Closing summary
It is now 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
For over 20 years, Clarence Thomas has accepted multiple luxury trips from Harlan Crow, a Republican real estate developer and megadonor, according to a new ProPublica investigation. Despite accepting these luxury trips for over two decades, Thomas has not listed them on his financial disclosures, according to the report. Crow and his wife denied wielding any political influence over Thomas via these luxury trip offerings.
New York congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has called for conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s impeachment. AOC’s calls follow reports that Thomas failed to disclose luxury gifts that he accepted from Republican billionaire, Harlan Crow, a megadonor to conservative organizations.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine activist and Democrat, has filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission. The 69-year old son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, will be challenging President Joe Biden as a Democrat.
The judge involved in Donald Trump’s arraignment has received multiple threats alongside his family following the arrest of the former president. On Thursday, NBC reported that since Trump’s arrest and arraignment earlier this week, judge Juan Merchan and his family have received “dozens” of threats, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Apropos of the reported threats to the judge in Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, J Michael Luttig, the retired conservative judge and sometime adviser to Mike Pence who came to national prominence with testimony to the House January 6 committee, has warned the former president he risks a gag order over his attacks on the judge in his New York criminal case. “There is no court that would want to impose a gag order on a president of the United States,” Luttig told Axios. But “if the former president forces the Manhattan criminal court, the court will have no choice”.
Democrats and campaigners outraged by a party switch that gives Republicans a veto-proof majority in the North Carolina state house have hit out at their former colleague. Tricia Cotham’s decision to change parties is “a deceit of the highest order”, the state Democratic party chair, Anderson Clayton, told reporters on Wednesday. “It is a betrayal to the people of Mecklenburg county with repercussions not only for the people of her district but for the entire state of North Carolina.”
A former employee who worked at Infowars, the fake news website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has been sentenced to four months of home detention over his role in the January 6 riots. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced 37-year old Samuel Montoya who previously served as an Infowars video editor and had participated in the January 6 riots.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the recent slew of anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have been passed across various states this week during a Thursday briefing. “This has been one of the worst weeks…[in] 2023 so far in terms of anti-LGBTQ bills becoming law in states across America … Just yesterday, the North Dakota senate passed 10 anti-LGBTQ bills in just one day, a single record.”
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that president Joe Biden’s decision to “end the war” in Afghanistan was “the right one.” “While it was always the president’s intent to end that war, it is also undeniable undeniable that decisions made and the lack of planning done by the previous administration significantly limited options available to him,” he said.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.
Updated
The leading Republican alternative to Joe Biden may be Donald Trump, the first president ever to be criminally indicted – and that not even in the case in which he incited a deadly attack on Congress – but according to a new CNN poll only a third of Americans think the Democrat deserves to be re-elected.
The CNN poll also gives Biden an approval rating of 42% (with 57% disapproving) and says 54% of Democratic-aligned voters would prefer someone else as their candidate in 2024.
That, in short, ain’t likely, particularly at a time when the declared alternative Democratic candidates are the vaccine-denying Robert F Kennedy Jr and the self-help author Marianne Williamson.
Biden is widely expected to announce his campaign for re-election soon. Already the oldest president ever, if he runs and wins he will be 82 by the time he is sworn in for a second four-year term.
Some further reading:
