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Trump New York grand jury back in session
The New York grand jury investigating Donald Trump over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels is back at work, and is hearing more evidence Monday, the Associated Press reports.
It’s still unclear, however, when the panel, which is meeting in a state office building in Lower Manhattan, might be asked to vote on a possible criminal indictment for the former president.
Today’s reconvening was the first time the panel heard testimony since last Monday, the day before Trump, falsely, insisted he was to be arrested. The AP said it confirmed the developments with “a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secretive proceedings”.
Uncertain is whether any additional witnesses might be called to testify.
Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters of his upcoming arrest.
That didn’t happen, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
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There’s good news over the health of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman. Ramon Antonio Vargas has the details:
John Fetterman is expected to return to office soon after spending the last five-plus weeks in a hospital receiving treatment for mental depression, a spokesperson has said, though the staffer stopped short of offering an exact timeline.
“John will be out soon. Over a week but soon,” Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania senator, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article published on Friday. Saying that the team caring for Fetterman at Washington DC’s Walter Reed hospital was “amazing”, Calvello added: “Recovery is going really well.”
The Inquirer’s report noted that a hospital stay of more than five weeks is a relatively long time to be receiving inpatient care for depression. But, the report added, a Fetterman aide said the lengthy stay was “about John getting the care he needs and not rushing this”.
“Six weeks is a grain of sand in [the] six-year term” to which Fetterman was elected, the aide said, according to the Inquirer. “He’s doing what he needs to do.”
A CNN journalist had reported being told earlier in March by a source close to Fetterman that the longer hospital stay resulted from doctors taking extra care to get the senator’s “medication balance exactly right”.
A rising star among Democrats, Fetterman checked into Reed to be treated for clinical depression on 15 February. That stay started a week after he was hospitalized for feeling light-headed. He had also suffered a stroke while campaigning last year.
Read the full story:
Trump New York grand jury back in session
The New York grand jury investigating Donald Trump over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels is back at work, and is hearing more evidence Monday, the Associated Press reports.
It’s still unclear, however, when the panel, which is meeting in a state office building in Lower Manhattan, might be asked to vote on a possible criminal indictment for the former president.
Today’s reconvening was the first time the panel heard testimony since last Monday, the day before Trump, falsely, insisted he was to be arrested. The AP said it confirmed the developments with “a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secretive proceedings”.
Uncertain is whether any additional witnesses might be called to testify.
Trump, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters of his upcoming arrest.
That didn’t happen, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
The mayor of Florence has invited students and their parents from a Florida Christian charter school to come and see Michelangelo’s statue of David to show them the 16th century masterpiece is not pornographic.
Hope Carrasquilla, principal of the Tallahassee Classical School, was ousted after a parent complained children were “exposed to pornography” when they were shown pictures of David in class.
The school’s governing board told her to stand down or be fired, reflecting the push by Florida’s hard right Republican governor Ron DeSantis to impose conservative values in schools and hand parents unprecedented powers.
Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, the Italian city where the Renaissance masterpiece is on display at the Accademia Gallery, has extended the invitation to Carrasquilla.
According to the Associated Press, Nardella said confusing art with pornography was “ridiculous”.
Cecilie Hollberg, the gallery’s director, told the AP: “To think that David could be pornographic means truly not understanding the contents of the Bible, not understanding western culture and not understanding Renaissance art.”
The agency reported that several parents and teachers plan to protest Carrasquilla’s exit at a school board meeting tonight.
Read more:
Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republican House extremists have been gladhanding January 6 defendants at a Washington DC jail. Ed Pilkington has the details:
A jail in Washington has become the latest focal point of the US culture wars after a congressional delegation led by the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene visited defendants charged in 2021’s deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and championed them as “political prisoners”.
Greene high-fived the detainees and shook their hands, according to the Associated Press. As the tour group was leaving, the defendants chanted “Let’s go Brandon!”, an offensive phrase denigrating Democratic president Joe Biden.
Greene was joined by fellow far-right Republican members of the House oversight committee during a two-hour tour of the DC jail on Friday. The group included extremist Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who embraced Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot dead by police as she participated in the Capitol riot, NBC News reported.
This is at least the second visit that Greene has made in a campaign to reframe the incarcerated January 6 rioters from alleged violent insurrectionists into martyrs of the far-right cause. This time, however, her stunt was joined by Democratic members of the oversight committee who attended the tour so that they could hold their Republican peers to account, they said.
“We won’t let Marjorie Taylor Greene and these … extremists tell lies about the insurrectionists and their attack on our democracy,” one of the Democratic visitors, Robert Garcia of California, said before the tour began.
Read the full story:
Harris rebuilding bridges on African tour
Kamala Harris is in Africa, rebuilding bridges with nations neglected by the US while aiming to blunt China’s growing influence in the region.
The vice-president met Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo on Monday in Accra, and will hold summits with the leaders of Tanzania and Zambia as she promotes US business interests.
Harris is the fifth senior Biden administration official to visit Africa this year in what Politico says is “nothing less than the resetting of relations between the US and the countries she’s scheduled to visit”.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the UN ambassador; Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary; Antony Blinken, secretary of state; and first lady Jill Biden have all visited in recent months. The president plans to make the trip later this year.
Observers say the mending of fences is necessary, and overdue, following the Trump administration’s attitude towards the continent. Donald Trump drew global derision for his 2018 comment referring to some African nations as “shitholes”.
Harris arrived in Africa with a $139m package of bilateral security, economic and development assistance, Reuters reported.
Her week-long trip follows a December summit hosted by Biden in Washington with African leaders, in which the president announced he was “all in” on Africa’s future.
Elizabeth Warren announced Monday that she’s running for a third term in the Senate.
The Massachusetts Democrat, a progressive who ran for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, says she’s seeking reelection to “end corruption in Washington, make the economy work for the middle class and protect democracy,” according to the Associated Press.
We’ve won some big victories for working families in Massachusetts and across the country, but there’s a lot more to do. So today I’m making it official: I’m running for re-election to keep up the fight. pic.twitter.com/ebG3vJCot3
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 27, 2023“I first ran for Senate because I saw how the system is rigged for the rich and powerful and against everyone else. I won because Massachusetts voters know it, too. And now I’m running for Senate again because there’s a lot more we’ve got to do,” Warren, 73, said in a campaign video released Monday.
A criminal indictment for Donald Trump for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels could come as early as today, as the former president continues to rail against the “fake” investigation by New York prosecutors.
We’re waiting for confirmation that a grand jury convened by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has reconvened on Monday, as expected, to hear final testimony in the case sparked by Trump’s alleged efforts to silence Daniels about their affair before the 2016 election.
Security has been stepped up around the Lower Manhattan courthouse where the jury has been meeting in secret, according to ABC News and other media outlets. Bragg received death threats last week, and a suspicious white powder was sent to his office.
The former president, meanwhile, spent the weekend furiously denouncing the inquiry on social media, and at a rally in Texas, having previously told supporters falsely that he would be arrested last week.
He wasn’t, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that Trump’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
Trump has also drawn ire from opponents and some fellow Republicans for his “reckless” rhetoric warning of “death and destruction” if he is indicted. “He’s going to get someone killed,” Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.
The jury is mulling a felony charge of falsifying business records against Trump after he allegedly tried to hide a $130,000 payment to Daniels, with whom he has denied an affair.
It’s one of four current investigations dragging down Trump’s campaign for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.
There’s been movement in recent weeks in the justice department’s inquiries into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and mishandling of classified documents he hid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office.
And in Georgia, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is looking into his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in January 2021 asking him to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.
While we await developments, have a read of my colleague Ed Pilkington’s report on Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina conceding on Sunday that Trump effectively made up his insistence he was to be placed under arrest last week.
Good morning US politics blog readers. We begin the new week where we left the last, watching for a grand jury in New York City to reconvene and possibly hand down a criminal indictment of Donald Trump for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The episode has turned into something of a three-ring circus, with the former president railing against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg at a weekend rally in Texas, having previously told supporters, falsely, that he would be arrested last week.
He wasn’t, and one of his attorneys admitted on Sunday that the ex-president’s unfounded remarks about his imminent detention were mere speculation prompted by “rumors”.
The grand jury, meanwhile, did not sit on Thursday or Friday, and we’re waiting to see if it gets back to business today. We’ll bring you any developments as they happen.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
Joe Biden hosts the Women’s Business Summit in Washington DC, and is scheduled to deliver remarks at 2.30pm.
Kamala Harris is on a goodwill trip to Africa, meeting leaders of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, and a host of business and community leaders. The vice-president is attempting to rebuild relations after then-president Trump’s 2018 denouncement of some African nations as “shithole countries”.
The Senate convenes this afternoon to take up measures that would formally end the Gulf and Iraq wars of 1991 and 2002. Biden says he supports the repeal of authorizations for military interventions, which advanced to a final vote with bipartisan support last week.
The first briefing of the week from the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is scheduled for 1pm.
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