Closing summary
In his second campaign speech of the year, Joe Biden again unloaded on Donald Trump, warning that the former president’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss over baseless accusations of fraud amount to a “second Lost Cause” and calling him “a loser”. But, in a sign of Biden’s own troubles, protesters interrupted his speech in Charleston, South Carolina, asking him to call on Israel to cease its invasion of Gaza. Back in Washington, DC, congressional leaders announced a deal to fund the government and ward off a shutdown that would partially begin next week, but rightwing Republicans don’t like it.
Here’s what else happened today:
House Republicans released a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for not turning up at a behind-closed-door deposition.
Trump’s attorneys argued that the charges against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia should be thrown out for several reasons.
Elise Stefanik, a top House Republican and potential vice-presidential pick for Trump, refused to commit to certifying the results of the 2024 election.
Florida Republicans booted state party chairman Christian Ziegler after rape allegations were made against him.
Biden continues to stand by defense secretary Lloyd Austin, the White House said, despite the Pentagon waiting days to announce that he had been hospitalized.
Joe Biden’s approach towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza has sparked a significant wave of protests, including during the president’s speech today in Charleston, South Carolina. But as the Guardian’s Jonathan Guyer reports, there are signs even people within his administration are uncomfortable with how Biden has handled the issue:
Dissent inside the Biden administration over the president’s Gaza policy is growing, with a public resignation this week of a Department of Education official, and a letter signed by more than a dozen Biden campaign staffers calling for a ceasefire and the conditioning of aid to Israel.
“It’s pretty extraordinary levels of dissent,” said Josh Paul, a career official working on arms sales at the state department who resigned in protest in October, of the mounting signs of discontent. “I am hearing in recent weeks from people who are thinking more seriously about resigning.”
Tariq Habash, the Department of Education official, also says that he has heard from many more officials than he had anticipated who are contemplating their own exits. “It speaks to the continued shift and concerns about our current policies,” he said. “I hope it resonates with the president and the people who are making policy decisions on this issue that is affecting millions of lives.”
Habash, who is Palestinian American, is the first political appointee from the Biden administration to bring his resignation to the media and publish an open letter. “I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives,” he wrote in announcing his resignation from his position as adviser to its policy planning office. In the letter, he objected to the president not pressuring Israel “to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics” that have led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also took issue with administration leaders’ repetition of “unverified claims that systemically dehumanize Palestinians”.
A day before Habash quit, 17 current campaign staffers anonymously called for a ceasefire and conditioning military aid to Israel. Their letter urged Biden to take “concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict”. An organizer of the letter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We know we’re not alone in this, and there is a very big coalition asking for the same thing.”
Fresh off of refusing to commit to certifying the results of this year’s election, Elise Stefanik, the fourth-highest-ranking House Republican, called for defense secretary Lloyd Austin to resign for failing to promptly announce his hospitalization.
“It is shocking and absolutely unacceptable that the Department of Defense waited multiple days to notify the President, the National Security Council, and the American people that Defense Secretary Austin was hospitalized and unable to perform his duties,” Stefanik said in a statement.
“This concerning lack of transparency exemplifies a shocking lack of judgment and a significant national security threat. There must be full accountability beginning with the immediate resignation of Secretary Austin and those that lied for him and a Congressional investigation into this dangerous dereliction of duty.”
There are no indications yet that Joe Biden wants Austin’s resignation, but Stefanik’s statement may be a sign that House Republicans will hold hearings into the matter.
The Pentagon is under scrutiny for how it handled a medical episode involving defense secretary Lloyd Austin, who was hospitalized for days last week before the news was made public. The White House today said that, despite the lack of transparency, Joe Biden continues to support Austin, the Guardian’s Julian Borger reports:
The White House has said that the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, will stay in his job but noted his “lack of transparency” and called for a review of procedures after he spent three days in hospital without informing the president.
The White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, also said that Austin retained Biden’s confidence, and John Kirby, the national security council (NSC) spokesperson, told reporters on Air Force One: “There is no plan for anything other than for Secretary Austin to stay in the job.”
Kirby said Joe Biden “respects the fact that Secretary Austin took ownership for the lack of transparency” but added there would be a review of procedures in the wake of the incident, “to try to learn from this experience”. He added there was an “expectation” that if a cabinet member was hospitalized, “that will be notified up the chain of command”.
The Pentagon revealed on Monday that Austin first went to hospital on 22 December for an unspecified medical procedure, returning home the following day. He was then taken to the Walter Reed national military medical center in Washington on Monday 1 January, experiencing “severe pain” after taking part in NSC discussions that morning on a strike against an Iranian-backed militia leader in Iraq.
Ziegler maintains his relations with the woman accusing him of rape were consensual.
Last year, Ziegler and his wife, Mom’s for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, admitted to police they engaged in a three-way sexual encounter with the woman in the past, Politico reported.
The couple has been criticized as hypocritical after voicing conservative values and anti-LGBTQ+ views.
Bridget Ziegler is also on the school board for Sarasota County, Florida. Although she has not been accused of a crime, the Sarasota School Board asked her to resign last month.
Updated
Florida’s state GOP party chairman has just been ousted by fellow Republicans following rape allegations in a critical election year, AP reports.
In a special vote held on Monday, the republican party of Florida voted to remove Chairman Christian Ziegler from office in light of a police investigation into accusations of rape against him.
Ziegler denies the allegations.
Ziegler was suspended last month by the party. Both US senators representing Florida, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, called on Ziegler to step down.
State Senator Joe Gruters, who was party chair before Ziegler, said the party needs to move past this incident because the focus must be on 2024.
“Florida’s one of the most important states for the republicans and we have to continue to bring home victories, especially for Rick Scott and the top of the ticket with Trump as our nominee, eventually.”
DeSantis, the second most prominent republican primary candidate for president from Florida following Donald Trump, currently trails behind the former president ahead of the 15 January Iowa GOP caucuses.
Updated
Biden’s speech at Mother Emanuel church indicates his desire to appeal to Black voters – a crucial voting bloc that helped secure his 2020 win.
A Biden-Harris 2024 campaign ad said as much. “Joe Biden is putting in the work for Black America,” the ad’s narrator said.
But Biden is struggling to gain the support of these and other minority voters. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll found “one in 5 Black voters now say they’ll support a third-party candidate in November.”
Biden is now traveling to Dallas, Texas to attend the wake of US house representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a trailblazing US political figure. Johnson was the first registered nurse in Congress and the first Black woman to head the House science committee. Johnson died last week at the age of 89.
The day so far
In his second campaign speech of the year, Joe Biden again unloaded on Donald Trump, warning that the former president’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss over baseless accusations of fraud amount to a “second Lost Cause” and calling him “a loser”. But, in a sign of Biden’s own troubles, protesters interrupted his speech in Charleston, South Carolina, asking him to call on Israel to cease its invasion of Gaza. Back in Washington, DC, congressional leaders announced a deal to fund the government and ward off a shutdown that would partially begin next week, but rightwing Republicans don’t like it.
Here’s what else is happening today:
House Republicans released a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for not turning up for a behind-closed-door deposition.
Trump’s attorneys argued that the charges against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia should be thrown out for several reasons.
Elise Stefanik, a top House Republican and potential vice-presidential candidate for Trump, refused to commit to certifying the results of the 2024 election.
From the below video, you can see security escort out the protesters who interrupted Joe Biden’s speech in Charleston to appeal for him to call on Israel to end its invasion of Gaza:
As the Guardian’s Whitney Bauck reported over the weekend, such protests point to a larger problem for the president as his administration continues to stand by Israel despite the high civilian death toll resulting from its campaign against Hamas:
Updated
Joe Biden wrapped up his speech by referencing the gospel, which is fitting, as he was at church.
“This is a time of choosing. So, let us choose the truth. Let us choose America. I know, I know, we can do it together, and as the gospel song saying, ‘We’ve come too far from where we started. Nobody told me the road would be easy. I don’t believe he brought me this far to leave me,” Biden said.
“My fellow Americans, I don’t think the good Lord brought us this far to leave us behind.”
Joe Biden then went into familiar staples of his recent speeches, including his appointment of Black judges to the federal bench and efforts to get lead pipes replaced nationwide.
But he was back to talking about Donald Trump before long.
“Just a few days ago, the defeated former president was asked about the recent shooting in Iowa, did you hear about this one?” Biden asked. “It’s hard to believe, you know, what a response it was. All those kids dead.”
The president fudged the details in that last comment. The shooting in Perry, Iowa, left one student, not multiple, dead and seven people wounded. Asked to comment on the violence, Trump said, “we have to get over it”.
“My response is, we have to stop him!” Biden exclaimed, to applause.
Trump 'a loser' for not accepting 2020 election result – Biden
Joe Biden again attacked Donald Trump for refusing to accept that he lost the 2020 election, and called him “a loser”.
“There’s one thing they don’t have. They don’t have respect for the 81 million people who voted the other way, voted for my candidacy,” Biden said, of Trump and his allies, who continue to push baseless claims of election fraud.
“In their world, these Americans, including you, don’t count, but that’s not the real world. That’s not democracy. That’s not America,” he said. Biden went on to argue that in the country, “losers are taught to concede when they lose. He’s a loser.”
Updated
Biden calls 2020 election denialism 'the second Lost Cause'
With the interruption by protesters behind him, Joe Biden has warned that the effort by Donald Trump and his allies to insist, without evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent amounts to a “second Lost Cause”.
In American history, the Lost Cause is used to refer to a belief that the Confederacy’s secession was justified, and not tied to the preservation of slavery. Most historians regard the theory as not supported by facts.
“Now, we’re living in an era of a second Lost Cause,” Biden said. “Once again, for some of this country trying, trying to turn a loss into a lie, a lie which, if allowed live, once again, (will) bring terrible damage to this country at this time. A lie that’s about the 2020 election.”
Updated
After the protesters quieted down (perhaps because they were removed from the room – we can’t quite tell), Biden addressed their calls for a ceasefire.
“I understand their passion. I’ve been quietly … working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza,” the president said.
As he restarted his speech, the president was interrupted again by a supportive audience member, who told him, in part, “you’re a good man”, which was greeted with applause.
Protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza interrupt Biden
Just as Joe Biden was getting to the gist of his speech, protesters appealing to the president to call for a halt to Israel’s invasion of Gaza interrupted his speech.
The audience then began drowning out their calls by chanting, “four more years!”
Updated
This is Joe Biden’s second campaign speech of the year, and like his first, held on Friday in Pennsylvania, he took the stage to chants from the audience of “Four more years!”
The president is also set to continue the change of tactics he debuted last week, when he directly attacked Donald Trump and his allies. Biden had in months prior generally focused on his administration’s accomplishments, while dedicating less of his rhetorical emphasis to the former president and his Maga movement.
Updated
Joe Biden takes stage at Charleston's Mother Emanuel church
Joe Biden is now speaking at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is expected to warn of the threat to American democracy posed by Donald Trump’s campaign for president.
Follow along here for live updates.
Updated
In addition to taking a swipe at Donald Trump and the Republicans, Jim Clyburn also took a swipe at reporters.
After talking about how Joe Biden had followed through on efforts to provide student debt relief to public servants, Clyburn, who co-chairs the president’s re-election campaign, said, “For some strange reason, we don’t see reports about that.”
Biden’s public approval ratings have been underwater for more than two years, and some frustrated Democrats have blamed the news media, saying they aren’t giving the president the credit he deserves. Semafor reported yesterday that the Biden campaign is bringing reporters to their headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware for briefing focused both on their campaigns strategy, also to attempt to mold their coverage:
🟡 SCOOP: The Biden campaign is bringing top journalists to Wilmington and using the trips as an opportunity to tell reporters and editors what they’re getting wrong, @maxwelltani reports.https://t.co/IHp1Q06T9Y
— Semafor (@semafor) January 8, 2024
Joe Biden is now at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where long-serving Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn is introducing the president.
Clyburn has focused on Biden’s efforts to relieve some federal student loans, noting the roles Donald Trump and Republican attorneys general nationwide played in blocking his plan.
“Four years ago, this country was faced with a crisis. Four years ago, presidential candidate Joe Biden offered himself to the American people and he made a lot of promises and commitments. Among them he would bring relief to those who have become burdened with student loan debt. And he has done so,” Clyburn said.
He contrasted that with the Trump administration’s denial of student debt relief to public servants who would have been eligible for it under a law Congress approved.
“When I first became majority whip, we passed the law back in 2007 to give loan forgiveness to individuals who would work in public service for 10 years and paid their loans faithfully. When people started to hit that 10 year mark, it was 2017, and we know who occupied the White House. In 2017, people started to hit the 10-year mark Trump was president and implemented, the program was blocked and almost no one got loan forgiveness. Joe Biden took office in 2021 and changed that,” Clyburn said.
Updated
Biden to warn of 'enormous stakes' of 2024 election in speech at South Carolina church where racist mass shooting occurred
Joe Biden just landed in Charleston, South Carolina, where in about 20 minutes he will give a speech his campaign says will focus on the “enormous stakes” of the 2024 election.
The president’s address will take place at the Mother Emanuel church, where, in 2015, a white supremacist murdered nine worshippers. Biden’s campaign announced his speech will focus on “Maga Republicans” and their efforts to undermine democracy and foment political violence.
“This year’s election will determine the fate of American democracy, our freedoms, and whether this country will stand up against hate and vitriol embodied by Donald Trump and Maga Republicans,” Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina Democratic congressman who co-chairs Biden’s re-election campaign, in a statement.
“Few places embody these stakes like Mother Emanuel AME – a church that has witnessed the horrors of hate-fueled political violence and a church that has spoken to the conscience of this nation and shown us the path forward after moments of division and despair. I have always said that South Carolina picks presidents and I know President Biden and Vice-President Harris agree. We’re all proud to welcome President Biden to the church to remind the nation of what happened and that it is on all of us to fight back against this extremism.”
Updated
Donald Trump may get a welcome distraction from his legal troubles next week, when Iowa Republicans hold their caucuses. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports the former president is tipped to win the first state to vote in the GOP’s presidential nomination process:
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign anticipates winning the Iowa state caucuses and advisers have suggested internally they would only be concerned about the former president being upstaged if another candidate started polling within five or 10 points, according to people close to the campaign.
The margin of the expected win has been an informal litmus test for several weeks, and with none of Trump’s rival candidates close to breaching that threshold, the campaign has been confident Trump will win the state’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest.
Victory for Trump in Iowa would give him crucial momentum that advisers hope will propel him to the Republican nomination for 2024, as well as the personal satisfaction of attaining what eluded him in 2016, when he finished second – after Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas – despite leading in the polls.
The confidence inside the Trump campaign is tempered mainly by the recognition that low turnout from supporters could undercut Trump’s commanding position, a situation he has attempted to address by scheduling a blitz of rallies before the 15 January caucuses.
Trump returned to Iowa on Friday to run through four campaign rallies in two days after visiting the state infrequently in recent months, at least compared to his main rivals, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor.
Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed to have his indictment on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result dropped by a state court, the Messenger reports.
The former president was indicted in August by Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney in the Atlanta-area Fulton county. Here’s more from the Messenger on why Trump’s lawyers say the charges should be dropped:
Trump’s attorneys in a 34-page filing attacked the Fulton County indictment on due process grounds by arguing that “the alleged criminal conduct underlying this indictment consists entirely of core political speech at the zenith of First Amendment protections.”
Trump’s attorneys argued that none of the charges the former president faces in the Georgia case “have, in the in the history of Georgia, ever been utilized in a way to address the conduct alleged.”
“As a result,” they said, “President Trump did not have fair warning that his alleged conduct, pure political speech and expressive conduct challenging an election, could be criminalized, particularly since such actions have never before been prosecuted and no President has ever been criminally charged in the 234-year history of the United States of America,” Trump’s legal team argued.
“While the statutes underlying this indictment have been in existence for many years, the novel construction the State seeks to now employ violates all notions of due process, particularly since the indictment directly targets pure political speech,” Trump’s attorneys said in the motion to dismiss on due process grounds.
Despite their willingness to cooperate with Democrats on funding the government, many top House Republicans continue to believe in Donald Trump’s false claims that fraud played a role in his 2020 election loss. Case in point, Elise Stefanik, the fourth-highest-ranking Republican in the House. Here’s the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas on her latest bout of election denialism:
Leading US House Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik on Sunday declined to commit to certifying the results of the 2024 White House race no matter the outcome, three years and a day after a mob of Donald Trump supporters staged the January 6 Capitol attack while refusing to recognize that he had lost the presidency to Joe Biden.
Stefanik – a New York representative who serves as the House’s Republican conference chairwoman – was asked by Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press whether she would “vote to certify the results of the 2024 election, no matter what they show”.
The congresswoman replied: “We will see if this is a legal and valid election.”
Stefanik went on to criticize the Colorado legal ruling that removed Trump from the state’s ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution – which bars insurrectionists from taking office – and urged the federal supreme court to unanimously overturn that decision to let voters determine the former president’s electoral fate.
Welker said: “Just to be very clear, I don’t hear you committed to certifying the election results. Will you only commit to certifying the results if former president Trump wins?”
Stefanik said: “No, it means if they are constitutional,” before expressing her claim that the 2020 presidential race “was not a fair election” despite multiple legal reviews solicited by Trump and his allies confirming that it was.
Here’s more from Reuters on what we know about the plan to fund the government announced by Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress over the weekend:
The top Democrat and Republican in the US Congress on Sunday agreed on a $1.59tn spending deal, setting up a race for bitterly divided lawmakers to pass the bills that would appropriate the money before the government begins to shut down this month.
Since early last year, House of Representatives and Senate appropriations committees had been unable to agree on the 12 annual bills needed to fund the government for the fiscal year that began 1 October because of disagreements over the total amount of money to be spent.
When lawmakers return on Monday from a holiday break, those panels will launch intensive negotiations over how much various agencies, from the agriculture and transportation departments to Homeland Security and health and human services, get to spend in the fiscal year that runs through 30 September.
They face a 19 January deadline for the first set of bills to move through Congress and a 2 February deadline for the remainder of them.
There were already some disagreements between the two parties as to what they had agreed to. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement that the top-line figure includes $886bn for defense and $704bn for non-defense spending. But Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, in a separate statement, said the non-defense spending figure will be $772.7bn.
Last month, Congress authorized $886bn for the Department of Defense this fiscal year, which Democratic president Joe Biden signed into law. Appropriators will also now fill in the details on how that will be parceled out.
Republicans release resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for not attending deposition
The Republican-led House oversight committee has released its resolution holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for not attending a behind-closed-doors deposition in December.
Despite receiving a subpoena, the president’s son demanded that any questioning by Congress be done in public, and instead made a brief statement to reporters outside the Capitol on the day the deposition was to occur. Hunter Biden is facing several federal charges related to lying in order to purchase a gun and failing to pay taxes. But Republicans have for years alleged he is at the center of a plot where his father Joe Biden benefited from corrupt business dealings overseas, even though they have turned up no proof of their allegations.
In a report accompanying the resolution, the committee makes clear they planned to use whatever was learned from questioning Hunter Biden as part of their ongoing impeachment inquiry into the president.
“Mr. Biden’s testimony is a critical component of the impeachment inquiry into, among other things, whether Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as Vice President and/or President: (1) took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family; (2) abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or (3) abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him,” the report reads.
“Mr. Biden’s flagrant defiance of the Committees’ deposition subpoenas—while choosing to appear nearby on the Capitol grounds to read a prepared statement on the same matters—is contemptuous, and he must be held accountable for his unlawful actions.”
The oversight and judiciary committees will consider the contempt resolution on Wednesday.
Republican House speaker Johnson praises proposal to cut IRS, Covid-19 funding, says deal 'will not satisfy everyone'
In a letter to colleagues announcing a tentative agreement with Democrats on government spending, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson noted that the deal “will not satisfy everyone”, while pointing out that it would cut the budget of the IRS tax authority as well as rescind aid money allocated to respond to Covid-19.
“After many weeks of dialogue and debate, we have secured hard-fought concessions to unlock the [fiscal year] 24 topline numbers and allow the Appropriations Committee to finally begin negotiating and completing the twelve annual appropriations bills,” the speaker wrote yesterday.
He noted, “the concessions we achieved will include an additional $10 billion in cuts to the IRS mandatory funding (for a total of $20 billion), which was a key part of the Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ In addition, we will cut $6.1 billion from the Biden’s Administration’s continued COVID-era slush funds, which we achieved despite fierce opposition from the White House. The result is real savings to American taxpayers and real reductions in the federal bureaucracy.”
Joe Biden and congressional Democrats won approval for $80b in funding for the IRS in 2022, but Republicans have proposed rescinding it, even though doing so would increase the federal budget deficit.
“While work on finalizing appropriations must move quickly now, it is important to note that negotiations will be informed by the most robust House and Senate appropriations process we have seen in years, driven by the hard work and pressure exerted by this Republican Conference,” the speaker concluded.
Conservative caucus calls budget deal 'even worse than we thought'
The signs of trouble for the government funding agreement arrived not even two hours after its was announced, when the rightwing House Freedom Caucus called the proposal “even worse than we thought”:
It’s even worse than we thought.
— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) January 7, 2024
Don’t believe the spin. Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is $1.658 trillion — not $1.59 trillion.
This is total failure. https://t.co/QBok5lpa6E
The group of far-right Republicans referred to a late December letter in which they said, “Republicans must truly reduce programmatic spending” in the budget covering the 2024 fiscal year, which extends through September. While they didn’t outline exactly what spending cuts they wish to see, typical Republican targets include social aid programs such as Snap food benefits and early childhood education programs, as well as hiring for certain jobs and some federal government agencies.
Meanwhile, two of the eight members of Congress who voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House for, among other reasons, cooperating with Democrats on spending, tweeted their objections to the deal:
Republicans agreeing to spending levels $69 billion higher than last summer's debt ceiling "deal", with no significant policy wins is nothing but another loss for America. At some point, having the House majority has to matter. Stop funding this spending with an open border!
— Congressman Bob Good (@RepBobGood) January 7, 2024
The DC Uniparty’s purported top-line spending deal of $1.590 trillion is bogus.
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) January 7, 2024
$1.658 trillion is the real number once you dig through the smoke and mirrors.
Sad to say but the spending epidemic in Washington continues with both parties being culpable.
The government is currently funded under a short-term authorization Congress approved in mid-November, and which has two separate deadlines for when funding runs out. The first is 19 January for programs including agriculture, veterans affairs and energy, and the second is 2 February for defense, commerce and the justice department, among others.
Deal reached to avert government shutdown, but will right wing torpedo it?
Good morning, US politics blog readers. After what must have been an exhausting weekend for negotiators, Democratic and Republican leaders announced yesterday afternoon a framework to keep the government funded over the months ahead and avert shutdowns that would have begun as soon as 19 January. But almost immediately, rightwing Republican lawmakers, several of whom orchestrated the ousting of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House last year for agreeing to a similar deal with Democrats, objected. The proposed deal, which slashes some of Joe Biden’s budget priorities but doesn’t contain the deep cuts some conservatives would like to see, will probably win bipartisan support in the Senate and House of Representatives, but the rightwing opposition could potentially complicate its chances of passage. Over the course of today, we may find out more about how seriously the rightwing is in their opposition to the deal, and what other obstacles it may face to passage.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Joe Biden will at 12.30pm eastern time deliver remarks at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a racist gunman killed nine worshippers in 2015.
Nikki Haley will participate in a town hall hosted by Fox News beginning at 6pm eastern time in Iowa, one week before the state’s Republican caucuses.
A civil corruption trial against the National Rifle Association opens in Manhattan. Over the weekend, a former top official in the powerful gun rights group admitted to wrongdoing in the case brought by New York attorney general Letitia James.
