Joe Biden will meet with Northern Ireland political party leaders tomorrow, but is not expected to hold a news conference in Ireland.
Here’s a recap of today’s news:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling. He will probably reiterate the GOP’s demand that the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Speaking of Bragg, he filed a lawsuit against House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan to get him to stop messing with his prosecution of the former president.
Montana might be about to outlaw abortion after the second trimester of pregnancy.
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Biden arrives in Belfast
Joe Biden was accompanied by his sister Valerie Biden Owen, his son Hunter Biden, and recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy II. The president was greeted by Rishi Sunak.
Biden greeted on windy, chilly Belfast night by UK’s prime minister @RishiSunak, UK’s ambassador to US @KarenPierceUK @USAmbUK Jane Hartley, Northern Ireland’s @chhcalling.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 11, 2023
POTUS’s sister Valerie and son Hunter joined the tarmac receiving line. pic.twitter.com/eUvaoiyTUD
Some background, from The Guardian’s Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll:
The US president was due to be met at Belfast international airport by Rishi Sunak on Tuesday night for the start of a visit expected to mix delicate political choreography with economic announcements and events linked to Biden’s Irish and Catholic heritage.
Speaking to reporters before taking off in Air Force One, Biden said he wanted to safeguard the Good Friday agreement, which was signed 25 years ago this week, and support Sunak’s post-Brexit deal for the region. Asked what his priorities for the trip were, he said: “Make sure the Irish accords and Windsor agreements stay in place. Keep the peace and that’s the main thing. It looks like we’re going to keep our fingers crossed.”
Heavy security on both sides of the border preceded the US entourage, which will include the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and a recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy III.
Dozens of police and US secret service vehicles sealed off rain-drenched streets around central Belfast on Tuesday. Manhole covers were lifted and checked and sniffer dogs inspected hotel rooms as part of a £7m security operation – bolstered by 300 extra police from the British mainland.
In Derry, police recovered four suspected pipe bombs from a cemetery where republicans had staged an Easter Monday commemoration that led to petrol bomb attacks on police. The discovery was a “sinister and worrying development”, said the Police Service of Northern Ireland assistant chief constable, Bobby Singleton, with the Police Federation for Northern Ireland saying it was a clear statement of intent to cause harm to police officers.
Read more:
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Biden expected to land in Belfast as Ireland trip begins
In about 20 minutes, Air Force One is expected to touch down in Belfast, Northern Ireland where Joe Biden will begin his five-day trip to the island. While he has no public events scheduled this evening, tomorrow he will meet with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and deliver a speech at Ulster University, before departing for Dublin.
Keep it turned to this blog, where the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh will be covering Biden’s Belfast arrival as it happens. Until then, here’s a recap of what’s happened today so far:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling. He will probably reiterate the GOP’s demand that the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Speaking of Bragg, he filed a lawsuit against House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan to get him to stop messing with his prosecution of the former president.
Montana might be about to outlaw abortion after the second trimester of pregnancy.
Senate leader demands briefing on leaked Pentagon documents
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has asked that the chamber’s lawmakers be briefed on the leaked Pentagon documents concerning US assessments of the war in Ukraine.
“Majority Leader Schumer has requested a classified briefing for all senators on the leaked classified US documents on the war in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the senator told the Guardian’s US politics live blog.
Among the revelations from the documents is that Washington is concerned about Kyiv’s military strength ahead of a counteroffensive against Russia’s forces, which expected to start soon. Read more about that below:
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Here’s what Republican House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan has to say about the lawsuit the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg filed against him:
First, they indict a president for no crime.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) April 11, 2023
Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.
The president he’s referring to here is, of course, Donald Trump.
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The family of Evan Gershkovich, the American Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia on espionage charges, has released a statement after Joe Biden called them today.
Read it here:
Evan Gershkovich's family released the following statement after their call with President Biden on Tuesday:
— Andrew Restuccia (@AndrewRestuccia) April 11, 2023
Read more here:https://t.co/5yrL0Z6vab pic.twitter.com/UQc3VvYBCL
Manhattan DA sues top Republican to halt meddling with Trump case
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has filed a lawsuit against Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, to stop his efforts aimed at publicizing details of his office’s prosecution of Donald Trump, the New York Times reports.
Jordan is one of Trump’s top allies in Congress, and together with other Republicans has demanded documents and testimony from Bragg, who late last month indicted the former president on charges of falsifying business records. Last week, Jordan subpoenaed Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Bragg’s office who wrote a book about why he thinks Trump should face charges. The subpoena requires Pomerantz sit for a deposition before the judiciary committee, which has played a major role in the House GOP’s campaign of investigations against the Biden administration.
Accusing Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on Bragg’s prosecution, and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the Manhattan prosecutor, the lawsuit filed in federal court asks a judge to halt the subpoena to Pomerantz, and any future summons.
The Times reports that Pomerantz “has shown no indication that he is willing to testify voluntarily”, but declined to comment on Bragg’s lawsuit.
A bill to restrict abortions in Montana will become law – at least temporarily – if the governor signs it, a judge has ruled, and the Associated Press reports.
The latest ruling denies a request by abortion rights advocates to preemptively block legislation that would ban the abortion method most commonly used in the second trimester.
District court judge Kathy Seeley said the request by Planned Parenthood of Montana was made before the bill became law, so there is nothing to block.
Montana’s legislature approved the bill on Friday. It would ban dilation and evacuation abortions, which are typically used later than 15 weeks into a pregnancy. The ban will take effect immediately if Republican governor Greg Gianforte signs it.
Planned Parenthood argued the law is unconstitutional based on a 1999 Montana supreme court ruling that found that the state constitution’s right to privacy includes the right to have a pre-viability abortion from a provider of the patient’s choice.
The organization asked the court to freeze the law preemptively to make sure patients wouldn’t be prevented from getting care while the court considered the case.
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Rightwinger Stephen Miller, a senior aide in Donald Trump’s White House, was spotted this morning in Washington DC, “entering the area where the grand jury tied to special counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation meets,” NBC reports.
Miller and his attorney reportedly would not tell reporters why they were there.
The US court of appeals for the DC circuit last week denied Trump’s emergency motion to block several senior aides being called to testify, including Miller, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, NBC adds.
A year ago, Miller testified to the House of Representatives select committee investigating the insurrection on 6 January 2021, by extremist supporters of Trump who were seeking to keep the then president in office by preventing the official certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Sources told the Guardian at the time that Miller was testifying about the extent to which Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the US Capitol, inciting an insurrection (for which he was later impeached in an unprecedented move by the House to impeach a US president for a second time, although, once again he was later acquitted by the US Senate).
Miller was a senior adviser to the-then president Trump and director of speechwriting, known for his hard-right anti-immigration beliefs.
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Democratic House representative Jennifer Wexton has announced she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease:
On #WorldParkinsonsDay, I'm here to share that I've been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
— Rep. Jennifer Wexton (@RepWexton) April 11, 2023
I'm doing well, and I want to bring about as much good from this diagnosis as I can—including here in Congress. pic.twitter.com/bvEwzZQbqp
Wexton, who represents Virginia’s suburbs near Washington DC, was among the Democrats considered vulnerable in last November’s midterm election, though she ended up being re-elected with more than 53% of the vote.
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The day so far
Congress is finally getting the access it has demanded to the classified documents taken from Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence, though the materials will only be viewed in secret and by the chamber’s top leaders. Meanwhile, Democrats have made an important decision: Chicago will be the host city for their convention next year. Still no definitive word from Biden on his re-election plans, though yesterday he made it plain as can be by saying, “I plan on running.”
Here’s what else has happened so far today:
House speaker Kevin McCarthy will speak at the New York Stock Exchange next week regarding the debt ceiling, where he’ll likely demand the Biden administration accept spending cuts in exchange for the GOP’s support in raising it.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, will next week introduce a resolution to condemn Trump’s calls to defund the FBI and justice department.
Democrats are planning their counterattack to House Republicans’ plans next week to hold a hearing on crime in New York City – where Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently filed criminal charges against Trump.
Shifting to the realm of less public Republican activities, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reports on an intensifying conservative effort to undermine voter rolls nationwide:
An influential conservative group that has filed numerous lawsuits to force states to clean up their voter rolls, has joined Donald Trump and other election denial groups in attacking the most robust tool that accurately improves those voter rolls.
Judicial Watch, whose leader Tom Fitton urged Trump in 2020 to claim victory before all the votes were tallied, released a flawed report alleging potential violations of federal law by the Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric), a bipartisan consortium of over two dozen states that exchange voter registration data to ensure election security.
Fitton’s attack on Eric is part of a growing campaign by Trump-allied election denialist groups and Trump to urge member states to leave the consortium, prompting scathing criticism from voting rights advocates and election experts including some GOP officials.
Meanwhile, Punchbowl News reports today that a group of Democrats will take part in the House judiciary committee hearing in New York City, reversing their non-participation in some of the field visits organized recently by the committee’s GOP chair Jim Jordan.
The committee’s ranking member, New York representative Jerry Nadler, and other Democrats are expected to hold a press conference with city officials around the time of the hearing, Punchbowl reports. The event will be part of their counter-attack to the argument Jordan and other Republicans are expected to make, which is that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is focused less on fighting crime, and more on prosecuting Donald Trump.
Also journeying to New York City next week is the House judiciary committee, which plans to hold a hearing on crime.
The inquiry is part of the GOP’s efforts to discredit Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who days ago indicted Donald Trump for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Ahead of the hearing, the committee’s Twitter account has taken to highlighting violent crimes committed on New York’s streets:
MAN SHOT IN THE HEAD IN EAST HARLEM https://t.co/vcbOGKsUjl
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) April 11, 2023
SUSPECT SOUGHT AFTER 17-YEAR-OLD SHOT AND INJURED IN MANHATTANhttps://t.co/nJwkfjsvsU
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) April 11, 2023
New York is considered one of the safest large cities in America, though like many municipalities, has faced a recent uptick in crime.
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Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy will next week deliver a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, Punchbowl News reports:
On the same day @Jim_Jordan is holding a hearing on crime in New York, McCarthy is giving a speech at the stock exchange. pic.twitter.com/NXSrPvwi6I
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 11, 2023
This speech will be debt limit related. https://t.co/XmzK8T1cwT
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) April 11, 2023
Congress and the White House need to agree on a way to increase the government’s legal borrowing limit sometime within the next few months, otherwise the United States could default on its debt for the first time in history. That could have catastrophic consequences for the stock market, among other things.
Republicans want the Biden administration and his Democratic allies to agree to cut spending in exchange for increasing the debt ceiling, but Joe Biden has refused to negotiate over the issue, saying the limit should be raised without preconditions.
Meanwhile, Democratic-run states are stockpiling abortion medication following a conservative Texas judge’s ruling that revoked authorization for one of the drugs used in medication abortion, the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:
Several Democratic governors have moved swiftly to protect access to medication abortion in their states after a ruling by a Texas judge late last week threatened access to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone.
In an announcement on Monday, Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts said her state had ordered about 15,000 doses of mifepristone, the first of two drugs in a medication abortion regimen that has been approved for use up to the 10th week of pregnancy.
Healey also issued an executive order that she said would help protect access to medication abortions and shield providers who perform them.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, said his state had secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m pills of misoprostol, the second drug in the regimen that can be used safely on its own, though is slightly less effective as a single medication. That drug, which is used to treat other medical conditions, is also being targeted by anti-abortion groups seeking to remove it from the market.
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Republicans in Tennessee last week ousted two Democratic lawmakers who had staged a noisy protest in favor of gun control on the floor of the house of representatives, but it was a pyrrhic victory. One of the lawmakers was reinstated to the legislature yesterday, and the second may be voted back in tomorrow. Here’s the latest on this ongoing saga:
The city of Nashville’s governing council on Monday afternoon voted unanimously to return the expelled Black lawmaker Justin Jones to the Tennessee state legislature.
The body’s Republican majority state lawmakers had expelled Jones and fellow house member Justin Pearson late last week because they led protests in the chamber demanding gun control after yet another mass shooting in an American school, this one at an elementary school in the city days before.
Moments later, Jones marched to the capitol several blocks away. He took the oath of office on the steps and entered the building while supporters sang This Little Light of Mine.
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Chicago to host 2024 Democratic national convention
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) today selected Chicago as the host city for its convention next year, where Joe Biden will likely again receive the party’s nomination to contest the presidential election.
“Democrats will gather to showcase our historic progress including building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not from the top down,” Biden said in a statement announcing the decision.
DNC chair Jaime Harrison said: “The midwest reflects America and will give Democrats an opportunity to showcase some of President Biden and Vice-President Harris’s most significant accomplishments for American families. I’m grateful to the leadership of Chicago’s bid for being great partners, as well as to the other cities for putting forward such strong bids.”
Chicago beat out Atlanta, Houston and New York in the race for the convention’s host city.
Updated
Joe Biden has boarded Air Force One for a flight to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he’ll meet with British prime minister Rishi Sunak before traveling to the Republican of Ireland.
Just before the flight, the president spoke to reporters are his ongoing efforts to free Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal detained in Russia. Here’s a video:
Yesterday, the Biden administration officially declared Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained”, indicating they give no credence to Moscow’s espionage allegations against him.
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The bigger classified documents scandal gripping Washington today involves batches of leaked materials from the Pentagon that have revealed a number of secrets embarrassing to the United States. Here’s the latest on that, from the Guardian’s Justin McCurry, Julian Borger and Ben Doherty:
The US is attempting to mend fences with key allies after leaked Pentagon documents claimed Washington had been spying on friendly countries including South Korea and Israel.
The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, spoke to his South Korean counterpart on Tuesday as officials in Seoul denied the possibility that the president’s office could have been the source of leaks over South Korean arms sales to the US.
The disclosure of the highly classified material represents Washington’s worst national security breach in many years and included details about Ukraine’s lack of ammunition and US intelligence collection methods used against Russia.
Donald Trump has for months appeared apoplectic about the investigation into his possession of classified documents, among other matters. That anger has lately resolved itself into a call, taken up by his supporters, to defund the FBI and justice department.
It’s an uncomfortable message for his fellow Republicans, who like to tell Americans that they’re the real tough-on-crime party. The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer intends to take full advantage of that dynamic with a resolution he plans to introduce next week repudiating Trump’s call to defund federal law enforcement.
Here’s what he wrote in a letter to senators:
Donald Trump’s call for defunding federal law enforcement agencies is a baseless, self-serving broadside against the men and women who keep our nation safe. The good work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice sends criminals to prison for bank robbery, sex trafficking, child pornography, hate crimes, terrorism, fraud and so much more. The former president and his allies in Congress must not subjugate justice and public safety because of their own personal grievances.
Senators from across the political spectrum and of both political parties should denounce such attempts by the former president and his allies to degrade public trust in our federal law enforcement agencies. The Senate must recommit that the United States is a nation of laws. As free people, we rely on the necessary and professional work of our federal law enforcement agencies to promote the safety and general welfare of our country.
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Three powerful men in trouble: the classified documents scandal, explained
If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the classified documents scandal that’s gripped Washington since last August, it’s this: people who work at the White House apparently like to hang on to government secrets.
Now, the three powerful men implicated here are in varying degrees of trouble, though with none of their cases resolved, we don’t know yet how severe the consequences could be.
Donald Trump appears to be in the greatest peril. He’s being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith over the secret materials the FBI found when they searched Mar-a-Lago last August – which only happened after the former president refused months of entreaties to hand over all the materials that he had. Smith is also looking into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the broader effort to overturn the 2020 election.
But it turns out Joe Biden had his own stash of classified documents. Unlike Trump, the president reportedly started handing them over to government secret keepers as soon as he became aware he had the materials – which date back to his time as a senator and vice-president – at his former office and residence, though the White House did keep quiet for months about the discoveries after they were first made around the time of last November’s midterm election. Attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed another special prosecutor, Robert Hur, to look into whether Biden broke the law here.
Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence also kept classified documents at his home in Indiana, and has since turned them over to the powers that be. Garland has not appointed a special prosecutor to look into this.
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Congressional leaders get to see Trump, Biden, Pence classified documents
Good morning, US politics blog readers. We’ve known for months that Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Mike Pence were holding on to classified documents they apparently should not have possessed – but what, exactly, did they have? The leaders of Congress are finding out, after the Democratic and Republican leaders in each chamber as well as the top lawmakers on the intelligence committees were given access to the material taken from three men, Punchbowl News reports. It remains to be seen if the lawmakers will keep quiet about what they saw, or air their views about the issue, which presents varying degrees of legal peril for the three men.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Washington continues to reel from a major leak of US intelligence materials, and national security officials say they don’t know yet if the apparently purloined documents have been contained.
Joe Biden is heading to Northern Ireland where he will, among other things, celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement that mostly quelled decades of violence.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters during Biden’s flight to Belfast.
