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      State of the Union guest list shows reproductive rights in spotlight after Alabama IVF bill signed into law – live

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      Becerra’s comments come ahead of Joe Biden addressing the nation in the State of the Union on Thursday night. Although the White House has not released the speech, a large number of Democratic guests suggest reproductive rights may feature heavily.Among the guests of high-ranking Democrats are Elizabeth Carr, the first person in the US to be born via IVF; Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who nearly died of septic shock when she was denied a medically necessary abortion; and Kate Cox, who had to flee Texas for an abortion after she learned her fetus had a fatal chromosomal condition.More guests include reproductive endocrinologists, an Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim, and leaders of reproductive rights groups.Becerra’s comments emphasizing the importance of reproductive rights, Democrats’ guest list for the State of the Union and a recent administration officials’ trips to states with abortion restrictions are the most recent evidence of Democrat’s election bet: that when Republicans married the motivated minority of voters who support the anti-abortion movement, they also divorced themselves from the broader American public, broad margins of whom support IVF, contraception and legal abortion.My colleague Chris Stein will be covering Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening on our dedicated live blog. In the meantime, here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      LaTorya Beasley, an Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children, and Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion, are among those set to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.
      Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.
      Biden welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance. The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending the State of the Union address tonight.
      Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term 42-year-old Republican senator from Alabama, will deliver the GOP’s official response to Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.
      Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president.
      No Labels, the third-party presidential movement, will reportedly to announce on Friday that it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign described a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning whether Biden can “even survive til 2029” as “a sick and deranged stunt”.
      Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.
      Daniel Rodimer, a former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada, surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.
      Republican Florida congressman Byron Donalds became the latest vice-presidential contender to refuse to commit to certifying election results.Donalds, at an Axios event, suggested he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he was vice president. He also did not clarify if he would have certified the 2020 election results.Donalds is one of the names being floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. When asked if he would certify the 2028 results as vice president, he replied:
      If you have state officials who are violating the election law in their states … then no, I would not.
      Asked if he agreed with former vice-president Mike Pence’s move to certify the results, Donalds said: “You can only ask that question of Mike Pence.”Republicans have chosen Katie Boyd Britt, a first-term senator from Alabama, to deliver the party’s official response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight – a move likely designed to highlight the big age gap between the two.Britt, 42, is one of nine women in the Senate Republican conference and the youngest female Republican elected to the Senate.In a statement announcing her speech, she said it was time for the next generation of American politicians “to step up”. She added:
      The Republican Party is the party of hardworking parents and families, and I’m looking forward to putting this critical perspective front and center.
      Senate Republicans say she will offer a split screen of sorts when she delivers the party’s rebuttal to the State of the Union address by Biden, 81.“She’s young, female and full of energy – opposite of everything Joe Biden is,” senator Markwayne Mullin told the Hill. “The contrast between the two, it’s so different.”The third-party presidential movement No Labels is expected to announce it will move forward with a presidential bid in the November election, according to multiple reports.About 800 No Labels delegates are expected to meet virtually in a private meeting and vote on Friday in favor of launching a presidential campaign for this fall’s election, sources told AP and Reuters.The group will not name its presidential and vice presidential picks on Friday, but instead it is expected to roll out a formal selection process late next week for potential candidates who would be selected in the coming weeks, the people said.The House passed a bill that would require federal authorities to detain any migrant charged with theft or burglary, named after a Georgia nursing student police have said was killed by a man who entered the US illegally.The measure, called the Laken Riley Act, requires immigrations and customs enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants accused by local authorities of theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting.The bill would also allow states and individuals to sue the federal government for crimes committed by immigrants who enter the country illegally.The bill was named after 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was killed on the campus of the University of Georgia while on a morning run last month. Riley’s death has become a rallying point for Donald Trump, after authorities arrested a Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.The House approved the legislation hours before Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address. Republicans have seized on Riley’s death to hammer the Biden administration’s border policies.“Republicans will not stand for the release of dangerous criminals into our communities, and that’s exactly what the Biden administration has done,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News.
      Laken is just one of the tragic examples of innocent American citizens who have lost their lives, been brutally and violently attacked by illegal criminals who are roaming our streets.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has responded to a new ad from a pro-Trump Super Pac questioning Biden’s ability to serve a second term in a new TV ad and whether the president can “even survive til 2029.”The ad, by Make America Great Again Inc, shows a clip from Biden’s press conference after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.During the briefing, Biden spoke about comments by Donald Trump about letting Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies. Pausing for dramatic effect, Biden then says he should clear his mind “and not say what I’m really thinking.”In the Maga Inc ad, a narrator says: “We can all see Joe Biden’s weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive to 2029. The real question is, can we?”Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told NBC News that the ad is “a sick and deranged stunt from a broke and struggling campaign”, adding:
      Trump tried this strategy four years ago and got his ass kicked by Joe Biden – he should tune in tonight alongside tens of millions of Americans to see why President Biden will beat him again this November.
      A former congressional candidate backed by Donald Trump has been arrested for murder. The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:A former pro wrestler who won a prominent endorsement from Donald Trump while unsuccessfully running for Congress in Nevada surrendered to authorities on Wednesday on an arrest warrant for murder.Daniel Rodimer, 45, was booked in connection with the slaying of 47-year-old Christopher Tapp, who was reportedly beaten to death in Resorts World Las Vegas on 29 October.Rodimer met Tapp – who was once charged with murder himself – “through the classic car and racing circuit”, according to the local television news station KLAS, which reviewed police documents.Investigators allege that Rodimer fatally attacked Tapp after he offered Rodimer’s stepdaughter cocaine during a hotel room party.Initially, authorities believed Tapp’s death stemmed from a drug overdose and a fall, after an autopsy found evidence of blunt trauma and cocaine use. But detectives later determined Tapp had been in a fight inside the hotel room where he was found injured. He died later at a hospital.For the full story, click here:Here is a video of Maryland’s former Republican governor Larry Hogan – who we reported about earlier – saying that he will not vote for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump:Hogan, who recently stepped down from his third-party movement No Labels, said: “I think we’ll hopefully have some ability to vote for someone that these people actually want to vote for rather than just voting against.”In a tweet on Thursday, Joe Biden urged Americans to tune into his State of the Union address in which he plans to address “how far we’ve come in building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up …”He went on to add that he plans to address “the work we have left to lower costs and protect our freedoms against MAGA attacks”.An Alabama mother who saw a second round of IVF canceled after the state supreme court ruled that embryos were children will attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, as guests of the first lady, Jill Biden.LaTorya Beasley of Birmingham, Alabama, is among the first lady’s 20 invited guests who “personify issues or themes to be addressed by the president in his speech,” the White House said in a statement.Beasley and her husband had their first child, via IVF, in 2022. They were trying to have another child through IVF but Beasley’s embryo transfer was suddenly canceled because of the Alabama court decision.Also on the guest list is Kate Cox, the Texas mother forced to travel outside her state for an abortion. The White House said the cases of Beasley and Cox, showed “how the overturning of Roe v Wade has disrupted access to reproductive healthcare for women and families across the country”. In a statement, the White House said:
      Stories like Kate’s and LaTorya’s should never happen in America. But Republican elected officials want to impose this reality on women nationwide.
      Joe Biden has welcomed Sweden into Nato in a statement after the country officially became the 32nd member of the western military alliance.Stockholm’s ratification process was finally completed in Washington on Thursday, as Sweden and Hungary – the last country to ratify Sweden’s membership – submitted the necessary documents after a drawn-out process that has taken nearly two years.The ratification marked the end of a 20-month-long wait that started in May 2022 when it submitted its application to join alongside Finland, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February that year.In a statement, Biden said he was “honored” to welcome Sweden as Nato’s newest ally, and that the alliance was “stronger than ever” with its addition. He added:
      Today, we once more reaffirm that our shared democratic values – and our willingness to stand up for them – is what makes Nato the greatest military alliance in the history of the world. It is what draws nations to our cause. It is what underpins our unity. And together with our newest Ally Sweden – NATO will continue to stand for freedom and democracy for generations to come.
      The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, will be attending Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as a guest of the first lady, the White House has confirmed.Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is running for Senate, has said he would not vote for Donald Trump in the November election.Hogan, at an Axios event, said he will vote for neither Trump nor Joe Biden and would instead seek out a third-party candidate. He said:
      I’m like 70% of the rest of people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative.
      He added that he didn’t know yet who that candidate will be. Hogan, one of the most outspoken and only Trump critics in the Republican party, last year said he would support the party’s nominee for president, but at the time said he did not think Trump would be that candidate.Joe Biden will announce in the State of the Union speech that US forces will build a temporary port on the Gaza shoreline in the next few weeks to allow delivery of humanitarian aid on a large scale.“We are not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership,” a senior US official said on Thursday, reflecting growing frustration of what is seen in Washington as Israeli obstruction of road deliveries on a substantial scale.The port will be built by US military engineers operating from ships off the Gaza coast, who will not need to step ashore, US officials said. The aid deliveries will be shipped from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, which will become the main relief hub. The official said:
      Tonight, the president will announce in his State of the Union address that he has directed the US military to undertake an emergency mission to establish a port in Gaza, working in partnership with like minded countries and humanitarian partners. This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day.
      Biden will also announce the opening of a new land crossing into the occupied and devastated coastal strip. Biden has been fiercely criticised within his own party for the failure to open up Gaza to humanitarian aid, with a famine looming and 30,000 Palestinians dead already since the start of war on 7 October.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight will highlight Democratic successes and show the chaos in the House Republican party in stark relief.During his floor remarks reported by CNN, Schumer said Biden will make it clear that “after so much adversity, America’s economy is growing, inflation is slowing, and Democrats’ agenda is delivering.” He said:
      The difference between the parties will be as clear as night and day. Democrats are focused on lowering costs, creating jobs, putting money in people’s pockets. But the hard right, which too often runs the Republican party in the House and now increasingly in the Senate, is consumed by chaos, bullying, and attacking things like women’s freedom of choice.
      Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner for president, Donald Trump, has “made it abundantly clear that he’s not running to make people’s lives better, but rather on airing his personal political grievances,” Schumer added.Joe Biden will deliver the final State of the Union address of his presidential term this evening, giving him an opportunity to tout his accomplishments and pitch his re-election campaign as he prepares for a rematch against Donald Trump in November.Previewing Biden’s State of the Union speech, his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said his remarks would focus on the president’s vision for the nation’s future and his legislative accomplishments.“You’re going to hear the president address how democracy is under attack, how freedoms are certainly under attack,” including women’s reproductive rights and voting rights, Jean-Pierre told MSNBC.Biden’s speech will also highlight his agenda for a potential second term, the White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told NPR. Those include “lowering costs, continuing to make people’s lives better by investing in childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave, continued progress on student debt”, he said, adding:
      The president is also going to call for restoring Roe v. Wade and giving women freedom over their healthcare. And he’ll talk about protecting, not taking away, freedoms in other areas, as well as voting rights.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”. A third Republican was quoted as saying:
      He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.
      Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win. Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears. More

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      Who is Katie Britt? Alabama senator to deliver rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union

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      Republicans have chosen first-term Alabama senator Katie Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the Senate, to deliver the rebuttal to the State of the Union address tonight.At 42, Britt is also the third-youngest senator serving today, presenting a counterpoint to the oldest sitting president.Her rebuttal will come on the heels of a high-stakes political showdown over women’s access to in vitro fertilization in her home state.After Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos preserved for IVF “are children” under state law, Britt told reporters that “defending life and ensuring continued access to IVF services for loving parents are not mutually exclusive,” pushing for changes to state and federal law to protect the procedure.Alabama’s legislature subsequently wrote new legislation intended to do so, which Governor Kay Ivey signed into law on Wednesday.Britt was elected to the Senate in 2022. Her political fortunes can be attributed in part to her astute balancing act navigating relationships with Alabama’s business elite as a consummate political insider, while connecting herself to president Donald Trump and Trumpist populism as a candidate.She also got lucky. Her opponent in the race, Mo Brooks, had Trump’s endorsement to succeed the retiring senator Richard Shelby, but squandered an early polling lead. Trump withdrew his endorsement mid-race, and the business-backed Britt swept into place.Britt has two school-age children with her husband, former San Diego Chargers offensive tackle Wesley Britt.Her political resume began in high school, when she was elected in 1999 by the delegates of Alabama Girls State program to be their governor . The high school valedictorian graduated from the University of Alabama as student body president in 2004. After a stint serving as former Shelby’s communications chief, she earned a law degree there in 2013. More

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      Put yourself in the shoes of a Donald Trump voter – and understand what drives his success | Simon Jenkins

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      Donald Trump is certain to be the Republican candidate in this year’s election for US president. He is also currently favourite to win. To most readers of the Guardian, I am sure this prospect is appalling, as it is to most Britons. The nation to which they gave birth and language, that has been their friend and protector down the ages, seems to be going mad.Britons who know the US are amazed that, however reluctantly, enough of its voters might again choose Trump to rule over them after the experience of 2017 to 2021. Who are these Americans? How can they be so blind to his faults, with the law hounding him, gossip ridiculing him and commentators pouring scorn and derision on his every word?The answer is that the Americans who support Trump are not those whom most Britons know. They are elderly and rural: they are often, but by no means solely, working class and/or non-graduates. But, above all, they love Trump because they, too, are hostile to the Americans that he purports to hate.These hated Americans – the language of Trump’s rallies is visceral – mostly live in big cities down the east and west coasts. They favour federal government, identity politics, social liberalism and free trade. They are led by a college-educated, liberal establishment. Of course, these are generalisations – but that is what Trump trades in.His claim is that over the past two decades this establishment has corrupted the nation’s identity and bruised its essence. Using the rhetoric of a mafia boss, he declares he will smash these enemies of America. He will stop Mexicans crossing the border, with guns if need be. He will execute drug dealers, protect American families from gender politics, leave idiot Europeans to their petty wars and end Biden’s crazy foreign interventions.Trump is the braggart of every bar-room brawl. Most democratic leaders come to power with their rough edges softened through climbing the ladder of party politics. Not so Trump. The only experience he brought to the White House was that of New York’s property jungle, a world of rivalry, double-dealing and revenge; his favourite motto is the phrase he used in January towards his now fallen rival Nikki Haley: “I don’t get too angry, I get even.”A large amount of the abuse that Trump attracts from his critics disappointingly relies on raw snobbery. It comprises attacks on his dress, his manners, his vulgar houses and his coarse turn of phrase – and echoes the remarks of English toffs on the arrival of the first Labour government in Downing Street. They do him no harm in the eyes of his fans. Early comparisons with Mussolini played to his self-image as a warrior taking on an entrenched elite.See it through their eyes: the US did not collapse into dictatorship under Trump. Enemies were not arrested nor hostile media shut down. Since leaving office, though, his own enemies have not stopped trying to convict and imprison him, even as the trials merely aid his cause. Colorado’s attempt to stop him running for office was as legally wrongheaded as it was counterproductive.The US economy did well under Trump, better than Britain’s. He made a genuine if futile attempt to find peace in Korea. Vladimir Putin, with whom his relations remain obscure, did not invade Ukraine while he was in the White House. His recent demand that Nato and Europe reassess both their strategy and their forces was hardly unreasonable, if poorly expressed. His fixation with immigration is hardly confined to the American continent.That is why Trump’s enemies would do well to look to the causes of their own unpopularity. Democracy gives no quarter. It is one person, one vote, and its believers cannot complain when the arithmetic goes against them. Trump complains that the US ruling class and its media – apart from the bits he controls – are governed by new ideologies based on gender and race. He claims they want to ban conservatism from campuses, “defund” the police and flood the country with Mexican labour and Chinese goods. There is just enough truth in these accusations to have his supporters cheering him on.A prominent US senator recently assured a private gathering in London that Americans would never return Trump to the White House. It was inconceivable. Those declaring for him were just “just trying to give us a fright”.I can only hope he is right. With the present state of things in the world, the erratic Trump should never be in a position to lead what is still, tenuously, the free world. But those who oppose him should study what makes him so popular in the eyes of most Americans – and makes them less so.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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      Johnson pleads for decorum from Republicans at Biden State of the Union

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      Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, reportedly pleaded with his party to show “decorum” on Thursday, when Joe Biden comes to the chamber to deliver his State of the Union address.“Decorum is the order of the day,” Johnson said, according to an unnamed Republican who attended a closed-door event on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was quoted by the Hill.The same site said another unnamed member of Congress said Johnson asked his party to “carry ourselves with good decorum”.A third Republican was quoted as saying, “He said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum. We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations.”Last year’s State of the Union saw outbursts from Republicans and responses from Biden that made headlines, most awarding the president the win.Kevin McCarthy, then speaker, also asked his Republican members not to breach decorum. But in a sign of his limited authority, months before he became the first speaker ejected by his own party, such pleas fell on deaf ears.When Biden said Republicans wanted to cut social security and Medicare, many Republicans shouted: “No!”Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia – apparently dressed as a Chinese spy balloon – yelled: “You lie! You lie! Liar!”Responding to widespread applause, Biden said: “As we all apparently agree, social security and Medicare are apparently off the books now … We’ve got unanimity!”Greene has form. In March 2022, she and Lauren Boebert, a fellow extremist from Colorado, repeatedly interrupted Biden’s first State of the Union.The two congresswomen tried to start a chant of “Build the wall”, referring to the southern border. Boebert shouted about the deaths of 13 US service members in Afghanistan. She was booed in return.Biden will give his third State of the Union at a key point in an election year, his rematch with Donald Trump all but confirmed, polling showing Trump in the lead.The third Republican who spoke to the Hill said Republicans attending Biden’s speech should let Democrats “do the gaslighting, let them do the blaming. I think the American people know who is responsible for the many worldwide crises that we have.”But a named Republican, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, said decorum would most likely not be maintained.“Will they do it?” Burchett said, of likely boos and catcalls at Biden. “Somebody asked me that earlier and I said, ‘Does the Baptist church got a bus?’ Of course they will because he’s gonna say some very offensive things, he’s gonna attack us.“I think we just need to try to be a little classy. Consider where we’re at, let the other side do that. You know, they did it to Trump, and nobody said boo, but when we do it we’re gonna get made an example of it.”Democrats did boo Trump. The most memorable State of the Union moment from his presidency, though, came in 2020, another election year, and was expressed in actions rather than words.After Trump finished speaking, Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the House, stood behind him and theatrically ripped up his speech. More

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      Smirking and smiling: why America’s judges have made Trump gleeful

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      You’re reading the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter. To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, sign up here.On the docket: the courts are suddenly making Trump ‘jubilant’On Monday, Donald Trump did something he has rarely done in the past few months: he heaped praise on judges.“I want to start by thanking the supreme court for its unanimous decision today,” he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago home, shortly after the US supreme court ruled that he was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot, in a decision that guarantees he’ll be able to appear on every state’s ballots this fall.“It was a very important decision, very well crafted. I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs.”In the past week, judges have given Trump a lot to smile about.The supreme court’s ruling that he can’t be removed from the ballot came just days after the same court decided to in effect delay his Washington DC federal election interference trial for months, possibly pushing it past election day and derailing the trial entirely. On Wednesday, the court announced that it would hear arguments for that case on 25 April – the absolute final day of the court’s calendar for oral arguments.Guardian US reporter Hugo Lowell writes that Trump “has been jubilant” over the supreme court’s move, and has repeatedly raised the topic “every day since” it happened, according to people close to him.On Friday, Trump smirked and smiled as he watched Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge in Florida he appointed to the federal bench who’s now overseeing his classified documents case, make clear she was in no rush to get that trial moving and was likely to delay its start date.Cannon told prosecutors that one part of their proposed schedule was “unrealistic”, a sign she wouldn’t accept their proposed July trial date. And she declined to actually schedule anything during last Friday’s scheduling hearing – an unusual approach that charitably indicates the rookie judge is moving very deliberately through the process, and could even suggest she’s aiming to slow the trial down as much as possible.Trump is known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve, and his demeanor couldn’t have been more different than at other recent court appearances. When he appeared at the late January hearing to set his New York hush-money trial dates, Trump called it a “sad day for New York” and complained the trial would take him off the campaign trail. During his civil defamation trial with E Jean Carroll in late January, Trump groused so loudly during testimony that the judge had to warn him to pipe down – or be removed from court.In Georgia, we’re still waiting to see what Judge Scott McAfee decides to do after last Friday’s hearing wrapped up debate over whether the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and special prosecutor Nathan Wade should be removed from Trump’s Georgia criminal election interference case. Trump’s criminal hush-money case is set to kick off in New York in just a few weeks.But the events of the past 10 days have made it more likely that all but one of Trump’s criminal trials may not take place before the November election – if they happen at all.Will this matter?View image in fullscreenGuardian US chief reporter Ed Pilkington dissects the supreme court’s decision to leave Trump on the ballot in Colorado, warning that its 9-0 decision belied a deep division over what the liberal justices viewed as a “wholly gratuitous” expansive decision from five of the court’s conservative justices.Ed writes: “The sting of the ruling – and its danger, despite its unanimous facade – is likely to be felt in the longer term. As the three liberal justices lament, the ruling shields the court and ‘petitioner’ – ie Trump – ‘from future controversy’. Worse, the conservative majority has moved to ‘insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office’ … protecting all future insurrectionists against the democratic safeguards built into the US constitution.“That future may not be long in coming. Trump has shown no remorse over 2020, and may well unleash another attack should he lose in November.”Our reporter George Chidi explains that Judge McAfee’s crucial decision on whether or not to disqualify Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the Georgia election interference case probably hinges on how McAfee views a specific part of the law: whether the defense had to prove Willis and Wade had an actual conflict of interest, or just the appearance of impropriety, for them to be booted from the case.“The stakes are high,” George writes. “If Willis is disqualified, it will plunge the prosecution against Trump, and others, into chaos, likely triggering delays that could go beyond the November election. If Willis remains, the prosecution of the former US president for seeking to undermine Georgia’s 2020 election will continue – though it will be badly damaged in terms of political optics.”And Sam Levine lays out how the supreme court’s decision to hear Trump’s claims of presidential immunity was “unquestionably one of Trump’s biggest legal victories to date” – and undercuts their own standing in the eyes of the public.“The court has now essentially sanctioned Trump’s delaying strategy,” Sam writes. “Regardless of what the supreme court rules on the immunity question, by delaying the trial, it has now directly linked itself to Trump’s fate in the 2024 election. It is a perilous move for a court that is already suffering a credibility crisis and is widely seen as a body that favors Republicans and conservatives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBriefsView image in fullscreen Trump’s attorneys said they opposed a gag order that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to put in place in Trump’s upcoming hush-money criminal trial. The limited gag order would bar Trump from attacking potential trial witnesses, jurors, and Bragg and Merchan’s staffs while excluding the prosecutor and the judge themselves from the order. The Georgia state senate committee that is investigating Willis held a Wednesday hearing with Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Trump Georgia co-defendant Mike Roman, where she reiterated the claims she’d made during her push to disqualify Willis from the case. Politico reports that in recent weeks Arizona prosecutors issued grand-jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sign that Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, is nearing a decision on whether to charge Trump’s allies in the state with crimes relating to their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.Cronies & casualtiesView image in fullscreenPro-Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin on Monday by agreeing to turn over documents that revealed the key role they played in creating what became Trump’s “fake electors” scheme to try to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Those once-private text messages and emails show exactly how intimately Chesebro was involved in the efforts – from conceptualizing the plan itself to brainstorming media strategy to attending the 6 January rally, where he took a selfie near the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.In one text message, after the Wisconsin supreme court declined to overturn the state’s election results, Chesebro sent Troupis a screenshot of a text that appears to joke about killing Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice who cast a critical vote in the case. “We’re thinking of inviting Hagedorn on the plane and solving that problem at high altitude, over water …” the message says.What’s nextFriday Georgia’s campaign-filing deadline is noon on Friday – meaning we’ll know by then whether anyone decides to run against Fani Willis (as well as Judge Scott McAfee, who’s overseeing the case and is running for election for the first time after being appointed to the bench by the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, in 2022).Some time next week McAfee said at last Friday’s hearing that he plans to make a decision by the end of next week on whether Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade will be allowed to remain on the Georgia case.Any time now Judge Cannon could announce the new trial schedule for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.25 March Trump’s criminal hush-money trial is set to begin with jury selection in New York.25 April The US supreme court will hear oral arguments over Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him against any criminal charges for his actions in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection.Have any questions about Trump’s trials? Please send them our way at: trumpontrial@theguardian.com More

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      Super Tuesday 2024 live: millions of voters head to polls in the US as Haley suggests she could stay in the race

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      Voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls on Tuesday for what is the biggest day of the presidential primaries of the 2024 election cycle.Polls are now open in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia for voters to cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. All those states except Alaska are also holding their Democratic primary contests as well. In Iowa, where Democratic caucuses were held by mail since January, the results are expected this evening. (Republicans held their Iowa caucuses in January, when Trump easily won the first voting state.)First polls will close at 7pm Eastern time. Here’s what to expect tonight, so you can plan your evening. Meanwhile, here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Nikki Haley once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the race “as long as we’re competitive”.
      “I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race. You know, all of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard,” she told Fox News.
      Joe Biden aimed to shore up his standing among Black voters as he warned what would happen if Democrats lose the White House.
      Biden is reportedly eager for a “much more aggressive approach” to the 2024 contest for the White House that would revolve going for Donald Trump’s jugular.”
      Donald Trumphas predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.
      Trump voiced support for the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza, and claimed the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.
      Taylor Swift has urged her fans to vote on Super Tuesday in a post on her Instagram Story.
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip.
      Only in the past few years have Democrats known success in Arizona’s Senate races, and Republicans are hoping to undo that in November.In a statement, Montana senator and head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Steve Daines said Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to bow out will boost the prospects of Kari Lake, who the party is backing for the seat.“An open seat in Arizona creates a unique opportunity for Republicans to build a lasting Senate majority this November. With recent polling showing Kyrsten Sinema pulling far more Republican voters than Democrat voters, her decision to retire improves Kari Lake’s opportunity to flip this seat,” Daines said.Turnout has lagged in Minnesota’s primary compared to previous years, at least so far. About 88,000 people had returned early ballots as of Tuesday morning, out of 200,000 who had received them, the state’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, told reporters.Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point.“There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.”But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections.“Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point.“There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.”But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections.“Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.Hello US politics live blog readers, Super Tuesday is all go at the voting booths and the results will start coming in this evening. We’ll be here to bring you all the news and the context, as it happens.Here’s where things stand:
      Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with obstruction of justice in a new, 18-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday related to a years-long bribery scheme linked to Egypt and Qatar.
      Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, ex-Democratic Party and now independent US Senator, has announced she will retire at the end of her term this year. Her exit clears the way for a likely matchup between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Ruben Gallego in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races.
      Nikki Haley, the last rival to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the Republican race “as long as we’re competitive.” She told Fox News on Super Tuesday: “All of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard.”
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip, according to multiple reports. Barrasso, 71, is relatively popular with the Republican right. He endorsed Donald Trump in January and has the closes relationship with the former president of the “three Johns”.
      Barasso’s decision not to run means the race is now effectively between senators John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas, although Barrasso’s departure could pave the way for another Trump ally to throw their hat in the ring, such as Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who met with Trump on Monday night amid speculation that he could launch a bid for Senate leader.
      Polls are open and voting is under way in some states as millions head to the ballot box on this Super Tuesday, the largest day for voting for both Democrats and Republicans before the November presidential election. Voters involved today are in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. The territory of American Samoa will be caucusing.
      The Guardian US Super Tuesday live blogging team’s Léonie Chao-Fong is now handing over for the rest of the day and evening to Chris Stein and Maanvi Singh.Senator Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, have been charged with obstruction of justice in a new, 18-count indictment unsealed on Tuesday related to a years-long bribery scheme linked to Egypt and Qatar.Menendez has pleaded not guilty to earlier charges of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen to impede law enforcement probes they faced, and illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.In the new indictment, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said Menendez’s former lawyers had told them in meetings last year that Menendez had not been aware of mortgage or car payments that two businessmen had made for his wife, and that he thought the payments were loans, Reuters reported.In countless campaign appearances during his futile pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination, Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, celebrated his state as “the place woke goes to die”.Now, by virtue of a federal appeals court ruling that skewers a centerpiece of his anti-diversity and inclusion agenda, Florida resembles a place where anti-woke legislation goes to die.In a scathing ruling released late on Monday, a three-judge panel of the 11th circuit appeals court in Atlanta blasted DeSantis’s 2022 Stop Woke Act – which banned employers from providing mandatory workplace diversity training, or from teaching that any person is inherently racist or sexist – as “the greatest first amendment sin”.The judges upheld a lower court’s ruling that the law violated employers’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression. They were also critical of DeSantis for “exceeding the bounds” of the US constitution by imposing political ideology through legislation.The panel said the state could not be selective by only banning discussion of particular concepts it found “offensive” while allowing others.Donald Trump is seeking a new trial in the defamation case brought by E Jean Carroll, claiming that the judge in the case improperly restricted his testimony.In January, Trump was ordered to pay $83.3m in damages to Carroll for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegation that he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.Trump’s testimony lasted less than five minutes as the judge in this case, Lewis Kaplan, significantly limited what the ex-president could say in court.In a court filing on Tuesday, Trump’s defense attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer argued “the Court’s restrictions on President Trump’s testimony were erroneous and prejudicial” because Trump was not allowed to explain “his own mental state” when he made the defamatory statements about Carroll. They continued:
      This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted.
      Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, has announced she will retire at the end of her term this year.“I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered,” she said in a video posted to social media.
      Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.
      The now independent senator won her seat in 2018 as a Democrat. She was the first non-Republican to win a Senate seat for Arizona since 1994. She’d go on in December 2022 to announce her leave from the Democratic party to become an independent.Her exit clears the way for a likely matchup between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Ruben Gallego in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races.Joe Biden claimed he has been leading in recent public opinion polls not noticed by the media.The president was asked about his message for Democrats who are concerned about his poll numbers as he boarded Air Force One in Hagerstown, Maryland. Biden replied:
      The last five polls I’m winning. Five in a row, five. You guys only look at the New York Times.
      A spokesperson for the Biden campaign did not immediately provide a full list of polls referenced by Biden, the Washington Post reported.Biden was also asked about the chances of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, to which he said:
      It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. Israelis have been cooperating. There’s been a rational offer. We will know in a couple of days what’s gonna happen. We need a ceasefire.
      Although many Democrats have sharply criticized Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, several primary voters who cast ballots in Arlington, Virginia, said they felt the president has done as much as he can to bring about a ceasefire.“I think he’s been between a rock and hard place,” said John Schuster, 66. “I’m a supporter of the state of Israel, but not of the way Israel has prosecuted the war.”Looking ahead to the general election against Donald Trump, Schuster said:
      I see no reason whatsoever to vote against Biden on that issue [of the war in Gaza] because the alternatives will all be worse.
      Russell Krueger, 77, condemned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the situation in Gaza, where more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.On the question how Biden has navigated the war, Krueger said”:
      I would have liked a little bit more verbal outreach, but I suspect he’s done most of what he can do … I would have given up on Netanyahu a little before this.
      Asked about Kamala Harris’ recent call for an immediate temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Krueger took her comments as a sign that the administration is “definitely moving in the right direction”. He added:
      I think that they will probably come out much more forcefully at the State of the Union address this Thursday.
      One Virginia Democrat said he had planned to cast a primary ballot for “uncommitted” on Tuesday, but he ended up voting for Marianne Williamson because “uncommitted” did not appear on Virginia’s primary ballot.David Bacheler, 67, criticized Joe Biden as a “horrible” president, arguing that the nation’s welfare had been materially damaged since he took office.“This country needs to change. It’s going in a very bad direction,” Bacheler said after voting at Clarendon United Methodist Church in Arlington.
      Everything’s blown up. Look at all the mess we’ve got in the Middle East now. It wasn’t like that a few years ago.
      Bacheler said he believes the country was better off when Donald Trump was president, and he is currently leaning toward supporting him over Biden in the general election.“He knows how to handle the economy better,” Bacheler said.
      I’m still undecided, but I’m leaning toward Trump.
      Two self-identified Democrats said they cast primary ballots for Nikki Haley this afternoon at Clarendon United Methodist Church in Arlington, Virginia.Virginia holds open primaries, so voters do not necessarily have to participate in the primary of the party with which they are registered.Although both said they planned to vote for Joe Biden in the general election, they chose to participate in the Republican primary as a means of protesting Donald Trump‘s candidacy.“There’s no greater imperative in the world than stopping Donald Trump,” said John Schuster, 66.
      It’ll be the end of democracy and the world order if he becomes president.
      Schuster acknowledged he did not align with Haley on most policy matters, but he appreciates how her enduring presence in the Republican primary appears to have gotten under Trump’s skin.“It’s a vote against Trump. Nikki Haley is very conservative. I disagree with her on everything, except for on the issue of democracy and Russia,” Schuster said.
      Anything to irritate [Trump] and slow him down is what I’m doing.
      Voters in more than a dozen states head to the polls on Tuesday for what is the biggest day of the presidential primaries of the 2024 election cycle.Polls are now open in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia for voters to cast their ballots in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. All those states except Alaska are also holding their Democratic primary contests as well. In Iowa, where Democratic caucuses were held by mail since January, the results are expected this evening. (Republicans held their Iowa caucuses in January, when Trump easily won the first voting state.)First polls will close at 7pm Eastern time. Here’s what to expect tonight, so you can plan your evening. Meanwhile, here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Nikki Haley once again rejected a third-party presidential bid, as she insisted she would stay in the race “as long as we’re competitive”.
      “I don’t know why everybody is so adamant that they have to follow Trump’s lead to get me out of this race. You know, all of these people deserve to vote. Sixteen states want to have their voices heard,” she told Fox News.
      Joe Biden aimed to shore up his standing among Black voters as he warned what would happen if Democrats lose the White House.
      Biden is reportedly eager for a “much more aggressive approach” to the 2024 contest for the White House that would revolve going for Donald Trump’s jugular.”
      Donald Trumphas predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.
      Trump voiced support for the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza, and claimed the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.
      Taylor Swift has urged her fans to vote on Super Tuesday in a post on her Instagram Story.
      Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming has decided not to run for Senate Republican leader to succeed Mitch McConnell, and instead will run for the No. 2 position of whip.
      Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Trump press secretary turned Arkansas governor, has said she is confident that her former boss will win the GOP nomination and take back the White House in the November general election.Sanders, speaking to reporters as she cast her ballot at a Little Rock community center with her husband, Bryan Sanders, said:
      This is a head to head matchup at this point between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and he’s the clear favorite, has all the momentum, and I feel really good about him winning again in November.
      She went on to say that she was not surprised by the US supreme court’s ruling restoring Trump to primary ballots, adding that the 9-0 decision was “very telling” and “should be a signal to stop trying to use our courts for political purposes.”Reaching for racist rhetoric bizarre even for him, Donald Trump compared undocumented migrants to the US to Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer and cannibal famously played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums,” the former president and probable Republican presidential nominee claimed in an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday.
      You know, insane asylums, that’s Silence of the Lambs stuff. Hannibal Lecter, anybody know Hannibal Lecter?
      To laughter from the audience at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump added:
      We don’t want ’em in this country.
      Trump has made such statements before, including in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland last month. As framed to Right Side, they were the latest piece of extremist and dehumanizing invective from a candidate seeking to make immigration a core issue of the 2024 presidential campaign.Trump has a long history of such racist statements, having launched his successful 2016 presidential campaign by describing Mexicans crossing the southern border as rapists and drug dealers.Joe Biden took to the radio airwaves on Super Tuesday as he aims to shore up his standing among Black voters, a critical constituency for Democrats in the November general election.In an interview aired this morning, Biden promoted his achievements for Black voters, such as increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities and key investments in infrastructure to benefit Black communities, AP reported.The president also criticized Donald Trump and warned what would happen if the Democrats lose the White House in another interview.“Think of the alternative, folks. If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump,” said Biden.
      The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he has dealt with the African-American community, I think, has been shameful.
      Donald Trump has claimed that the Hamas attacks of 7 October on Israel would have never happened if he had been president at the time.Trump, in an interview with Fox, was asked whether he supported the way the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is fighting in Gaza. Trump said:
      You’ve gotta finish the problem. You had a horrible invasion [that] took place. It would have never happened if I was president.
      Texas’s plans to arrest people who enter the US illegally and order them to leave the country is headed to the supreme court in a legal showdown over the federal government’s authority over immigration.An order issued on Monday by Justice Samuel Alito puts the new Texas law on hold for at least next week while the high court considers what opponents have called the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law more than a decade ago.The law, known as Senate Bill 4, had been set to take effect on Saturday under a decision by the conservative-leaning fifth US circuit court of appeals. Alito’s order pushed that date back until 13 March and came just hours after the justice department asked the supreme court to intervene.The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed the law in December as part of a series of escalating measures on the border that have tested the boundaries of how far a state can go to keep people from entering the country.The law would allow state officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. People who are arrested could then agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the country or face a misdemeanor charge for entering the US illegally. Those who do not leave after being ordered to do so could be arrested again and charged with a more serious felony.Donald Trump has predicted he will sweep “every state” on Super Tuesday and said he is fully focused on the November election against his presumed opponent, Joe Biden.“My focus is really at this point, it’s on Biden,” Trump said on Fox News.
      We should win almost every state today, I think every state. … But we [should’] really look at Biden. More

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      Hamas negotiators under pressure to produce list of hostages to be released

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      Egyptian and Qatari officials are putting pressure on Hamas negotiators in Cairo to produce a list of hostages to be released as the first step in a phased ceasefire agreement with Israel, according to officials familiar with the talks.Israel has not sent a delegation to the second day of talks in Cairo, demanding that Hamas present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce that would initially last six weeks, beginning with the month of Ramadan, the officials say.Hamas is meanwhile demanding that large-scale humanitarian aid should be allowed into Gaza and that Palestinians displaced from their homes in the north of the coastal strip should be allowed to return.US officials have said that Israel had “more or less” accepted the six-week ceasefire deal, which White House national security spokesperson John Kirby confirmed would involve a six-week truce and begin with the release of sick, elderly and women hostages.Diplomatic sources in Washington said it was unclear what was stopping Hamas from producing a list identifying the first 40 hostages, noting that uncertainty about lists and identities had dogged the last successful hostage negotiations in November. They suggested it could reflect problems of communication between Hamas units inside and outside Gaza, that some hostages could be held by other groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or that elements of Hamas were withholding the information as a way of obstructing a deal.Washington does not believe the absence of an Israeli delegation was necessarily bad news for a ceasefire hopes, as Israeli negotiators could arrive within a couple of hours if agreement was reached on a list. Egypt and Qatar have assured Joe Biden’s administration that they were putting pressure on the Hamas representatives in Cairo to come up with the identities of the hostages involved.The US is also stepping up pressure on Israel to open new land routes, as well as new sea corridors, to allow a far greater flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza to prevent a famine that UN agencies have warned is imminent. The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said on Sunday that Israel must “significantly increase the flow of aid”. She added there were “no excuses” for the delay.Biden used similar language in a tweet on Monday, saying: “The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough – and nowhere fast enough.” Unlike Harris, however, he did not name Israel as the responsible party.At the White House, Kirby said truck deliveries into Gaza had been slowed by opposition from some members of Israel’s cabinet.“Israel bears a responsibility here to do more,” Kirby said.View image in fullscreenIsrael meanwhile stepped up its allegations against the UN relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), saying that Unrwa in Gaza had employed over 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other armed groups, and that Israel had shared this intelligence with the UN.“Over 450 Unrwa employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza,” Israeli military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said on Monday evening. “This is no mere coincidence. This is systematic.”“We sent the information that I am sharing now, as well as further intelligence, to our international partners, including the UN,” he said.A preliminary report by the UN office of internal oversight services (OIOS) into alleged Unrwa-Hamas links delivered to the secretary-general last week, said the investigators had received no evidence from Israel since the initial allegations in January that a dozen Unrwa employees had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack. But the OIOS said it expected to receive information from Israel shortly.Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict reported on Monday that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualised torture,” and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during the 7 October attack. In her report, Patten, who visited Israel with a nine-person team in the first half of February, added there were also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.” As the talks were under way in Cairo, a top Israeli minister, Benny Gantz, arrived in Washington for talks with Harris, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to the undisguised irritation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu invited his longstanding political rival into a coalition government after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, but that has done little to improve the tense relations between the two men.US officials acknowledged that Gantz’s meetings in Washington, enhancing his own status as a would-be prime minister, was likely to inflame those tensions further. Netanyahu has yet to be invited to the White House since he returned to office at the end of 2022, at the head of the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history.Gantz is said to have asked for the visit to Washington, rather than having been invited, but US officials said they welcomed an opportunity to talk to a member of the five-man Israeli war cabinet.“We’re going to discuss a number of things in terms of the priorities that, certainly, we have, which includes getting a hostage deal done, getting aid in, and then getting that six-week ceasefire,” Harris told reporters before meeting Gantz.The Biden administration is pushing for more crossing points into Gaza to be opened for humanitarian relief, especially Erez in the north. US officials say that a sea route would take at least a week to arrange, if at all, so opening Erez and other access points to the north is seen by aid organisations as an urgent priority.“The disparity in conditions in the north and south [of Gaza] is clear evidence that aid restrictions in the north are costing lives,” warned Adele Khodr, the regional director of the UN children’s relief organisation, Unicef. Unicef says 16% of children in the north are acutely malnourished, compared with 5% in the south of the strip.The White House is seeking to help resolve rifts within the Israeli coalition, suggesting Netanyahu should seek a compromise over his coalition’s bitterly contested judicial overhaul, introduced early last year. After unprecedented street protests over the measures, in which demonstrators said they feared for Israel’s democratic future, the US president went even further, telling reporters in March 2023: “I hope he walks away from it.”Netanyahu has faced significant pressure to step down for nearly a decade over his ongoing trials for corruption charges, which he denies, as well as for instigating the judicial overhaul, which has been suspended since the outbreak of war.It is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu is slow-walking ceasefire talks, as well as talking up threats of an Israeli offensive on Rafah and Lebanon, because he believes he stands a better chance of beating the charges if he remains in office, and elections are unlikely while Israel is still at war.Earlier this year, Israel’s centrist opposition leader, Yair Lapid, met the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris.Polling suggests Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right and religious parties would incur massive losses if an election was held now, and centrist and leftwing Israeli parties are looking for ways to force an early contest. Gantz’s party is currently likely to win the most votes.Lapid said in a post on X after last week’s local elections that the successful contests showed that holding national elections during the war would pose “no problem”. More

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      Donald Trump confuses Joe Biden and Barack Obama again at Virginia rally – video

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      Donald Trump confused Barack Obama for Joe Biden at a rally in Virginia, triggering further questions about the age of the likely Republican presidential nominee who has made a string of such gaffes. Trump said: ‘Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word’. The crowd reportedly went silent as Trump referenced Obama, who left office more than seven years ago. It was the third time Trump had made the same blunder in the past six months More