Trump New York grand jury back in session
The New York grand jury investigating Donald Trump over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels is back at work, and is hearing more evidence Monday, the Associated Press reports.
It’s still unclear, however, when the panel, which is meeting in a state office building in Lower Manhattan, might be asked to vote on a possible criminal indictment for the former president.
Today’s reconvening was the first time the panel heard testimony since last Monday, the day before Trump, falsely, insisted he was to be arrested. The AP said it confirmed the developments with “a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secretive proceedings”.
Uncertain is whether any additional witnesses might be called to testify.
Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters of his upcoming arrest.
That didn’t happen, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
Key events
Jean-Pierre: Israel reform delay a ‘space for compromise’
The Biden administration has welcomed Monday afternoon’s announcement by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he was delaying a judicial overhaul until the next parliament session in a few weeks’ time.
There has been widespread unrest in the country in protest at the unpopular reform bill.
Speaking at her afternoon press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, praised the Netanyahu move:
We welcome this announcement as an opportunity to create additional time and space for compromise. A compromise is precisely what we have been calling for.
And we continue to strongly urge Israeli leaders to find a compromise as soon as possible. We believe that it is the best path forward for Israel and all of its citizens.
Democratic societies are strengthened by checks and balances, and fundamental changes to a democratic system should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.
You can follow the latest on the protests in Israel on our live blog here:
White House on Tennessee school shooting: ‘Enough is enough’
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Joe Biden had been briefed on the “heartbreaking news of another shooting of innocent schoolchildren”.
Speaking at her afternoon briefing, Jean-Pierre said “enough was enough”, and reminded reporters that the president called in his state of the union address in February for lawmakers to act:
How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system, or to require the safe storage of guns?
Once again the president calls on Congress to do something before another child is senselessly killed in a preventable act of gun violence.
Jean-Pierre said Biden had taken more action than any president before him on gun safety, including a sweeping bipartisan package of reforms last year. But, she said, that wasn’t enough:
While we don’t know yet all the details in this latest tragic shooting, we know that too often our schools and communities are being devastated by gun violence.
Schools should be safe spaces for our kids to grow and learn and for our educators to teach.
Jill Biden has reacted to the elementary school shooting in Tennessee that claimed the lives of three children and three adults.
The first lady was speaking at an event in Washington DC:
We just learned about another shooting in Tennessee, a school shooting. I am truly without words. Our children deserve better and we stand, all of us, we stand with Nashville in prayer.
An airport executive who was Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) blasted “cheap, unfounded partisan attacks” for his decision to withdraw, Reuters reports.
Phil Washington, chief executive of Denver international airport, said Monday he wrote to the president over the weekend to say he was stepping down:
I no longer saw a respectful, civil, and viable path forward to senate confirmation.
I faced cheap and unfounded partisan attacks and procedural obstruction with regard to my military career that would have further lengthened the already delayed confirmation process.
Senate Republicans said Washington was unqualified to serve, citing his limited aviation experience and failure to answer some key questions.
Democrats were forced to cancel a planned committee vote last week on his confirmation after some senators remained undecided.
Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was one of those unconvinced by Washington, even after a one-on-one phone call.
“The administration should quickly nominate a permanent FAA administrator with the necessary, substantial aviation safety experience and expertise,” she said Monday.
Georgia prosecutors ordered to respond to Trump filing
There are developments in another of Donald Trump’s legal battles, this time in Georgia where a judge has ordered the Fulton county district attorney’s office to respond to a motion by the former president to throw out a report by a grand jury investigating his interference in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s legal team also wants all testimony from the inquiry rejected, and district attorney Fani Willis to be barred from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump.
Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney ordered Willis to respond by 1 May and state if an in-person hearing is needed to resolve any issues.
A spokesperson for Willis said her office would reply through its court filings, the Associated Press reported.
The filing is a longshot effort by Trump to escape one of many legal challenges he faces, including the state inquiry in New York into a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The grand jury in that case reconvened this morning as it mulls a felony charge for Trump for hiding a $130,000 payment to cover up an affair.
He also faces a twin justice department investigation into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office in 2021.
The Georgia investigation began shortly after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in which suggested his fellow Republican should “find” the exact number of votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow loss in the state to Biden.
The special grand jury heard from about 75 witnesses and considered other evidence before issuing a report that includes recommendations for Willis on criminal charges, the AP reports.
Martin Pengelly
Donald Trump has increased his national lead in the Republican presidential primary but could face a closer tussle with his chief rival, Ron DeSantis, in the first two states to vote, new polls show.
DeSantis has not declared his run but is expected to do so later this spring. Trump has hit the campaign trail, staging his first 2024 rally in Waco, Texas on Saturday.
DeSantis has struggled to reconcile support for Trump over the former president’s reportedly imminent indictment in New York with political attacks as he looks to differentiate himself in the primary. Correspondingly, Trump has begun to attack DeSantis in familiar slashing fashion.
This morning, a new survey from the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and the Harris Poll gives Trump a 26-point national lead over DeSantis, by 50% to 24%, a four-point gain since February.
The former vice-president Mike Pence was third with 7%. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was fourth with 5% support.
The website Axios, meanwhile, published the results of two polls from a Republican firm.
In head-to-head matches, Public Opinion Strategies put DeSantis eight points up on Trump in Iowa, which will kick off the primary in February 2024, and level in New Hampshire, the second state to vote.
But there was better news for Trump when Public Opinion Strategies asked respondents to choose from the whole field of declared and potential contenders.
Then, Trump and DeSantis were tied in Iowa while Trump led by 12 points in New Hampshire.
Other surveys have shown such potential for anti-Trump candidates to split the vote and give the former president the nomination without a majority.
That happened in 2016, when Trump first won the Republican nomination. That year, the Texas senator Ted Cruz won Iowa before Trump swept to victory in New Hampshire.
Trump was not seriously challenged thereafter.
Martin Pengelly
Salomé Gómez-Upegui reports on troubling developments in Florida, a relative refuge in the US south for women seeking full access to reproductive healthcare…
A six-week abortion ban proposed by Florida Republicans earlier this month threatens to reverberate across the American south.
Following the supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the federal right to abortion, Florida became a strategic refuge for women seeking to access reproductive healthcare from states that banned abortion – places as varied as Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas.
“In the last six months since Dobbs, the number of out-of-state patients coming to [us] for abortion care has quadrupled,” Damien Filer, a representative of Planned Parenthood of South, East, and North Florida (PPSEN), told the Guardian.
“In Jacksonville and Tallahassee, our health centers on the state’s northern border, our general patient load has more than doubled, with the majority being from out of state.”
However, the proposed six-week ban introduced earlier this month is expected to pass the Republican-controlled Florida legislature and be signed by the governor, Ron DeSantis. It would go into effect only if the Florida supreme court upholds the current 15-week ban in a case it will decide at some point this year.
The six-week ban would include exceptions to save a woman’s life, and the limit would remain at 15 weeks in the case of rape or incest. However, women seeking an abortion under the rape and incest exception would be forced to prove their victim status with documents such as restraining orders, police reports or hospital records – often rendering these exceptions meaningless, advocates say, given the barriers to reporting assault.
Read on…
Martin Pengelly
Steven van Zandt, the musician and actor who starred as Silvio Dante in The Sopranos and plays guitar as Little Steven in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, called Jamie Raskin his “brother from another mother” today, in a message of support for the Maryland Democrat’s fight against cancer.
Raskin, 60, is undergoing chemotherapy for large B-cell lymphoma, a process which causes hair loss, and has taken to wearing bandannas. Van Zandt is known for wearing such headgear on stage.
In February, Raskin shared a picture of a bandanna given to him by Van Zandt, writing: “Look what I received from one of the greatest musicians on earth, a gift I will treasure almost as much as his song ‘I Am a Patriot’. You are about to see a step up in my chemo head-cover fashions for the next few months. Rock on Stevie, keep spreading the light.”
Raskin also told HuffPost: “I give all honor to Little Steven for creating this look for American men going through something.”
Van Zandt, 72, said: “That gift is from all of us who want to thank you every day for giving us hope that there is a politician that cares about justice!”
Raskin rose to national prominence during the presidency of Donald Trump. A professor of constitutional law, he was lead House manager in Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol riot.
Early on Monday, Van Zandt tweeted a picture with Raskin, both with bandannas in place, and his message of support. The actor and musician also posted a picture with Raskin and the CBS reporter Robert Costa, who he called his “DC bodyguards”.
Here’s more about Raskin, from our book critic, Charles Kaiser:
Interim summary
The headline news so far is the grand jury looking into Donald Trump’s hush money payment to an adult film star has reconvened in New York city, and is listening to evidence.
But we don’t know yet if the panel, which is meeting for the first time in almost a week at Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s behest, is hearing from new witnesses. Or when it might be asked to vote on a criminal indictment for the former president.
Here’s what else we’ve been following:
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There’s good health news for Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator John Fetterman, who is expecting to leave hospital soon after five weeks’ treatment for depression.
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Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator for Massachusetts, says she’s running for a third term in the chamber, and has plans to “end corruption in Washington, make the economy work for the middle class, and protect democracy”.
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Kamala Harris is in Africa, meeting with the leaders of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, and seeking to rebuild bridges with nations previously neglected by the US. The vice-president arrived in Africa with a $139m package of bilateral security, economic and development assistance, Reuters reported.
Coming up this afternoon: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is scheduled to brief reporters at 1pm. And Joe Biden will speak later after meeting women business leaders at a summit in Washington DC.
There’s good news over the health of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. Ramon Antonio Vargas has the details:
John Fetterman is expected to return to office soon after spending the last five-plus weeks in a hospital receiving treatment for mental depression, a spokesperson has said, though the staffer stopped short of offering an exact timeline.
“John will be out soon. Over a week but soon,” Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania senator, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article published on Friday. Saying that the team caring for Fetterman at Washington DC’s Walter Reed hospital was “amazing”, Calvello added: “Recovery is going really well.”
The Inquirer’s report noted that a hospital stay of more than five weeks is a relatively long time to be receiving inpatient care for depression. But, the report added, a Fetterman aide said the lengthy stay was “about John getting the care he needs and not rushing this”.
“Six weeks is a grain of sand in [the] six-year term” to which Fetterman was elected, the aide said, according to the Inquirer. “He’s doing what he needs to do.”
A CNN journalist had reported being told earlier in March by a source close to Fetterman that the longer hospital stay resulted from doctors taking extra care to get the senator’s “medication balance exactly right”.
A rising star among Democrats, Fetterman checked into Reed to be treated for clinical depression on 15 February. That stay started a week after he was hospitalized for feeling light-headed. He had also suffered a stroke while campaigning last year.
Read the full story:
Trump New York grand jury back in session
The New York grand jury investigating Donald Trump over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels is back at work, and is hearing more evidence Monday, the Associated Press reports.
It’s still unclear, however, when the panel, which is meeting in a state office building in Lower Manhattan, might be asked to vote on a possible criminal indictment for the former president.
Today’s reconvening was the first time the panel heard testimony since last Monday, the day before Trump, falsely, insisted he was to be arrested. The AP said it confirmed the developments with “a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secretive proceedings”.
Uncertain is whether any additional witnesses might be called to testify.
Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters of his upcoming arrest.
That didn’t happen, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
The mayor of Florence has invited students and their parents from a Florida Christian charter school to come and see Michelangelo’s statue of David to show them the 16th century masterpiece is not pornographic.
Hope Carrasquilla, principal of the Tallahassee Classical School, was ousted after a parent complained children were “exposed to pornography” when they were shown pictures of David in class.
The school’s governing board told her to stand down or be fired, reflecting the push by Florida’s hard right Republican governor Ron DeSantis to impose conservative values in schools and hand parents unprecedented powers.
Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, the Italian city where the Renaissance masterpiece is on display at the Accademia Gallery, has extended the invitation to Carrasquilla.
According to the Associated Press, Nardella said confusing art with pornography was “ridiculous”.
Cecilie Hollberg, the gallery’s director, told the AP: “To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding western culture and not understanding Renaissance art.”
The agency reported that several parents and teachers plan to protest Carrasquilla’s exit at a school board meeting tonight.
Read more:
Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republican House extremists have been gladhanding January 6 defendants at a Washington DC jail. Ed Pilkington has the details:
A jail in Washington has become the latest focal point of the US culture wars after a congressional delegation led by the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene visited defendants charged in 2021’s deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and championed them as “political prisoners”.
Greene high-fived the detainees and shook their hands, according to the Associated Press. As the tour group was leaving, the defendants chanted “Let’s go Brandon!”, an offensive phrase denigrating Democratic president Joe Biden.
Greene was joined by fellow far-right Republican members of the House oversight committee during a two-hour tour of the DC jail on Friday. The group included extremist Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who embraced Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot dead by police as she participated in the Capitol riot, NBC News reported.
This is at least the second visit that Greene has made in a campaign to reframe the incarcerated January 6 rioters from alleged violent insurrectionists into martyrs of the far-right cause. This time, however, her stunt was joined by Democratic members of the oversight committee who attended the tour so that they could hold their Republican peers to account, they said.
“We won’t let Marjorie Taylor Greene and these … extremists tell lies about the insurrectionists and their attack on our democracy,” one of the Democratic visitors, Robert Garcia of California, said before the tour began.
Read the full story:
Harris rebuilding bridges on African tour
Kamala Harris is in Africa, rebuilding bridges with nations neglected by the US while aiming to blunt China’s growing influence in the region.
The vice-president met Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo on Monday in Accra, and will hold summits with the leaders of Tanzania and Zambia as she promotes US business interests.
Harris is the fifth senior Biden administration official to visit Africa this year in what Politico says is “nothing less than the resetting of relations between the US and the countries she’s scheduled to visit”.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the UN ambassador; Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary; Antony Blinken, secretary of state; and first lady Jill Biden have all visited in recent months. The president plans to make the trip later this year.
Observers say the mending of fences is necessary, and overdue, following the Trump administration’s attitude towards the continent. Donald Trump drew global derision for his 2018 comment referring to some African nations as “shitholes”.
Harris arrived in Africa with a $139m package of bilateral security, economic and development assistance, Reuters reported.
Her week-long trip follows a December summit hosted by Biden in Washington with African leaders, in which the president announced he was “all in” on Africa’s future.
Elizabeth Warren announced Monday that she’s running for a third term in the Senate.
The Massachusetts Democrat, a progressive who ran for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, says she’s seeking reelection to “end corruption in Washington, make the economy work for the middle class and protect democracy,” according to the Associated Press.
We’ve won some big victories for working families in Massachusetts and across the country, but there’s a lot more to do. So today I’m making it official: I’m running for re-election to keep up the fight. pic.twitter.com/ebG3vJCot3
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 27, 2023
“I first ran for Senate because I saw how the system is rigged for the rich and powerful and against everyone else. I won because Massachusetts voters know it, too. And now I’m running for Senate again because there’s a lot more we’ve got to do,” Warren, 73, said in a campaign video released Monday.
A criminal indictment for Donald Trump for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels could come as early as today, as the former president continues to rail against the “fake” investigation by New York prosecutors.
We’re waiting for confirmation that a grand jury convened by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has reconvened on Monday, as expected, to hear final testimony in the case sparked by Trump’s alleged efforts to silence Daniels about their affair before the 2016 election.
Security has been stepped up around the Lower Manhattan courthouse where the jury has been meeting in secret, according to ABC News and other media outlets. Bragg received death threats last week, and a suspicious white powder was sent to his office.
The former president, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters falsely that he would be arrested last week.
He wasn’t, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
While we await developments, have a read of my colleague Ed Pilkington’s report on Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina conceding on Sunday that Trump effectively made up his insistence he was to be placed under arrest last week.
Good morning US politics blog readers. We begin the new week where we left the last, watching for a grand jury in New York City to reconvene and possibly hand down a criminal indictment of Donald Trump for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The episode has turned into something of a three-ring circus, with the former president railing against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg at a weekend rally in Texas, having previously told supporters, falsely, that he would be arrested last week.
He wasn’t, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that the ex-president’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
The grand jury, meanwhile, did not sit on Thursday or Friday, and we’re waiting to see if it gets back to business today. We’ll bring you any developments as they happen.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
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Joe Biden hosts the Women’s Business Summit in Washington DC, and is scheduled to deliver remarks at 2.30pm.
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Kamala Harris is on a goodwill trip to Africa, meeting leaders of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, and a host of business and community leaders. The vice-president is attempting to rebuild relations after then-president Trump’s 2018 denouncement of some African nations as “shithole countries”.
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The Senate convenes this afternoon to take up measures that would formally end the Gulf and Iraq wars of 1991 and 2002. Biden says he supports the repeal of authorizations for military interventions, which advanced to a final vote with bipartisan support last week.
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The first briefing of the week from the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is scheduled for 1pm.
