Closing summary
We’re closing the US politics blog now. The US Senate is edging closer to passing Joe Biden’s $40bn package of military, humanitarian and economic aid to Ukraine after a hold-up last week by Republican senator Rand Paul.
It’s been a busy day:
- New White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made her historic debut at the briefing room podium, calling out the hatred and bigotry behind the Buffalo mass shooting.
- Joe Biden paid tribute to retired police officer and nine other victims of the Buffalo massacre, and will visit the city tomorrow with first lady Jill Biden.
- Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis said his administration intends to take over the running of Disney’s government after stripping the company of autonomy for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
- Vice-president Kamala Harris landed in Abu Dhabi with a US delegation for the funeral of United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
- Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican congresswoman and member of the bipartisan panel investigating the 6 January insurrection, accused Republican leadership of enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism”, following the tragedy in Buffalo.
Please join us again tomorrow, and remember you can follow developments in the Ukraine conflict on our live news blog here.
Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration would “continue to call out” anybody promoting the racist “great replacement theory” the Buffalo killer cited as a justification for the mass shooting, but would not be drawn into “a back and forth on names and who said what”.
Senior Republican and conservative figures including congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Fox News host Tucker Carlson are under scrutiny for promoting the discredited conspiracy theory that immigration threatens white values and western civilization.
Jean-Pierre was asked why she would not call out individuals:
If a person has a white supremacy kind of extremism, we need to call that out. It doesn’t matter who it is. I’m not going to speak or call out any individual names.
[The president] is determined to make sure that we fight back against the forces of hate and evil and violence. That’s what we’re going to continue to call out, but we reject hatred and extremist ideologies.
