Closing summary
We’re closing the US politics blog now after a busy day of news, mostly out of Washington DC. Thanks for joining us.
It appears Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, retains the support of congressional Republicans, who applauded his defense of leaked conversations with party leaders following the 6 January Capitol riot in a caucus meeting this morning.
Despite an audio recording published by the New York Times catching him in a lie over whether he would ask then-president Donald Trump to resign, the House GOP caucus gave him a standing ovation, and McCarthy emerged smiling.
Here’s what else we were following today:
- There were mixed messages in the White House over Covid-19. The government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said the US was out of the pandemic stage of the virus, while press secretary Jen Psaki said at her afternoon briefing: “Covid isn’t over and the pandemic isn’t over”.
- Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the Biden administration’s immigration policies in House and Senate hearings, telling lawmakers: “We’ve effectively managed migrants at the border”.
- The Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people, an inquiry following the killing of George Floyd found.
- Joe Biden paid tribute to the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at her funeral in Washington DC also attended by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
- Donald Trump appealed a ruling by a New York judge that held him in civil contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with an investigation into the former president’s business affairs.
- Russia and the US enacted a prisoner swap that saw former US marine Trevor Reed gain his freedom.
A reminder that you can follow developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on our live 24-hour blog here.
New York’s highest court has rejected the state’s new congressional district maps, which had been widely seen as favoring Democrats, the Associated Press reports.
The legal fight over New York’s redistricting process could be a factor in the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House in November’s midterm elections.
New York is set to lose one seat in Congress in 2021. New York’s new maps would give Democrats a strong majority of registered voters in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. Right now, Republicans currently hold eight of the state’s 27 seats.
Democrats had been hoping that a redistricting map favorable to their party in New York might help offset expected losses in other states where Republicans control state government.
The state’s court of appeals agreed in a ruling on Wednesday with a group of Republican voters who sued, saying that the district boundaries had been unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that the Legislature hadn’t followed proper procedure in passing the maps.
The court said it will “likely be necessary” to move the congressional and state senate primary elections from June to August.
Read more:
White House: Covid-19 pandemic 'isn't over'
The White House press secretary Jen Psaki is countering the assertion of the government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci that the US is out of the Covid-19 pandemic stage.
Fauci made the claim in an interview with PBS NewsHour on Tuesday, citing falling rates of hospitalizations and deaths.
But Psaki, at her afternoon press briefing at the White House, framed the situation somewhat differently:
There’s no question that we’re in a different moment in our fight against Covid. But we also know Covid isn’t over, and the pandemic isn’t over.
We’ve seen an uptick in some places, driven by the extremely transmissible BA.2 variants. We know the risk of potential surges even as a potential new variant or subvariant remains, so a different phase because we’re at a much lower level of hospitalizations and deaths, and even nationwide of cases.
But we are still seeing people get very sick from Covid.
Appearing to play down any split in messaging, Psaki said:
What Dr Fauci was saying is that we are in a different phase of this pandemic. And that’s absolutely true.
Nationwide cases are relatively low, far below the 900,000 cases a day we saw during the Omicron surge... hospitalizations are about at about the lowest level since the pandemic and deaths are declining.
Mayorkas: Biden administration has 'effectively managed migrants at the border'
Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been telling lawmakers that the Biden administration has “effectively managed” the flow of migrants at the US-Mexico border with the resources at its disposal, CNN is reporting.
Mayorkas is being questioned by Senate and House committees today, largely about the ending of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy next month.
The decision that terminates the policy of blocking refugees at the southern border because of the Covid-19 pandemic is set to end on 23 May, but has drawn an outcry from Republicans and concern among Democrats about an expected surge of migrants.
Mayorkas wasted little time in pinning the blame on the Trump administration, when he testified to the Senate appropriations committee:
We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows. Only Congress can fix this.
Yet, we have effectively managed an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the United States and interdicted more drugs and disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before.
Updated
'Pattern of racism' at Minneapolis police department: report
A state investigation launched after George Floyd’s killing has found that the Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people.
The Associated Press reports that the department also used force more often on people of color and maintained a culture where racist language is tolerated.
The report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights following a nearly two-year investigation said the agency and the city would negotiate a court-enforceable agreement to address the long list of problems identified in the report, with input from residents, officers, city staff and others.
The report said police department data “demonstrates significant racial disparities with respect to officers’ use of force, traffic stops, searches, citations, and arrests.”
And it said officers “used covert social media to surveil Black individuals and Black organizations, unrelated to criminal activity, and maintain an organizational culture where some officers and supervisors use racist, misogynistic, and disrespectful language with impunity.”
Human rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero said during a news conference that it doesn’t single out any officers or city leaders.
“This investigation is not about one individual or one incident,” Lucero said.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and his partners, who won a $27m settlement from the city for the Floyd family, called the report “historic” and “monumental in its importance.” They said they were “grateful and deeply hopeful” that change is imminent.
A Florida judge has ordered a man who defaced an LGBTQ+ Pride mural to write a 25-page essay about the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting.
Last June, the city of Delray Beach in south Florida unveiled a rainbow mural at an intersection on the fifth anniversary of the attack, in which a gunman killed 49 people at the club in Orlando.
A few days later, police noticed “tire skid marks” that were “approximately 15 feet across the painting”, according to an affidavit.
Cellphone footage sent to authorities showed then 19-year-old Alexander Jerich driving towards the intersection in a white pickup truck with a Donald Trump flag draped over it. According to the police, he had attended a 30-car rally for the former president’s birthday on 14 June.
“The video clearly shows a white Chevy truck stopped at the intersection, and then intentionally accelerated the vehicle in an unreasonable unsafe manner in a short amount of time … The Chevy truck continues to recklessly skid sideways,” the affidavit said.
“The video shows that the driver willfully drove the vehicle with disregard for the safety of any other persons or property.”
Using the license plate captured in the video, police located Jerich, who agreed to turn himself in. He pleaded guilty to charges of criminal mischief and reckless driving, and agreed to pay $2,003 to repair the mural.
During a hearing last Thursday, Jerich hung his head, cried and apologized for his actions but did not offer any real explanation for them, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Breyer signs off from supreme court hearings after 28 years
Justice Stephen Breyer has heard his last supreme court arguments, Reuters is reporting, ending an almost three decades-long career on the nation’s highest judicial bench.
Chief Justice John Roberts, his voice trembling, delivered a tribute at the end of the hearing:
The oral argument we have just concluded is the last the court will hear with Justice Breyer on the bench.
For 28 years this has been his arena for remarks profound and moving, questions challenging and insightful, and hypotheticals downright silly.
Roberts, Reuters says, was referring to liberal justice Breyer’s penchant for peppering attorneys arguing cases before him with queries involving outlandish hypothetical scenarios as he sorted through complex legal matters:
This sitting alone has brought us ‘radioactive muskrats’ and ‘John the Tiger man’.
The justices heard about two hours of arguments in a case involving a Native American tribal authority in Oklahoma that was the last one on the court’s calendar for its nine-month term.
Breyer, at 83 the oldest of the nine justices, announced in January he would retire when the court begins its summer recess, typically at the end of June after all the pending rulings are issued.
On 7 April, the US Senate approved Joe Biden’s chosen replacement for Breyer, Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose historic confirmation will make her the first Black woman to sit on the supreme court.
There are developments in Florida, where the Trumpist Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been fundraising off his fight with Disney over his controversial “don’t say gay” law that bans classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity.
DeSantis, who is favored to make a run at his party’s nomination for president in 2024, has reaped a record windfall from that spat, and other right-wing culture war laws he has enacted, including redrawing Florida’s congressional map to eliminate Black voting power, and a 15-week abortion ban with no exception for rape, incest or human trafficking.
Campaign finance records show that DeSantis had amassed a $105m treasure chest by the end of March for his bid to seek reelection later this year, a record amount for any previous Florida politician, the Miami Herald reports.
It includes about $50,000 from two separate days in which the governor’s campaign sent out fundraising emails chastising Disney for its opposition to the “don’t say gay” bill.
Last week, DeSantis signed into law a bill hastily approved at his behest by Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature dissolving Disney’s 55-year right to self-governance.
Opponents called the law an act of petty political revenge by DeSantis after the theme park giant, Florida’s largest private employer with almost 80,000 cast members, halted political donations and pledged to help overturn the “don’t say gay” law.
Meanwhile, Disney is telling its investors that the state cannot abolish the company’s special tax district without first paying off an estimated $1bn in bond debt, per a contract agreed in 1967 when the agreement was enacted.
The move suggests the fight over Disney’s special status is about to turn from political to legal. A statement from the governor’s office has promised more legislation to deal with the issue, but no details have yet been forthcoming, the Herald says.
Interim summary
Here’s where we’re at halfway through a busy Wednesday:
- Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, received a standing ovation at a Republican caucus meeting during which he defended himself over audio recordings that threatened to derail his chance of becoming House speaker in November.
- Joe Biden paid tribute to the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at her funeral in Washington DC also attended by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
- Donald Trump is appealing a ruling by a New York judge that held him in civil contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with an investigation into the former president’s business affairs.
- Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top medical adviser, has announced the pandemic phase of Covid-19 in the US is over, despite rising numbers of cases.
- Russia and the US enacted a prisoner swap that saw former US marine Trevor Reed gain his freedom.
Please stick with us, there’s more to come this afternoon.
Republicans applaud McCarthy for audiotape defense
Kevin McCarthy received a standing ovation from Republican congress members this morning as he defended recorded conversations with party leaders following the 6 January insurrection that have threatened to derail his chances of becoming House speaker.
The Associated Press reports that McCarthy, the minority leader, told the House Republican caucus that he never asked then-president Donald Trump to resign over the deadly insurrection by Trump’s supporters.
The AP cited two Republicans at the private morning meeting at GOP headquarters, who were granted anonymity to discuss it.
McCarthy, who is in line to become House speaker if Republicans, as predicted, win control in the November’s midterm elections, received a standing ovation, the lawmakers said, according to the news agency.
It’s worth noting here that the allegation against McCarthy, per the damaging tapes released by the New York Times, was not that he lied about directly asking Trump to resign, but rather that he had discussed with other party officials that he would do so, then denied that.
One of the Times’ audio clips captured him in conversation with the the-third most senior House Republican Liz Cheney, whom he later ousted from her leadership role, saying he would tell Trump he should stand down.
Today, one Republican in the room said the meeting was “cathartic” for lawmakers, the AP said. Another voiced confidence that McCarthy would be the next speaker.
McCarthy, however, was challenged by two of the party’s extremist members, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said they felt “singled out” by the Republican leadership team.
One Republican congressman, Wisconsin’s Glenn Grothman, berated the media as he left the meeting.
“You guys obsess over January 6. Nobody cares,” he said.
An ABC poll this January found that 72% of Americans think the deadly attack on the Capitol, amid Trump’s frantic efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes, “threatened democracy”.
Read more:
Biden: Albright 'turned the tide of history'
Joe Biden has delivered a moving eulogy to Madeleine Albright, telling mourners at her funeral in Washington DC that the former secretary of state “turned the tide of history”.
The president was among about 1,400 masked attendees at Washington National Cathedral service honouring the top diplomat from the Bill Clinton administration who died last month at the age of 84.
Albright, Biden said, was “a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans”:
With her humanity and her intellect, she turned the tide of history.
Her story was America’s story. She loved to speak about America as the indispensable nation. To her, the phrase was never a statement of arrogance, it was about gratitude.
For all this country made possible for her was a testament to her belief in the endless possibilities that only America could help unlock around the world, and to her understanding what American power could achieve when it is united with and motivated by enduring American values.
Biden acknowledged that Albright, who was appointed the first female secretary of state by Clinton in 1997, arrived in the US as a child refugee from the former Czechoslovakia with her family:
That’s why there was nothing she loved more than swearing in new citizens to this great nation of ours. She’d light up reminding them that she once stood where they stood. Having gained the blessings of liberty she wanted nothing more than the share them around the globe.
To Madeleine, from my perspective, there was no higher mission, no greater honor, than to serve this great experiment of freedom known as the United States of America.
In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright.
Report: Trump appeals contempt ruling, $10,000 daily fine
Donald Trump is appealing the contempt of court ruling and daily $10,000 fine imposed on him by a New York judge this week for his refusal to hand over documents the state attorney investigating his business affairs.
CNN is reporting that the appeal was filed yesterday, the same day that the fines were supposed to come into effect, meaning the former president may not have to pay until the legal challenge is resolved.
New York state supreme court judge Arthur Engoron ruled Trump in contempt on Monday over his resistance to a subpoena from New York state attorney Letitia James demanding documents and information.
“Mr Trump, I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously. I hereby hold you in civil contempt and fine you $10,000 a day,” Engoron said at the hearing Trump did not attend.
Read more:
One of the most intriguing trials stemming from the 6 January Capitol riot has begun in Washington DC, with a retired member of New York city’s police department charged with beating a fellow lawman, a Washington DC police officer, with a flagpole.
The New York Times has this in-depth look at the case surrounding Thomas Webster, the former NYPD officer and one-time member of the security detail for New York’s ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Webster, the Times says, beat his on-duty compatriot with the flagpole several times, according to prosecutors, then pushed through barricades and tackled him to the ground.
Webster, who denies the charges, insists the Washington DC officer provoked his aggression and that he was simply trying to protect himself.
The trial began in federal district court in Washington DC on Tuesday, the sixth case connected to the Capitol attack to go on trial.
Former New Mexico county commissioner Couy Griffin, who founded a group called Cowboys for Trump, was found guilty by a judge last month, the second consecutive conviction of a 6 January rioter.
Read more:
Biden, Obama and Clinton join world leaders at Albright funeral
The funeral of Madeleine Albright, America’s first female secretary of state, is getting under way in Washington DC with a number of world leaders and senior US political figures, including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, paying their respects.
Albright, 84, died of cancer last month, after a storied political career that saw her rise from child refugee to a pinnacle of service during the Clinton administration.
About 1,400 mourners are gathered at Washington National Cathedral, every one masked at the Albright family’s request.
Blinken, who is Biden’s secretary of state, is one of three of Albright’s successors in attendance. Another, Hillary Clinton, is scheduled to deliver a tribute, as well as her husband and Biden.
We’ll have more coverage coming up.
Read Albright’s obituary here:
Updated
Sarah Palin announced her candidacy for Alaska’s only congressional seat this month, entering a race with dozens of candidates. She certainly brings name recognition to the contest – but another contender may have her beat in that department.
His name is Santa Claus.
He lives, of course, in North Pole – a town of about 2,000 in Alaska. He has a big white beard and a kindly manner, and Santa Claus is indeed his legal name, though, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, he does not exploit elf labor. He won a city council seat in 2015, to the delight of observers around the world. Now he’s ready to take his political career to the next stage.
He’s running to complete the term of the long-serving Republican congressman Don Young, who died last month at age 88. A special primary will be held on 11 June.
As for Claus’s politics: he’s been called “a bastion of blue on a city council as red as Rudolph’s nose”. He says voters who look at Sanders’ policy platform can get a pretty good idea of his own, including support for Medicare for All, racial justice, corporate accountability, and free and fair elections.
That includes ranked-choice voting, which will feature in the second round of the coming election. “That’s what’s given me the opportunity here,” he said. Ranked-choice voting “gives people with name recognition such as yours truly, and even Sarah, for that matter, a slight advantage”.
But Claus hasn’t always had that name. “Seventy-four years ago, I didn’t pop out with a beard,” he says. In fact, Claus changed his name from Tom O’Connor in 2005.
Read more:
Covid-19 pandemic stage 'over' in US, Fauci says
Anthony Fauci has declared the pandemic stage of the Covid-19 virus over in the US, in an eyebrow-raising interview the government’s leading infectious diseases expert gave to PBS NewsHour.
Yet despite his pronouncement, which he says he’s basing on the nation’s low numbers of new daily infections, Fauci has pulled out of attending this weekend’s White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington DC for fear of catching an infection himself.
His declaration is more surprising, and contradictory perhaps, because of his assertion in the same interview with NewsHour host Judy Woodruff that the US was undercounting cases of Covid-19. Recorded new infections, fueled by the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, have risen 61% in the last 14 days, figures show.
Fauci told PBS:
I am virtually certain that we are undercounting the number of infections. There are many people, people who I know myself, friends and others, who get infected, who do an antigen test, don’t get many symptoms, but don’t report it to anyone. So, the fact is, there are infections that are not getting centrally reported.
Fauci said he does not envisage the virus will ever be eradicated, but that vaccines and treatments will keep infections at a low, and less dangerous level:
We are certainly in this country out of the pandemic phase. Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day, and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.
Pandemic means a widespread, throughout the world, infection that spreads rapidly among people. So if you look at the global situation, there’s no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing.
CNN’s Reliable Sources reported that Fauci, 81, decided to withdraw from Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner “because of an individual assessment of his own personal risk.”
Joe Biden still intends to attend, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, despite a new wave of infections among Washington DC politicians, including vice-president Kamala Harris and Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Ron Wyden.
Updated
Joe Biden has spoken with the family of Trevor Reed, the former US marine freed today by Russian in prisoner swap deal.
The swap was “months in the making”, White House sources told CNN, with senior administration officials including the president working on the details.
Video aired by CNN, reportedly from Russian authorities, appeared to show Reed at an airport about to board a plane to the US.
In a statement, the president said:
I heard in the voices of Trevor’s parents how much they’ve worried about his health and missed his presence. And I was delighted to be able to share with them the good news about Trevor’s freedom.
His safe return is a testament to the priority my administration places on bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained abroad. We won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.
Whelan is another former US marine and corporate security officer sentenced to 16 years by a Russian court in 2020 for spying. John Sullivan, the US ambassador to Moscow, called Whelan’s conviction “a mockery of justice”.
Today, we welcome home Trevor Reed and celebrate his return to the family that missed him dearly. A former U.S. Marine, he is now free from Russian detention. I was delighted to be able to share with his family the good news about Trevor’s freedom.
— President Biden (@POTUS) April 27, 2022
US-Russia prisoner swap frees former marine
Russia and the US have carried out a dramatic prisoner exchange, trading a marine veteran jailed in Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America, a senior US official and the Russian foreign ministry said.
The surprise deal would have been a notable diplomatic manoeuvre even in times of peace, but it was all the more extraordinary because it was completed as Russia’s war with Ukraine has driven relations with the US to their lowest point in decades, the Associated Press says.
As part of the exchange, Russia released Trevor Reed, a former marine from Texas who was arrested in the summer of 2019 after Russian authorities said he assaulted an officer while being driven by police to a police station following a night of heavy drinking.
Reed was later sentenced to nine years in prison, though his family has maintained his innocence and the US government has described him as unjustly detained.
The US agreed to return Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US after he was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the US.
Read more:
Thompson: 6 January panel to pursue McCarthy again
Kevin McCarthy is likely to face new pressure this week to appear before the bipartisan panel investigating the 6 January insurrection, its chairman has said, as the House minority leader faces angry Republican colleagues this morning.
The embattled GOP chief was caught in a lie over the 6 January insurrection by the New York Times, which released audio clips capturing the purported Donald Trump ally saying he would call for Trump’s resignation, which he denied.
Possibly more damaging for McCarthy’s hopes of one day becoming House speaker is the Times’ latest release, in which he suggests far-right Republican lawmakers could incite violence against colleagues.
In a recording made on 10 January last year, four days after Trump supporters rioted at the Capitol building and amid the then-president’s efforts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, McCarthy tells fellow Republican leaders that extremist politicians are “putting people in jeopardy” with incendiary statements and tweets.
Vocal Trump acolytes Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama are identified by McCarthy as particularly likely to endanger other lawmakers’ security.
Gaetz, predictably, reacted with fury, exposing Republican fissures in a tweet attacking both McCarthy and minority whip Steve Scalise:
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) April 26, 2022
McCarthy faces the House GOP caucus later this morning, with the knowledge that the 6 January panel is pressing again to get him to testify.
According to the Associated Press, the panel expects to decide this week about issuing a second request to McCarthy, who has declined to voluntarily appear, and is also looking at summoning a widening group of House Republicans for interviews.
The committee is looking into the riot and Trump’s attempts to cling on to power. Its chair, the Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, says the panel will hold public meetings in June, and expects to release a report in the early fall.
Read more:
Good morning, and welcome to the midweek edition of our US politics blog.
It’s going to be an uncomfortable morning for the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who faces his Republican caucus for the first time since he was caught in a lie by the New York Times over the 6 January insurrection.
Audio clips released by the newspaper captured the purported Donald Trump ally saying he would call for Trump’s resignation, which he denied.
But possibly more damaging for McCarthy’s hopes of one day becoming House speaker is the Times’ latest release, in which he suggests far-right Republican lawmakers could incite violence against colleagues.
McCarthy faces the House GOP caucus at 10am.
Here’s what else were watching today:
- Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, has declared the Covid-19 pandemic effectively over in the US, according to the Washington Post. Curiously, however, he’s skipping the White House correspondents’ dinner this weekend for fear of catching it.
- Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will appear before both House and Senate committees today trying to explain how the Biden administration intends to fix the pickle it has got itself into over ending the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy.
- Joe Biden, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, will attend the funeral in Washington DC for Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state who died last month.
- The House panel investigating the 6 January insurrection will hold public meetings in June, and expects to release a report in the early fall, its chair Bennie Thompson has said.
