Closing summary
That’s a wrap for a particularly lively day in US politics.
Joe Biden sought to kickstart his stalled domestic agenda with a “Building a Better America” speech in North Carolina, talking up US manufacturing, jobs and technology investments before heading off to spend the Easter break at Camp David.
Thanks for joining us today, and remember you can follow developments in the Ukraine-Russia war in our 24-hour live blog here.
Here’s what else we covered today:
- Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former top aide, reportedly testified to the 6 January House panel looking into the deadly Capitol riot and other efforts by the former president to overturn the 2020 election.
- The Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from the commission on presidential debates, which has brought voters unfiltered information from White House hopefuls for decades.
- The Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill limiting abortions in the state to 15 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
- President Joe Biden’s approval rating plunged to 33% according to a new Quinnipiac poll, equaling his lowest previous rating from January.
It’s common knowledge that the Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott is no supporter of the Biden administration’s controversial decision to end the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy that blocked refugees at the US southern border because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But now the Democrat seeking to replace him, Beto O’Rourke, has added his voice to the wave of criticism, ripping Joe Biden for having no plan to deal with an expected influx of migrants when the policy is terminated on 23 May.
“It does not make sense to end this until there is a real plan and the capacity in place to handle those and address those that come over,” O’Rourke said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.
“Everyone is legitimately concerned about the lack of a plan. We should hold the federal government accountable for doing its job, and they’re not doing that.”
O’Rourke, who narrowly failed to unseat Republican Ted Cruz in their 2020 US senate race, trails Abbott in polls ahead of November’s gubernatorial election. Border security will be one of the biggest issues for voters in the midterms and O’Rourke will be careful not to adopt too radical an approach.
In comments to the Tribune, he indicated he wanted the Title 42 policy gone, but only when measures were in place to cope with the influx it would cause.
“What it has done is produced a situation where the same person is crossing multiple times a week, and under Title 42 that Border Patrol agent simply turns that person back around and then that person tries to cross the next day,” he said.
“They’re not arrested, not detained, there are no consequences for someone who is not following our laws when they try to come into this country, and it means that this country is not following its laws when it comes to those who are trying to make a legitimate claim for asylum.”
Biden was also keen to talk up one the major policy successes of his administration, the bipartisan $1.2tn infrastructure bill funding improvements to roads, bridges, mass transit systems and improvements to the ports, water infrastructure and the electricity grid.
He said:
All these investments, infrastructure, research and development, and making it in America, are really about one thing, empowering more communities to do what you’re doing here in Greensboro, transforming yourself into a city of the future, not the past, where instead of shuttered factories, we’re building clean energy technologies that are going to power the future, helping America achieve true energy independence by creating good jobs and fighting for climate change.
And if we continue this we’re not only going to be investing here, we’re going to export billions of dollars worth of product to the rest of the world.
Technology was a key theme of Biden’s speech. He praised Intel for investing $20bn in a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Columbus, Ohio, and the bus manufacturer Thomas, whose electric fleet of school buses, he said, meant: “hundreds of thousands of our children will no longer be inhaling the exhausts of diesel school buses.”
But, Biden cautioned, inaction could lead to the US falling behind in race to lead the world in technology:
Other countries are racing ahead. We can’t afford to wait. So Congress, get this bipartisan bill on my desk. North Carolina needs it. America needs it. Let’s meet this moment together.”
Updated
Biden touts 'Building a Better America', demands Congress pass innovation act
Joe Biden is at the podium in North Carolina talking up his administration’s successes in jobs growth and the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, while laying out how he proposes to tackle raging inflation.
The president is attempting to fire back up his domestic agenda, which has stalled since the collapse of his Build Back Better plans last year.
In Greensboro this afternoon, he is presenting his rebooted plans under the similar-sounding banner of Building a Better America, talking up US leadership in global technology, and pointing to a bright future for industries such as “cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, health care, and so much more.”
Urging Congress to get the bipartisan innovation bill to his desk, an act that would provide resources for, among other things, investment in technology-based industries, Biden said:
Every action I’ve taken to rebuild our economy has been guided by one principle: made in America means using products, parts and materials built right here in the United States of America.
It means bringing manufacturing jobs back, building supply chains here at home, not outsourcing from abroad.
Turning to inflation, which this week reached 8.5%, its highest level in more than four decades, Biden said:
Our economy has gone from being on the mend to being on the move. I know that we’re still facing challenges of high prices, inflation. I grew up in a family where the price of gasoline went up at the pump.
We need to address these high prices, and urgently, for working folks out there. When we build more in America we increase economic capacity. And ultimately it helps lower everyday prices for families. Look around. American manufacturing is coming back. Once again we’re seeing the pride that comes from stamping a product made in America.”
Updated
The Ohio supreme court has again blocked Republicans from implementing new districts for the state legislature that would be severely distorted in favor of the GOP, sending politicians back to the drawing board for a fifth time.
Since January, the state court has rejected four proposals for new districts in Ohio, saying all of them violated new language in the state constitution prohibiting gerrymandering “primarily to favor or disfavor a political party”.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, has been the decisive vote in all four of those decision, siding with her three Democratic colleagues. Republicans currently have a 4-3 majority on the Ohio supreme court.
The map the supreme court rejected on Thursday came about after a little bit of trickery from Republicans on the 7-member panel that controls the redistricting process. After a bipartisan team of mapmakers was close to producing a final map, the Republicans on the commission abruptly decided to submit their own proposal, drawn behind the scenes instead. That proposal was very similar to the one the Ohio supreme court had previously rejected.
Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose, a Republican, has said Ohio needs legislative maps in place by 20 April in order to vote in primary elections on 2 August.
In a separate federal lawsuit, Republicans have been pushing a 3-judge panel to implement a map by 20 April. The Ohio supreme court was unmoved by those arguments, noting that lawmakers could delay the August primary. It also warned the federal judges that they shouldn’t interfere in a state court’s decision over a state election.
The court ordered the panel to produce a new map by 6 May.
Pentagon: Russian battleship ‘significantly damaged and possibly not operational’
The Pentagon says it is still unable to confirm Ukraine’s claim that it fired a missile that severely damaged the Russian battleship Moskva in the Black Sea, but defense officials are certain there was “a significant explosion” that has likely left it crippled.
John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, has just wrapped up an afternoon briefing in which he expanded on his earlier comments to CNN that the ship was on fire.
“We do know there was a significant explosion on this cruiser. We do believe that the explosion caused a significant fire, which as of this morning was still raging,” he said.
“We assess that at least some of the crew members evacuated the ship and were placed aboard other Russian navy ships. I can’t tell you if it’s the whole crew.”
Kirby added that Pentagon officials no longer believed the Moskva was fully operational.
“This morning, we had assessed that the ship was under way under its own power, we are no longer able to make that certainty,” he said.
“It remains to be seen exactly what the major impact is going to be. This is a cruiser, they only have three in this class.”
Covid cases are on the rise in the north-eastern part of the US, as many Americans travel and gather together for spring break and religious holidays.
The rise is being driven by BA.2, a subvariant of Omicron which is more transmissible than its sibling BA.1, and was responsible for an estimated 86% of new Covid-19 cases nationwide last week, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
With precautions having been relaxed in many places earlier this year, experts have been looking at whether BA.2 will lead to another surge. “This is what the beginning of surges have looked like” in the past, said Julia Raifman, assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.
The rise in cases is expected to result in disruptions to school and work as more people become ill. The US is now at “a key point to trigger action”, Raifman said. “If we take decisive action to reduce the transmission, then we will reduce case growth… and if we don’t, then we’re really leaving it to the virus to decide what’s next.”
Case counts across the US remain comparatively low, and rates are still falling in several parts of the country. But the US overall is seeing a tick upward in numbers, with an average of 30,000 people testing positive in the US each day, compared with about 26,000 last week, according to the CDC.
Washington DC, where the mayor, Muriel Bowser, and the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, each declared they’d contracted Covid cases last week, has one of the highest two-week average increase. Rhode Island, Maryland, Kansas, Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York all saw more than 60% increases.
Philadelphia was the first city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate on Monday, in an attempt to stave off a rise in hospitalizations, which a University of Pennsylvania model predicts may rise in coming weeks. The city will also add requirements to show proof of vaccination if cases continue rising.
Read more:
Interim summary
We’re midway through a remarkably busy day in US politics, and Joe Biden has still to deliver his remarks in North Carolina on the economy and America’s global leadership in technology.
Here’s a quick look at where things stand:
- The Republican National Committee has voted to withdraw from the commission on presidential debates, which has brought voters unfiltered information from White House hopefuls for decades.
- Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former top aide, is reportedly testifying today to the 6 January House panel looking into the deadly Capitol riot and other efforts by the former president to overturn the 2020 election.
- The Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a bill limiting abortions in the state to 15 weeks, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
- President Joe Biden’s approval rating has plunged to 33% according to a new Quinnipiac poll, equaling his lowest previous rating from January.
Republicans quit presidential debate system
The Republican National Committee (RNC) voted unanimously on today to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying the group that has run the debates for decades was biased and refused to enact reforms, Reuters reports.
Today, the RNC voted to withdraw from the biased CPD, and we are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” the committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement.
It is unclear what format those debates would take or whether they would take place as often as in recent decades.
The nonprofit commission, which has run the debates since 1987, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move comes as U.S. political divisions have grown deeper, and the possibility of fewer debates could leave Americans with less access to unfiltered information about their aspiring leaders.
Statement from @GOPChairwoman pic.twitter.com/sLwXEYeIRZ
— Asma Khalid (@asmamk) April 14, 2022
Republicans have long accused the debate commission, which was founded to codify the debates as a permanent part of presidential elections, of being biased in favor of Democratic candidates.
CNN’s online report adds: Thursday’s vote comes after months of signals from the RNC that it sought a break from the commission. In June 2021, McDaniel sent a letter outlining several complaints about the commission’s practices, reflecting former President Donald Trump’s concerns about the conduct of the 2020 debates.
And in January, McDaniel sent another letter threatening to “prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates” unless the commission changed its rules.
The RNC claims it has not pulled its future nominees out of debates entirely.
We’ll have more details for you in due course.
Jean-Pierre also tore into the Texas governor Greg Abbott, who ordered, then appeared to back away from, secondary inspections of trucks that have caused “delays, protests and chaos” at the US southern border as state officials hunt illegal immigrants.
Customs and border protection (CBP) officials say commercial traffic at the Mexico border has dropped 60% since Abbott insisted the Texas department of public safety (DPS) reinspect vehicles already searched by the CBP.
The federal agency called the move “unnecessary” and Abbott backtracked, at least partially, on Wednesday when he dropped the requirement at one of the crossing points, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
“These truck inspections hurt Texas, and US trade and commerce, and will have no effect on asylum seekers,” Jean-Pierre said. “Texas DPS does not need to replace CBP at the southern border and attempting to do so jeopardizes public safety and America’s economic security.
“We have called on Governor Abbott to stop these unnecessary and duplicative inspections that are choking trade into our country.”
The White House is slamming Florida’s “radical” enacting of a 15-week abortion ban, urging Congress to send Joe Biden a bill to his desk enshrining women’s rights to the procedure into law.
“Women’s constitutional rights are under attack all across the country. That’s why this White House administration is doing everything we can in response to these attacks,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters just now in a “gaggle” aboard Air Force One as Biden heads for North Carolina.
“Roe v Wade was reaffirmed nearly five decades ago, and the president again calls on Congress to act and send a bill to his desk to shut down these radical steps being taken.”
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law this morning with no exceptions for pregnancies from rape, incest or human trafficking. It will take effect on 1 July.
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Dozens of federal agencies and every cabinet office on Thursday announced new strategies to “advance equity and racial justice” as part of a coordinated and comprehensive White House initiative aligned to Joe Biden’s executive action on equality.
According to a White House statement:
The first-ever Equity Action Plans … lay out more than 300 concrete strategies and commitments to address the systemic barriers in our nation’s policies and programs that hold too many underserved communities back from prosperity, dignity, and equality.
In one example, the justice department is improving language access to its programs so Americans with limited English proficiency can better report crimes, access services, understand their rights.
In another, the commerce department says it’s investing nearly $50bn in broadband infrastructure deployment, affordability, and digital inclusion efforts “to help close the digital divide, particularly for rural and Tribal communities”.
And the health and human services department “is increasing outreach to communities of color to encourage enrollment in free and low-cost health care, and is addressing the maternal mortality crisis that disproportionately impacts Black and Native families”.
Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office in January 2021 requiring the 90 federal agencies and cabinet departments to review racial justice and equity policies and come up with improved strategy proposals.
Updated
DeSantis enacts 15-week abortion ban in Florida
Florida now has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation after its Republican governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law a measure banning the procedure after 15 weeks.
There is no exemption for incest, rape, or human trafficking, with the only exceptions permitted if the mother’s health is threatened, or if the baby has a “fatal fetal abnormality”.
“We are here today to protect life. We are here today to defend those who can’t defend themselves,” DeSantis said at a signing ceremony in Kissimmee.
Florida’s new 15-week ban, which will take effect on 1 July, is in keeping with a number of similarly draconian laws passed or under consideration in multiple southern Republican states.
The US supreme court is expected to rule in June whether to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision that protected a woman’s right to abortion nationwide.
In a statement after it was approved by legislators last month, the White House called the Florida law “extreme by any standard”. Pro-choice groups have promised to fight it in court.
Read more here:
Updated
Ron DeSantis, the Trumpist Republican governor of Florida, has apparently found a way to upstage his Texas counterpart Greg Abbott, who is busing undocumented migrants to Washington DC to try to make an example of Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
As the first bus from Texas unloaded its passengers in the capital yesterday, coincidently right outside a Fox News television studio, DeSantis was concocting his own novel plot, according to the Boston Herald.
Under the scheme, undocumented aliens from the sunshine state will be taken by bus to Martha’s Vineyard, the ultra-wealthy Massachusetts enclave where celebrities including Spike Lee, David Letterman, Carly Simon and James Taylor make their home, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
DeSantis is also reportedly planning on sending them to Biden’s home state of Delaware and other perceivedly progressive states more amenable to taking in migrants.
“If Biden is dumping people, which he has dumped people, we now have money where we can reroute them to sanctuary states like Delaware,” DeSantis said, according to the Herald.
The White House has dismissed Abbott and DeSantis’s plans as “a publicity stunt,” noting that states do not have authority over federal immigration policy.
The first bus from Texas contained only undocumented migrants who consented to the journey, Abbott’s office confirmed.
“A bus carrying migrants from Texas arrived in Washington, D.C. this morning and a second bus is on the way, according to @GovAbbott ...Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia echoed the @WhiteHouse response that Abbott is looking for publicity.”@KHOU’s story: https://t.co/abNUrzzH8Q
— Rep. Sylvia Garcia (@RepSylviaGarcia) April 14, 2022
Stephen Miller’s testimony - if he is cooperative - will be almost without question some of the most valuable and compelling evidence the 6 January inquiry will have collated to date about Donald Trump’s involvement in the deadly insurrection.
Miller was an ever-present at Trump’s side throughout his administration, a supremely loyal and focused character credited as the mastermind of some of the most controversial and harshest policies it enacted.
An extremist known for his white nationalist and far-right views, Miller was central to almost every decision Trump made while in office, as well as ultra hardline immigration policies the former president would likely have enacted had he won a second term.
It is that loyalty to his old boss, and to Trumpism itself, that has analysts wondering if Miller will actually be forthcoming in his reported appearance before the House panel today, or whether he will clam up or plead the fifth amendment under questioning.
There is already speculation that Miller’s agreement to appear - which neither he nor the panel has yet confirmed - was simply an exercise in avoiding the fate of other former Trump advisers Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro, charged with contempt of the House last week for ignoring their own subpoenas.
As for the panel itself, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Trump, who has vociferously pushed the big lie that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, is now the main, if not sole focus of the final stages of its investigation.
The former president’s actions on the day of, and following the insurrection have been under scrutiny, most recently a revelation that calls he made on 6 January were hidden from the official log.
The inquiry has also looked into an illegal scheme allegedly pushed by Trump and his supporters to put forward fake electors to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral college.
The panel has said it will likely hold public hearings this spring, and a report is expected before this year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are predicted to seize a majority in the House and shut the inquiry down, if it is still ongoing at that stage.
Miller 'to testify today to January 6 panel'
Big news from the House investigation into the Capitol riot: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former top adviser, will give testimony to the panel today, according to the Associated Press.
Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
The reported cooperation of Miller is further evidence that the inquiry is lapping at the doors of the Trump Oval Office, after the former president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both former senior White House advisers, gave their own testimony in recent weeks.
According to two sources cited by the AP, it is unclear if Miller will appear in person or virtually before the nine-member bipartisan panel.
But the fact he is appearing at all is a significant development, and likely another major blow to Trump’s efforts to shield information about his movements on the day of the insurrection and subsequent efforts to overturn the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.
Miller, considered Trump’s top aide through the entirety of his single term in office, has fiercely resisted previous efforts to get him to testify after receiving a subpoena in November, the AP says.
At the time, Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the panel, said Miller had “participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud”, the basis of Trump’s big lie that his election defeat was fraudulent.
How cooperative Miller will be in terms of the testimony he has to offer remains to be seen. It is likely that Miller’s decision to appear was prompted by last week’s House vote to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their refusal to comply with their own subpoenas.
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Updated
As promised, here’s some more on the Economic Report of the President, White House economists’ annual assessment published today, and this year an apparent finger-pointing exercise too.
It’s no secret that the economy is weighing down the Biden administration’s ambitions, with inflation this week reaching a four-decade high of 8.5% and little prospect of Democrats advancing recovery measures in a bitterly-divided Congress.
Republicans have been quick to label it the Biden inflation crisis, while the president himself says it’s “Putin’s price hike,” asserting that the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has sent the global economy haywire.
Biden, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the backing of the economists’ report, which apportions blame to the Ukraine war, as well as other factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and natural weather disasters, which have affected manufacturing and contributed to supply chain issues:
The fact that inflation has accelerated in so many countries underscores its common drivers. Pandemic-induced changes in behavior led to relatively more demand for goods than services.
This phenomenon of recovering demand for goods interacting with supply constraints can help to explain the relatively higher inflation in the United States, where the recovery was relatively stronger.
As for the supply chain disruption, the economists warn that could last much longer than the pandemic which helped to cause it:
Though modern supply chains have driven down consumer prices for many goods, they can also easily break.
The Covid-19 pandemic is not the first time that supply chains have been disrupted; the production and distribution of goods have been regularly snarled by natural disasters, cyberattacks, labor strikes, supplier bankruptcies, industrial accidents, and climate-induced weather emergencies.
The pandemic simply exposed just how complex and interconnected modern supply chains have become.
Elon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for more than $40bn, saying he wants to release its “extraordinary potential” to boost free speech and democracy across the world.
The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. The news came just days after he bought a 9.2% stake in the social media company and was subsequently offered a seat on the board, but then refused to take up the position.
In a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, Musk said the site was not thriving as a company or a tool for improving freedom of speech, and “needs to be transformed as a private company”.
Musk, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, said if his offer was not accepted he would “reconsider my position as a shareholder” as he did not have “confidence in [Twitter’s current] management”.
“This is not a threat,” he added. “It’s simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made.”
In the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Thursday, Musk said he had offered to buy all Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each – a total of $41.4bn (£31.5bn) based on 763.58m shares outstanding, according to data from the financial information provider Refinitiv.
I made an offer https://t.co/VvreuPMeLu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2022
Read the full story here:
President to tout US innovation and leadership as approval rating falls
Joe Biden is looking to sign off for the Easter break on an upbeat note with today’s trip to an engineering research complex in North Carolina to plug his “building a better America” plans.
The president will tout the Bipartisan Innovation Act, a bill designed to boost American manufacturing and global technological leadership, but his remarks are sure to cover wider issues of the US economy and jobs growth.
Inflation, immigration and the Ukraine war are all weighing on his administration, and Biden is seeking to kickstart his stalled domestic agenda with the appearance in Greensboro before heading off to Camp David to spend the Easter holiday.
The president, however, will board Air Force One shortly with more bad news ringing in his ears – a new Quinnipiac poll puts Biden’s approval rating at only 33%, matching his previous low from January, with 54% disapproving of the job he’s doing.
Biden has struggled with his domestic agenda: his flagship $2tn Build Back Better initiative boosting social spending and addressing the climate crisis was opposed by Republicans and ultimately killed by the moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin, whose vote would have been crucial in the divided 50-50 chamber.
While progress at home has stalled, inflation has soared to 8.5%, a 41-year high, with analysts saying the president is failing with his messaging. That’s why he’ll be talking up the bipartisan nature of the innovation act, which has Republican support in both the House and Senate.
White House experts are shifting blame for the country’s economic woes, including soaring inflation, away from Biden. The council of economic advisers’ annual report published this morning says the Ukraine war and climate crisis are contributory. We’ll have more on that shortly.
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, will conduct the final briefing of the week, a so-called gaggle aboard Air Force One as Biden heads for North Carolina.
Updated
Good morning, and welcome to our Thursday US political blog.
Joe Biden will spend the final working day before the Easter break seeking a reset of his stalled domestic agenda, as inflation, immigration issues and Russia’s war in Ukraine weigh on his administration.
The president will head to North Carolina this morning, where he will tour an engineering research complex in Greensboro before delivering lunchtime remarks touting the Bipartisan Innovation Act, a bill designed to boost American manufacturing and global technological leadership.
Here’s your daily reminder that every development in the Ukraine-Russia war can be found on our 24-hour live blog here.
And here’s what else we’re looking at in the US today:
- A new Quinnipiac poll has Joe Biden’s approval ratings in the tank. Only 33% approve of the job he’s doing, and 54% disapprove, matching his previous low from January.
- White House economists warn in their annual report that supply chain issues will outlast the Covid-19 pandemic, and that the climate crisis and natural disasters are at least partly to blame.
- Beto O’Rourke, Texas governor hopeful and a prominent rising figure in the Democratic party, is criticizing the Biden administration for ending the Title 42 immigration policy next month without a plan to deal with an expected surge of migrants.
- The Biden administration is unveiling its “equity action plans” today for dozens of federal agencies and all cabinet departments, seeking to make federal policies fairer for diverse communities.
