Closing summary
We’re closing the US politics blog now after a busy day of news, mostly out of Washington DC. Thanks for joining us.
It appears Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, retains the support of congressional Republicans, who applauded his defense of leaked conversations with party leaders following the 6 January Capitol riot in a caucus meeting this morning.
Despite an audio recording published by the New York Times catching him in a lie over whether he would ask then-president Donald Trump to resign, the House GOP caucus gave him a standing ovation, and McCarthy emerged smiling.
Here’s what else we were following today:
- There were mixed messages in the White House over Covid-19. The government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said the US was out of the pandemic stage of the virus, while press secretary Jen Psaki said at her afternoon briefing: “Covid isn’t over and the pandemic isn’t over”.
- Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the Biden administration’s immigration policies in House and Senate hearings, telling lawmakers: “We’ve effectively managed migrants at the border”.
- The Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people, an inquiry following the killing of George Floyd found.
- Joe Biden paid tribute to the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at her funeral in Washington DC also attended by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
- Donald Trump appealed a ruling by a New York judge that held him in civil contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with an investigation into the former president’s business affairs.
- Russia and the US enacted a prisoner swap that saw former US marine Trevor Reed gain his freedom.
A reminder that you can follow developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on our live 24-hour blog here.
New York’s highest court has rejected the state’s new congressional district maps, which had been widely seen as favoring Democrats, the Associated Press reports.
The legal fight over New York’s redistricting process could be a factor in the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House in November’s midterm elections.
New York is set to lose one seat in Congress in 2021. New York’s new maps would give Democrats a strong majority of registered voters in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. Right now, Republicans currently hold eight of the state’s 27 seats.
Democrats had been hoping that a redistricting map favorable to their party in New York might help offset expected losses in other states where Republicans control state government.
The state’s court of appeals agreed in a ruling on Wednesday with a group of Republican voters who sued, saying that the district boundaries had been unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that the Legislature hadn’t followed proper procedure in passing the maps.
The court said it will “likely be necessary” to move the congressional and state senate primary elections from June to August.
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