based on his personal and financial motives, so he has acquired a unique and personal interest or stake in Mr Roman’s continued prosecution. That is, he is motivated to prosecute Mr Roman for as long as possible because he will continue to make exorbitant sums of money,” the motion added.According to county records reviewed by the Hill, Nathan Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees in 2022 and 2023 as he worked on the election interference case.The motion further claimed – without evidence – that Willis and Nathan Wade traveled together to vacation destinations including Florida, Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The Guardian has contacted Willis and Nathan Wade for comment. Neither have yet spoken publicly on the subpoena. More

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      ‘Totally baseless’: Trump denounced for Nikki Haley ‘birther’ lie

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      A leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for “playing the race card” by propagating the “totally baseless” claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter,” Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC.“I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by those claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”The term “birther” was coined to describe racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, the first Black US president, which Trump seized on as he established a presence on the political far right.In 2016, as he ran for president himself, Trump also attempted to raise doubts about Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who was then his chief rival.Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother American. He was born in Hawaii. Cruz’s father was Cuban and his mother American. He was born in Canada and moved to Texas when young.The 14th amendment to the US constitution – the same text under which Colorado and Maine now seek to remove Trump from the ballot for inciting an insurrection – says “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” are citizens. It was introduced after the civil war, conferring citizenship on people once enslaved. The constitution requires that a presidential candidate must be a resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old, and a “natural-born citizen”.As described in Haley’s autobiography, her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India”. Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972, a US citizen at birth. Her father became a US citizen in 1978, her mother in 2003. Haley was governor of her home state from 2011 to 2017, then ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president.In the race for the Republican nomination, Haley has surged in polling. She has done particularly well in New Hampshire, cutting Trump’s lead to single digits. Trump still dominates in Iowa, the first state to vote next week.On Tuesday, Trump re-posted to his Truth Social platform a post from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site, which cited Paul Ingrassia, a New York Young Republican and “constitutional scholar”, as saying Haley was disqualified.In his own post, Ingrassia cited “great investigative work by Laura Loomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972”. Loomer, a far-right, Islamophobic, white-supremacist Florida activist who has run unsuccessfully for Congress, is an ardent Trump supporter.Experts agree Haley is qualified to be president, simply because she was born on US soil. Campaigning on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants.His post about Haley was condemned across the US media – and the political spectrum.Charles Gasparino, a Fox Business correspondent, said: “The problem with Donald is that he goes disgustingly low and not just against real enemies.”John Avlon, a CNN political analyst, said: “Trump’s lies are cut and paste: now he’s going birther on Nikki Haley – after trying the same attack on Obama, Harris and Cruz.”Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents from India and Jamaica. Trump sought to cast doubt on her eligibility for office during the 2020 election. More

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      Field of bad dreams: Biden rival makes quip after no one turns up to 2024 event

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      Contemplating a New Hampshire campaign event to which not one voter showed up, the Minnesota congressman and Democratic presidential hopeful Dean Phillips told reporters on Tuesday: “Sometimes, if you build it, they don’t come.”He was alluding to a famous line from Field of Dreams, a 1989 film in which an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner builds a baseball field, thereby attracting the ghosts of famous players.Phillips is widely held to have a ghost of a chance of succeeding in his quest to deny a sitting president, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nomination. Nonetheless, the 54-year-old centrist, who is self-funding his campaign, insists Biden is too old at 81 to mount a meaningful fight against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.In Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Phillips parked his “Government Repair Truck” – a tested campaign prop – outside a Hilton hotel, planning to talk to voters while handing out Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, a staple for New Englanders, notably including Ben Affleck.Unfortunately, reports of sparsely or non-attended campaign events are a staple of presidential primary campaigns.According to NBC News, no one showed up to chat with Phillips in part because the temperature was below freezing, thereby sending drivers to an underground parking garage from which they could enter the hotel.Phillips “ended up pouring coffee for the staffers who were there”, NBC said, adding that the candidate made his Field of Dreams quip to reporters.Biden is not on the ballot in New Hampshire, thanks to a dispute between the state and national Democrats who reconfigured their primary to start in South Carolina.The focus of the Republican race will switch to New Hampshire next week, after Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Trump leads in the north-eastern state, though the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has eaten into his advantage.Elsewhere on Tuesday, Reuters published an interview in which Phillips once again rejected the contention that he risks damaging Biden and thereby boosting Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also declined to rule out a third-party run for president, notionally on a ticket with Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman whose opposition to Trump cost her a seat in the House.“I wouldn’t say that’s even discussed right now,” Phillips said. “But I never say never.“I mean, this is about preservation of democracy. We are certainly different, politically. But we do have the same principle. And that is protecting the constitution, ensuring our systems of governance work and restoring some degree of sensibility and common sense to Washington. So I want to help her do that. And I think she wants to help me.” More

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      Capitol rioter falsely accused of being double agent sentenced to probation

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      A man targeted by rightwing conspiracy theories about the US Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the January 6 attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.He appeared remotely by video conference and was not in the Washington courtroom when chief judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.Epps’s sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president’s lawyers argued he is immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.The Fox News Channel and other rightwing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters.Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said. “You were hounded out of your town.”Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’s vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US marines from 1979 to 1983.The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.“He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community,” attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps’s life have persisted even after the justice department charged him with participating in the January 6 siege.“Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr Epps don’t speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered,” Epps’s lawyer wrote.Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars. Prosecutors say Epps encouraged the mob to storm the Capitol, helped other rioters push a large metal-framed sign into a group of officers and participated in “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps does not deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on 6 January 2021.“He didn’t start the riot,” Gordon told the judge. “He made it worse.”Epps’s lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on 6 January 2021 to peacefully protest against the certification of the electoral college vote for Joe Biden over Trump. More

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      Russia arrests US man on drug trafficking charges

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      A US national has been arrested on drug trafficking charges in Russia, the latter nation said on Tuesday, bringing the number of Americans detained by authorities in Moscow to at least three as tensions rise over the Ukraine war.Robert Romanov Woodland, 32, was arrested on 5 January, Reuters reported, citing the Russian news website Mash, which said Woodland faced a 20-year prison sentence if convicted.A district court in the northern Moscow suburb of Ostankino ruled on Saturday to keep Woodland in custody until 5 March on charges of attempted large-scale production and sale of illegal drugs.No other details were immediately available. Neither the US state department nor US the embassy in Moscow has commented, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, did not address it at a press conference later on Tuesday in Tel Aviv.Russian media said that the name of the accused matches that of a US citizen interviewed by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020, who said he was born in the Perm region of Russia’s Ural mountains in 1991 and adopted by an American couple at the age of two.The man said he later traveled to Russia to find his birth mother, and after locating her he decided to stay in the town of Dolgoprudny, 15 miles north of central Moscow. He said he worked as an English teacher at a local school.Woodland’s arrest comes as relations between the US and Russia grow increasingly strained as the war in Ukraine continues. Efforts by the Biden administration to secure the release of two other Americans jailed in Russia – the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and the former marine Paul Whelan – were rejected last month, and Woodland’s detention will fuel analysts’ fears that they are being held as bargaining chips.Russia freed the American basketball star Brittney Griner, who spent almost 10 months in jail on drug charges, in December 2022 in exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called “Merchant of Death” who was held in a US prison for 12 years.At the time, Joe Biden expressed regret the deal did not include Whelan, 53, a corporate security executive from Michigan who was jailed in 2018 on espionage charges his family and US officials say are false.“While we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up,” the president said, although in an interview last month Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence, said he felt “abandoned and betrayed” by the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said last month his government had talked with the US over the two detainees and hoped to “find a solution”.Gershkovich, 32, is the first American journalist to be held in Russia on spying charges since the end of the cold war. He was arrested in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg on a reporting trip in March 2023 and has been held behind bars since. Like Woodland, he faces a 20-year prison term if convicted.No trial date has been set, and the US government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Will US spending deal be enough to avert government shutdown?

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      Congressional leaders reached an agreement on overall spending levels to fund the federal government in 2024, a significant step toward averting a shutdown later this month. But political divisions on immigration and other domestic priorities could stall its progress.The deal is separate from bipartisan Senate negotiations that would pair new border security measures with additional funding for Israel and Ukraine. That proposal was expected to be released as early as this week, but a senator involved in the talks said on Monday that the timeline was “doubtful”.The details of this deal, negotiated by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Democratic Senate majority, Chuck Schumer, must still be worked out. Joe Biden praised the deal but some conservatives are unhappy, underscoring the fragile nature of the agreement with just days left to finalize it.What’s the deal?Congressional leaders agreed on a “topline” figure to finance the federal government in fiscal year 2024: $1.59tn. In a letter to colleagues over the weekend, Johnson said the spending levels include $886bn for the military and $704bn for non-defense spending.Johnson said Republican negotiators won “key modifications” as part of the deal, which he said will further reduce non-military spending by $16bn from a previous agreement brokered by Kevin McCarthy, then the House speaker, and Biden. Additionally, he noted that the overall spending levels were roughly $30bn less than a proposal the Senate had considered.The agreement rescinds roughly $6bn in unspent Covid relief funds and accelerates plans to slash by $20bn new funding that the Internal Revenue Service was supposed to receive under the Inflation Reduction Act, Johnson said.Congressional negotiators are now up against a tight deadline to write and pass 12 individual appropriations bills, an unlikely feat given the timeframe. Funding for roughly one-fifth of the government expires on 19 January, while the rest of the government remains funded until 2 February. Alternative options include a continuing resolution, known as a CR, or an all-in-one omnibus bill, both of which conservatives find unpalatable.How are leaders selling it?Biden said the agreement “moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities”.“It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring,” Biden said in a statement. “It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.”Democratic leaders cast the deal as a win. “When we began negotiations, our goal was to preserve a non-defense funding level of $772bn – the same level agreed to in our debt ceiling deal last June – and that $772bn was precisely the number we reached. Not a nickel – not a nickel – was cut,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday.While Johnson touted several “hard-fought concessions” secured in the deal, he also acknowledged that not everyone in his caucus would be pleased by the agreement.“While these final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like, this deal does provide us a path to: 1) move the process forward; 2) reprioritize funding within the topline towards conservative objectives, instead of last year’s Schumer-Pelosi omnibus; and 3) fight for the important policy riders included in our House FY24 bills,” he wrote in the letter.Can it hold?Even if lawmakers can work at lightning speed to draft a dozen appropriations bills in time, several hurdles lie ahead. Johnson, who holds a narrow majority in the House, is already facing a revolt from conservatives in his caucus.Hours after the speaker announced a deal had been reached, the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus railed against it. “It’s even worse than we thought. Don’t believe the spin,” it said. “This is total failure.”Several conservatives say they want to see Johnson attach strict new border security measures to any government funding deal, and some have signaled a willingness to shut down the government if those demands are not met.In an interview on Sunday, Elise Stefanik, the No 4 House Republican, did not rule it out as a course of action.“We don’t support shutting down the government,” Stefanik said. “But we must secure the border. We must secure the border. That’s where the American people are. We’re losing our country in front of our very eyes.”Schumer said Democrats would balk at the inclusion of any “poison pill” amendments.“If the hard right chooses to spoil this agreement with poison pills, they’ll be to blame if we start careening towards a shutdown,” he said on Monday. “And I know Speaker Johnson has said that nobody wants to see a shutdown happen.”But Johnson is under pressure from the far right, and he knows his job could be on the line. Conservatives moved to oust his predecessor from the speakership after McCarthy struck a deal with Democrats to preserve spending levels and avert a government shutdown. More