We’re closing the blog now, after a reasonably busy day in US politics.
Merrick Garland’s big NBC News interview is due at 6.30pm ET – here’s our story, which will develop, for those who want to carry on reading about whether Donald Trump will face criminal charges over January 6 and his attempt to overturn US democracy itself.
Otherwise, today saw:
- Trump return to Washington to deliver a 90-minute speech at the America First Agenda summit. He didn’t get so far as to announce a new White House run. See Richard’s blogging below and David Smith’s report on the speech to come.
- The New York Times reported more details of part of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the fake electors scheme.
- Mike Pence also gave a speech in Washington, in some mild sense dueling with his old boss and in some very mild sense rebuking him for fixating on the past.
- CNN reported that John Roberts, the chief justice, tried to persuade Brett Kavanaugh to help him stop the other conservatives on the supreme court overturning the right to an abortion – but it didn’t work.
- Nancy Pelosi’s mooted trip to Taiwan continued to cause all sorts of bother and headaches – and to attract Republican support.
The blog will be back tomorrow. Good night.
Updated
Trump teases 2024 White House run
Donald Trump on Tuesday dropped more hints that he will imminently announce a third run at the White House.
In a largely subdued, and scripted, 90-minute speech to the America First Agenda summit in Washington DC, his first visit to the capital since leaving office last year, Trump said it would be his “very great honor” to run again, and that if he didn’t “our nation is doomed”.
But he stopped short of outright declaring his candidacy, the former president mindful he is mired in legal and political jeopardy amid numerous investigations into the insurrection and attempt to stay in office following his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.
Trump said he could not just sit at home while the “persecution” continued:
I can’t do that because I love our country. And I can’t do that because I love the people of our country. So I can’t do that. I wouldn’t do it, and people don’t want me to do it.
I’m not doing this for me because I had a very luxurious life. I had a very simple life. People say you sure you want to do this? But you know, there’s an expression. The best day of your life is the day before you run for president. And I laughed at it. I said that may be true, actually.
Trump’s speech was intended to be a laying out of Republican policy agenda for the November midterms and beyond, but it pivoted into a succession of familiar old Trump grievances, including attacks on Democrats over crime, immigration and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After an assault on the House panel investigating his illegal attempts to stay in office, Trump concluded:
If I don’t [run] our nation is doomed to become another Venezuela or become another Soviet Union.
Please look in later for my colleague David Smith’s account of Trump’s speech.
Updated
And there it is, finally: Donald Trump’s lie that he really won the 2020 election.
The former president waited an hour into his speech at the America First Agenda summit in Washington DC, just as he was winding down, before turning to the falsehood that his defeat by Joe Biden was corrupt:
I ran for president, I won, and I won a second time, but much better the second time, a lot better.
I always say I ran the first time and I won. We actually did it twice.
Toward the end of the speech, Trump riffed freely about Mexico, and immigration, telling a succession of “sir stories” and claiming his administration built hundreds of miles of southern border wall before his plans were thwarted by the “catastrophe” of the 2020 election:
We had it almost finished, it was a catastrophe, that election, a disgrace to our country.
They [Democrats] didn’t want to build the wall. That’s when I started to think that maybe they really do want to have these borders open so everybody can invade our country.
A speech that was billed as a setting out of Republican policies pivoted quickly into an airing of Trump’s old grievances, including the “hoax” of the Mueller inquiry into his administration’s links with Russia, the “China virus” – his derogatory term for the Covid-19 pandemic – and an attack on Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top adviser on infectious diseases:
I used to listen to Fauci and whatever he said I did the opposite. I came out very good.
As if realizing he’d reach the hour mark, and it was time to wind down, Trump indicated his speech was over. “I look forward to laying out many more details in the weeks and months to come,” he said.
Then came extra time, and the free-wheeling Trump of old stepped forward, with an assault on the “unfair January 6 unselect committee of political action thugs” investigating the insurrection.
“Where does it stop?” Trump wondered. “It probably doesn’t stop because despite great outside dangers this country remains sick, sinister, and evil people within.
“They want to damage me so I can no longer go back to work for you. But I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said, another tease that he might soon declare another White House run.
Updated
In NBC’s interview with Merrick Garland, Lester Holt also asked if the Department of Justice (DoJ) would welcome a criminal referral from the House January 6 committee.
The panel has made referrals for Trump aides. Steve Bannon has been convicted of criminal contempt of Congress and faces jail time. Peter Navarro has been charged. Dan Scavino and Mark Meadows were referred, the DoJ then deciding not to act.
Garland told NBC: “So I think that’s totally up to the committee.
“We will have the evidence that the committee has presented and whatever evidence it gives us. I don’t think that the nature of how they style, the manner in which information is provided, is of particular significance from any legal point of view.
“That’s not to downgrade it or to or disparage it. It’s just that that’s not … the issue here. We have our own investigation, pursuing through the principles of prosecution.”
Updated
“We should not allow men to play in women’s sports. It’s so crazy,” Donald Trump says, before going off script to allege he was advised not to bring up transgender issues.
“‘Sir, don’t say that, it’s very controversial,’” he claims he was told, launching into a bizarre tale of a transgender swimmer he says gave “wind burns” to a fellow competitor as she sped by. Then a story about a transgender weight lifter:
This guy comes along, he’s named Alice ... world record, world record. We could have put another couple hundred pounds on. It’s so unfair.
Now Trump says he would be the “world’s greatest women’s basketball coach” and that he doesn’t like LeBron James, with whom he has clashed previously.
Updated
Garland on Trump and January 6: 'We pursue justice without fear or favour'
NBC has released a clip of its eagerly awaited interview with Merrick Garland, in which Joe Biden’s attorney general is asked about the political sensitivities around potential criminal charges for Donald Trump concerning the attack on the US Capitol, arising from the work of the House January 6 committee.
The interviewer, Lester Holt, said: “You said in no uncertain terms the other day that no one is above the law. That said, the indictment of a former president, of perhaps a candidate for president, would arguably tear the country apart. Is that your concern as you make your decision down the road here? Do you have to think about things like that?”
Garland said: “We pursue justice without fear or favour. We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for events surrounding January 6, or any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable. That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”
The Department of Justice is investigating Trump’s election subversion efforts on a number of fronts. The January 6 committee could make a criminal referral to the DoJ. Whether it should, or will, and whether it has presented sufficient evidence to do so if it chooses, is a matter of debate around the US and on the committee itself.
Holt said: “So if Donald Trump were to become a candidate for president again, that would not change your schedule or how you move forward or don’t move forward?”
Garland said: “I’ll say again, that we will hold accountable anyone who was criminally responsible for attempting to interfere with the transfer legitimate lawful transfer of power from one administration to the next.”
So that’s that.
Updated
It’s certainly a very subdued speech by Donald Trump so far, his monotone delivery lacking the energy of his campaign rallies. He’s more than a half-hour in, and still talking about crime, which he’s now blaming on Democratic governors – and the homeless.
He’s lamenting what’s happened in “our beautiful cities”, San Francisco, Chicago ... where he says people don’t have time to stop and admire the beauty, “they just want to make it to their offices”.
Let the liberals invite the homeless to camp in their backyards, soil their properties, attack their families and use drugs where their children are trying to play.
For the good of everyone involved, the homeless need to go to shelters, the long-term mentally ill need to go to institutions, and the unhoused drug addicts need to go to rehab, or if necessary and appropriate, jail.
On his first return to Washington DC since leaving the presidency, Trump says, he doesn’t recognize the place. He seems to be calling for a war on litter:
The main roads had more bottles and cigarettes and everything you can imagine. Then you see the tents and the homeless and you ask ‘what’s happened to this great bastion’?
There’s very little applause, just the occasional trickle.
Updated
Crime, and support for law enforcement, has become the central theme in Donald Trump’s comments so far, although he hasn’t mentioned the officers beaten in the violent January 6 attack by his supporters during the deadly Capitol riot.
Trump is sticking strictly to the script, and reading diligently from his teleprompter:
In the Make America Great Again, movement, we believe that every citizen of every background should be able to walk anywhere in this nation at any hour of the day, without even a thought of being victimized by violent crime. If we don’t have safety we don’t have freedom.
First, we have to give our police back their authority, resources, power and prestige. We have to leave our police alone every time they do something. They’re afraid they’re going to be destroyed, their pensions going to be taken away, they’ll be fired, they’ll be put in jail.
Without irony, or any acknowledgement of the police officers who were injured by the Trump-inspired mob defending politicians at the Capitol building, he continued:
Let them do their job. Give them back the respect that they deserve.
Trump attacks Democrats in policy speech
Donald Trump has begun his remarks at the America First Agenda summit by tearing into the Biden administration’s policies he says have “brought our country to its knees”.
“We made America great again,” Trump said, referring to what he considered was the state of the country, and economy, he left to Joe Biden, his successor.
Inflation is the highest in 49 years ... gas prices have reached the highest in our country. We’ve become a beggar nation, grovelling to others for energy.
He’s following up with attacks on Democratic immigration policy and levels of crime, and a drugs crisis, which he sees as happening only in “Democrat-run cities”:
Our country is now a cesspool of crime ... because of the Democratic party’s efforts to destroy and dismantle law enforcement throughout America.
There is, however, no evidence that Democrats have defunded law enforcement anywhere, and Biden has made a specific point of saying it is not his party’s policy.
So far, at least, there have been no references to the 2020 election, which Trump maintains was stolen from him ...
Updated
Donald Trump was due to take the stage at 3pm but, just like at countless rallies before, during and subsequent to his single term in office, he is running late.
Currently Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker, and Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who would like the job himself, are engaged in a roundtable discussion extolling Trump’s policies and looking ahead to the midterm elections, which McCarthy says will be a “one in 50-year election.”
“We can lock in a conservative majority for the decade,” he says.
Meanwhile, it appears a group of anti-Trump protesters have reached the hotel before the former president, and are making some noise:
Protestors in the hotel at the America First Policy Initiative event chanting “no trump no kkk no fascist USA” pic.twitter.com/c37IVacDDP
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) July 26, 2022
Updated
A number of Florida families and coalition of equality activist groups have filed a lawsuit over Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” law that bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.
The bill signed by DeSantis in March is “based on undefined standards of appropriateness [and] effectively silences and erases LGBTQ+ students and families,” the lawsuit, filed against four separate Florida school districts claims.
Good morning. My lawsuit against #DontSayGay has been filed. Children deserve to be loved and respected no matter how they identify. Read more about it here:https://t.co/2YWEtftpMa pic.twitter.com/RaTJEl90we
— Jen 🏳️🌈 SAY GAY 🏳️⚧️ Cousins (@slytherbitch6) July 26, 2022
“This law will prevent our two youngest children, rising first and third graders, from discussing their older non-binary sibling in the classroom for fear of their teacher or their school getting in trouble,” said plaintiffs Jennifer and Matthew Cousins, according to a press release announcing the legal action.
“The law also robs them of the opportunity of discussing their family like other non-LGBTQ+ children. It’s heartbreaking to know that my children may be bullied because this law paints our family as shameful.”
DeSantis insists that the law, officially called the Parental Rights in Education act, is designed to stop “wokeism” in Florida’s schools and empowers families by giving them choice over their children’s educational activities.
DeSantis’s taxpayer-funded press secretary Christina Pushaw has previously called opponents of the bill “groomers”.
Greetings from the ballroom of a swanky Washington hotel that has been turned into an indoor Donald Trump rally as the former US president makes his return to the nation’s capital.
Just like a Trump rally, music from Elton John and Frank Sinatra boomed from loudspeakers, then warm-up acts came out to lavish praise on Trump.
Brooke Rollins, president and chief executive of the American First Policy Institute (AFPI), a thinktank created by Trump alumni which is hosting the speech, described him as “one of the greatest Americans of all time”. Televangelist Paula White added: “He wears a bigger mantle than I think many of us even recognise.”
Less than a mile from the White House, it’s Trump’s first visit to Washington since he snubbed Joe Biden’s inauguration and took flight to Florida.
Numerous Trump White House officials have been giving speeches or wandering the corridors during the AFPI summit, where face masks or mentions of January 6 are almost non-existent. I just overheard someone ask Kellyanne Conway: “Can I have a selfie?”
Updated
Trump back in DC to speak on Republican policy
Donald Trump is set to take the stage shortly in Washington DC to address the conservative America First Agenda Summit, his first return to the capital since leaving office last year.
Conference organisers at the America First Policy Institute say the former president, who is mulling a third run at the White House in 2024, will focus on the Republican party’s plans to combat inflation and improve the US immigration system.
But it remains to be seen if Trump can resist recirculating his lies about the 2020 election, especially following an appearance by his former vice-president, Mike Pence, at a conference of conservative students this morning.
Pence took thinly-veiled shots at his old boss, and his obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, telling his audience: “Some people may choose to focus on the past. But elections are about the future.”
It is unlikely the notoriously thin-skinned ex-president will be able avoid the temptation to fire back.
Stay with us, and we’ll bring you Trump’s comments as they happen. While we wait, take a read of my colleague Joan E Greve’s preview of his return to the capital:
Updated
NYT: Trump lawyers 'knew fake electors scheme was illegal'
The New York Times has published details of “previously undisclosed” emails between associates of former president Donald Trump, including some from lawyers in which they purportedly acknowledge a scheme to keep him office was likely illegal.
Some of the messages refer to “fake” electors who were in place in certain key states to falsely declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election, and prevent Joe Biden from reaching the White House.
The Times said they showed “a particular focus on assembling lists of people who would claim – with no basis – to be electoral college electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost.”
One lawyer used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors, the Times said, while “lawyers working on the proposal made clear they knew that the pro-Trump electors they were putting forward might not hold up to legal scrutiny”.
SCOOP: @lukebroadwater and I reviewed dozens of emails between Trump campaign officials and lawyers, including one in which a lawyer described the slates of electors they were putting together as “fake” https://t.co/P36lgMtFuA
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 26, 2022
The “fake electors” scheme was a central plank of Trump’s strategy to remain in power, and has become a focus of the House panel investigating his insurrection. In declaring Trump the rightful winner, the committee asserts, the fake electors’ goal was persuading the then vice-president, Mike Pence, as Senate president, to refuse to certify Biden’s victory.
The panel has already examined previously-known communications about it between Trump allies.
The Times quotes, among others, an email reportedly sent by Jack Wilenchik, a Phoenix-based lawyer who helped organize the pro-Trump electors in Arizona, to a Trump adviser in the White House.
“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” he wrote.
Wilenchik wrote in a later email, adding a smiley face emoji, that “‘alternative’ votes would probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes”.
Updated
Joe Biden has said that his presidential predecessor Donald Trump “lacked the courage to act” as a mob of his supporters tried to halt the congressional certification of his defeat in the 2020 election by mounting the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
In virtual remarks Monday to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Biden – who was recovering from Covid-19 – said police officers defending the Capitol were “speared, sprayed, stomped on, brutalized” for hours by white nationalists and other Trump sycophants who bought his false claims that he’d been robbed of victory by electoral fraudsters.
Brave women and men in uniform across America should never forget that the defeated former president of the United States watched January 6th happen and didn’t have the spine to act.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 25, 2022
In my remarks today to @noblenatl, I made that clear: https://t.co/pQ8E4IcZR1 pic.twitter.com/uO60QO0Wrz
“The defeated former president of the United States watched it all happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office,” Biden said, alluding to evidence and testimony staged by the congressional committee investigating the assault during a series of public hearings throughout the summer. “While he was doing that, brave law enforcement officers are subjected to the medieval hell for three hours … dripping in blood, surrounded by carnage, face to face with a crazed mob that believed the lies of the defeated president.
“The police were heroes that day. Donald Trump lacked the courage to act.”
Read the full story:
Interim summary
Let’s take stock of where we are on a lively Tuesday in US politics:
- Mike Pence took shots at Donald Trump during a speech to young conservatives in Washington DC, the ex-vice-president telling them “elections are about the future”. The former president, obsessed by his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, addresses the rightwing America First Agenda summit a little later this afternoon.
- Biden’s recovery from his Covid-19 infection has allowed him to resume exercising, physician Kevin O’Connor said in a morning update. But the president’s health will not have been improved by polling news from New Hampshire, where only one-fifth of residents want him to seek a second term, according to Politico.
- January 6 rioter Mark Ponder, who attacked police officers with poles during the deadly attack on the Capitol, was sentenced to at least five years in prison, one of the lengthiest terms so far handed out to those convicted. Ponder, 56, from Washington DC, said he “got caught up” in the chaos and “didn’t mean for any of this to happen”.
- Senators voted 64-32 to move forward on the Chips Act, which seeks to provide about $52bn for US companies manufacturing computer chips, plus tax credits and other incentives. Biden says the money is essential to reverse a shortage of semiconductors in the US, and keep the country at the cutting edge of defense, healthcare and the burgeoning electric vehicle market.
- Chief Justice John Roberts made ultimately fruitless efforts to persuade fellow supreme court conservatives to preserve abortion rights, CNN said. The network published an analysis of events leading up to the court’s overturning of almost half a century of federal abortion protections last month, including a claim that Roberts pressed Brett Kavanaugh – one of three Donald Trump-appointed justices – in particular to change his vote.
Stick with us, there’s plenty more to come this afternoon, including Trump’s return to the capital for the first time since he left office last year.
Updated
Poll shows Biden’s deep unpopularity in New Hampshire
It is just one poll and just it is just one state, but a new survey of voters in New Hampshire makes grim reading for the White House.
In the state which holds the crucial first primary in the presidential nomination process, Joe Biden’s numbers are cratering.
Politico has the details and you’ll find their quick top line rundown below:
Only one-fifth of New Hampshire residents want Biden to seek a second term in 2024, according to the poll.
The president is statistically tied with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in 2024 presidential support, survey results show. He also trails a handful of potential 2024 candidates in favorability, including Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.
The percentage of Democrats who want Biden to run again has tanked since this time last year, from 74 percent to 31 percent, according to this year’s poll.
And among New Hampshire members of both parties, the poll also shows concern for Biden’s age: 78 percent of respondents overall said they were at least somewhat concerned, including 75 percent of Democrats.
January 6 rioter Mark Ponder gets at least five years in jail
The Associated Press has news on a lengthy sentence for a January 6 rioter. The story follows:
A man who attacked police officers with poles during the riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five years in prison, matching the longest term of imprisonment so far among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions.
Mark Ponder, a 56-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., said he “got caught up” in the chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, and “didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“I wasn’t thinking that day,” Ponder told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, asking her for mercy before she sentenced him to five years and three months in prison.
That was three months longer than the prison sentence requested by prosecutors. And it’s the same sentence that Chutkan gave Robert Palmer, a Florida man who also pleaded guilty to assaulting police at the Capitol.
More than 200 other Capitol riot defendants have been sentenced so far. None received a longer prison sentence than Ponder or Palmer.
Chutkan said Ponder was “leading the charge” against police officers trying to hold off the mob that disrupted Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“This is not ‘caught up,’ Mr. Ponder,” she said. “He was intent on attacking and injuring police officers. This was not a protest.”
Biden exercising again after Covid infection
Joe Biden’s daily health bulletin is a good one, as he continues to recover from the Covid-19 infection announced last week.
The president has improved enough to be able to resume his regular exercise routine, according to a Tuesday morning update from physician Dr Kevin O’Connor, reported by the Associated Press.
Took some calls this morning with man’s best co-worker. pic.twitter.com/dmkE5WhuvX
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 25, 2022
Biden’s symptoms “have now almost completely resolved” and all of his vital signs are good, O’Connor wrote, adding that he took a fifth and final dose of the antiviral Paxlovid on Monday night.
Tuesday is Biden’s fifth full day of isolation, although he has been working remotely, in the company of his dog Commander, and he plans to test for the virus on Wednesday. A negative result will see the 79-year-old president returning to work in person.
Updated
Representative Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, attended his son’s same-sex wedding days after the lawmaker voted against a bill that would codify the right to have a same-sex marriage into federal law.
Thompson was one of 157 Republicans who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the US House last week. On Friday, he attended his son’s wedding.
“Congressman and Mrs Thompson were thrilled to attend and celebrate their son’s marriage on Friday night as he began this new chapter in his life,” a spokesperson for the lawmaker, Maddison Stone, said in a statement on Monday. “The Thompsons are very happy to welcome their new son-in-law into their family.”
Democrats are pushing the measure amid concern that the US supreme court could take away the right to same-sex and interracial marriage in the wake of its decision to overturn the nationwide right to access an abortion. Those concerns were prompted by supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, who used a concurring opinion in the abortion case to suggest that the court use the same rationale to revisit its 2015 decision protecting same-sex marriage.
After the vote on the Respect for Marriage Act, Stone said the measure was a “stunt”.
“This bill was nothing more than an election-year messaging stunt for Democrats in Congress who have failed to address historic inflation and out of control prices at gas pumps and grocery stores,” Stone told the Centre Daily Times.
In 2015, the supreme court ruled the constitution protects the right to a same sex-marriage in a case called Obergefell v Hodges. After the Obergefell ruling, Thompson told a local newspaper that he wanted to make sure the religious rights of others were protected.
Read the full story:
Updated
Senate advances Biden-backed Chips Act
It’s a win for Joe Biden in the Senate … members have just voted 64-32 to move forward on the Chips Act, which seeks to provide about $52bn for US companies manufacturing computer chips, plus tax credits and other incentives.
The president spoke with industry leaders and labor officials from the White House yesterday, urging Congress to get the bill to his desk as soon as possible.
Biden says the money is essential to reverse a shortage of semiconductors in the US, and keep the country at the cutting edge of defense, healthcare and the burgeoning electric vehicle market.
But not all commentators are in favor. In an analysis for the Guardian last month, former US labor secretary Robert Reich called industry’s demands for the subsidies in exchange for producing more chips “extortion”.
The Senate just moved forward on Chips for America with a strong bipartisan vote: 64-32.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) July 26, 2022
We're one step closer to lowering prices for Americans, strengthening domestic supply chains and bolstering national security.
Congress should send this to @POTUS desk as soon as possible.
Updated
The Biden administration said Tuesday it will sell an additional 20m barrels of crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve as part of an ongoing effort to rein in gas prices.
It’s part of a previously announced plan to release a million barrels every day for 180 days, senior administration officials said during a briefing with reporters.
The officials also announced a treasury department analysis estimating that the oil releases have helped bring down the price of gas by as much as 40c per gallon.
The price of gas has fallen in recent weeks to a national average of $4.32, according to the AAA, but remains high amid soaring inflation and exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The painfully high cost of fuel, food and rent is a source of deep frustration and anxiety among the American public and a political liability for the president and Democratic party ahead of November’s midterms.
The analysis was published as new data showed consumers have grown even more pessimistic about the state of the US economy.
Republicans have hammered the Biden administration over gas prices, accusing it of taking a victory lap when prices remain high. A slew of new economic data this week is likely to raise fears that the US may be headed toward a recession.
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the 6 January House panel probing Donald Trump’s attempts to stay in power following his 2020 election defeat, says he sees “positive developments” from the justice department’s parallel criminal inquiry, even if its progress isn’t clearly visible.
The Illinois congressman told CNN’s New Day on Tuesday that he was aware of frustration, some of it his own, caused by a perceived lack of motion on the legal front, even as damning revelations about Trump’s conduct were aired in the House panel’s recent public hearings.
But he said he was more encouraged by what he’s seen lately:
There was a lot of frustration, just kind of personally, for the last, I guess, year and a half, like, what’s DoJ doing?
I think our investigation, though it is not a criminal investigation, certainly has brought some things to light that DoJ is watching, and it seems like between that and some of the search warrants that have been served and some of the other things that we have seen, that they are moving forward.
If they are moving forward on looking at this stuff, that’s positive for the country, even if, for the short term, it may be hard.
The House panel wrapped up what analysts said was the “first season” of public hearings last week, but members are hinting that could be more in the fall as further evidence emerges.
Meanwhile, senior Republican officials in Illinois are ignoring demands by Trump-aligned party members to sanction Kinzinger, similar to action taken against the panel’s other Republican, Liz Cheney, by her party in Wyoming.
Politico reports that Darren Bailey, a Trump-backed Republican running for governor, and state party president Don Tracy, issued statements “focused on uniting the party” as it aims to oust incumbent Democrat JB Pritzker from the governor’s mansion in November.
Read details of CNN’s interview with Kinzinger here.
CNN: Roberts 'lobbied to save abortion rights'
Chief justice John Roberts made ultimately fruitless efforts to persuade fellow Supreme Court conservatives to preserve abortion rights, CNN said on Tuesday.
The network has published an analysis of events leading up to the court’s overturning of almost half a century of federal abortion protections last month, including a claim that Roberts pressed Brett Kavanaugh - one of three Donald Trump-appointed justices - in particular to change his vote.
Eventually, the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that gave constitutional protection to women seeking an abortion was overturned in a 5-4 vote, with Roberts siding with the liberal minority.
But he did vote with the conservatives in a 6-3 decision that upheld a Mississippi abortion ban that gave rise to the Roe v Wade challenge.
CNN said “multiple sources” told the network that Roberts’ overtures, particularly to Kavanaugh, raised fears among conservatives, and hope among liberals, that he could change the outcome trailed in the leaking of the draft opinion to Politico in May.
But once that draft was published, CNN said, conservatives pressed to try to hasten release of the final decision and Roberts was “ thwarted by the sudden public nature of the state of play”.
After watching Mike Pence take shots at Donald Trump’s 2020 election obsession this morning, we’ll be looking out for the former president’s response this afternoon when he addresses the America First Agenda Summit in Washington DC.
My colleague Joan E Greve has this preview of Trump’s first return to Washington since leaving office:
Mr Trump is going (back) to Washington. The former president will return to the nation’s capital on Tuesday, marking his first visit to the city since leaving office last year.
Trump will deliver the keynote address at a summit held by the America First Policy Institute, a thinktank formed by some of his former White House advisers.
AFPI’s leaders have said the America First Agenda Summit will focus on the Republican party’s plans to combat inflation and improve the US immigration system, but that agenda is unlikely to stop Trump from recirculating his lies about the 2020 election.
The summit comes less than a week after the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection held its second primetime hearing, which focused on Trump’s inaction during the deadly Capitol attack. The committee outlined how Trump refused for hours to intervene and instead watched television coverage of the violence, even as some of his closest advisers pleaded with him to take action.
Trump is expected to confront the committee’s accusations in his Tuesday speech, as he has remained determined to criticize those who did not support his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last month, Trump again attacked Mike Pence, his former vice-president, for refusing to interfere with the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6.
“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic,” Trump said. “But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike – and I say it sadly because I like him – but Mike did not have the courage to act.”
Read the full story:
Updated
Ted Cruz, the Republican Texas senator, has endorsed fellow rightwinger Harriet Hageman for Congress in Wyoming in a direct challenge to incumbent Liz Cheney.
“Harriet will be a rock-ribbed conservative congresswoman who will always defend the constitution,” Cruz says in a fawning statement.
“She knows the importance of standing up for individual constitutional rights and fighting back against the federal government.”
Cheney, a long-serving Republican congress member, has drawn criticism from Donald Trump supporters such as Cruz for serving as vice-chair of the January 6 House panel investigation the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Wyoming’s primary takes place on 16 August. A Casper Star Tribune poll last week showed Cheney trailing Hageman by 22%.
Updated
Pence digs at Trump over 2020 obsession
Mike Pence has been taking shots at his former boss Donald Trump during an appearance at the Young America’s Foundation conference in Washington DC this morning, urging his audience of conservative students to look to the future, not backwards.
The former vice-president, who is mulling his own run for the presidency in 2024, is touting a “freedom agenda” which he says is forward focused.
His mentions of Trump by name were limited to claiming credit for their administration’s perceived achievements. But the former president’s ongoing obsession with his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden is clearly on Pence’s mind:
Some people may choose to focus on the past. But elections are about the future. And I believe conservatives must focus on the future to win back America.
We can’t afford to take our eyes off the road in front of us.
His comments appeared more tame than previous attacks on his one-time boss, whose supporters wanted to hang Pence during the deadly 6 January Capitol riot as Trump pressed him to refuse to certify Biden’s victory.
But with the former running mates appearing to move in opposite directions, highlighted by their backing of rival candidates in Arizona’s Republican primary for state governor, Pence is keen to assert he is the politician looking to the future.
I came today not to look backwards but to look forward. The truth of the matter is, now more than ever, conservatives need to be focused on the challenges Americans are facing today and offer bold and positive agenda solutions for the future.
The conservative movement has always been built on the notion that ideas have consequences. Conservatism is bigger than any one moment, any one election, or any one person. It’s always been about ideas.
Referring to the cancelation of his scheduled speech at the Heritage Foundation last night, due to a thunderstorm, Pence said:
More than ever, we need to lead America with a freedom agenda focused on the future. God must have had different plans for today. For he must have decided that a talk about the future... should be given to the rising generation.
His hour-long speech ended with one final dig:
I truly believe elections are about the future. That is absolutely essential... that we don’t give way to the temptation to look back.
We’ll be watching Trump’s response this afternoon when he speaks at the America First Agenda summit, also in Washington.
Good morning politics blog readers. It’s shaping up to be a busy day in Congress, with Senate Democrats working hard on Republican colleagues to build enough support to pass the Marriage Equality Act by the end of the week.
With the chamber’s August break looming, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is keen to advance the same-sex marriage bill that cleared the House last week with the backing of 47 Republicans, and on to Joe Biden’s desk.
But although a handful of Senate Republicans have affirmed their support, it remains to be seen if Democrats in the equally divided chamber can reach the 60-vote threshold they need to force a final vote.
Here’s what else we’re following today:
- Donald Trump returns to Washington DC this afternoon for the first time since leaving office last year. His address to the rightwing America First Agenda Summit is ostensibly policy focused as he mulls another run for the presidency in 2024.
- The 6 January House panel investigating Trump’s efforts to subvert his 2020 election defeat continues its work behind closed doors, following a lively series of public hearings and, as we learned last night, potentially damning testimony from former vice-president Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short.
- Joe Biden, who announced yesterday he’s “feeling great” as he recovers from Covid-19, has a busy schedule. He’s meeting virtually with the head of South Korea’s SK group, which is investing $22bn in American industry, and will attend (virtually) House celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- The Senate will vote this morning, after a weather delay yesterday, on the Chips Act, providing $52bn for US companies manufacturing computer chips, plus tax credits and other incentives.
- The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, will give her daily briefing at 3.15pm, beside Biden’s senior economic adviser Brian Deese.
