DeSantis opposes US aid to Ukraine as Republican presidential race intensifies – live

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Florida's Rubio rejects DeSantis comments on Ukraine

Marco Rubio, Florida’s Republican senator, disagreed with governor Ron DeSantis’s characterization of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” in a radio interview.

The comments to conservative host Hugh Hewitt underscore the divide within the GOP over Washington’s support to Kyiv, which has the support of most Democrats.

Here’s what the senator had to say:

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has sent a letter to Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) former president and CEO Greg Baker demanding answers about his involvement in rolling back financial regulations in 2018.

Warren and other progressive Democrats have blamed the weakening five years ago of parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which tightened requirements on banks after the global financial crisis, for playing a part in SVB’s collapse last week. In her letter, Warren cast Baker as a cheerleader for loosening the regulations, which led to the bank’s collapse:

Despite your assurances to Congress that SVB was sufficiently protected from risk because of your various efforts, it is now clear that SVB was wholly unequipped to independently assess its business’s risk. SVB failed – while its Chief Risk Officer position sat vacant for eight months as its financial standing deteriorated – because it failed to address two key risks: concentration in your client base, and rising interest rates. This is a failure of “Banking 101” – what one analyst called “sheer incompetence.” Had SVB been subject to Dodd-Frank rules undone by EGRRCPA the bank would have been required to maintain stronger liquidity and capital requirements and conduct regular stress tests that would have required SVB to shore up its business to weather the type of stress it experienced last week. But because you fought to exempt SVB from those stronger rules, the bank was in a much weaker position to withstand the bank run.

Warren asked Baker for his response by 28 March.

While financial markets appear to have stabilized (for now) after last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the legal and political fallout is unlikely to resolve itself for a long time. Reuters reports that the first of what will probably be many lawsuits has been filed against the shuttered institution:

SVB Financial Group and two top executives have been sued by shareholders over the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as global stocks continued to suffer on Tuesday despite assurances from the US president, Joe Biden.

The bank’s shareholders accuse the SVB Financial Group chief executive, Greg Becker, and chief financial officer, Daniel Beck, of concealing how rising interest rates would leave its Silicon Valley Bank unit “particularly susceptible” to a bank run.

The proposed class action was filed on Monday in the federal court in San Jose, California.

It appeared to be the first of many likely lawsuits over the demise of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which US regulators seized on 10 March after a surge of deposit withdrawals.

It’s a blast from the past courtesy of CNN, which dug up a 2015 interview with then-congressman Ron DeSantis, who sounded fine with arming Ukraine.

At the time, Ukraine was fighting Russian-backed separatists in a chunk of its east, while DeSantis was on his second term representing Florida in the House of Representatives.

Here’s a clip of the interview with conservative radio host Bill Bennett that CNN found:

Ukraine’s cause has created unlikely alliances and rivalries across Washington – and the United States at large. The Guardian’s David Smith spoke to country music star Brad Paisley, who has lately become a champion of Kyiv:

Wearing white cowboy hat, black suit and black tie, country singer and guitar virtuoso Brad Paisley strode on stage in the East Room of the White House before a bipartisan audience.

In what may be another consequence of the growing rift within the GOP over supporting Ukraine, Semafor reports activists calling for more aid to Kyiv are having trouble getting a meeting with House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“That’s a shame because we wanted very much to thank him for all of the assistance which Ukraine is receiving from the United States and also explain what is the price of the Ukrainian victory in 2023 and why this would have the geopolitical implications on China, which definitely is the top priority for him given from his public interviews which we were hearing on Fox News just yesterday,” said board member Olena Halushka of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine.

Together with other Ukrainian activists, Halushka said they’d reached out to members of Congress who are showing resistance to their cause, but with no luck.

“We sent requests to many of the most skeptical voices, but unfortunately we didn’t receive any feedback or confirmation,” she said.

Semafor reports a spokesman for McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment.

Here’s Ron DeSantis’s full statement outlining his position on Ukraine, as posted by Tucker Carlson:

Other big Republican names responded to the Fox News commentator’s questionnaire, including Texas governor Greg Abbott, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, former vice president Mike Pence and, of course, Donald Trump.

Trump, DeSantis, Carlson align on Ukraine, but remain at odds

It was unlikely an accident that Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis declared his opposition to arming Ukraine on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. The commentator is a Ukraine foe and with about three million viewers a night, perhaps the most popular one in American media. DeSantis’s position on the issue was revealed in a questionnaire Carlson sent to him and other potential 2024 presidential contenders, with the host reading their responses on air. You can watch that moment here:

DeSantis’s stance aligns himself with Donald Trump, the presumed Republican frontrunner who also opposes aid to Ukraine. But the former president’s relationship with Carlson has become awkward lately, thanks to messages from Fox News employees released as part of a lawsuit.

“I hate him passionately,” Carlson said of Trump in one of the messages.

Eyeing 2024, DeSantis comes out against Ukraine aid

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last night, Florida’s Republican governor and all-but-declared 2024 presidential contender Ron DeSantis said he was opposed to further American aid to Ukraine, via a statement read on the air by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. The decision aligns DeSantis with his rival Donald Trump, who is seen as the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year, but creates daylight between him and many other Republicans who say backing Kyiv is a national security priority. With Democrat Joe Biden a staunch friend of Ukraine, the governor’s stance makes clear the potential consequences if the GOP retakes the White House next year. We’ll see if anyone else in the party weighs in on DeSantis’s decision today.

Here’s what else is happening:

• Biden will sign an executive order today to crack down on illegal gun sellers. He’ll make the rule official in Monterey Park, California, site of a January mass shooting in which 11 people were killed.

• The Treasury will turn over some suspicious transaction records about the Bidens to James Comer, the House Republican leading the investigations into the president and his family.

• New inflation data showed price growth slowing last month but still remaining potent, potentially complicating the response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.