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House ethics committee opens Matt Gaetz misconduct investigation – as it happened

This article is more than 2 years old
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in San Francisco (now) and in Washington (earlier)
Fri 9 Apr 2021 20.21 EDTFirst published on Fri 9 Apr 2021 09.36 EDT
Matt Gaetz has forcefully denied the allegations against him.
Matt Gaetz has forcefully denied the allegations against him. Photograph: Reuters
Matt Gaetz has forcefully denied the allegations against him. Photograph: Reuters

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Biden unveils $1.52tn budget blueprint

Biden unveiled his first budget proposal to Congress on Friday, unveiling a sweeping $1.52tn blueprint that would come on top of his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure agenda.

The request offers a glimpse into Biden’s policy priorities for the 2022 fiscal year, which includes boosts in spending on education and public housing as well as sharp increases in investments to combat climate change and “counter the threat from China”. In total, the plan would raise federal spending by 16% on domestic priorities.

The proposal only serves to outline the president’s priorities. It is up to Congress to appropriate government spending. With only the slimmest majorities in both chambers, Democrats may find it challenging to approve such high levels of spending.

This moment of crisis is also a moment of possibility, Shalanda Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter the chairs of the House and Senate appropriations and budget committees detailing the request “Together, America has a chance not simply to go back to the way things were before the Covid-19 pandemic and economic downturn struck, but to begin building a better, stronger, more secure, more inclusive America.”

Read the nearly 60-page document here. [PDF]

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Biden creates commission to study supreme court expansion

Biden will sign an executive order on Friday that creates a bipartisan, 36-member commission to study adding seats to the US supreme court.

The order fulfills a campaign promise to examine court reform, including expanding the number of justices or setting term-limits, amid growing calls from progressive activists. Biden has not said whether he supports expanding the court, also known as “court packing.”

During his presidency, Trump appointed three justices to the court, among them was a seat that Republicans had blocked his predecessor, Barack Obama, from filling. Despite arguing in 2016 that the seat should be filled by winner of the year’s presidential election, Republicans rushed to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the 2020 election.

The result was one of the most ideologically conservative courts in modern times.

The executive order directs the commission to complete its report within 180 days of its first meeting. It is comprised of a “bipartisan group of experts” that includes Constitutional and legal scholars; former federal judges; practitioners who have appeared before the Court as well as reform advocates.

The commission co-chairs are Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law and a former White House Counsel under Obama, as well as Yale Law School Professor Cristina Rodriguez, former deputy assistant Attorney General in the office of legal counsel at the US department of Justice under Obama.

The commission will hold public meetings appraising the “merits and legality of particular reform proposals,” according to the White House.

The announcement comes after the supreme court justice Stephen Breyer warned this week that efforts to expand the court could erode public “trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.”

The remarks by Breyer, the court’s oldest justice and a member of its minority liberal bloc, prompted calls for his resignation from reform advocates. Demand Justice, a progressive group focused on the Supreme Court, started an online petition calling for his retirement.

“Tell Justice Breyer: Put the country first. Don’t risk your legacy to an uncertain political future. Retire now,” the petition states.

If an opening should arise, Biden has promised to appoint the nation’s first ever Black female justice.

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At today’s briefing, Dr Anthony Fauci is attempting dispel concerns about the vaccines by emphasizing the science that led to the development of three effective vaccines.

Citing his article in Science Magazine, published on Friday, he highlighted the scientists and doctors behind this “extraordinary” accomplishment.

This did not happen in 11 months,” Fauci said. “It was due to an extraordinary multidisciplinary effort involving basic clinical and pre-clinical science that had been underway out of the spotlight for decades before the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Members of the White House coronavirus task force touted the administration’s progress vaccinating Americans, but warned that infections were climbing again across in several states across the country.

“On the one hand we have so much reason for optimism and hope,” said Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “On the other hand, cases and emergency room visits are up and, as I’ve highlighted throughout the week, we are seeing these increases in younger adults, most of whom have not been vaccinated.

She cited schools and youth sports as possible contributors to the rise of cases in the Midwest.

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Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said 112 million Americans have received at least one does and more than 66 million Americans are fully vaccinated - more than a quarter of all American adults.

Touting “significant progress”, Zients said the current 7-day vaccination average, including slow downs over the Easter holidays, was 3 million shots per day.

“Our vaccination program is working, it’s accelerating and we’re on track to meet the president’s goal of administering 200m shots in his first 100 days,” he said during a press briefing on Friday.

He added that there are currently 66,000 sites where Americans can go to receive their vaccinations and emphasized that all adult Americans will be eligible for vaccination on 19 April, an accelerated timeline.

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Trump appointees at the Health and Human Services department worked to undermine and alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus pandemic to better reflect the former president’s rosy public commentary about the rampant outbreak, according to a new report in the Washington Post.

The revelations are based on newly released documents from congressional investigators.

The Post reports that:

Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.

Pointing to one change — where CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”

In the same email, Alexander touted another example of a change to a weekly report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that he said the agency made in response to his demands. The weekly Morbidity and Mortality Reports, which offer public updates on scientists’ findings, had been considered sacrosanct for decades and untouchable by political appointees in the past.

Two days later, Alexander appealed to then-White House adviser Scott Atlas to help him dispute an upcoming CDC report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans.

Read the story here.

Donald Trump on Friday gave his “Complete and Total Endorsement” of senator Marco Rubio, following rumors that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, was considering challenging him for the seat.

Trump called Rubio a “tireless advocate for the people of Florida” and praised his support for cutting taxes, gun rights, the US military and defense spending. He also recalled Rubio’s loyalty during the Russia investigation, quoting from the senator’s defense of him during what the former president called the “FAKE Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX.”

Rubio, who is running for a third term, is seen as the frontrunner in the 2022 Senate race. He is also considered a potential presidential contender in 2024, alongside Trump, who has flirted with the idea of a comeback.

After Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and former White House adviser, moved to Florida, speculation mounted that she would seek to run against Rubio in 2022.

Stewart Boss, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Trump’s endorsement of Rubio is “another reminder for voters exactly what they don’t like about Rubio: he’s a self-serving politician who is only ever looking out for himself, while hardworking Floridians pay the price.”

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The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports on the costly and potentially unlawful efforts of three conservative states to buy pharmaceutical drugs from illicit dealers in order to carry out lethal injection executions.

The states are using tax-payer money to source the drugs, which manufactures and distributors have said should not be used in executions.

Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal the full extent of the spending blitz that American death penalty states have embarked upon as they try to restart executions delayed by the pandemic. The findings show that Republican leaders are not only willing to run roughshod over their own state and federal laws, but are also prepared to spend lavishly in the process.

The most jaw-dropping outlay has been made by Arizona, a state in which Republicans hold both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. A single-page heavily redacted document obtained by the Guardian records that last October the department of corrections ordered 1,000 vials of pentobarbital sodium salt, each containing 1mg, to be shipped in “unmarked jars and boxes”.

At the bottom of the document, the record states: “Amount paid: $1,500,000.”

Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois became the first Republican lawmaker to call on his colleague, Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, to resign amid allegations of sex-trafficking.

“Matt Gaetz needs to resign,” Kinzinger said in a Tweet, in which he linked to a report by the Daily Beast detailing Venmo transactions between Gaetz and accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg in 2018.

Matt Gaetz needs to resign. https://t.co/AygfqAxQJX via @thedailybeast

— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) April 9, 2021

The 38-year-old Republican, one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Congressional allies, is under federal investigation related to sex-trafficking charges, according to reporting by the New York Times and multiple other outlets.

Republican leaders have so far remained silent on the growing swirl of allegations against Gaetz.

  • NBC News reported that prosecutors are examining Gaetz and Greenberg’s relationship, and whether they “used the internet to search for women they could pay for sex”. Also under investigation is whether Gaetz paid women to travel to the Bahamas for sex, according to NBC News.
  • CNN reported that Gaetz would occasionally show other lawmakers naked pictures of women he claimed to have slept with.
  • Accusations have also re-emerged that Gaetz had created a game with a point-scoring system for sleeping with “ aides, interns, lobbyists, and married legislators.”
  • The New York Times reported that in the waning days of Trump’s presidency, Gaetz sought “blanket pre-emptive pardons” for himself and other allies in Congress.

Trump this week issued a tepid defense of Gaetz, denying the report that the congressman asked him for a pardon. “It must also be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him,” Trump said in the statement.

Gaetz is due to speak publicly for the first time on Friday night at a conference hosted by a conservative women’s group at Trump’s Miami golf course.

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Hello and welcome to the day in US politics

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s coverage of the day in US politics.

All is relatively quiet this morning in Washington at the moment. Joe Biden has no public events scheduled for today, but he may take a few questions at the start of his economic briefing around 2.30pm.

Biden is expected to release his budget blueprint to Congress today, a first preview of the new administration’s spending priorities after four years of Republican control.

We’ll hear from Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, and Pete Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary, at 12.30pm, and receive an update from the White House coronavirus task force at 11am.

Meanwhile, Jill Biden, is schedule to travel to Alabama this afternoon to promote the White House’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, with an emphasis on its provisions aimed at reducing child poverty. Actress Jennifer Garner was initially expected to join the First Lady on her visit to the Republican state, but the trip was postponed due to a storm and Garner is no longer scheduled to attend.

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