Closing summary
That’s all from the US politics blog for today, and indeed the week. Please join us again on Monday.
Donald Trump learned that he would continue to be fined $10,000 a day by a court in New York for failing to hand over documents pertaining to the state’s criminal probe of his business dealings.
State court judge Arthur Engoron was scathing of a two-paragraph affadavit submitted by the former president’s lawyers claiming he didn’t have any of the documents wanted by New York’s attorney general Letitia James.
Here’s where else our day went:
- The White House expressed dismay to Indonesia over its invitation for Russia’s president Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit in Bali later this year.
- House speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers will vote “as soon as possible” to approve Joe Biden’s request for an additional $33bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an emergency fuel waiver to allow sales of plant-based E15 gasoline during the summer, which the White House says can save families 10c per gallon.
- Biden and Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador discussed US plans to lift Covid-19 immigration restrictions and the countries’ differences over sanctions on Russia for its war in Ukraine.
- Children younger than five will probably have to wait at least another two months before being able to receive Covid-19 vaccines, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set hearings for June.
- Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said the House panel investigating Donald Trump’s 6 January insurrection would consider subpoenas if senior Republicans won’t testify voluntarily.
A quick reminder that you can follow developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on our 24-hour live news blog here.
White House dismayed over Indonesia's G20 invitation to Putin
The Biden administration has expressed its dismay to Indonesia over the Asian country’s invitation to Russian president Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit in Bali later this year.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at her afternoon briefing:
The president has expressed publicly his opposition to President Putin attending the G20... we’ve conveyed our view that we don’t think they should be a part of it publicly, and privately as well.
The UK, US and Canada staged a coordinated walkout of a G20 session in Washington DC earlier this month in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden has also publicly called for Russia to be expelled from the G20 group of the world’s leading industrial nations.
Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo said Friday he had spoken to Putin and the Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy by phone this week, and that both said they would attend the G20 gathering, according to the Associated Press:
I reiterated the importance of ending the war immediately. I also emphasized that peaceful efforts should continue and Indonesia is ready to contribute to these peaceful efforts.
Psaki said it was too early to predict what the summit would look like, or if both leaders would attend:
There’s a lot that can happen between now and then but we certainly haven’t seen an indication to date of Russia’s plan to participate in diplomatic talks constructively.
Joe Biden had a “very constructive” call with Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday, the White House secretary Jen Psaki said at her afternoon briefing.
She said the two leaders spoke mostly about immigration, and the Biden administration’s planned termination of Title 42 Covid-19 restrictions next month:
The majority of the conversation was about migration and continued work on coordination, economic coordination, on taking steps to reduce migration to the border.
They have been a partner in that over the last several months.
López Obrador, meanwhile, said in a Spanish language tweet that he had a “cordial” conversation with Biden, and that his foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard would visit Washington DC next week to discuss the Summit of the Americas, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles in June.
The White House said their call lasted 52 minutes, ending just before 2 pm, the Associated Press reports.
Senior Biden administration officials said ahead of the conversation that it would also address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global economic challenges, the pandemic, climate change and the trade in illicit drugs.
Psaki said during her briefing that she didn’t have full details of the conversation, but that the virtual conference had been “very constructive”.
Biden had been expected to press Mexico on tightening sanctions against Russia.
Tuvimos una cordial conversación con el presidente Biden. Tratamos temas de interés en la relación bilateral y acordamos que el secretario Marcelo Ebrard visitará Washington el lunes para avanzar en temas de cooperación para el desarrollo y sobre la Cumbre de las Américas. pic.twitter.com/IIWeLii7S7
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) April 29, 2022
Trump affadavit: I don't have documents NY attorney general is seeking
Donald Trump has told a New York court he doesn’t have any of the documents the state’s attorney general Letitia James wants as she continues her criminal probe into his business dealings.
The former president is facing fines of $10,000 a day and was held in civil contempt by state court judge Arthur Engoron on Monday, and appealed the ruling two days later.
In a single-page, two-paragraph affadavit filed by his lawyers this afternoon seeking to overturn the fines, Trump argues:
To the best of my knowledge, (i) I do not have any of the documents requested in the subpoena dated December 1, 2021 in my personal possession; and (ii) if there are any documents responsive to the subpoena I believe they would be in the possession or custody of the Trump Organization.
Engoron denied the request to end the fines and overturn the contempt ruling on Friday, saying he was not satisfied with the affidavit and that there was no evidence he had conducted a thorough search for the records sought by James.
“I am surprised he doesn’t seem to have any documents, they’re all with the organization”, the judge said.
“I will consider your request to terminate the fine,” he told Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba. “But if you don’t hear from me, the clock is still ticking”.
James says her investigation has turned up evidence the Trump Organization, which manages hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, has given banks and tax authorities misleading financing information in order to obtain financial benefits such as favorable loans and tax breaks.
Read more:
Updated
Armed citizens will soon be allowed to roam Florida with no requirement for any firearms training, the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has said.
In what critics will see as another pitch for support from the party’s rightwing base as he mulls a 2024 presidential run, DeSantis made the promise at a press conference Friday, the Miami Herald is reporting.
“I can’t tell you exactly when, but I’m pretty confident that I will be able to sign ‘constitutional carry’ into law in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said, according to the newspaper.
“The Legislature will get it done. I can’t tell you if it’s going to be next week, six months, but I can tell you that before I am done as governor, we will have a signature on that bill”.
Constitutional carry allows weapons to be carried without the need for a permit or training. It differs from open carry, which allows those with firearms to display them openly.
DeSantis is favored to win reelection in November, a springboard to a possible White House run in two year’s time. He has signed numerous “culture war” bills into law in recent weeks that will play well with his Republican base, including a “don’t say gay” law that outlaws classroom discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Florida has an unenviable record in mass shootings, notably the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando that left 49 dead, and the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Parkland in which 17 students and staff were murdered by a former student.
Nikki Fried, Florida’s agriculture commissioner responsible for issuing gun licenses, a and the only statewide elected Democrat, slammed DeSantis’s promise in a statement:
This is absurd political pandering from the governor of a state that has experienced some of the worst mass shootings in our country’s history and in a nation where we have the highest rates of gun violence in the world.
It’s an insult to the memories and families of every victim of gun violence.” We should be passing laws to prevent gun violence.
Fried is among the frontrunners for the Democratic party’s nomination to challenge DeSantis for governor later this year.
I’ve made it a priority to ensure that background checks are performed for every concealed carry permit @FDACS issues. We should be passing laws to prevent gun violence, not allowing permitless open carry. pic.twitter.com/5kwghE6lk2
— Commissioner Nikki Fried (@NikkiFriedFL) April 29, 2022
Interim summary
Here’s where things stand midway through the day:
- House speaker Nancy Pelosi says lawmakers will vote “as soon as possible” to approve Joe Biden’s request for an additional $33bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued an emergency fuel waiver to allow sales of plant-based E15 gasoline during the summer, which the White House says can save families 10c per gallon.
- Biden and Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador are discussing US plans to lift Covid-19 immigration restrictions and the countries’ differences over sanctions on Russia for its war in Ukraine.
- Children younger than five will probably have to wait at least another two months before being able to receive Covid-19 vaccines, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set hearings for June.
- Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said the House panel investigating Donald Trump’s 6 January insurrection would consider subpoenas if senior Republicans won’t testify voluntarily.
The environmental protection agency (EPA) on Friday followed through on Joe Biden’s demand to allow E15 fuel to be sold in the summer, which the president hopes will help reverse, or at least arrest soaring prices at the pump.
Biden announced the move in Iowa earlier this month, claiming that the fuel with a higher ethanol content than regular gasoline would save families about 10 cents per gallon. Sales of plant-based E15 are usually banned at gas stations beyond 1 June because it creates denser levels of smog in higher temperatures.
The White House, which has blamed what it calls “Putin’s price hike” on gasoline supply shortages created by Russia’s war in Ukraine, welcomed the EPA’s issuance of an emergency fuel waiver. In a statement, press secretary Jen Psaki said:
The waiver is a critical step to address the fuel supply crisis and follows President Biden’s announcement earlier this month laying out actions to increase use of biofuels in order to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, accelerate the clean energy transition, build real US energy independence, support American agriculture and manufacturing, and save Americans money at the pump.
At current prices, E15 can save a family 10 cents per gallon of gas on average and many stores sell E15 at an even greater discount and today’s waiver will allow families to pay that lower price for months to come.
Industry groups, however, doubt the impact of the plan. E15, they say, will be available only at about 2,300 of the nation’s more than 100,000 gas stations, concentrated in the Midwest and the South, including Texas.
Read the EPA statement here.
William Barr, Donald Trump’s former attorney general, said in an interview on Thursday that it would be a “big mistake” for the Republican party to nominate Trump for president in 2024.
Appearing on the Newsmax television channel, Barr said Trump, who has hinted that he will run again, would not be a sound choice.
“I don’t think he should be our nominee – the Republican party nominee,” Barr said.
“And I think Republicans have a big opportunity – it would be a big mistake to put him forward.”
In a poll in January 57% of Republican voters said they would choose Trump in 2024. Trump also won the less scientific Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, in February, by a large margin.
Trump, who was impeached twice during his four years in the White House, has repeatedly teased his supporters with suggestions he will run again.
“We did it twice, and we’ll do it again,” Trump told a crowd at the CPAC convention – claiming again that he won the 2020 election.
“We’re going to be doing it again a third time.”
Still, Barr’s remarks will be sure to anger Trump, who has repeatedly clashed with his former attorney general since losing the 2020 election.
In Barr’s book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, he wrote that Trump had “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed”.
Trump, Barr said, has surrounded himself with “sycophants” and “whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories”.
Read more:
Pelosi: House to vote on Biden's $33bn Ukraine request 'as soon as possible'
Nancy Pelosi says the House will vote to pass Joe Biden’s $33bn request for aid for Ukraine “as soon as possible.”
Speaking at her weekly press briefing on Friday morning, the House speaker framed the administration’s request as one of a number of “emergencies” Congress needed to address urgently.
“We have emergencies here. We need to have the Covid money, and time is of the essence because we need the Ukraine money... so I would hope that we can do that [soon]”, Pelosi said, according to Reuters.
The speaker, however, was unable to give any indication as to when any vote might be, saying only: “We hope to as soon as possible pass that legislation”.
Biden announced on Thursday plans to more than double US spending on military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as the country fights the two-month old Russian invasion.
Funding for coronavirus relief, meanwhile, remains stalled in Congress. The White House wants more than $20bn; and a bipartisan $10bn “agreement in principle” was scuttled by Republican anger over the Biden administration planning to end the Title 42 immigration policy that blocked migrants because of the pandemic.
Read more:
Biden and Mexico's López Obrador to discuss immigration, Ukraine
Joe Biden and Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador will discuss US plans to lift Covid-19 immigration restrictions at the southern border during a virtual conference at lunchtime, Reuters reports.
The two leaders will also talk about differences between the countries over how to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting comes just days after a federal judge ordered the homeland security department to halt preparations to lift on 23 May the Trump-era Title 42 public health order that allows the expulsion of migrants to prevent the spread of the virus.
Mexican officials share concerns of the homeland security department that its repeal will create a spike in migration, are claims by Republicans in the US that a spike in gang activity and drug crimes will follow.
Mexico has also appeared reluctant to join the US and European allies in issuing sanctions against Russia.
“We respect Mexico as a leader in the United Nations and we obviously hope that they will join us in imposing a cost on the Kremlin for what it is doing... by working with us to enforce sanctions implemented by the US and our partners,” an anonymous senior Biden administration official told Reuters, acknowledging the “inevitably different approaches” by the countries.
Talking of Covid-19, the government’s leading infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci is attempting clean-up over his comments in an PBS interview this week that the pandemic stage of the virus was “over” in the US.
Speaking at a virtual meeting hosted Friday by the National Press Club, Fauci said the pandemic was not over, and it was unlikely that the US would ever eliminate Covid-19 completely, Reuters reports:
When I said we are no longer in that fulminant acute phase, that does not mean that the pandemic is over. By no means is it over. We still are experiencing a global pandemic.
Fauci said health officials were instead hoping to get out of what he called the “acute pandemic phase”.
In his interview with PBS NewsHour posted on Tuesday, he pointed to decreases in deaths and hospitalizations and stated: “Right now, we are not in the pandemic phase in this country,” although he acknowledged that globally it was still ongoing.
On Wednesday, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted: “There’s no question that we’re in a different moment in our fight against Covid. But we also know Covid isn’t over, and the pandemic isn’t over.”
At least 38 states this week reported an increase in new infections of Covid-19, fueled by the Omicron subvariant BA.2. Cases have spiked 50% in two weeks nationwide, the New York Times says.
FDA panel to assess Covid vaccines for under-fives in June
Children younger than five will probably have to wait at least another two months before being able to receive Covid-19 vaccines, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set a series of hearings for June.
The reviews are typically the final step before authorizing the shots, the Associated Press reports. The FDA said it plans to convene its outside panel of vaccine experts on June 8, 21 and 22 to review applications from Moderna and Pfizer for child vaccines.
On Thursday, Moderna submitted data to the FDA that it hopes will prove its two low-dose shots can protect children younger than 6.
Pfizer is soon expected to announce if three of its even smaller-dose shots work for very young children, months after the disappointing discovery that two doses weren’t quite strong enough.
The announcement follows months of frustration from families impatient for a chance to vaccinate their young children, along with complaints from politicians bemoaning the slow pace of the process, the AP says.
The FDA has posted a video to social media attempting to explain to families what’s happening with vaccines for children younger than five.
For children under 5, what's the process for making a COVID-19 vaccine available? Dr. Peter Marks explains in the latest episode of "Just a Minute!" pic.twitter.com/Cg4rvFqVYP
— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) April 29, 2022
Now we know what Donald Trump considered one of the biggest threats to his safety before and during his single term in office: tomatoes.
The revelation came during the former president’s testimony to attorneys representing a group of protestors suing over their violent removal from a Trump campaign rally in 2015, reported by CNN’s The Point.
“And you said: ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you.’ That was your statement?” Benjamin Dictor, an attorney for the protestors, asked Trump.
The then-White House hopeful replied in the affirmative:
It’s very dangerous stuff. You can get killed with those things.
We were threatened. They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.
Dictor wanted to know how Trump became aware of the threat of being beaned by a tomato. The answer:
We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s very violent stuff. Tomato, when they start doing that stuff, it’s very dangerous. There was an alert out that day.
No doubt aware of the potentially serious consequences of admitting he had intended security staff or other rally attendees to commit violence, Trump when on to insist that his “knock the crap out them, would you” comment was a joke.
It was said sort of in jest. Buy maybe, you know, a little truth to it. I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit. And some fruit is a lot worse than... tomatoes are bad by the way. But it’s very dangerous... they were going to hit very hard.
The videotaped deposition took place in New York’s Bronx county in October 2021.
Updated
The Guardian’s Sam Levine looks at how changing electoral maps across the country spell big trouble for Democrats in November’s midterm elections:
New York’s highest court on Wednesday dealt national Democrats a major setback in their quest to keep control of the US House, when it struck down the state’s 26 congressional districts because they were illegally distorted in favor of Democrats.
New York is critical for Democrats in the decennial process of redrawing congressional districts. The state’s 26 seats offer the party one of the richest opportunities to use mapmaking power to their advantage.
Democrats currently have a 19-8 advantage in the congressional delegation, but drew a map that gives them three additional seats, increasing their advantage to 22-4 (New York is losing a congressional seat because of population loss). It would give the party 85% of the congressional seats in a state Joe Biden won with about 61% of the vote.
Democrats saw that advantage as a necessary effort to counter aggressive Republican efforts to distort district lines to add Republican-friendly seats in places like Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.
Shorter 2022 redistricting: it's permissible to brazenly gerrymander in some states (mostly red), but not others (mostly blue). As long as that's true, you're not going to end up with a "fair" or "equitable" national House map.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) April 27, 2022
“For Democrats, a maximal gerrymander in New York was almost a prerequisite to any chances of holding the House,” said Dave Wasserman, a redistricting expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Over the past few months, observers have noted that the redistricting process appeared to be going unexpectedly well for Democrats, who were buoyed by a mix of court rulings striking down Republican gerrymandered districts and anti-gerrymandering reforms. Some predicted that redistricting would end in a “partisan wash” or potentially even a balanced US House.
Now, that looks increasingly unlikely.
“A couple of months ago redistricting looked like a silver lining in an otherwise bleak election cycle for Democrats. Today, it looks like just another Republican bonus,” he said. “Democrats can’t catch a break.”
Overall, Republicans are poised to pick up between four and five in the House this year, according to FiveThirtyEight. Republicans need to flip five Democratic-held seats to take control of the House.
The ruling in New York, which could cost Democrats three seats, comes just after Florida governor Ron DeSantis successfully pushed an aggressively gerrymandered map that adds four additional GOP seats.
Read more:
The White House communications director Kate Bedingfield is the latest Biden administration official to announce that she has tested positive for Covid-19.
Vice-president Kamala Harris tested positive earlier this week, following recent infections for House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki, and Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Ron Wydon.
In a tweet, Bedingfield said she was not considered “a close contact” of President Joe Biden, despite seeing him on Wednesday. Bedingfield said she is vaccinated and boosted, was experiencing only mild symptoms, and was working from home.
This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. I last saw the President Wednesday in a socially-distanced meeting while wearing an N-95 mask, and he is not considered a close contact as defined by the CDC.
— Kate Bedingfield (@WHCommsDir) April 29, 2022
My colleague Hugo Lowell has more on the 6 January panel’s efforts to persuade Republicans to give evidence voluntarily:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to issue letters requesting voluntary cooperation from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and around a dozen other Republican members of Congress, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The panel intends to issue a letter to McCarthy – the top House Republican – and is considering further letters to Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, as well as some Republican senators, the sources said.
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chair of the select committee, is expected to authorize the list of Republican members of Congress caught up in the investigation potentially as soon as this week. The letters may come either this week or next week, the sources said.
The scope and subjects of the letters are not yet finalized, and the sources cautioned that the members of Congress approached for cooperation may still change. On Thursday, Thompson said only that he would send letters to McCarthy and other Republicans.
But the select committee’s move to seek cooperation from some of Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill – and for some members like McCarthy, Jordan and Perry, the second such request – marks a new gear for the inquiry as it reaches its final stages.
Read more:
Subpoenas for Republican politicians from the 6 January House inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat could be upcoming, a senior Democrat on the panel is hinting.
The Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin gave his assessment Friday in an interview with the Washington Post’s Early 202, one day after the bipartisan committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, announced that a series of public hearings would begin on 9 June.
Raskin has previously asserted the hearings “will blow the roof of the House”, and said in his interview Friday that the public has so far learned “only a very small fraction” of the information the bipartisan committee has gathered to date about Trump’s plotting and the deadly Capitol attack by the former president’s supporters.
Subpoenas to testify for Trump allies who could hold crucial information, including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and right-wing congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, are not the panel’s preferred route, Raskin said.
But he warned that if McCarthy, who has already failed to respond to one request, and other Trump allies Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania continue to stonewall, more forceful action could be taken:
The committee has been resolved to hear from everyone who has relevant information about what happened on January 6. And we also have expressed a strong preference for inviting people to come speak voluntarily at least first.
The moment subpoenas are involved the prospective witnesses can tie it up in court for a long time. I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen. But it would be just a lot better if everyone recognized his or her legal and civic obligations.
The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has pleaded not guilty to contempt charges, and the House voted to recommend similar charges for Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in December.
As for what information the panel has learned, Raskin said:
Even with all the leaks, it’s a very small fraction of the information we have that has become public. Most of the evidence has not been divulged. And, in any event, it has not been put together in a way that tells a single coherent story. And that’s our challenge.
Good morning readers, welcome to Friday’s US politics blog.
It’s a party weekend in the capital, with DC figures including Joe Biden looking forward to tomorrow’s return of the White House correspondents’ dinner – those who don’t have Covid-19 at least.
But there’s no let up in the 6 January House committee’s pursuit of Republicans who could hold crucial information about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat. The panel plans public hearings in June, and my colleague Hugo Lowell reports that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and rightwing Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, are in the investigation’s sights.
This morning, the Washington Post has published an in-depth interview with the Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, who says the public knows “only a very small fraction” of the information the panel has gathered to date.
For developments in the Ukraine conflict, hop on over to our live 24-hour news blog here.
In the US today:
- Joe Biden will speak at lunchtime with Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss mutual interests and priorities in the region.
- Biden will meet later with inspectors general of various government agencies to talk about how his $1tn infrastructure package will be implemented.
- Democrats’ fears are growing that changing electoral maps across the country spell big trouble for their prospects in November’s midterm elections.
- The White House press secretary Jen Psaki will deliver her final briefing of the week at 2pm.
