Closing summary
It’s 6pm in Washington. Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Donald Trump attacked the judge and New York prosecutors who have charged him with orchestrating a years-long fraud for the first day of a civil trial that could see the former president and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and that has already threatened to end his business career in the city where it started.
The former president, speaking in front of cameras during the first day of his fraud trial, said his financial statements were “phenomenal”, and called New York attorney general, Letitia James, who is Black, a “racist” and a “horror show” and said the case was being overseen by a “rogue judge”.
Congressman Matt Gaetz continued to attack Kevin McCarthy over the House Republican speaker’s successful efforts to avoid a government shutdown, even as other hard-right lawmakers came to McCarthy’s defense. Speaking on the House floor on Monday, Gaetz railed against McCarthy, accusing the speaker of cutting “a secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine.
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has named Laphonza Butler to fill the Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, who died on Thursday. Butler, a Democratic strategist and former labor leader, will be the only Black woman serving in the US senate, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the chamber.
A federal judge has scheduled the trial of US senator Bob Menendez on bribery and corruption charges to begin 6 May 2024. Under the indictment unsealed last month, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were accused of using his seat in the Senate, as chair of the foreign relations committee, to benefit the government of Egypt.
A state senator from North Dakota, Doug Larsen, his wife and their two young children died when the small plane they were traveling in crashed in Utah, a senate leader said.
Congressman Jamaal Bowman attempted to distance himself from a memo released by his office that referred to some Republican extremists as Nazis.
In a memo obtained by Politico, Bowman’s office suggested several talking points his Democratic colleagues could use to defend him amid a GOP push to punish the New York congressman after he set off a House fire alarm during Saturday’s spending vote.
One suggested response from Bowman’s office to questions about the incident:
I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.
Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bowman condemned the use of the word “Nazi”, calling it “inappropriate”.
I just became aware that in our messaging guidance, there was inappropriate use of the term Nazi without my consent. I condemn the use of the term Nazi out of its precise definition. It is important to specify the term Nazi to refer to members of the Nazi party & neo-Nazis. https://t.co/DUi92VpUia
— Congressman Jamaal Bowman (@RepBowman) October 2, 2023
