Closing summary
Hello again, it’s been a lively day in US politics with news coming from the White House, the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill. We’re closing this blog now. We still have live coverage of the first day of the first ever criminal trial of a former US president as Donald Trump attends court in New York, where jury selection is underway in the hush money case involving Stormy Daniels. You can read that blog here.
We’ll be back on Tuesday. All in the one blog this time we’ll plan to have action from Day 2 of the Trump trial, oral arguments at the Supreme Court over alleged insurrectionists accused of obstruction of an official proceeding when they tried to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, on January 6, 2021, and now-President Biden’s trip to his hometown of Scranton on the first visit of a three-day campaign swing through the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Here’s what happened today:
The White House “will not accept” any bill put forward by Republicans in the US House that only provides additional funding to Israel and not also Ukraine, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “The Speaker has to move quickly” to put the a bipartisan bill already passed by the Senate onto the floor of the House for a vote, she said.
“We do not want a war with Iran,” national security spokesman John Kirby said at the White House press briefing. He said the US is not involved with any Israeli decision now about how to respond after Iran sent drones and missiles hurtling towards Israel on Saturday, with almost all of them shot down.
Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas was absent from the court in Washington DC on Monday – with no explanation, as the court issued a ruling and heard oral arguments. This is highly unusual. Thomas, 75, also was not participating remotely in arguments, as justices sometimes do when they are ill or otherwise can’t be there in person.
The US supreme court on Monday allowed a Black Lives Matter activist to be sued by a Louisiana police officer injured during a protest in 2016 in a case that could make it riskier to engage in public demonstrations, a hallmark of American democracy. In declining to hear DeRay Mckesson’s appeal, the justices left in place a lower court’s decision reviving a lawsuit by the Baton Rouge police officer, John Ford, who accused him of negligence after being struck by a rock during a protest sparked by the fatal police shooting of a Black man, Alton Sterling, by white officers.
Joe Biden is preparing for a three-day election campaign swing through Pennsylvania from Tuesday, after Donald Trump campaigned there on Saturday, two days before his criminal trial was due to begin in New York.
Czech prime minister Petr Fiala has now arrived in the Oval Office.
Before his departure from Prague on Sunday, Fiala told reporters that during his visit to the US he will focus on security cooperation, the Middle East, and aid to Ukraine, the White House pool reports.
Fiala said he would address the issue of further support for Ukraine in any talks he has with US officials. The White House today is urging the US House to bring a stalled bill to the floor for a vote that provides fresh aid to Ukraine and Israel.
I will try to convince our American friends that this help and support is absolutely necessary,” Fiala said of more aid for Ukraine in its desperate fight back against Russia more than two years after the much larger neighbor invaded.
Other topics will include economic relations and nuclear energy. Although the American firm Westinghouse has dropped out of the bid for the completion of a Czech power plant, the Czech Republic would still like to cooperate with the US on the supply of nuclear fuel for Czech power plants, and development of small modular reactors.
Announcing Fiala’s travel to the US, the Czech Government Office pointed to a symbolic significance of his visit, as the Czech Republic commemorates the 25th anniversary of its accession to NATO.
