Closing summary
Thanks for joining us on the US politics blog today. We’re closing it down for now and will return tomorrow morning.
Joe Biden spoke with the Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and announced a new $800m package of aid to assist the country in its defense of the Russian invasion. The package will include heavy military equipment including helicopters and armored personnel carriers.
The White House press secretary Jen Psaki also explained Biden’s first use of the word genocide yesterday to describe Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
You can follow developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on our 24-hour live blog here.
And here is where else today went in the US:
- The centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) extended the federal mask mandate for air, rail and bus travelers for a further two weeks as health officials assess the spread of the Covid-19 subvariant BA.2.
- Wholesale prices rose a record 11.2% in March, adding more inflationary pressure on the US economy after the announcement of an 8.2% rise in consumer prices on Tuesday.
- Democrats expressed fears that the ongoing inflation crisis in the US will make it harder to retain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
- Federal prosecutors moved closer to a decision on possible charges for Donald Trump’s personal attorney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani over his lobbying efforts in Ukraine.
The White House press briefing is finally under way, with press secretary Jen Psaki explaining Joe Biden’s first use of the word “genocide” to describe the Russian assault in Ukraine for the first time.
“The president was speaking to what we all see, what he feels is clear as day in terms of the atrocities happening on the ground,” Psaki said, following Biden’s use of the term in an address on inflation in Iowa on Tuesday.
“He said genocide yesterday, not once, but twice actually, because as he said, it’s becoming clearer and clearer each day that it’s [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s aim to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian, that we’re seeing greater brutality increase day by day.
“What we saw in Bucha was not an anomaly. The mayor and city council in Mariupol are reporting high numbers of civilian casualties. The train station attack just over the weekend killed more than 50 civilians. The UN has recently report reported 4,450 civilian casualties since February 24. And the real number we believe is likely much higher.
“The OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Moscow mechanism report today found clear patterns of international humanitarian law violations by Russian forces by targeting hospitals, schools, residential buildings and other locations where civilians are shot sheltering.
“And we’ve also seen Kremlin rhetoric in Russian media deny the national identity of the Ukrainian people.
“He also noted yesterday, of course, there will be a legal process that plays out in the courtroom, but he was speaking to what he see has seen on the ground, what we’ve all seen in terms of the atrocities on the ground.”
While we await the White House press briefing to begin, here’s the Biden administration statement detailing the call between the president and his Ukraine counterpart Voldymyr Zelenskiy earlier today, and the $800m aid package they discussed.
Biden says:
I just spoke with President Zelenskiy and shared with him that my Administration is authorizing an additional $800 million in weapons, ammunition, and other security assistance to Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has used the weapons we are providing to devastating effect. As Russia prepares to intensify its attack in the Donbas region, the United States will continue to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to defend itself.
This new package of assistance will contain many of the highly effective weapons systems we have already provided and new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine. These new capabilities include artillery systems, artillery rounds, and armored personnel carriers. I have also approved the transfer of additional helicopters. In addition, we continue to facilitate the transfer of significant capabilities from our Allies and partners around the world.
The steady supply of weapons the United States and its Allies and partners have provided to Ukraine has been critical in sustaining its fight against the Russian invasion. It has helped ensure that Putin failed in his initial war aims to conquer and control Ukraine. We cannot rest now. As I assured President Zelenskiy, the American people will continue to stand with the brave Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom.
The Pentagon says that the military equipment, including helicopters and armored personnel carriers, in the $800m aid package for Ukraine just announced by Joe Biden is available right now “from stocks,” and will be delivered as soon as possible.
“We’re aware of the clock. And we know time is not our friend,” the Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said at his afternoon briefing, noting that Russia was redeploying forces withdrawn from Kyiv to the disputed Donbas region for an anticipated onslaught.
“Even before this was announced today we had been moving at very fast speed, all the other security assistance we’ve been providing at, frankly, an unprecedented rate.
“It’s not like the other material we’ve been sending isn’t useful in the Donbas it has been, but in recognition of what the Russians are preparing to do, they’re not doing it now.
“They’re not fully up to readiness for this renewed push they want to put in the Donbas, we recognize that, and we’re taking advantage of every day, every hour to get this stuff there as fast as we can.”
Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of Montana, thinks “our behaviour as individuals has deteriorated” and social media is to blame.
This, remember, is the Greg Gianforte who in 2017 pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault after attacking Ben Jacobs, a Guardian reporter who asked him a question during an election campaign, when Gianforte was a member of the US House.
Gianforte’s thoughts about bipartisanship and the right way to treat ideological opponents are contained in a fascinating report from the Daily Montanan, about a session at the University of Montana in Missoula on Monday.
“As for one of the contributors to the divisive nature of politics,” the story says, “Gianforte pointed to social media as a serious culprit. On social media, people tell just one side of a story, often with a pejorative, he said, and he said he tries to make sure in discussions he’s saying something that is true, needs to be said, and is kind rather than insulting or confrontational.”
“I think our behavior as individuals has deteriorated,” Gianforte said.
As the Bozeman Chronicle reported at the time, and as the Daily Montanan put it this week, “reports from law enforcement and witness interviews indicated Gianforte misled authorities about the incident [in which he assaulted Jacobs]. The Chronicle noted Gianforte apologized to the reporter the following day, and later as part of a settlement, he apologized in writing and said his conduct did not meet the high standards to which he should be held”.
Here, meanwhile, is an Associated Press interview from June 2017 entitled “Gianforte calls for civil politics after assaulting reporter”.
In the interview, Gianforte “refused to answer questions about the attack and why his campaign initially released a statement painting Jacobs as the instigator, which contradicted witness accounts, Gianforte’s own apology letter and the criminal charge to which he eventually pleaded guilty”, and instead “repeated nine times over the course of [a] half-hour … that he had taken responsibility and wanted to move on”.
“I have addressed the issue,” Gianforte said. “I think I’ve been very clear, I’ve taken full responsibility. I’m not proud of what happened that evening, but I have accepted full responsibility and both Ben and I, and I think the people of Montana, want us to move on.”
Finally, here’s more about what Gianforte has been up to recently:
Biden commits $800m in new Ukraine 'assistance'
Joe Biden committed another $800m in assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday after speaking by phone with the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The package will include artillery systems, artillery rounds, and armored personnel carriers, the White House announced, in addition to helicopters.
“This new package of assistance will contain many of the highly effective weapons systems we have already provided and new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine,” Biden said in a statement.
The call with Zelenskiy was in part to coordinate the delivery of the assistance. Biden said the US will continue to work with allies to share additional weapons and resources as the conflict continues.
“The steady supply of weapons the United States and its Allies and partners have provided to Ukraine has been critical in sustaining its fight against the Russian invasion,” Biden said.
“It has helped ensure that [the Russian president Vladimir] Putin failed in his initial war aims to conquer and control Ukraine. We cannot rest now.”
The afternoon briefing from White House secretary Jen Psaki is upcoming, and she is certain to face questions about it.
Donald Trump is redoubling his efforts to unseat Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia who crossed the former president over his efforts to overturn his election defeat in the state.
Trump is, for the first time, according to Politico, plowing money into a midterm race, sending $500,000 to a political action committee (PAC) dedicated to Kemp’s ouster.
Polls show Kemp with a clear lead over Trump’s preferred candidate, the former Georgia senator David Perdue, in the 24 May primary, and it remains to be seen if the donation from Trump’s sizeable war chest will make any difference.
But it does promise to be a huge test of Trump’s self-promoted powers of endorsement.
Politico cites Trump insiders describing the donation to the Super PAC as “an initial cash infusion,” raising the prospect of more money to come if Perdue fails to close the gap as the primary approaches.
Trump has amassed a fund of at least $110m, according to analysts, mostly from individual donors, as he mulls whether to make a third run at the White House in 2024. He has, Politico says, written small checks for favored candidates in local races, and funded rallies, but this is the first time his own Save America PAC has spent so much.
Aside from the money, Trump has attended rallies for Perdue.
“President Trump is committed to supporting his endorsed candidates across the nation, but we won’t be telegraphing our efforts to the media,” Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said in a statement.
Kemp drew Trump’s ire when he refused to agree to his demands to overturn the 2020 election in the state. The former president’s infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, demanding that he “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory there, is the subject of a criminal inquiry by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis.
It’s a far cry from October 2018, when Trump said Kemp, then the secretary of state, would make “a great governor” of Georgia.
Updated
It might seem slightly odd to quote an exchange on Twitter between Rick Wilson, of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, and an anonymous account, but I think this is quite telling.
Earlier today, Wilson tweeted the Washington Post’s report about Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, being removed from the electoral roll in North Carolina.
“The ‘v0TeR FrAud iz Re8L’ crowd is about to go silent,” he wrote.
The anonymous account responded: “I think you just admitted that voter fraud is real, champ. Oops.”
Wilson replied: “I think you just admitted Mark Meadows committed it.”
Meadows was in place throughout Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election while claiming mass voter fraud powered Joe Biden to victory. It didn’t, and the Trump campaign lost the overwhelming majority of court cases it brought.
Such efforts culminated in the deadly Capitol riot, when a mob attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of electoral college results. Meadows faces a possible charge of contempt of Congress after withdrawing co-operation with the House January 6 committee. Trump continues to claim the election was rigged. It wasn’t.
Representatives for Meadows have not yet commented on his own voter fraud problem.
Here’s our original write-up of the strange saga of Meadows’ own voter registration, which was first reported by the New Yorker.
And here, for good measure, is our story on CNN’s story about texts Meadows received from Donald Trump Jr about how to overturn the election:
Feeling “burned” by her husband’s first run for the presidency, Jill Biden resisted advisers including Ron Klain, now White House chief of staff, who pushed him to mount another campaign in 2004.
“All these men – and they were mostly men – coming to our home,” she said. “You know, ‘You’ve got to run, you’ve got to run.’ I wanted no part of it.”
The first lady was speaking to Julie Pace and Darlene Superville, co-authors of Jill: A Biography of the First Lady, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
“I didn’t even know whether I wanted Joe to ever do it again,” Jill Biden said. “I mean, I had been so burned.”
Full story:
Mike Pence continues to walk a political tightrope as he mulls a decision to challenge for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
The problem for the former vice-president is that he needs to distance himself from his old boss Donald Trump’s obsession with his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, yet figure a way to still appeal to Trump’s loyal and powerful base.
He took his latest stab in a speech at the university of Virginia last night, going after the perceived left-wing tenets of “wokeism” and “cancel culture”, but noticeably neglecting to repeat his recent assertions that Trump “was wrong” to believe Pence had the power to overturn the election result.
“Under the Trump-Pence administration, we actually achieved things that conservatives had only talked about for generations,” Pence said, taking care to credit the ex-president who has branded him “disloyal” and expressed no regret for his supporters’ seeking to hang the vice-president during the 6 January riot.
“We did it all by standing strong for freedom,” Pence continued, warming to his theme that only conservatives had the ability to free the country from Biden’s alleged “tyranny.”
Pence will face strong headwinds if he decides to pursue his party’s nomination. Aside from Trump, who is mulling a third run at the White House, who continues to lead in the polls, and who has ruled out another Trump-Pence ticket, there is Ron DeSantis, the Trumpist Republican governor of Florida, whose rising popularity among hardliners makes him a serious contender.
The Guardian’s Washington correspondent David Smith wrote this analysis in December looking at Pence’s prospects for a presidential run:
Mark Meadows has been stripped from North Carolina’s electoral roll amid a criminal inquiry into whether Donald Trump’s former chief of staff committed election fraud by registering to vote at a residence he never owned or lived at.
Melanie Thibault, director of the Macon county board of elections, confirmed her decision to the Asheville Citizen Times, which reported that the registration for Meadows’ wife Debra remained active.
According to the New Yorker, which broke the story last month, Meadows registered his address as a rented mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, which he reportedly had never visited. He voted from there as an absentee in the 2020 presidential election, and has subsequently registered to vote in Virginia.
According to neighbors in Scaly Mountain, and the former owner of the property, Mrs Meadows rented and stayed at the mobile home for “a few nights” but her husband was never seen there.
Thibault said Meadows’ removal from the voters roll was a standard procedure under a statute that says a person who votes in another state loses their registration in North Carolina.
Meadows, who with his wife owns a condo in Virginia, reportedly voted in that state in a 2021 election, triggering Thibault’s decision.
The Citizen reported that the North Carolina state bureau of investigation was continuing its inquiry into possible voter fraud by Meadows, a fierce Trump loyalist who has never commented on the story.
The bureau, the newspaper said, would not comment on whether Meadows’ removal from the North Carolina roll would affect its investigation.
Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is removed from North Carolina's voter rolls amid an SBI probe into allegations he committed election fraud. https://t.co/5grl1b1miT
— The Citizen Times (@asheville) April 13, 2022
Updated
Federal prosecutors are reportedly closing in on a decision whether to charge Donald Trump’s personal attorney, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, over his lobbying efforts for the ex-president in Ukraine.
The details come in a CNN report, which says Giuliani helped investigators unlock “several electronic devices” seized by the FBI as they sought evidence to establish if he violated any federal laws.
Giuliani acted as a representative of Trump in Ukraine, and their efforts there to seek dirt on Joe Biden ultimately led to the one-term president’s first impeachment following his infamous quid-pro-quo call with Ukraine’s president Voldymyr Zelenskiy.
At that stage, Trump feared Biden would be his likely opponent in the 2020 presidential election that he ultimately lost, and sought to hold up US military aid to Ukraine until Zelenskiy agreed to an investigation.
Giuliani sought the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the then-US ambassador to Ukraine, and pressed Zelenskiy for the inquiry into Biden and his son Hunter over their business dealings in the country.
Giuliani’s cooperation in unlocking the devices “could speed up the review and ultimately lead to a quick decision” over charges, CNN said, citing multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation.
Giuliani is facing legal peril on multiple fronts, including an inquiry into his alleged masterminding of a plot to push fake slates of voters to try to overturn Trump’s defeat to Biden.
Read more:
Updated
CDC to ‘extend travel mask mandate’ a further two weeks
The federal mask mandate for travelers will be extended by a further two weeks as the government assesses the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases across the US, multiple news sources are reporting.
An official announcement from the centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) is expected shortly, according to the Associated Press and others.
The mandate was set to expire on 18 April, but was widely expected to be extended for the fourth time since Joe Biden took office as the BA.2 Covid subvariant takes hold across the nation.
The two-week extension to the mandate, which requires air, rail and bus travelers to be masked, is the shortest so far, and will allow health officials to monitor the spread of BA.2, the sources said.
At least 21 states have joined a lawsuit seeking to end the “egregious transportation mask mandate overreach,” arguing that Covid-19 does not exist “only on airplanes and public transportation”.
An “insidious and coordinated” effort between lawmakers and extremist groups is under way to undermine American democracy, according to a new report.
On Tuesday, the nonpartisan civil rights organization National Urban League released the annual report in its analysis series The State of Black America. The report, called Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, outlines the “conspiracy and the urgent case for a national mobilization to protect and defend our most sacred constitutional right”.
It focuses on four main tactics that it says are used in this effort: gerrymandering, voter suppression, misinformation and intimidation.
In 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census data to redraw congressional maps, it noted. The new maps proposed by Republican state lawmakers “are no more than modern-day gerrymandering that strips voting power away from communities with Black and brown voters”, the report said.
It also listed 34 laws passed in 19 states between January 1 and December 7 2021 that make it more difficult for people to vote.
In addition to shortening the window to apply and deliver mail ballots, those laws limit absentee voting lists, restrict assistance in returning a voter’s mail ballot, reduce the availability of mail ballot drop boxes, and increase barriers for voters with disabilities, among other restrictions.
“The burden of these laws – strict photo ID requirements, the elimination or restriction of Sunday voting, voting by mail and early voting, and the closing of polling locations – overwhelmingly falls on Black voters,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of NUL, said in the report.
“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the United States has seen a steady rise in disenfranchisement practices giving one party an edge over the other. But never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process.”
Read more:
Wholesale prices surge record 11.2% in March
Some more bad inflation news for the Biden administration: spiking energy costs pushed wholesale prices up a record 11.2% last month from a year earlier, the Associated Press is reporting, another sign that inflationary pressure is widespread in the US economy.
The report from the Labor Department on Wednesday comes one day after the announcement that consumer prices in March climbed 8.5%, the highest rise in more than 40 years.
The cost of energy soared after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, with prices up 36.7% from March 2021.
Another factor, the AP says, was the unexpectedly quick economic recovery from the pandemic recession of 2020, which caught businesses by surprise and led to increased demand on “overwhelmed factories, ports and freight yards. and the subsequent supply chain upheaval.
The 11.2% year-on-year rise in wholesale prices is the highest on record, the Labor Department says.
An opinion piece in the New York Times today, meanwhile, predicts that inflation “will probably fall significantly over the next few months,” which, if true, will help appease Democrats worried about the impact of the crisis on the party’s midterm election prospects.
“Don’t get too excited. The better numbers we’re about to see won’t mean that the inflation problem is over,” columnist Paul Krugman writes.
“The US economy still looks overheated. Rising wages are a good thing, but right now they’re rising at an unsustainable pace. This excess wage growth probably won’t recede until the demand for workers falls back into line with the available supply, which probably - I hate to say this - means that we need to see unemployment tick up at least a bit.”
Updated
The treasury secretary Janet Yellen is warning of unspecified consequences for nations that “undermine” sanctions that the US and allies have imposed on Russia for its war in Ukraine.
Yellen is speaking at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council this morning in an address “to map out the future of the global economy and US economic leadership in the wake of Russia’s invasion.”
“The unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place,” Yellen told the assembly, according to the Associated Press.
There are no countries yet subverting the sanctions, the agency says, but there are fears among the allies that China, which has criticized the Western sanctions, could potentially do so.
Yellen did not specify what she envisaged the consequences to be, but said Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine had “redrawn the contours” of the global economy, which includes “our conception of international cooperation going forward.”
She appeared before a House panel last week, warning that Russian aggression would have “enormous economic repercussions in Ukraine and beyond,” and “escalate inflationary pressures as well.”
Inflation, the state of the global economy, and the impact of sanctions against Russia are certain to be discussed by the world’s finance ministers during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC from 18 to 24 April.
The Florida legislature will allow Governor Ron DeSantis to take the lead on redrawing the state’s 28 congressional districts, a highly unusual move that will probably diminish Black political power in the state and allow Republicans to further distort the state’s map to their advantage.
State legislatures, including Florida’s, usually draw a proposal for a plan that the governor approves or rejects. DeSantis vetoed the GOP-controlled legislature’s proposed congressional districts on 29 March after proposing his own map that would increase the number of GOP seats while eliminating two districts represented by Black Democrats. Leaders in the legislature said on Monday that they would not try to draft a new plan ahead of a special session next week, but instead were waiting for DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential candidate, to submit his own plan.
“We are awaiting a communication from the Governor’s Office with a map that he will support. Our intention is to provide the Governor’s Office opportunities to present that information before House and Senate redistricting committees,” legislative leaders said in a Monday memo.
The legislature approved a plan earlier this year that would have given Republicans an 18-10 advantage in the state’s delegation. DeSantis’s proposal would have given Republicans a 20-8 advantage.
DeSantis appears focused on eliminating two congressional districts with sizable non-white populations. One of those is Florida’s 5th congressional district, which stretches from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, is 46% Black and represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat. He has also targeted the state’s 10th congressional district, which is majority non-white and is represented by Val Demings, another Black Democrat.
“The Florida legislature is caving to the intimidation of DeSantis and his desire to create additional Republican seats in Congress by eliminating minority-access districts,” Lawson said in a statement. “Again, I am not surprised, but disappointed with the legislature’s inability to fulfill their constitutional duties as elected officials without political interference from DeSantis.”
Full story:
Democrats warn 'inflation could cost us Congress'
Joe Biden’s take on the US inflation crisis is simple: it’s caused by the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, and that he alone is responsible for “Putin’s price hike” on American families.
But as leading Democrats on Wednesday began to assess the impact of Biden’s trip to Iowa, to announce measures to lower gas prices, they have their own message for the president: Fix it fast, or say goodbye to control of Congress.
The Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, who is facing a tough battle to retain his seat in Georgia, says inflation is the overriding issue on voters’ minds.
“Right now I’m very focused on the real pinch that people are feeling around rising costs,” he said, according to The Hill, tying it to his stalled effort in Congress to suspend taxes on gas and other essential items.
“[It’s] why I introduced my insulin bill, which will cap the cost of insulin. It’s the reason why I’ve introduced the federal tax holiday.”
More outspoken, perhaps unsurprisingly, in Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has proven a constant thorn in Biden’s side, blocking legislation such as the Build Back Better act in the equally split 50-50 Senate.
Manchin laid into the Biden administration over inflation in a statement:
When will this end? It is a disservice to the American people to act as if inflation is a new phenomenon.
The Federal Reserve and the administration failed to act fast enough, and today’s data is a snapshot in time of the consequences being felt across the country.
Warnock’s is one of five races identified by Democratic strategist Jim Kessler to The Hill as crucial to the party’s chances of retaining control of the Senate.
“The natural order of midterms is you lose about 10 points, and if you lose 10 points across the board, that’s four senate seats. The wind is in their face,” he said.
The Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, scents blood in the water.
“I can remember good years and bad years for us. The best year we had was 1994 where we got the House back after 40 years and took the Senate as well. This atmosphere for Republicans is better than it was in 1994,” he said at an event hosted by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
But, he warns, according to Politico: “It’s actually possible for us to screw this up.”
Read more on gas prices:
Good morning, thanks for joining us. It’s midweek, and Democrats are starting to fret that the ongoing inflation crisis could prove terminal to their chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. Opinions are divided over the value of Joe Biden’s moves to lower gas prices, and Republicans are scenting blood in the water.
Overseas, Russia continues its assault on eastern Ukraine, and you can follow all the developments in the conflict on our live blog here.
Here’s what the US politics blog will be following today:
- The Florida legislature appears to have handed Republican governor Ron DeSantis carte blanche to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts in the party’s favor.
- Federal prosecutors are moving closer to a decision on possible charges for Donald Trump’s personal attorney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani over his lobbying efforts in Ukraine.
- The Republican former vice-president Mike Pence is ramping up his likely challenge for the 2024 presidential nomination, attacking “wokeness” and “cancel culture” in a speech in Virginia.
- White House press secretary Jen Psaki will brief reporters at 3pm.
