Closing summary
Nikki Haley officially kicked off her presidential campaign with a South Carolina speech in which she quipped about imposing “mental competency tests” for elderly politicians (think Donald Trump and Joe Biden) and won a few interesting endorsements. Kamala Harris was meanwhile heading to Germany for a meeting with some of Washington’s top allies, while downplaying the impact of the spy balloon saga on the relationship with China. In the afternoon, Congress’s budget analysts were out with sober new reports that estimated when the US government will run out of cash, and warning that the country is on track to hit a level of debt never seen before.
Here’s what else happened today:
The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz following his investigation over sex-trafficking allegations.
Biden is considering a national address about the three still-mysterious UFOs shot down over North America in recent days, and the Chinese spy balloon.
Democrats were doing all they can to make sure the public doesn’t forget Haley’s ties to Trump, whom she served as United Nations ambassador.
Despite all the lies, George Santos may run for re-election in 2024.
House Republicans have issued a new wave of subpoenas, this time targeting America’s biggest tech companies.
California is hoping to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in its constitution by repealing a proposition voters approved in 2008 that banned such unions, the Associated Press reports.
If the legislature repeals Proposition 8 with the required two-thirds majority vote, the issue will then go to voters, according to the AP. The effort is a response by the state’s Democrats, who dominate control the legislature and governor’s mansion, to conservative US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion last year that its decision allowing same-sex marriage nationwide should be revisited.
Thomas’s comment spurred Congress to in December approve the Respect for Marriage act, which protected same-sex and interracial marriage rights nationwide. The legislation doesn’t require states to allow same-sex unions, but instead prevents them from rejecting marriage licenses issued in other states. California’s lawmakers fear that if the supreme court decision is overturned while Proposition 8 remains part of its constitution, same-sex marriage could end up banned in the state.
Governor Gavin Newsom supports the effort, as does at least one Republican lawmaker, the AP reports.
In the latest move in its investigation campaign against the Biden administration, the House judiciary committee has subpoenaed the leaders of five of America’s biggest tech companies for “documents and communications relating to the federal government’s reported collusion with Big Tech to suppress free speech,” according to a statement.
“Congress has an important role in protecting and advancing fundamental free speech principles, including by examining how private actors coordinate with the government to … suppress First Amendment-protected speech. These subpoenas are the first step in holding Big Tech accountable,” said the statement from the committee’s Republican chair Jim Jordan.
Jordan noted that his office had attempted to get information from the tech firms last December, before he officially took over as the committee leader, but received no response. In his letters to the CEOs of Meta, Amazon, Google, Alphabet and Microsoft, Jordan wrote, “Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden Administration’s directives that suppress freedom of speech online.”
“This approach undermines fundamental American principles and allows powerful government actors to silence political opponents and stifle opposing viewpoints. Publicly available information suggests that your companies’ treatment of certain speakers and content may stem from government directives or guidance designed to suppress dissenting views.”
Those who watched last week’s State of the Union address will remember an unusual moment when Joe Biden engaged with Republican hecklers, and came out with what looked like a promise not to cut Social Security or Medicare in exchange for their votes to raise the debt ceiling.
He referred back to that interaction today in his speech before Maryland union members as he accused Republicans of pursuing policies that would drive the national debt higher.
Republican say they want “to reduce the deficit, but their plans are going to increase the deficit by $3tn, based on what they introduced so far,” the president said. “So where are they going to cut? They’re gonna cut Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, they’re going to cut Social Security or Medicare, veterans benefits, aid to farmers. At the State of the Union they seemed to say they’re not going to cut Social Security and Medicare. OK, great. I hope that’s true. But how are they going to make these numbers add up?”
Then came a pledge familiar to anyone who has heard Biden speak in the past: “If Republicans try to take away people’s healthcare, increase costs for middle class families or push Americans into poverty, I’m going to stop them.”
Joe Biden hasn’t made any news yet in his speech before union members, but the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reported earlier today that his administration is teaming up with Tesla on a step that could help more Americans drive electric cars:
The White House is partnering with Tesla to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the US, with the company opening at least 7,500 of its chargers to all electric vehicles (EVs) by the end of 2024, the White House announced Wednesday.
Tesla charging stations currently use a certain power connector that require non-Tesla EV to use an adapter. The White House said that Tesla will work to include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kW superchargers along highways and level 2 destination chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants across the country. Tesla is also planning to double its network of Superchargers.
The Biden administration in 2021 set goals of having 50% of new vehicle sales in the country to be EVs and 500,000 EV chargers along highways by 2030. The US currently has around 3m electric vehicles on the road and about 60,000 charging stations across the country.
The administration’s goals “have spurred network operators to accelerate the buildout of coast-to-coast EV charging networks”, the White House said in a statement. “Public dollars will supplement private investment by filling gaps, serving rural and hard to reach locations and building capacity in communities.”
Joe Biden has just kicked off his speech about the economy at a union hall in Maryland, where he could touch on the new debt limit and economic growth forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office.
The White House has said Biden will use the speech to accuse Republicans of wanting to drive the US national debt higher. This blog will keep an eye on the address for any news the president might make.
US govt may run out of money between July and September: CBO
Congress’s budget analysts estimate the United States will exhaust its bank accounts and could default on its obligations for the first time in history sometime between July and September, unless lawmakers agree to increase the debt limit.
In a just-released report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes that “the projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from CBO’s projection.” They point to the amount of tax revenue brought in by the April filing deadline as particularly important in determining when the US government will exhaust its cash on hand.
The United States is one of the few countries with a legal limit on how much debt the government can accrue, and that ceiling was hit last month. The Treasury then began taking “extraordinary measures” to allow the government to pay its bills without issuing new debt. The CBO report warns that if tax revenue ends up being less than expected, “the extraordinary measures could be exhausted sooner, and the Treasury could run out of funds before July.”
“If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully. As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both,” the CBO wrote.
The estimate is further out than one given by the Treasury last month, when it announced the debt limit had been reached and the government’s cash could be exhausted in June.
In separate forecasts released today, the CBO estimates that economic growth will weaken this year but rebound beginning in 2024, hitting a peak of 2.7% in 2025 before averaging 1.8% from 2028 to 2033. However it warns America is on a trajectory for the national debt to hit more than $46.4tn by 2033, equivalent to 118 percent of GDP and the highest level ever recorded.
Updated
The Guardian’s Lauren Aratani reports on news out of the White House today that the Biden administration is partnering with Tesla to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide, Elon Musk’s company agreeing to open at least 7,500 of its chargers to all electric vehicles by the end of next year…
Tesla charging stations currently use a certain power connector that require non-Tesla EV to use an adapter. The White House said that Tesla will work to include at least 3,500 new and existing 250 kW superchargers along highways and level 2 destination chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants across the country. Tesla is also planning to double its network of Superchargers.
The Biden administration in 2021 set goals of having 50% of new vehicle sales in the country to be EVs and 500,000 EV chargers along highways by 2030. The US currently has around 3m electric vehicles on the road and about 60,000 charging stations across the country.
The administration’s goals “have spurred network operators to accelerate the buildout of coast-to-coast EV charging networks”, the White House said in a statement. “Public dollars will supplement private investment by filling gaps, serving rural and hard to reach locations and building capacity in communities.”
Along with its partnership with Tesla, the White House is working with other companies, including car manufacturers like General Motors, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, to build out more chargers. The rental car company Hertz is working with BP to bring chargers to locations in major cities. Hertz is planning to make a quarter of its fleet electric by 2024.
Funding for the EV charging network expansion comes largely from the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021.
The bill allocates $7.5bn for charging infrastructure, including a $2.5bn community grant program. In September, the White House said all 50 states have plans to build chargers using funding from the bill.
Full story:
A setback for Donald Trump in New York, where a judge today rejected a gambit that might have delayed the looming trial over the writer E Jean Carroll’s claim the former president raped her in the city in the mid-1990s. The Associated Press has the following report:
Donald Trump missed his chance to use his DNA to try to prove he did not rape the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal judge said on Wednesday, clearing a potential roadblock to an April trial.
The judge, Lewis A Kaplan, rejected the 11th-hour offer by Trump’s legal team to provide a DNA sample to rebut claims Carroll first made publicly in a 2019 book.
Kaplan said lawyers for Trump and Carroll had more than three years to make DNA an issue in the case and both chose not to do so.
He said it would almost surely delay the trial scheduled to start on 25 April to reopen the DNA issue four months after the deadline passed to litigate concerns over trial evidence and weeks before trial.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately comment. Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment.
Carroll’s lawyers have sought Trump’s DNA for three years to compare it with stains found on the dress Carroll wore the day she says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996. Analysis of DNA on the dress concluded it did contain traces of an unknown man’s DNA.
Trump has denied knowing Carroll, saying repeatedly he never raped her and accusing her of making the claim to stoke sales of her book. She has sued him for defamation and under a New York law which allows alleged victims of sexual assault to sue over alleged crimes outside the usual statute of limitations.
Full story:
Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, has sent a letter to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who was Trump’s chief White House adviser, renewing a request for documents related to a $2bn deal with Saudi Arabia Kushner secured shortly after the end of the Trump administration.
The benefits to Kushner and Trump of their closeness to Saudi Arabia while in power have been the subject of extensive reporting and speculation, not least given Kushner’s closeness to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who US intelligence said was behind the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident resident in the US who wrote for the Washington Post.
Raskin writes: “Your efforts to protect the crown prince may have allowed him to maintain his position at the top of the Saudi government and, thus, his ability to deliver significant financial benefits to you and your father-in-law after the end of the Trump administration.
“Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf at Democracy for the Arab World Now, has stated that ‘[w]ithout the absolute protection of Trump and Kushner, MBS would definitely have fallen’.
“President Trump expressed an explicit awareness of the crown prince’s debt: when Secretary [of state Mike] Pompeo embarked on a state visit to the Middle East to visit the crown prince, he wrote that President Trump told him, ‘My Mike, go and have a good time. Tell him he owes us.’”
Here’s more about Pompeo’s view of the Khashoggi affair … and the Post’s condemnation of it.
Raskin goes on to say Kushner and his investment firm, A Fin Management, LLC (Affinity), have “failed to cooperate with the Committee Democrats’ investigation”, which was launched last summer, when Democrats held the House.
What’s Raskin after? “Documents, including communications between Mr Kushner and Saudi government officials, and documents sufficient to show the identity of all foreign investors in Affinity”.
When does he want it? “By 1 March 2023.”
Will he get it? Seems unlikely.
Raskin also noted that though the new Republican oversight chairman, James Comer of Kentucky, had “acknowledg[ed] the unresolved conflicts-of-interests crisis left by the Trump administration”, he had declined to sign the letter to Kushner.
Updated
The scandal-blasted New York Republican congressman George Santos is reportedly contemplating running for re-election in 2024, despite being at the centre of an extraordinary rolling political controversy since his election last November.
CNN reported the change in Santos’s thinking today.
Yesterday, Santos tweeted his defiance, writing: “Let me be very clear, I’m not leaving, I’m not hiding and I am NOT backing down. I will continue to work for New York’s third district and no amount of Twitter trolling will stop me. I’m looking forward to getting what needs to be done, DONE!”
Santos’s résumé has been shown to be largely made up, his claims about family heritage debunked, his past scoured for alleged criminal behaviour and his campaign finances investigated amid questions over missing money and the source of his personal wealth.
Santos’s very identity has been questioned, given past activities under a different name, Anthony Devolder.
Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for Santos to resign but though he has admitted embellishing his résumé he denies wrongdoing.
Republican leaders have stuck by him. Santos supported the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, through 15 rounds of voting for the position. McCarthy must now work with a very slim majority, making Santos’s seat all the more valuable.
Santos has raised sufficient funds to have to announce whether he will run again by a deadline in mid-March. Two other New York Republican freshmen told CNN Santos would lose a primary if he chose to contest it.
“George Santos will not be on any ticket in 2024,” said Marc Molinaro, adding that he would support a resolution to expel Santos from Congress if it made it to a vote.
Democrats have introduced such a resolution but only five members of the House have ever been expelled – three for fighting for the Confederacy in the civil war.
Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a neighbouring district, told CNN: “I am confident that George Santos will not be on any ticket come 2024. I am confident that we’ll do everything in our power to make sure we have the right candidate, the honest candidate, the truthful candidate, and the one who was honest about his entire being.”
Two anonymous but senior Republicans, meanwhile, pointed to hard political realities.
One, asked about House ethics investigations said: “I think he’ll be indicted before we get to him.”
Another, described as a “senior GOP member”, pointed to the party’s need to avoid a new election in a district Joe Biden won with ease.
“We don’t want a special,” he said.
The day so far
Nikki Haley officially kicked off her presidential campaign with a South Carolina speech in which she quipped about imposing “mental competency tests” for elderly politicians (think Donald Trump and Joe Biden) and won a few interesting endorsements. Kamala Harris was meanwhile heading to Germany for a meeting with some of Washington’s top allies, while downplaying the impact of the spy balloon saga on the relationship with China. Later this afternoon, Biden will launch a counterattack against the GOP and their demands for spending cuts with a speech intended to convince voters that Republicans are the real money wasters.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz following his investigation over sex-trafficking allegations.
Biden is considering a national address about the three still-mysterious UFOs shot down over North America in recent days, and the Chinese spy balloon.
Democrats were doing all they can to make sure the public doesn’t forget Haley’s ties to Trump, whom she served as United Nations ambassador.
Justice department ends sex-trafficking investigation of Matt Gaetz
The justice department will not charge rightwing congressman Matt Gaetz after investigating him on sex trafficking allegations, CNN reports:
BREAKING: DOJ formally decides not to charge Congressman Matt Gaetz in sex-trafficking probe. Prosecutors have been informing witnesses today of final decision by DOJ leadership after investigators recommended not moving forward back in the fall. More to come on @CNN
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) February 15, 2023
Federal agents had been looking into whether the Republican representing part of northwestern Florida in the House of Representatives paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. In December, an ex-tax collector and friend of Gaetz whose arrest sparked the investigation of the congressman was sentenced to 11 years in jail for offenses including the sex trafficking of a minor.
As the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports, Nikki Haley would like to see “mental competency tests” implemented for politicians of a certain age:
Haley just vowed that in her America she would make voter ID the law of the land, institute term limits for Congress and implement "mental competency tests" for politicians over 75
— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) February 15, 2023
Who could she be referring to? Likely Joe Biden, who is 80, but perhaps also Donald Trump, who is 76.
At her presidential campaign launch event in South Carolina, Nikki Haley has received the endorsement of Cindy Warmbier, whose son Otto died after his release from a North Korean prison, the Washington Post reports:
Cindy Warmbier, mother of Otto Warmbier (who died after being released from North Korean prison), is speaking now. She calls Haley “a glimmer of light” during the darkest period of her life.
— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) February 15, 2023
Donald Trump succeeded in getting Otto Warmbier returned to the United States in 2017. The then president later implied that he didn’t think North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un knew about Warmbier’s torture while in custody – a comment that his family rebuked.
Updated
In an interview with Politico before departing for a high-profile security conference in Germany, vice-president Kamala Harris downplayed the spy balloon’s impact on Washington’s relationship with China.
“We seek competition, but not conflict or confrontation,” she said in the interview ahead of the Munich Security Conference, where she’ll meet with leaders of allies including Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Britain’s Rishi Sunak. “Everything that has happened in the last week and a half is, we believe, very consistent with our stated approach,” Harris continued, noting she’d told Chinese president Xi Jinping of Washington’s policy during a brief meeting last November.
Asked whether the balloon episode would impact the countries’ relations, she said: “I don’t think so, no.”
Updated
Biden weighing public address on UFOs and Chinese spy balloon
Joe Biden may address the nation about the recent shootdowns of UFOs over North American airspace, as well as the Chinese spy balloon, Bloomberg News reports:
President Biden is considering delivering a public address before leaving for Poland on the downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon and other objects, people familiar with the planning tell @jendeben & me
— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) February 15, 2023
A speech is not set in stone and the plans could change. If he does speak, POTUS is likely to say incident won't spark China conflict, US acted to protect national security & the public has nothing to fear about downed objects
— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) February 15, 2023
NBC reported earlier on discussions about a speech
The navy has recovered part of the Chinese balloons shot down earlier this month off the east coast after traversing much of the United States. However, the Biden administration has said little about the three objects shot down in recent days over the United States and Canada.
Updated
Days after the January 6 insurrection, Republican House representative Ralph Norman encouraged Donald Trump’s chief of staff to declare martial law to stop Joe Biden from taking office.
Norman has had a change of heart since then, though not about his call to subvert the constitution, which he defended as recently as last December.
Rather, Norman has shifted his support from Trump to his fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, who he said has his vote for the GOP’s presidential nomination:
This is probably no surprise for many of you. I’m thrilled to be in Charleston this morning to throw my support behind Nikki Haley for President in 2024!(1/3)https://t.co/3T8afcDZko
— Ralph Norman (@RalphNorman) February 15, 2023
We are at a pivotal point in our nation. While the Republican candidates, values, and messages have done very well here in South Carolina, that hasn’t been the case everywhere across our great nation (2/3)
— Ralph Norman (@RalphNorman) February 15, 2023
It’s time for a reset and a new chapter in national Republican politics, and there’s no better person to help write that new chapter than our former governor and my good friend, Nikki Haley! 🇺🇸
— Ralph Norman (@RalphNorman) February 15, 2023
(3/3) pic.twitter.com/3HxygLFhqP
Nikki Haley will soon formally launch her presidential campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, but the local Democratic party wants to make sure voters don’t forget her support for Donald Trump.
They’ve hired a video billboard truck to drive around outside the event, playing this ad in which Haley praises the former president and says that she won’t run if he runs – a promise she has not stuck to:
Local broadcaster WIS10 caught the truck as it was making its rounds, as well as a Trump supporter who’d joined in the circling:
Here’s that video-billboard truck driving along King Street in downtown Charleston just over an hour before Haley’s event is set to begin, along with an apparent fan of her former boss and now rival for the GOP nomination, former President Donald Trump ⬇️ https://t.co/9jO25qVQLW pic.twitter.com/hEj06JjzAr
— Mary Green (@MaryGreenNews) February 15, 2023
He picked a curious moment for it, but Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is out with a video in which he talks about some of the common ground he’s found with Democrats:
Republicans & Dems differ, but there are areas for common ground. So far this year, the House is the only place where true bipartisanship exists:
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) February 15, 2023
→ Condemning the Chinese Communist Party's balloon
→ Criticizing DC govt for being soft on crime
→ Rebuking voting for non-citizens pic.twitter.com/lzYvV5c8dl
It’s not a long list, but the speaker has a point: there are a handful of issues on which the two parties can find unanimity, or at least bipartisanship. And there’s a good chance that one of the House’s biggest legislative tasks this year – agreeing to increase the debt ceiling – will be accomplished only with the support of at least some Democrats.
The White House has released excerpts of Joe Biden’s speech on the economy, set for 2.30pm ET today.
“Let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening. If you add up all the proposals that my Republican friends in Congress have offered so far, they would add another $3tn to the debt over 10 years,” the president will say during an appearance at a union hall in Maryland.
“When I introduce my budget in a few weeks, you’ll see that people making less than $400,000 a year will not see a single penny increase in taxes, nor have they for the past two years. You’ll see that my budget will invest in America, lower costs and protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, while cutting the deficit by $2tn over 10 years.”
Updated
Before serving as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina – the first state to secede at the start of the civil war. That fact appears to have had some impact on her political thinking, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
Shortly after Nikki Haley announced her campaign for president on Tuesday, footage was released showing the Republican former South Carolina governor saying states have the right to secede from the union.
“I think that they do,” Haley said in the footage, which Patriot Takes, an anonymously run social media account and fundraising Pac which claims to “monitor and expos[e] rightwing extremism and other threats to democracy”, said came from 2010 and featured an unnamed neo-Confederate group.
“I mean, the constitution says that.”
Haley also said she did not think South Carolina should secede.
Haley’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor and political scientist at Georgia State University, said on Twitter: “No, Nikki Haley, the constitution does not provide a right for secession. See, Texas v White (1869). See also, the civil war.”
Updated
We’ll be hearing more from Nikki Haley today after she announced her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday. She’s the only major candidate to emerge against Donald Trump, but there’s more to her story than that, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:
As the Republican governor of South Carolina in 2015, Nikki Haley stood shoulder to shoulder with political leaders from across the state to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. Days before, an avowed white supremacist who posed with the flag in photographs massacred nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston.
As her state – and the nation – reeled from the heinous act, Haley argued that the flag embraced by many southerners as a symbol of “noble” traditions was for too many others “a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past”.
It was a defining moment for the governor, one that earned her national attention and cemented her status as a Republican rising star. On Tuesday, Haley, 51, officially entered the race for president, becoming the first and so far only major Republican challenger to former president Donald Trump.
Here’s the White House’s attack line today against Republicans, condensed into a tweet:
Republicans on the Hill like to talk about the deficit.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 15, 2023
Well, if you add up their plans so far, they’ll add $3 trillion to the debt.
It's mostly going to rich folks and Big Pharma.
My budget will reduce the deficit by $2 trillion.
What's in the rest of theirs? pic.twitter.com/14JlHzDyrt
Some economic truths, before we get into the politics: America’s budget debt is very high, both in absolute terms, and as a percentage of GDP. The federal budget deficit – which is the portion of its spending that Washington must borrow money to cover – is also lofty (though it has been worse). And in June, the government is expected to run out of money to pay its bills unless Congress agrees to increase the limit on how much money it can borrow.
So what’s the purpose of Biden’s tweet and speech today? The GOP has demanded the president and his Democratic allies agree to cut spending if they want their votes for raising the borrowing limit. Today, the White House will try to convince voters that it’s the GOP who want to spend recklessly. We’ll see if the public believes them.
Updated
Biden looks to cast GOP as money wasters in speech
Good morning, US politics blog readers. America’s large national debt was accumulated under both Republican and Democratic presidents, but ever since they reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives, the GOP has cast itself as guardians of fiscal prudence. Joe Biden will try to undercut that argument today in a speech where he will accuse the Republicans of wanting to hike the national debt by more than $3tn. The president is likely playing the long game here, since he’s in the midst of trying to convince the House GOP and its leader Kevin McCarthy to support increasing the US government’s borrowing limit before June, the point at which it could run out of money. The Republicans say they want spending cuts in exchange for their votes, while the White House’s stance can be summed up in two words: no negotiations. Expect to hear more about this at his speech set for 2.30pm ET.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador under Donald Trump, will today formally announce her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, after scooping herself with a surprise video announcement yesterday.
Kamala Harris is heading to the annual Munich Security Conference, where she’ll meet with global leaders and likely discuss Ukraine, China and other matters of international concern to Washington.
The Senate will be in session, and consider more of Biden’s nominees to the federal courts.
Updated
