Summary of the day
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
A diverse coalition of advocacy groups have sent a letter to Congress today calling for formal hearings and investigations into alleged corruption in the court. The letter comes amid reports that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had accepted previously undisclosed gifts and trips from wealthy stakeholders whose business interests at times clashed with cases before the supreme court.
The federal prosecutor overseeing the criminal case against Hunter Biden said the justice department never impeded him from bringing charges. In a letter to Republican senator Lindsey Graham, Delaware US attorney David Weiss denied allegations that he ever formally sought permission from attorney general Merrick Garland to be designated as special counsel.
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has been ordered by a New York judge to pay his former attorneys nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal fees. Judge Arlene Bluth ruled on Friday in favor of the law firm, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, after they filed a lawsuit against Bannon for breach of contract related to several cases.
An exclusive circle of “extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative” Americans is in the spotlight after a New York Times investigation revealed how the supreme court justice, Clarence Thomas, has benefited from being a member. The latest revelation comes amid scrutiny over Thomas prompted by a report revealing that he had received gifts from the Republican mega-donor, Harlan Crow.
Joe Biden visited London where he met with Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles III. Biden will head now to Vilnius, Lithuania, for a critical Nato meeting – where Russia’s war in Ukraine will top the agenda – and finish his trip with a stop in Finland.
A major branch of the US military does not have a Senate confirmed leader for the first time, as a result of Republican senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade on all senior military nominations. Commandant Gen David Berger stepped down from his position as leader of the marine corps on Monday, after more than 40 years of service.
Hill Harper, an actor known for his roles on “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY”, has announced he is running for Michigan’s Senate seat. Harper is the sixth Democratic candidate to enter the race to replace retiring Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow, who announced in January that she would not be seeking a fifth term in 2024 in the battleground state.
Ron DeSantis has made “very large, critical errors” in the Republican presidential primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, the biggest of which is the Florida governor’s attempt to “out-Trump Trump” and appeal to the hard-right GOP base.
George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds, stoked outrage by comparing himself to the great civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks.
A major branch of the US military does not have a Senate confirmed leader for the first time, as a result of Republican senator Tommy Tuberville’s blockade on all senior military nominations.
Commandant Gen David Berger stepped down from his position as leader of the marine corps on Monday, after more than 40 years of service. His successor, Gen Eric Smith, is the acting commandant until he is confirmed by the Senate.
Tuberville, an Alabama Republican and Senate armed services committee member, placed a hold on all senior military promotions in protest of the Pentagon’s new policy that provides paid leave and reimbursement costs for travel for troops if they cannot obtain abortions in their state.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, at a ceremony marking Berger’s departure, said:
You know, it’s been more than a century since the US Marine Corps has operated without a Senate-confirmed commandant. Smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are central to the defense of the United States.
He added:
I am also confident that the United States Senate will meet its responsibilities, and I look forward to welcoming an outstanding new commandant for our Marine Corps and to adding many other distinguished senior leaders across the joint force.
Former vice president Mike Pence criticized his former boss, Donald Trump, after the former president claimed he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours.
Pence, who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was asked on Fox News how he believes the war in Ukraine will end. Pence said:
There’s some talk, my former running mate likes to talk about solving it in a day. The only way you’d solve this war in a day is if you gave Vladimir Putin what he wanted.
2024 GOP pres. candidate Mike Pence goes after Trump for claiming he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine in 24 hours:
— The Recount (@therecount) July 10, 2023
“My former running mate likes to talk about solving it in a day. The only way you’d solve this war in a day is if you gave Vladimir Putin what he wanted.” pic.twitter.com/AqPkXE4H73
Pence also said he supported Joe Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, saying that it was in the US interest “to give the Ukrainians what they need to stop [Russians] there.”
Away from US politics, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the majority of Nato members stood together with his country and the Vilnius summit must confirm that Ukraine is a de-facto member of the military alliance.
“The majority of the Alliance stands firmly with us,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video message. “When we applied for membership of Nato, we spoke frankly: de-facto, Ukraine is already in the Alliance. Our weapons are the weapons of the alliance. Our values are what the alliance believes in. Vilnius must confirm all this.”
Zelenskiy said further weapons supplies for Ukraine in its war against Russia would also be discussed at the summit and added: “I am sure that there could well be positive news regarding weapons for our men from Vilnius.”
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has said she believes the US and China wanted to stabilize their economic ties with “candor” and “respect.”
Yellen said she believed her trip, during which both sides discussed “significant disagreements,” had succeeded in putting a floor under the relationship.
In an interview with Marketplace, taped shortly before her departure from Beijing on Sunday, she said: “There are challenges, but I believe there is a desire on both sides to stabilize the relationship and to constructively address problems that each of us see in our relationship, to do so frankly, with candor, with respect and to build a productive relationship going forward.”
The supreme court has concluded another term that upended Americans’ lives.
Last week, the court’s conservative supermajority ruled against race-conscious decisions in college admissions, overturning decades of precedent supporting affirmative action. A day later, the six conservative justices both struck down Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan and sided with a Colorado-based business owner who wanted to refuse service to same-sex couples.
As the conservative justices’ decisions attracted criticism, their behavior away from the bench also sparked alarm. Reports emerged that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had accepted previously undisclosed gifts and trips from wealthy stakeholders whose business interests at times clashed with cases before the supreme court.
The outcry unleashed over the justices’ ethics scandals, combined with the widespread disapproval of their opinions, has intensified calls to reform the supreme court. And although court reform efforts have previously been denounced as radical overreach, more Americans are warming to the idea in the face of a six-three conservative supermajority issuing decisions viewed as largely out of step with the country’s principles and priorities.
“Democracy is at risk,” Congressman Hank Johnson, a Democrat in Georgia, said.
We must save this supreme court from itself, and that’s why it’s so important that we do court reform now.
Read the full story by my colleagues Joan E Greve and Ed Pilkington.
Hill Harper, an actor known for his roles on “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY”, has announced he is running for Michigan’s Senate seat.
Harper is the sixth Democratic candidate to enter the race to replace retiring Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow, who announced in January that she would not be seeking a fifth term in 2024 in the battleground state.
Harper faces a tough test challenging Elissa Slotkin, a three-term Democratic House member who has raised $5.8m in just over four months, according to her campaign.
In an interview with The Associated Press before his announcement, Harper said that not being a “career politician” would serve as an advantage in Congress and that he plans to run a campaign “powered by the people, for the people”.
We can all feel it: D.C just isn’t getting things done for people.
— Hill Harper (@hillharper) July 10, 2023
We need representatives who'll take on special interests, get money out of politics, and make our government work for all of us.
That’s why today, I’m announcing my campaign for U.S. Senate in Michigan! ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/lv11ncDcsK
Michigan’s Senate seat is crucial for Democrats if they hope to maintain control of the Senate. The state flipped from Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden four years later.
Biden hails 'rock-solid' UK-US friendship during talks with Rishi Sunak
Joe Biden described relations with the UK as “rock solid” during talks in London with Rishi Sunak.
The president, on a brief stopover in the UK before the Nato summit in Vilnius, said before the start of formal discussions in the Downing Street garden:
We’ve got a lot to talk about. Our relationship is rock solid. Couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend and a greater ally.
The meeting with Sunak, their fifth in as many months, was dominated by discussion of Ukraine and its aspirations for Nato membership, a subject that is likely to dominate the Nato summit and has the potential to reveal frictions in the UK-US alliance.
In his talks with Biden, Sunak focused on the planned “security guarantees” an informal alliance of Nato countries intended to provide Ukraine as an interim measure before it received the full protections of Nato membership.
Biden and Sunak also agreed to differ over the US decision to accede to Ukraine’s request to provide cluster munitions on certain conditions, and as a bridge until the supply of more conventional armaments picks up.
The UK prime minister’s official spokesperson said providing the weapons “was a difficult choice for the US” that had been “forced on them by Russia’s war of aggression”.
The two leaders “discussed the commitments that UK has under that convention, both not to produce or use cluster munitions and to discourage their use”.
Asked if Sunak complied with that commitment to discourage the use of the weapons in his talks with Biden, the spokesperson said:
Yes, they discussed the requirements the prime minister is under because of this convention, and the UK is upholding that.
US attorney in Hunter Biden case denies whistleblower claim
The federal prosecutor overseeing the criminal case against Hunter Biden said the justice department never impeded him from bringing charges.
In a letter to Republican senator Lindsey Graham, Delaware US attorney David Weiss denied allegations that he ever formally sought permission from attorney general Merrick Garland to be designated as special counsel – a status that would have allowed him to bring federal charges in any district across the nation against the president’s youngest son, Reuters reported.
Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump, wrote:
I have not requested Special Counsel designation. Rather, I had discussions with Departmental officials regarding potential appointment ... which would have allowed me to file charges in a district outside my own without the partnership of the local U.S. Attorney. I was assured that I would be granted this authority if it proved necessary.
His comments appear to debunk claims made by Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal supervisory agent who worked on the Hunter Biden investigation, who alleged the justice department repeatedly stonewalled the probe.
Shapley also claimed that when Weiss sought permission from Garland to be designated as special counsel, so he could bring charges from anywhere in the country, his request was denied. Garland has denied the claim.
Updated
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has been ordered by a New York judge to pay his former attorneys nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal fees.
Judge Arlene Bluth ruled on Friday in favor of the law firm, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, after they filed a lawsuit against Bannon for breach of contract related to several cases.
The firm represented Bannon in a series of legal problems, including his fight against a congressional subpoena investigating the 6 January 2021, US Capitol attack, as well as criminal investigations into his efforts to crowdfund a wall along the southern US border.
According to the firm, Bannon made partial payments totaling $375,000 out of the more than $850,000 billed.
In a six-page order, Bluth ordered Bannon to pay $480,487.87 in unpaid bills as well as “reasonable legal fees” to his former lawyers.
In September 2022, Bannon was indicted in New York state court in Manhattan on money laundering and conspiracy charges over the planned wall. He pleaded not guilty.
He was previously indicted on federal fraud charges for the fundraising effort but was pardoned by Donald Trump during his final days in office.
Updated
An attorney for the three remaining survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre said they will appeal an Oklahoma judge’s recision to reject a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 massacre.
Judge Caroline Wall on Friday dismissed with prejudice the lawsuit, preventing Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and Hughes Van Ellis, 102, from refiling in the Oklahoma district court their lawsuit against the city of Tulsa and others.
Originally filed in 2020, the lawsuit sought reparations for the attack in the city’s Greenwood district, at the time one of the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the US. It argued that large swaths of Tulsa’s Black community still suffer from the damage brought on by the massacre, more than a century on.
A group supporting the lawsuit said in a statement:
Judge Wall effectively condemned the three living Tulsa Race Massacre Survivors to languish — genuinely to death — on Oklahoma’s appellate docket. There is no semblance of justice or access to justice here.
One of the attorneys representing the survivors told the Washington Post that her legal team intends to appeal the judge’s decision. She told the paper in a statement:
Black Americans, especially Black Tulsans, carry the weight of intergenerational racial trauma day in and day out—a weight they cannot relinquish or cavalierly dismiss.
The dismissal of this case is just one more example of how America’s, including Tulsa’s, legacy is disproportionately and unjustly borne by the Black community.
Updated
The head Democrat on the House armed services committee, Adam Smith, said he is “worried about the extreme right-wing amendments” that have been attached to the House version of the annual defense bill, which members are set to take up on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 amendments have been filed, including ones addressing abortion in the military, diversity programs, the origins of the coronavirus, guns and on many more political and cultural topics, the Washington Post reported.
Smith told the paper he was concerned about GOP measures on “abortion, guns, the border, and social policy and equity issues”. He said:
We’ll just have to wait and see what amendments are made in order when the bill is debated on the House floor.
He added:
Depending on which amendments pass, I will make an evaluation on whether I support the final bill.
George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds, stoked outrage by comparing himself to the great civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks.
“Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back, and neither am I gonna sit in the back,” Santos told Mike Crispi Unafraid, a rightwing podcast.
Santos also said he will run for re-election in his New York seat, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens.
Now honoured by a statue in the US Capitol, Parks was a seamstress and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People secretary who carved her place in history when on a bus in Alabama in 1955 she refused to move to make way for a white passenger and was arrested and jailed.
Justice Clarence Thomas accepted more undisclosed gifts through elite, wealthy circle – report
An exclusive circle of “extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative” Americans is in the spotlight after a New York Times investigation revealed how the supreme court justice, Clarence Thomas, has benefited from being a member.
The Times reported on Sunday that just months after Thomas joined the bench in 1991, he was welcomed into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, where he forged relationships with an exclusive circle of wealthy and powerful members “who lionized him” and gave him proximity to “a lifestyle of unimaginable material privilege.”
The paper writes:
While he has never held an official leadership position, in some ways he has become the association’s leading light. He has granted it unusual access to the Supreme Court, where every year he presides over the group’s signature event: a ceremony in the courtroom at which he places Horatio Alger medals around the necks of new lifetime members. One entrepreneur called it ‘the closest thing to being knighted in the United States.’
This organization granted him access to wealthy friends who gifted Thomas with luxurious vacation retreats and VIP tickets to sporting events, as well as invited him to parties, according to the paper. Thomas did not disclose many of the gifts and trips over the last two decades reported by the Times.
The latest revelation comes amid scrutiny over Thomas prompted by a ProPublica report revealing that he had received gifts from the Republican mega-donor, Harlan Crow. ProPublica has reported that gifts from Crow to Thomas included luxury travel and resort stays, purchase of a property in which the justice’s mother lives rent-free, and schooling for Thomas’s great-nephew.
Updated
Ron DeSantis has made “very large, critical errors” in the Republican presidential primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, the biggest of which is the Florida governor’s attempt to “out-Trump Trump” and appeal to the hard-right GOP base.
“The dynamics of these races change from day to day,” the New York progressive congresswoman told MSNBC. “I think that Governor DeSantis has made some very large, critical errors.
You can’t out-Trump Trump, right? And that’s what he’s really been trying to do. His attacks on teachers, on schools, on LGBTQ+ Americans, I think, go way too far in the state of Florida. And I think that they are a profound political miscalculation and an overcompensation.
DeSantis is a clear second in polling regarding the Republican nomination but lags as much as 30 points behind Donald Trump.
The former president is the clear frontrunner despite an unprecedented 71 criminal indictments, a $5m civil penalty after being held liable for sexual assault and defamation, and the prospect of more charges to come regarding attempted election subversion.
DeSantis, a former US congressman, won a landslide re-election in Florida last year. He has pursued a hard-right agenda, including signing a six-week abortion ban, loosening gun controls and attacking the teaching of race and LGBTQ+ issues in public schools.
But he has struggled to make an impact on the campaign trail, observers suggesting he lacks the skills to truly connect with voters, even in a Republican primary, let alone in a general election.
On Sunday, DeSantis told Fox News:
The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I will beat [Joe] Biden. But, even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things.
Head-to-head polling shows Biden and DeSantis in a tight race. Recent surveys from Emerson and Yahoo News gave Biden leads of six and three points respectively. NBC News found the two men in a tie.
The letter by the coalition United for Democracy calling for lawmakers to hold formal hearings and investigate supreme court ethics and recent scandals involving its justices reads:
We write today on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans we represent to urge Congress to finally address a broken and captured Supreme Court that is overturning precedents, shattering judicial norms, and consistently siding with billionaires, massive corporations, and their extreme right-wing allies over workers, families, communities, and our democracy.
In the letter sent to party leadership on Capitol Hill and leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the coalition said the court has “exempted itself from the most basic oversight” and that revelations about ethics and corruption “have undermined public trust and made a mockery of the idea that every American should be treated equally under the law”.
This Supreme Court majority has gone too far on behalf of their donors and benefactors. Enough is enough. People across the country, including the tens of millions we represent, are increasingly disillusioned with today’s biased and unfair Supreme Court. We want a Supreme Court that protects our freedom to make a good living, to breathe clean air and drink clean water, to walk through our communities without the fear of gun violence, to make our own health care decisions, and to know our kids will learn and grow at school.
The letter does not name any particular justice.
The Republicans who lead three key House committees are joining forces to probe the justice department’s handling of charges against Hunter Biden.
Leaders of the House judiciary, oversight and accountability, and ways and means committees on Friday opened a joint investigation on Friday into the federal case into the president’s youngest son, in the wake of the justice department’s plea deal with Hunter Biden.
Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, James Comer of Kentucky and Jason Smith of Missouri and issued a series of requests for voluntary testimony from senior officials at the department, FBI and internal revenue service after making sweeping claims about misconduct and improper interference.
Republicans also want a special counsel appointed to investigate retaliation that has been alleged against the whistleblowers who came forward with the claims.
The chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, launched an attack on chief justice John Roberts last Thursday, promising a vote on ethics reform legislation after a term beset by scandal.
“The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards,” Durbin said.
I’m sorry to see Chief Justice [John] Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the court – all while the court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.
In May, Roberts turned down an invitation to testify to the committee regarding ethics reform and, although supreme court justices are notionally subject to the same ethics rules as other federal justices, in practice they govern themselves.
Biden meets with King Charles III at Windsor Castle
Joe Biden is in London today, where he met with Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III.
Biden flew into Stansted airport late last night for a trip that the White House said was designed “to further strengthen the close relationship between our nations”.
He will then leave Britain for Vilnius, Lithuania, where Nato leaders will gather for a key summit. Biden is then expected to travel to Helsinki for a meeting with Nordic leaders.
Updated
Calls for structural reform seem to have as little chance of success as calls for justice Clarence Thomas to resign or be impeached – calls perhaps likely to increase after the publication by the Times on Sunday of an investigation of the justice’s membership of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, “a cluster of extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionised him and all that he had achieved”.
Republicans control the House and trail Democrats by two seats in the Senate, all but ensuring a block on any such move. Furthermore, Joe Biden is against major reform, such as changing the size of the court or imposing term limits.
Speaking to the former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki, congressman Ro Khanna told MSNBC:
Voters know that the court is just out of touch with their lives, that the court is taking away their rights, taking away women’s rights to control their own body, taking away students’ relief in terms of the student loans. The president forgave the loans. The supreme court took that money away.
[Voters] see these justices, they see all the ethical conflicts, and they’re saying, ‘Enough with it. Let’s have a clean slate and term limits.’
I’ve said everything should be on the table, but … it’s not an easy thing to do. Often people see that it is polarising or partisan. I guess term limits is an easier first step … and a judicial code of conduct of ethics.
The Senate judiciary chair, Dick Durbin, has promised a vote on ethics reform. Any measure would be highly unlikely to pass the Republican House.
Chief justice urged to testify for ‘good of democracy’
The chief justice should testify before Congress about ethics scandals besetting his supreme court “for the good of democracy”, a leading Californian progressive said.
The justices are “so cloistered, they’re so out of touch”, the congressman Ro Khanna told MSNBC on Sunday.
They don’t have a sense of what life is like, so my plea to him would be for the good of democracy come testify. What are you afraid of?
The Democratic-controlled Senate judiciary committee has requested that Roberts testify about reports regarding relations between justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch and rightwing donors or, in Gorsuch’s case, the chief of a prominent law firm involved in a property purchase.
Questions have also been raised about the career of Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, who, according to the New York Times, “has made millions recruiting lawyers to prominent law firms, some of which have business before the court”.
In April, turning down the invitation to testify before the Senate judiciary committee, John Roberts cited concerns about the separation of powers.
Updated
Campaigners for Scotus reform to urge investigation for alleged corruption
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A diverse coalition of advocacy groups called United for Democracy, which banded together last month with the aim of moving the needle on supreme court reform, will send a letter to Congress today calling for formal hearings and investigations into alleged corruption in the court.
The group includes Democratic power players such as Planned Parenthood and MoveOn, plus prominent labor unions and grassroots organizations. In the letter, the group argues that recent “revelations about ethics and corruption at the court have undermined public trust and made a mockery of the idea that every American should be treated equally under the law.”
The letter does not make mention of specific names or revelations, but comes amid reports that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had accepted previously undisclosed gifts and trips from wealthy stakeholders whose business interests at times clashed with cases before the supreme court.
The Democratic-controlled Senate judiciary committee has requested that the chief justice, John Roberts, testify about reports regarding relations between justices Thomas, Alito and Neil Gorsuch and rightwing donors or, in Gorsuch’s case, the chief of a prominent law firm involved in a property purchase.
Public trust in the court is at all-time lows. The outcry unleashed over the justices’ ethics scandals, combined with the widespread anger over decisions on abortion, affirmative action, student debt relief and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, has intensified calls to reform the supreme court.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
Joe Biden is in London where he has met with Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles III. Biden will then head to Vilnius, Lithuania, for a critical Nato meeting – where Russia’s war in Ukraine will top the agenda – and finish his trip with a stop in Finland.
The Senate will meet this afternoon to resume consideration of the nomination of Xochitl Torres Small’s nomination for deputy agriculture secretary. They will vote at 5.30pm. The House is out.
Updated
