Closing summary
Today was thought to be the day that a Manhattan grand jury would decide whether to make Donald Trump the first American president to be indicted. But the jurors were told not to come in today, possibly because there is still one last witness to hear from. An indictment could come on Thursday, or next week – either way, check back in with us tomorrow for the latest on this ongoing story.
Here’s what else happened today:
The candidates for a Wisconsin supreme court seat – which some believe is the most important election of this year – went head to head in a debate yesterday.
The House GOP’s zeal to defend Trump may backfire, Democrats warn.
Ron DeSantis should use his power as governor of Florida to prevent Trump’s arrest if he is indicted, rightwing lawmaker Matt Gaetz said. It’s worth noting that the former president is reportedly willing to travel to New York to answer any charges filed.
Bernie Sanders grilled the CEO of Moderna in a Senate hearing called to address the pharmaceutical firm’s plans to quadruple the price of its Covid-19 vaccine.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates again despite concerns about the fragility of the US financial system after the collapse of Silicon Valley and other banks.
Tomorrow may or may not be the day a Manhattan grand jury indicts Donald Trump, but one thing that’s happening for sure is the appearance of TikTok’s CEO before a House committee. The video-sharing app has been in Washington’s crosshairs over security concerns and alleged links to the Chinese communist party. Here’s the Guardian’s Dan Milmo with an idea of what we can expect from the hearing:
TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, will be questioned by lawmakers in Washington on Thursday with the app’s US future in severe doubt. The Biden administration wants TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the business or face a complete ban in the US. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.
TikTok says such a move would not “solve the problem”. Under a plan dubbed Project Texas, which the White House now appears to have rejected, TikTok is moving its US user data to third party servers and is allowing its source code to be scrutinised by Oracle, a US tech firm which will also vet its app updates.
For the White House and many US lawmakers, this does not go far enough to answer concerns about whether TikTok’s data, from more than 1 billion users, can be accessed by the Chinese state and whether TikTok’s recommendation algorithm could be manipulated by the security services in order to influence what users see.
Here are some the questions that Chew, a Singaporean former Goldman Sachs banker, could be asked at the House energy and commerce committee hearing, which starts at 10am ET on Thursday.
Updated
Ron DeSantis will try to expand his “don’t say gay” law to middle and high school classes, the Associated Press reports, ahead of his expected presidential campaign for which the Florida governor will likely pledge to implement his approach to cultural issues nationwide.
Last year, DeSantis signed into law the measure that barred schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity until third grade, “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”. The new proposal would implement the ban for grades 4 to 12, and will be voted on next month by the state’s board of education, which is controlled by DeSantis’s appointees.
Several Republican-led states as well as GOP lawmakers in Congress have proposed similar legislation since the passage of the initial measure in Florida.
Updated
Washington lawmakers are mighty angry at the Federal Reserve for its failure to stop Silicon Valley Bank from collapsing and almost spurring a financial crisis in the world’s largest economy.
So much so that two polar opposites on the Senate’s political spectrum – Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Elizabeth Warren – are proposing the creation of an inspector general for the central bank that is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, something it currently lacks.
Warren is a known foe of Wall Street, and one of Fed chair Jerome Powell’s biggest opponents in Congress. Scott is a conservative who made a failed attempt to become Senate GOP leader earlier this year, and has proposed a number of policies that infuriated Democrats, such as putting time limits on all federal legislation.
“Consumers and American families must not bear the brunt of the failures of gross mismanagement and greed at their banks or the incompetence and misdeeds of the government regulators who are there to protect them. I want to thank Senator Warren for joining me on this good bill. This is common sense and should have the bipartisan support of our colleagues so that it can quickly pass and become law,” Scott said in a statement announcing the proposal.
Updated
Despite the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and fears of a potential financial crisis, the Federal Reserve just decided to keep raising interest rates, saying the fight against inflation is not yet won, the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe reports:
Facing the worst banking crisis since 2008 and the highest inflation rate in a generation, the Federal Reserve chose to keep fighting price rises and announced another hike in interest rates.
The US central bank announced on Wednesday that its benchmark interest rate would rise another quarter of a percentage to point to a range of 4.75% to 5% – its ninth consecutive rate rise and the highest rate since 2007. A year ago interest rates were close to zero.
The latest increase was smaller than the half-point increase that some had expected before a series of bank collapses shook global markets.
In a statement, the Fed said the impact of the banking crisis was “uncertain” but inflation “remains elevated”.
In a hearing before the Senate health committee today, Bernie Sanders grilled the CEO of Moderna about why the biotechnology firm plans to increase the price of its Covid-19 vaccine:
Sen. Sanders (I-VT) asks CEO Stéphane Bancel if Moderna will charge U.S. govt. less for its vaccine:
— The Recount (@therecount) March 22, 2023
Bancel: “We have very increased complexity.”
Sanders: “You have money for stock buybacks by the billions, and you guys became billionaires. That doesn’t seem too complex to me.” pic.twitter.com/x9Juw37hWl
According to MarketWatch, Moderna plans to raise the price of its vaccine to around $130 a dose, from the current cost of approximately $26 per shot. In the hearing, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the price increase reflects reduced demand for the doses.
“We’re talking here today about an increase in price. If you think about what happens in any other industry, when you get a very large volume, you get a very big discount. That’s actually what we did, with 500m orders from the US government. This year, if we get 30 [m] or 50 [m], that would be great,” he said, according to MarketWatch.
Updated
Over on his Truth social network, Donald Trump did not directly address the ongoing indictment drama in Manhattan, but did have some choice words for Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis finally talked back to Trump in a recent interview, and the former president did not like that:
While I am fighting against Radical Left Lunatics, Persecutors, and unfair Prosecutors who want to destroy us all, Ron DeSanctimonious is not working for the people of Florida as he should be, he is too busy chatting with a Ratings Challenged TV Host from England, desperately trying to rescue his failing Campaign – But it’s my fault, I put him there!
Updated
Donald Trump may be the early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but the race is just heating up, and one politician expected to throw their hat in the ring is South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott.
Scott is the only Black Republican in the Senate, but if he decides to run, would be the second South Carolinian in the race, after Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. The lawmaker has lately been doing the sorts of things one does when considering a run for president, such as planning trips to early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire next month.
The Associated Press reports today that once he gets back from that travel, he’ll meet with donors in Charleston for what’s been dubbed the “Faith in America Summit”, which will feature “high-level fundraisers and supporters”. Will a presidential campaign announcement come next? We’ll see.
Updated
Jury may hear from additional witness – source
Hugo Lowell, the Guardian’s man for all things Trump-related, is in New York and has filed the following report from Manhattan criminal court, where the grand jury in the Stormy Daniels hush money case would usually meet on a Wednesday but we now know will not today.
The Manhattan grand jury expected to consider criminal charges against Donald Trump will not meet on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, and is on standby about meeting on Thursday.
The reason for the schedule change was not immediately clear.
The grand jury meets in the afternoons on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays but is not required to meet three times every week. It may hear from an additional witness before being asked to vote on whether to return an indictment in connection with the hush money payment, the source said.
The adjournment sparked speculation among people close to Donald Trump, advisers asking if it signalled weaknesses in the case being prosecuted by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, or whether there was more damning evidence to come.
A spokesperson for the district attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
What charges Bragg might seek remains unclear, though some members of Trump’s legal team believe the most likely scenario involves falsifying business records coupled with tax fraud.
Trump has been resigned to criminal charges and has repeatedly insisted he wants to be handcuffed when he appears in court, the Guardian has reported.
The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to Manhattan criminal court for fingerprinting and a mugshot, sources said, he might as well seek to turn it into a spectacle.
Trump’s insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from motivations including a desire to show defiance for what he sees as an unfair prosecution, and to have the whole affair galvanize his base for the 2024 presidential campaign.
But above all, sources close to Trump said, he is deeply anxious that any special arrangements, like making his first appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse via an obscure entrance, would make him look weak or like a loser.
Trump’s legal team has recommended Trump allow them to quietly turn him in and schedule a remote appearance, even citing Secret Service guidance about security.
But Trump has rejected that approach. Over the weekend, he told various allies he didn’t care if someone shot him, as he would become “a martyr” if so. He also said that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said.
Updated
The White House has fired back at Mike Pence, after the former vice-president and potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination touted “common sense reforms” to social security and Medicare during a speech in Virginia on Tuesday.
In a statement to Politico, Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary, conflated Pence’s remarks with another issue Democrats want to run on when he said: “Mike Pence – and congressional Republicans – are flat wrong about cutting Medicare and banning abortion.
“This continues an alarming trend of Republican leaders both selling out hardworking middle-class families and undermining basic American freedoms – especially the right of women to make their own healthcare decisions.”
Joe Biden has seized on Republican threats to social security and Medicare, scoring a notable win on the issue in his State of the Union speech last month and campaigning on it since.
Pence was speaking at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, as it staged its “Mock Con”, an annual mock presidential nomination convention.
“President Biden won’t even discuss commonsense reforms of social security and Medicare, and too many leaders in my political party take the same position,” Pence said. “If that frustrates you, good – it should, because it’ll be your generation that’s robbed of your dreams and opportunities.”
Pence also said: “What we need now is leadership because, if we act in this moment with the support of this generation, we can introduce commonsense reforms that will never touch anyone who is in retirement, or anyone who will retire in the next 25 years.”
Most observers agree that without reform, social security and Medicare will eventually become insolvent.
The two frontrunners in the Republican race Pence has not yet officially entered, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, have said they do not favour cuts – DeSantis after being prodded by Trump, who highlighted positions the Florida governor took when he was a congressman.
Congressional Republicans are preparing their budget proposal, in answer to Biden’s and as a stand-off over raising the US debt limit continues, towards a June deadline.
Updated
The hard-right Newsmax channel will return to DirecTV, the Newsmax chief executive said earlier, ending an exile which Republicans in Congress and supporters of Donald Trump claimed represented media censorship but which DirecTV said was due to unreasonable financial demands.
The Newsmax chief executive, the Trump ally Christopher Ruddy, said: “Newsmax recognises and appreciates that DirecTV clearly supports diverse voices, including conservative ones.
“DirecTV helped give Newsmax its start nearly a decade ago as it continues to do with upcoming news networks, which is why we are pleased to reach a mutually beneficial agreement that will deliver our network to DirecTV, DirecTV STREAM and U-verse customers over the next several years.”
Bill Morrow, chief executive of DirecTV, said: “This resolution with Newsmax, resolving an all-too-common carriage dispute, underscores our dedication to delivering a wide array of programming and perspectives to our customers.
“Through our persistent negotiations, we reached a resolution under mutually-agreeable business terms allowing us to deliver the conservative news network at the right value – a reflection of the free market at work.”
Newsmax was one of the hard-right competitors to which Fox News executives feared losing viewers amid Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election via lies about election fraud, an issue now under the spotlight in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6bn defamation suit.
DirecTV dropped Newsmax in January. The deal may head off threats from Republicans in control of the US House (the ones otherwise so concerned about the “weaponisation” of government) to hold a hearing on the matter.
Last month, Byron Donalds of Florida, a member of the oversight committee, told Newsmax: “We obviously have an issue with a lot of media companies silencing conservative thought and conservative speech and the one thing we’re committed to is doing everything we can to put an end to it.”
The day so far
Well, that was anti-climactic. Today was thought to be the day that a Manhattan grand jury would decide whether to make Donald Trump the first American president to be indicted. But for reasons that have yet to be revealed, the jurors were told not to come in today, pushing the indictment to tomorrow, if not later. Thus, we will continue to wait.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The candidates for a Wisconsin supreme court seat – which some believe is the most important election of this year – went head to head in a debate yesterday.
The House GOP’s zeal to defend Trump may backfire, Democrats warn.
Ron DeSantis should use his power as governor of Florida to prevent Trump’s arrest if he is indicted, rightwing lawmaker Matt Gaetz said. It’s worth noting that the former president is reportedly willing to travel to New York to answer any charges filed.
Here’s more news to file under “things that might not happen this week”.
The Senate is working on legislation that would repeal the authorizations for America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, and involvement in the 1991 Gulf war. But lawmakers have been given the chance to add amendments to the bill, and Punchbowl News reports those negotiations are delaying its passage:
Sen. Risch, top R on Foreign Relations, says he doesn’t think the Senate will be able to wrap up AUMF repeal this week. Amendment talks are ongoing, he says.
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) March 22, 2023
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has confirmed that the Manhattan grand jury considering whether to indict Donald Trump will not be meeting today:
New: Hearing that the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence in the Stormy Daniels hush money case won’t be meeting today, per source familiar — matching Insider. Grand jury appears to be on standby for tomorrow.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 22, 2023
Grand jury that could indict Trump will not meet today
The Manhattan grand jury considering whether to indict Donald Trump for allegedly facilitating a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election has been told not to meet today, according to media reports.
Insider and the New York Times cited two unnamed sources saying today’s meeting has been called off. The grand jurors are debating whether to recommend charges for the former president over his payment to adult film actor and director Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump.
Insider reports that it appears unlikely the grand jury will meet at all this week, potentially delaying the indictment till next week. It was unclear why today’s meeting had been called off.
The scene outside the Manhattan courthouse where a grand jury is deciding whether to indict Donald Trump has attracted conspiracy theorists:
A bomb-sniffing dog:
And Alvin Bragg himself:
And if that’s not enough excitement for you, NY1 reports they’re shooting an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit around the corner:
An *only in NYC* scenario … with the press lined up outside the Manhattan DA’s office awaiting grand jury action in the Trump case, a block away, a crew is filming an episode of Law & Order SVU pic.twitter.com/VyIzsH8AUS
— Kevin Frey (@KevinFreyTV) March 22, 2023
Updated
Yesterday, the candidates for Wisconsin’s state supreme court election went head to head in a debate. We’ve been closely watching this race, which has huge implications for the entire country when it comes to issues like abortion, education and election law.
In a packed conference room at the Wisconsin State Bar Association on Tuesday, candidates Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly clashed on questions about abortion, redistricting and public safety. The debate reflected the tone of the campaigns, with conservative candidate Kelly casting his opponent as a liar and a partisan, while Protasiewicz reaffirmed her liberal positions on issues like redistricting and abortion and pointed repeatedly to Kelly’s ties to right wing groups as disqualifying.
In a race that has shattered spending records, the candidates diverged significantly on the question of recusal from cases involving funders and partisan supporters.
“I’ve been very clear that we need a recusal rule for our supreme court,” said Protasiewicz, who pledged to recuse herself from cases involving the Democratic party – which has financially supported her campaign. Kelly, on the other hand, implied that he would not recuse himself from cases involving major donors or supporters.
“We have a first amendment for a very good reason,” said Kelly. “You need to have a methodology so that when you analyze cases and write opinions that squeezes out all personal views and personal politics.”
Early voting for the Wisconsin election began Tuesday.
This post has been corrected to say that voting began Tuesday, instead of Wednesday.
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House Republicans may be rushing to Trump’s aid but CNN reports that the Senate GOP is reacting more cautiously:
Romney and Cornyn both declining to comment on potential Trump indictment and House GOP probe of DA.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 22, 2023
"I don't know anything about it, other than what you guys report," Cornyn said when I asked about his view of a possible Trump indictment, as he walked into a hearing room
As it became clear that Donald Trump’s indictment was imminent, House Republicans earlier this week demanded documents and testimony from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. That might not have been such a good idea, according to Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent.
He spoke to some of the Democrats serving on the oversight committee, which is one of the three House panels that made the requests of Bragg. According to Sargent, Democratic lawmaker Daniel S Goldman warned that if Republicans try to hold hearings about Bragg’s investigation, Democrats “could dramatize how Republicans are ‘using the official power of Congress to effectively coordinate with a criminal defendant’ – Trump – to ‘obstruct an ongoing criminal investigation’”.
Jamie Raskin, who is the top Democrat on the oversight committee, said something similar. “If and when there is an indictment, we will be able to reconstruct all the facts of this case in a way that makes sense to the American public” in any hearings the oversight committee holds, he told Sargent.
In other words: committee hearings into the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Trump could cut both ways.
Updated
Are you among those who would guess that Donald Trump is days away from becoming the first American president to be arrested? Let the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly correct you:
Donald Trump may be preparing to become the first US president to be criminally indicted but should his perp walk for paying hush money to a porn star come to pass – perhaps granting his reported wish to be seen handcuffed – he will not be the first president ever arrested.
In 1872, President Ulysses S Grant was nicked for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.
The arrest of the 18th president, at the corner of 13th and M streets in Washington DC, was not for “a high crime, but it was – at least theoretically speaking – a misdemeanor”, the Washington Post reported.
Grant became president in 1869, four years after leading the Union armies to victory over the Confederacy in the civil war, the conflict which ended slavery in the US.
One might think that Donald Trump’s legal trouble would be a boon for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is viewed as the former president’s strongest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination next year. One would be wrong, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
Donald Trump may be in legal trouble over his alleged weakness for vice, but his predicament is increasingly placing Ron DeSantis – his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination – in a political vise.
The Florida governor must join Republican attacks on Alvin Bragg, the Democratic Manhattan district attorney whose indictment of Trump over a hush money payment to a porn star is reportedly imminent, while trying not to lose ground in a primary he has not formally entered.
DeSantis has floated criticism of Trump over the hush money payment – and indeed did so again on Tuesday in an interview with Fox Nation. The same day, however, a new poll showed how Trump, who is also fundraising off his legal peril, has tightened his grip on the primary race.
One reason why Trump may not fight his apparent indictment in New York tooth and nail: it could be lucrative. The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports:
Donald Trump is attempting to capitalize on his anticipated arrest over hush money payments to an adult film star by bombarding supporters with fundraising emails to support his presidential election campaign.
In a series of messages in recent days Trump and his acolytes have urged people to donate to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, established to support Trump’s bid for president in 2024.
The emails paint Trump as the victim of a political agenda of a varying cast of “globalist power brokers”, the “deep state” and “witch hunt-crazed radicals”. Each ends with a plea for donations, the language used changing slightly each time.
Rightwing House Republican Matt Gaetz wants Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis to prevent New York authorities from forcing Donald Trump to travel to the state in the event he is indicted.
The Florida congressman made the case in an appearance this morning on NewsNation – even though reports indicate Trump, a former New Yorker whose official residence is now Florida, appears willing to appear in Manhattan to answer the charges:
If I were Governor of Florida, I would not allow any Floridian to be hauled before a Soros-backed prosecutor in a blue city over politics. I wouldn’t make an exception to not protect the President of the United States.
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 22, 2023
Ron DeSantis should be standing in the breach to stop any… pic.twitter.com/jeuzxKCiGB
Updated
Today is the second day of a major hearing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which stems from the network’s airing of Donald Trump’s unfounded allegation of fraud in the 2020 election. Here’s the latest on the case from the Guardian’s Sam Levine, who is in Delaware to cover the hearing:
Attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News will return to court on Wednesday for the second day of a pre-trial hearing previewing many arguments in a closely watched $1.6bn defamation case.
Dominion is suing the rightwing network over its decision to repeatedly air false claims about its voting equipment in 2020 as Donald Trump and allies tried to overturn the election.
Both sides are asking Eric Davis, a Delaware superior court judge, to rule in their favor ahead of trial.
Davis said on Tuesday he had not reached a decision. His ruling will probably set out the scope of issues for a trial scheduled for mid-April.
Seeking 'spectacle', Trump wants to be handcuffed if indicted
It will be a moment many of his foes have anticipated for years – and one Donald Trump is only too happy to make happen. If he is indicted by the grand jury convened by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg to look into whether he falsified records related to a hush money payment made just before the 2016 presidential election, Trump wants to be handcuffed when he appears at the courthouse, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.
The reasons are as Trumpian as you’d expect. Here’s more from the story:
Donald Trump has told advisers that he wants to be handcuffed when he makes an appearance in court, if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, multiple sources close to the former president have said.
The former president has reasoned that since he would need to go to the courthouse and surrender himself to authorities for fingerprinting and a mug shot anyway, the sources said, he might as well turn everything into a “spectacle”.
Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.
But above all, people close to Trump said, he was deeply anxious that any special arrangements – like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse – would make him look weak or like a loser.
Special counsel alleges Trump lied to own lawyers as pressure rises over NY indictment
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump has not been indicted yet, but the Manhattan grand jury considering district attorney Alvin Bragg’s case is meeting today, meaning we could finally find out if they are ready to issue the history-making charges against the former president. As interesting as that is, there has been a development elsewhere worth paying attention to. ABC News reports that a judge involved in special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s possession of classified documents has found that the former president may have misled his own attorneys about what materials he had. We’ll be paying attention to both these matters today.
Here’s what else is going on:
Ron DeSantis is finally attacking Trump as the Florida governor appears to struggle in the polls.
The Senate health committee is expected to grill Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel in a hearing at 10am ET, amid reports the pharmaceutical firm plans to quadruple the price of its Covid-19 vaccine.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 3pm.
