Senate eyes vote on Ukraine aid and border security as House adjourns – live
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The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.
“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.
“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”
The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.
Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.
Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.
Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”
Since I became Speaker in late October, I have clearly and consistently told the White House and Leader Schumer that we must secure our own border before we secure another country’s.
For some reason, the Biden Administration waited until this week to even begin negotiations…
Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
House Republicans voted on Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though they have uncovered no proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings. Some right-wing media figures appear to have grown weary of the investigation, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports:
Several figures at Fox News, a usually reliable mouthpiece for most Republican party initiatives in Washington DC, have shown signs of “impeachment fatigue”, appearing to question the motivation of the vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry that Biden himself has condemned as “a baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts”.
Peter Doocy, Fox’s White House correspondent, was among the most vocal, telling viewers that “Republicans are still trying to connect” money that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, earned overseas to accounts controlled by Joe Biden.
“The House oversight committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business,” Doocy said.
“But they are going to try again with this impeachment inquiry.”
Despite signs of progress in the Senate negotiations over a supplemental funding package, some Republicans are skeptical that a bill can be passed quickly.
For one thing, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, and the speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has shown little interest in calling members back.
In addition to those logistical concerns, at least one Republican senator has indicated he wants to see some assurance that the House will pass the bill as well before the Senate votes on it.
“As we’ve seen recently, just because the speaker supports something doesn’t mean the House will go along with it,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, told Punchbowl News.
“There’s no reason for us to rush to pass something that’s dead on arrival in the House.”
But House passage of a funding bill is far from guaranteed, even if Republicans win some concessions on immigration policies. Dozens of hard-right House Republicans remain adamantly opposed to additional Ukraine aid, which could jeopardize the bill’s passage.
Abortion rights supporters in Florida hope to enshrine the right to terminate a pregnancy in the state constitution by approving a ballot measure next year. Republican voters may be key to realizing that goal, Joseph Contreras reports for the Guardian:
More than 150,000 registered Republican voters in Florida have now signed a petition calling for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion up to the point of a fetus’s viability, which is generally considered to be around the 24th week of pregnancy.
The effort is a no-brainer, according to Miami-born Republican Carlos Lacasa.
“How can my party be so vigorous in its defense of the right to bear arms yet not defend a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare?” says the son and grandson of Cuban immigrants who fled communism under Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.
“I believe in small government, and morality cannot be legislated without an overwhelming consensus of the governed – and there is no such consensus on this issue.”
In supporting this effort, Lacasa will break ranks with the state’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, and his allies in the Florida legislature who have sharply limited access to abortions in the state in the last two years, encouraged in part by the supreme court overturning Roe v Wade.
The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial will continue its deliberations today, as they weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, has asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss at least $24m each to “send a message” to others who might consider similar election schemes.
“They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said yesterday.
“Facts do not and will not stop him. He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him.”
Read the full report from the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
A federal appeals court is expected to consider Friday whether Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, should see his criminal case transferred from state to federal court.
Meadows has so far been unsuccessful in his removal efforts. The US district judge Steve Jones denied the motion in September and Meadows challenged the decision to the US court of appeals for the eleventh circuit, which scheduled oral arguments for 9am.
The appeal before judges William Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees – marks possibly the final chance for Meadows to have his case transferred, a move that would give him key advantages at trial as well as affect the case against Donald Trump.
The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.
“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.
“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”
The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.
Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.
Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.
Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”
Since I became Speaker in late October, I have clearly and consistently told the White House and Leader Schumer that we must secure our own border before we secure another country’s.
For some reason, the Biden Administration waited until this week to even begin negotiations…
Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.