Closing summary
Donald Trump traveled to East Palestine, Ohio, where he took the opportunity to criticize the Biden administration’s response to the derailment and toxic waste spill earlier this month. Two can play at that game, however, and Democrats have seized on his trip to remind voters of his administration’s friendliness to the rail industry, and argue it set the stage for the derailment. We may hear more about that tomorrow, when transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg pays his own visit to the village.
Here’s what else happened today:
The foreperson of the special grand jury investigating Trump’s election meddling campaign in Georgia has been making the rounds of news outlets, and that might not be helpful for prosecutors.
Democrats got some good news in their quest to hold the Senate after next year, when Montana’s Jon Tester announced he’d stand for re-election. However, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin remains non-committal on another term.
House Republicans want to learn everything they can about American support to Ukraine.
Joe Biden is taking a page out of Trump’s book with new restrictions meant to dramatically crack down on asylum seekers arriving at the border with Mexico.
“Serious vulnerabilities” in Arizona’s election systems? Apparently not.
One of the most under-the-radar political stories of the year is happening in Wisconsin, where voters yesterday cast ballots in a primary election that could set the stage for a change in the ideological balance on the state supreme court. That won’t just affect Wisconsinites, but particularly all Americans, since the Badger state is crucial to any victorious presidential campaign. Here’s more on that from the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose one liberal and one conservative candidate to face off in a race to determine control of the state supreme court in what is likely the most important election of 2023.
Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee circuit court judge, will be on the ballot against Daniel Kelly, a conservative former supreme court justice, in the state’s 4 April general election. Protasiewicz, who received 46% of the statewide vote, and Kelly, who received 24% of the statewide vote, advanced from a four-member field that included Everett Mitchell, a liberal judge in Dane county, and Jennifer Dorow, a conservative judge in Waukesha county.
Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the court, but if Protasiewicz wins, the balance of the court would flip.
That would have enormous impact in Wisconsin, one of the most politically competitive states in America that often determines the outcome of the presidential election. The court is expected to have a say in the near future on a range of major voting rights and abortion decisions.
Among the news outlets Emily Kohrs, foreperson of the Georgia special grand jury investigating the 2020 election meddling campaign, spoke to was CNN.
Their legal analyst Elie Honig, a former assistant US attorney, was not impressed by her disclosures. Here’s what he had to say:
Emily Kohrs (and other jurors in Trump investigations, or any investigations for that matter), if you’re listening:
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) February 22, 2023
“It’s a prosecutor’s nightmare.”
Former federal and state prosecutor @eliehonig with @andersoncooper discussing effects of grand jury members speaking publicly. pic.twitter.com/s11guYp3Ef
Legal experts who spoke to the Washington Post say the Georgia special grand jury foreperson’s media blitz won’t be helpful to prosecutors looking to hold Donald Trump’s allies to account, but aren’t necessarily fatal to their case.
“What the forewoman said in this case was nothing more than hearsay, and in theory isn’t damaging. But her statements could allow for stalling and delaying on the part of those facing indictment who might question the impartiality of the proceedings,” Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University, told the Post.
Washington University in St. Louis law professor Peter A. Joy said her comments could be fodder for future investigations.
“It could lead to an investigation into the grand jury itself and the possibility that anyone indicted may be able to obtain a copy of the transcript of the grand jury proceedings, which would be helpful to the defense,” he said.
Clark D. Cunningham of Georgia State University summed it up best: It is “speculative and maybe alarmist to say that her media appearances will be a problem for the prosecution. But the adverse effect on public confidence, I think, is clear.”
Georgia grand jury foreperson's statements could fuel legal challenges
Lawyer for Republican officials who a special grand jury in Georgia may have recommended for indictment over their effort to meddle in the 2020 election could use the grand jury foreperson’s public statements to challenge any charges, CBS News reports:
News: CBS News has learned that lawyers close to several GOP witnesses in Fulton Co. investigation are preparing to move to quash any possible indictments by DA based on the public statements by the forewoman of the special grand jury, per two people familiar with the discussions
— Robert Costa (@costareports) February 22, 2023
Emily Kohrs, the foreperson of the special grand jury empaneled in the Atlanta area to investigate the effort by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia, has in recent days spoken publicly about the panel’s work. While she hasn’t named names, she confirmed that the panel did recommend indictments, and when it comes to the former president, “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”
Updated
Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, marked Ash Wednesday in Warsaw today.
This is Facebook’s translation from the Polish of what the attending priest, Wieslaw Dawidowski, had to say:
Today is Ash Wednesday. Also the greats of this world accept the ashes – if they belong to the Catholic tradition. I had the honor to put ashes on the head of the President of the United States himself Mr Joe Biden.
Everything happened in great secret but now I can say: in an improvised house chapel just next to the president’s apartment, we held a Holy Mass with the intention of peace, the conversion of Russia and the light of the Holy Spirit for the president.
Dawidowski’s post included pictures of presidential challenge coins and of the priest and president together, ash on the president’s forehead.
Democrats and immigration advocates have harshly criticized Joe Biden over a new proposal that could stop migrants claiming asylum at the US-Mexico border. One advocate said the move would cause “unnecessary human suffering”.
The pushback came after the Biden administration unveiled the proposal that would deny asylum to migrants who arrive without first seeking it in one of the countries they pass through.
There are exceptions for children, people with medical emergencies and those facing imminent threats but if enacted the proposal could stop tens of thousands of people claiming asylum in the US.
The move prompted comparisons to Donald Trump’s attempts to limit asylum, attempts repeatedly struck down by federal courts. As a presidential candidate, Biden pledged to reverse those policies.
The proposal “represents a blatant embrace of hateful and illegal anti-asylum policies, which will lead to unnecessary human suffering”, said Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
“Time after time, President Biden has broken his campaign promises to end restrictions on asylum seekers traveling through other countries.
“These are mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and thousands of children who are simply looking for a fair chance for their case to be heard. We urge the Biden administration to abandon policy initiatives that further the inhumane and ineffective agenda of the Trump administration.”
The proposed rule was posted in the Federal Register this week, with 30 days for public comment.
Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Justice Immigration Center, said the brief comment period “suggests that the president already knows that this policy is a betrayal of his campaign promises”.
Full story:
Jon Tester has announced a run for re-election – good news for Democrats facing a tough map in their quest to hold the Senate in 2024.
In a statement earlier today, the Montanan, for three terms an increasingly rare blue (Democratic) senator from a very red (Republican) state, said: “I know that people in Washington don’t understand what a hard day’s work looks like or the challenges working families are facing in Montana.
“I am running for re-election so I can keep fighting for Montanans and demand that Washington stand up for our veterans and lower costs.”
Politico reports an unusually cross Republican response, in the form of a statement from Steve Daines, the other Montana senator.
“Jon Tester just made the same mistake Steve Bullock did in 2020. Both should have ended their political careers on their terms. Instead, they each will have their careers ended by Montana voters.”
Bullock, a former Montana governor, ran against Daines in 2020 … and was soundly beaten.
As Politico puts it, “it’s rare for an intra-state senator … to hammer someone on the record like this. Part of the history here is that Tester helped recruit Bullock to run against Daines”.
Updated
An interesting report from Politico says Joe Biden’s failure to say whether he will run for re-election or not has created a creeping “sense of doubt” among Democratic operatives.
Most expect Biden to announce a run for a second term in April and thereby answer those who say he is too old for the office, the report says, “but even that target is less than definitive”.
Politico adds: “According to four people familiar with the president’s thinking, a final call has been pushed aside as real-world events intervene.”
One such event, of course, was the president’s visit to Ukraine and Poland this week.
Nonetheless, “some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors” are reportedly “strategising and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president”.
Among possible candidates should Biden not run, the site names three governors – JB Pritzker (Illinois), Gavin Newsom (California) and Phil Murphy (New Jersey) – and some of the usual suspects in Congress, including senators Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont), who it says are keeping the door open, just in case.
Sanders, of course, is a year older than Biden. Here’s what he says about those who say 80, or indeed 81, is too old to run for president:
A former Arizona attorney general omitted key context from investigators when he publicly said his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities” in state election systems, according to new documents obtained by the Washington Post.
The documents provide new insight into how Mark Brnovich, a Republican who left office last year, investigated allegations of fraud in his state. The investigation took 10,000 hours and had the participation of all of the office’s 60 investigators at one point or another.
In April last year, Brnovich released an interim report saying there were issues with the handling and verification of mail-in ballots. The documents obtained by the Post show that in a draft report, Brnovich’s staff wrote: “We did not uncover any criminality or fraud having been committed in this area during the 2020 general election.”
Brnovich’s interim report also suggested that Maricopa county, the largest in the state, had not turned over information, making the investigation more difficult. In a draft report, staff wrote that investigators collectively believed the county “was cooperative and responsive to our requests”.
The Post documents also show that top Arizona Republicans who claimed widespread fraud in the 2020 election could not substantiate their claims when they met investigators and were subject to criminal penalties if they lied.
When Mark Finchem, a prominent election denier who unsuccessfully ran for secretary of state last year, met investigators, he did not have much to show, “specifically stating he did not have any evidence of fraud and that he did not wish to take up our time”. He offered four ballots that had not been opened nor counted, the Post said.
Sonny Borrelli, another GOP lawmaker, only provided the name of one voter he believed to be deceased. The voter turned out to be alive.
The Department of Transportation has sent out a statement, from “a spokesperson”, about why Pete Buttigieg has announced his own visit to East Palestine, Ohio, site of the toxic Norfolk Southern rail spill, tomorrow.
It’s basically an outline of the how and why of the federal response, which crosses jurisdictions and departments, in answer to Republican attacks on Buttigieg (and Joe Biden) for not visiting the disaster site sooner.
The statement says: “As the secretary said, he would go when it is appropriate and wouldn’t detract from the emergency response efforts. The secretary is going now that the Environmental Protection Agency has said it is moving out of the emergency response phase and transitioning to the long-term remediation phase.
“His visit also coincides with the National Transportation Safety Board issuing its factual findings of the investigation into the cause of the derailment and will allow the secretary to hear from [department] investigators who were on the ground within hours of the derailment to support the NTSB’s investigation.”
The statement says the EPA is leading federal efforts to hold Norfolk Southern accountable “and make the company clean up its mess”, because “that is how it works in response to a chemical spill”.
The statement also takes a veiled shot at Republicans, including Donald Trump, due in East Palestine today, for weakening federal safety regulations applicable to companies like Norfolk Southern and businesses like transporting dangerous chemicals.
“The [department] will continue to do its part by helping get to the bottom of what caused the derailment and implementing rail safety measures, and we hope this sudden bipartisan support for rail safety will result in meaningful changes in Congress.”
The day so far
Donald Trump is expected in East Palestine, Ohio later today, where he’ll undoubtedly take every opportunity to criticize the Biden administration’s response to the derailment and toxic waste spill in the community earlier this month. Two can play at that game, however, and Democrats have seized on his trip to remind voters of his administration’s friendliness to the rail industry, and argue it set the stage for the derailment. We may hear more about that tomorrow, when transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg pays his own visit to the community.
Here’s what else has happened so far today:
Democrats got some good news in their quest to hold the Senate after next year, when Montana’s Jon Tester announced he’d stand for re-election. However, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin remains non-committal on another term.
House Republicans want to learn everything they can about American support to Ukraine.
Joe Biden is taking a page out of Trump’s book with new restrictions meant to dramatically crack down on asylum seekers arriving at the border with Mexico.
Transportation secretary Buttigieg to visit East Palestine on Thursday
Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit East Palestine, Ohio on Thursday, Politico reports.
He’ll receive an update from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the freight derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in the community, according to the report, which cites a person familiar with his plans.
The former (and perhaps future) presidential candidate has repeatedly ended up in the spotlight lately, often for the wrong reasons. As HuffPost reported earlier this week, both Republicans and progressives have questioned his leadership after the Southwest Airlines debacle over the holiday season, and the 10 day-gap before he commented on the East Palestine derailment did not help matters.
Here’s an example of how Democrats are looking to turn the tables on Donald Trump ahead of his visit to East Palestine.
The former president, who is again running for the White House in 2024, is expected to use the visit to criticize the Biden administration for not doing enough to help the community of less than 5,000 people on the state’s eastern flank. According to Fox News, Trump will “donate thousands of gallons of cleaning supplies and more than a dozen pallets of water” to East Palestine when he appears there.
But for Democrats, it’s the perfect opportunity to remind voters of policies they say were friendly to the rail industry and set the stage for the derailment.
“As Donald Trump travels to East Palestine, Ohio tomorrow, his trip serves as a reminder that Trump and his administration made gutting transportation and environmental safety regulations a key priority of their MAGA agenda,” the Democratic National Committee said in an email to reporters.
Linking to a number of media reports of his transportation policies, it said, “Trump and his administration rolled back … transportation safety and environmental rules, including toxic chemical regulations,” and “Trump’s budget proposals slashed funding for investigating accidents, enforcing environmental rules, and prosecuting environmental crimes”.
Donald Trump is expected to use his visit to East Palestine, Ohio to attack Joe Biden and his administration over the disastrous train derailment, but critics of the former president say the trip only highlights the former president’s role in loosening safety regulations for railroads.
Trump, the twice impeached former president now looking to secure the Republican nomination for the 2024 election, has already hit out at Biden visiting Kyiv while residents of East Palestine fret about the pollution unleashed after 20 train cars carrying toxic materials such as vinyl chloride derailed and caught fire near the small town earlier this month.
“You have a president going to Ukraine and you have people in Ohio that are in desperate need of help,” Trump said on Monday.
But Trump’s critics have been quick to point out that his administration, which rolled back more than 100 environmental rules in total, watered down several regulations at the behest of the rail industry.
Trump withdrew an Obama-era plan to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, shelved a rule that demanded at least two crew members on freight trains and dropped a ban on transporting liquified natural gas by rail, despite fears this could cause explosions.
“I don’t know exactly what he’s planning to do there, especially since his administration was anti-regulation and pro-industry every step of the way,” Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, told CBS on Tuesday. Buttigieg has been attacked by Republicans for failing to visit the site of the Ohio disaster.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board – the lead agency investigating the crash – has said that the improved braking system wouldn’t have applied to the train that veered off its tracks in East Palestine, but environmental groups are pushing for the Biden administration to reinstate the rule anyway.
There has been pressure from some Republicans to review safety rules, with Mike DeWine, the Ohio governor, saying it is “absurd” that the train could be marked as non-hazardous because it wasn’t exclusively carrying toxic material. But many other GOP figures have so far shied away from calling for tighter regulation of the rail industry, instead focusing on what they say has been a ponderous response from the Biden administration.
Where’s Joe Biden’s clean energy revolution happening? Often in red states, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports:
Georgia, a state once known for its peaches and peanuts, is rapidly becoming a crucible of clean energy technology in the US, leading a pack of Republican-led states enjoying a boom in renewables investment that has been accelerated by Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August, billions of dollars of new clean energy investment has been announced for solar, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing in Georgia, pushing it to the forefront of a swathe of southern states that are becoming a so-called “battery belt” in the economic transition away from fossil fuels.
“It seems like all roads are currently leading to Georgia, it’s really benefiting disproportionately from the Inflation Reduction Act right now,” said Aaron Brickman, senior principal at energy research nonprofit RMI. Brickman said the $370bn in clean energy incentives and tax credits in the bill are a “complete game changer. We’ve just frankly never had that before in this country. The IRA has transformed the landscape in a staggering way”.
Let’s pause for a minute and look at the state of play in the battle for the Senate, which Democrats are going to have a heck of a time maintaining control of in 2024.
They control the chamber by only two seats, and next year, several Democrats representing red or purple states will be up for re-election, including in Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
So it was good news for them today when Jon Tester, Montana’s Democratic senator, said he’d run again in 2024. He’s held the seat since 2007, and Democrats are hoping he can pull off another win:
It's official. I'm running for reelection.
— Jon Tester (@jontester) February 22, 2023
Montanans need a fighter that will hold our government accountable and demand Washington stand up for veterans and lower costs for families. I will always fight to defend our Montana values. Let's get to work.
Now for the murky, perhaps not-so-great news. West Virginia’s Joe Manchin has irritated progressives like no other over the past two years, but let’s face facts: he is a pivotal part of the Democrats’ Senate majority, and if he steps aside, it could put their control in serious jeopardy in 2024. Manchin hasn’t yet said what his plans are for next year, and there’s been speculation he’ll look for another job – perhaps even a run for president.
Punchbowl News reports the senator did pretty much nothing to clear the waters in an interview with West Virginia MetroNews today:
So, to recap, Manchin very strategically says he is not running for president “today” (which is technically true!) but he’s very clearly leaving the door open: “You don’t know who the Democrat and Republican nominee are going to be...” https://t.co/25To6uymGD
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) February 22, 2023
The Biden administration is tightening down dramatically on asylum seekers who arrive at its southern border, rolling out a policy similar to one attempted by Donald Trump that would target migrants who pass through a third country on their way to Mexico:
The United States could bar tens of thousands of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border from claiming asylum under a proposal unveiled on Tuesday that would be the most wide-ranging attempt yet by Joe Biden’s administration to deter unauthorized crossings.
Under the new rules, the US would generally deny asylum to migrants who show up at the US southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through, mirroring an attempt by the Trump administration that never took effect because it was blocked in court.
The measure, while stopping short of a total ban, imposes severe limitations on asylum for people of any nationality except Mexicans, who don’t have to travel through a third country to reach the US.
The proposed rule establishes “a rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility” for anyone who passes through another country to reach the US border with Mexico without first seeking protection there, according to a notice in the Federal Register. Exceptions will be made for people with an “acute medical emergency”, “imminent and extreme threat” of violent crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping, being a victim of human trafficking or “other extremely compelling circumstances”. Children traveling alone will also be exempted, according to the rule.
A divide among Americans over supporting Ukraine would be a boon for Russian president Vladimir Putin. In fact, he did his part to make that happen yesterday by pulling Russia out of its last nuclear arms treaty with the United States, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington and J Oliver Conroy report:
Vladimir Putin’s threat to suspend Russian participation in New Start, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the US, represents a blatant attempt to divide American opinion over the war on Ukraine by raising the specter of nuclear armageddon, experts and policymakers warned on Tuesday.
Putin announced his intention to halt participation in the agreement towards the end of a belligerent 100-minute speech in which he charged the US and western powers with trying to inflict “strategic defeat” on Russia. His fiery rhetoric prompted instant reaction across the political spectrum in Washington.
Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a Russian specialist at the White House National Security Council from 2017 to 2019, told the Guardian that Putin was “playing to the rifts in the United States”. The strategy was to increase political discord in an attempt to embolden calls for an end to US support for Ukraine.
“It’s playing to all those people who want Ukraine to surrender and capitulate to avoid a massive nuclear exchange and world war three, a kind of nuclear armageddon,” she said.
Thomas Graham, Russia director within George W Bush’s National Security Council, agreed that part of Putin’s calculation was to provoke “certain circles in the US to wonder whether the risks of supporting Ukraine are worth it”.
Speaking of Ukraine, the top Republican investigator in the House of Representatives James Comer has written to the state and defense departments as well as USAID demanding an accounting of Washington’s assistance to Kyiv.
“The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is conducting oversight of the federal government’s administration of U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance to Ukraine. Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Congress has provided more than $113 billion for security, humanitarian, economic, and governance assistance. It is critical that government agencies administering these funds ensure they are used for their intended purposes to prevent and reduce the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse,” Comer, who chairs the House oversight committee, and his Republican colleagues wrote in a letter to the heads of the three agencies.
“We learned from efforts in Afghanistan that the World Bank does not always have effective monitoring and accounting of funds, and often lacks transparency. We also learned that unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritize spending quickly lead to increased corruption and reduced effectiveness of programs. As the United States continues to filter assistance through multilateral organizations with pressure to spend funds quickly, we must ensure proper protections are in place to prevent the misuse of funds,” he continued.
While House GOP leadership has yet to openly break with Kyiv, their leaders, including speaker Kevin McCarthy, have signaled hesitation to continuing to fund Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, at least at the same levels as over the past year.
The Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio has suffered a fate common to, well, just about anything in America: it became embroiled in this country’s wonderful politics.
Republicans, for instance, have used it evidence to wag their fingers at Joe Biden for visiting Kyiv over the weekend, saying he should have gone to East Palestine instead. Expect Donald Trump to say the same thing when he appears in the town later today, which lies in Ohio’s heavily Republican sixth district.
But as the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reported on Monday, railroad worker unions see the disaster not as a political prop, but as exactly the type of consequence they’d warned about for years. Here’s more from his story:
US railroad workers say the train derailment in Ohio, which forced thousands of residents to evacuate and is now spreading a noxious plume of carcinogenic chemicals across the area, should be an “eye-opening” revelation for Congress and “an illustration of how the railroads operate, and how they’re getting away with a lot of things”.
Workers and union officials cited the Norfolk Southern Railway derailment in early February as a glaring example of why safety reforms to the industry – which include providing workers with paid sick leave – need to be made.
Thirty-eight cars on the train derailed in the town of East Palestine, near the Pennsylvania border, including 11 cars carrying hazardous materials that incited an evacuation order, a controlled release of chemicals, and fears of harmful chemical exposure to residents, wildlife and waterways.
Unions and rail companies have been at loggerheads for years over new contracts that would address what workers describe as poor working conditions, and would provide paid sick days amid grueling schedules caused by labor cuts.
“Without a change in the working conditions, without better scheduling, without more time off, without a better work-life balance, the railroad is going to suffer,” said Ron Kaminkow, the general secretary of Railroad Workers United, an Amtrak engineer in Reno, Nevada, and the vice-president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (Blet) local 51. “It’s just intrinsic, with short staffing. Corners get cut and safety is compromised.”
Trump to face questions on environmental record in visit to Ohio toxic train crash
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump is today heading to East Palestine, Ohio, where a Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals derailed earlier this month, causing an environmental disaster and an intensifying political firestorm. Trump wants to seize the initiative from Joe Biden, who Republicans have criticized for not visiting the Ohio town, though he did dispatch his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief. But Trump, who is running for president once again, may have questions of his own to answer in East Palestine. During his four years in the White House, he loosened up safety regulations for rail operators, and tried to curb the EPA’s powers.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Biden continues his visit to Poland, where he’ll be meeting with the leaders of America’s eastern European allies and Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, before flying back to Washington later today.
The supreme court will hear the second of two cases that address the question of whether tech companies are liable for users’ online speech.
Kamala Harris will be in Maryland to talk about the Biden’ administration’s efforts to lower costs for homebuyers.
