Republicans in Congress give McCarthy standing ovation for defense of leaked audio – as it happened

We’re closing the US politics blog now after a busy day of news, mostly out of Washington DC. Thanks for joining us.

It appears Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, retains the support of congressional Republicans, who applauded his defense of leaked conversations with party leaders following the 6 January Capitol riot in a caucus meeting this morning.

Despite an audio recording published by the New York Times catching him in a lie over whether he would ask then-president Donald Trump to resign, the House GOP caucus gave him a standing ovation, and McCarthy emerged smiling.

Here’s what else we were following today:

• There were mixed messages in the White House over Covid-19. The government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci said the US was out of the pandemic stage of the virus, while press secretary Jen Psaki said at her afternoon briefing: “Covid isn’t over and the pandemic isn’t over”.
• Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the Biden administration’s immigration policies in House and Senate hearings, telling lawmakers: “We’ve effectively managed migrants at the border”.
• The Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people, an inquiry following the killing of George Floyd found.
• Joe Biden paid tribute to the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at her funeral in Washington DC also attended by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
• Donald Trump appealed a ruling by a New York judge that held him in civil contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with an investigation into the former president’s business affairs.
• Russia and the US enacted a prisoner swap that saw former US marine Trevor Reed gain his freedom.

A reminder that you can follow developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on our live 24-hour blog here.

New York’s highest court has rejected the state’s new congressional district maps, which had been widely seen as favoring Democrats, the Associated Press reports.

The legal fight over New York’s redistricting process could be a factor in the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the US House in November’s midterm elections.

New York is set to lose one seat in Congress in 2021. New York’s new maps would give Democrats a strong majority of registered voters in 22 of the state’s 26 congressional districts. Right now, Republicans currently hold eight of the state’s 27 seats.

Democrats had been hoping that a redistricting map favorable to their party in New York might help offset expected losses in other states where Republicans control state government.

The state’s court of appeals agreed in a ruling on Wednesday with a group of Republican voters who sued, saying that the district boundaries had been unconstitutionally gerrymandered and that the Legislature hadn’t followed proper procedure in passing the maps.

The court said it will “likely be necessary” to move the congressional and state senate primary elections from June to August.

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The White House press secretary Jen Psaki is countering the assertion of the government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci that the US is out of the Covid-19 pandemic stage.

Fauci made the claim in an interview with PBS NewsHour on Tuesday, citing falling rates of hospitalizations and deaths.

But Psaki, at her afternoon press briefing at the White House, framed the situation somewhat differently:

There’s no question that we’re in a different moment in our fight against Covid. But we also know Covid isn’t over, and the pandemic isn’t over.

We’ve seen an uptick in some places, driven by the extremely transmissible BA.2 variants. We know the risk of potential surges even as a potential new variant or subvariant remains, so a different phase because we’re at a much lower level of hospitalizations and deaths, and even nationwide of cases.

But we are still seeing people get very sick from Covid.

Appearing to play down any split in messaging, Psaki said:

What Dr Fauci was saying is that we are in a different phase of this pandemic. And that’s absolutely true.

Nationwide cases are relatively low, far below the 900,000 cases a day we saw during the Omicron surge… hospitalizations are about at about the lowest level since the pandemic and deaths are declining.

Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been telling lawmakers that the Biden administration has “effectively managed” the flow of migrants at the US-Mexico border with the resources at its disposal, CNN is reporting.

Mayorkas is being questioned by Senate and House committees today, largely about the ending of the Trump-era Title 42 immigration policy next month.

The decision that terminates the policy of blocking refugees at the southern border because of the Covid-19 pandemic is set to end on 23 May, but has drawn an outcry from Republicans and concern among Democrats about an expected surge of migrants.

Mayorkas wasted little time in pinning the blame on the Trump administration, when he testified to the Senate appropriations committee:

We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain. It is not built to manage the current levels and types of migratory flows. Only Congress can fix this.

Yet, we have effectively managed an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the United States and interdicted more drugs and disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before.

A state investigation launched after George Floyd’s killing has found that the Minneapolis police department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people.

The Associated Press reports that the department also used force more often on people of color and maintained a culture where racist language is tolerated.

The report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights following a nearly two-year investigation said the agency and the city would negotiate a court-enforceable agreement to address the long list of problems identified in the report, with input from residents, officers, city staff and others.

The report said police department data “demonstrates significant racial disparities with respect to officers’ use of force, traffic stops, searches, citations, and arrests.”

And it said officers “used covert social media to surveil Black individuals and Black organizations, unrelated to criminal activity, and maintain an organizational culture where some officers and supervisors use racist, misogynistic, and disrespectful language with impunity.”

Human rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero said during a news conference that it doesn’t single out any officers or city leaders.

“This investigation is not about one individual or one incident,” Lucero said.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and his partners, who won a $27m settlement from the city for the Floyd family, called the report “historic” and “monumental in its importance.” They said they were “grateful and deeply hopeful” that change is imminent.

A Florida judge has ordered a man who defaced an LGBTQ+ Pride mural to write a 25-page essay about the 2016 Pulse gay nightclub shooting.

Last June, the city of Delray Beach in south Florida unveiled a rainbow mural at an intersection on the fifth anniversary of the attack, in which a gunman killed 49 people at the club in Orlando.

A few days later, police noticed “tire skid marks” that were “approximately 15 feet across the painting”, according to an affidavit.

Cellphone footage sent to authorities showed then 19-year-old Alexander Jerich driving towards the intersection in a white pickup truck with a Donald Trump flag draped over it. According to the police, he had attended a 30-car rally for the former president’s birthday on 14 June.

“The video clearly shows a white Chevy truck stopped at the intersection, and then intentionally accelerated the vehicle in an unreasonable unsafe manner in a short amount of time … The Chevy truck continues to recklessly skid sideways,” the affidavit said.

“The video shows that the driver willfully drove the vehicle with disregard for the safety of any other persons or property.”

Using the license plate captured in the video, police located Jerich, who agreed to turn himself in. He pleaded guilty to charges of criminal mischief and reckless driving, and agreed to pay $2,003 to repair the mural.

During a hearing last Thursday, Jerich hung his head, cried and apologized for his actions but did not offer any real explanation for them, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Justice Stephen Breyer has heard his last supreme court arguments, Reuters is reporting, ending an almost three decades-long career on the nation’s highest judicial bench.

Chief Justice John Roberts, his voice trembling, delivered a tribute at the end of the hearing:

The oral argument we have just concluded is the last the court will hear with Justice Breyer on the bench.

For 28 years this has been his arena for remarks profound and moving, questions challenging and insightful, and hypotheticals downright silly.

Roberts, Reuters says, was referring to liberal justice Breyer’s penchant for peppering attorneys arguing cases before him with queries involving outlandish hypothetical scenarios as he sorted through complex legal matters:

This sitting alone has brought us ‘radioactive muskrats’ and ‘John the Tiger man’.

The justices heard about two hours of arguments in a case involving a Native American tribal authority in Oklahoma that was the last one on the court’s calendar for its nine-month term.

Breyer, at 83 the oldest of the nine justices, announced in January he would retire when the court begins its summer recess, typically at the end of June after all the pending rulings are issued.

On 7 April, the US Senate approved Joe Biden’s chosen replacement for Breyer, Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose historic confirmation will make her the first Black woman to sit on the supreme court.

There are developments in Florida, where the Trumpist Republican governor Ron DeSantis has been fundraising off his fight with Disney over his controversial “don’t say gay” law that bans classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity.

DeSantis, who is favored to make a run at his party’s nomination for president in 2024, has reaped a record windfall from that spat, and other right-wing culture war laws he has enacted, including redrawing Florida’s congressional map to eliminate Black voting power, and a 15-week abortion ban with no exception for rape, incest or human trafficking.

Campaign finance records show that DeSantis had amassed a $105m treasure chest by the end of March for his bid to seek reelection later this year, a record amount for any previous Florida politician, the Miami Herald reports.

It includes about $50,000 from two separate days in which the governor’s campaign sent out fundraising emails chastising Disney for its opposition to the “don’t say gay” bill.

Last week, DeSantis signed into law a bill hastily approved at his behest by Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature dissolving Disney’s 55-year right to self-governance.

Opponents called the law an act of petty political revenge by DeSantis after the theme park giant, Florida’s largest private employer with almost 80,000 cast members, halted political donations and pledged to help overturn the “don’t say gay” law.

Meanwhile, Disney is telling its investors that the state cannot abolish the company’s special tax district without first paying off an estimated $1bn in bond debt, per a contract agreed in 1967 when the agreement was enacted.

The move suggests the fight over Disney’s special status is about to turn from political to legal. A statement from the governor’s office has promised more legislation to deal with the issue, but no details have yet been forthcoming, the Herald says.

Here’s where we’re at halfway through a busy Wednesday:

• Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, received a standing ovation at a Republican caucus meeting during which he defended himself over audio recordings that threatened to derail his chance of becoming House speaker in November.
• Joe Biden paid tribute to the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at her funeral in Washington DC also attended by former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
• Donald Trump is appealing a ruling by a New York judge that held him in civil contempt and fined him $10,000 a day for failing to comply with an investigation into the former president’s business affairs.
• Dr Anthony Fauci, the government’s top medical adviser, has announced the pandemic phase of Covid-19 in the US is over, despite rising numbers of cases.
• Russia and the US enacted a prisoner swap that saw former US marine Trevor Reed gain his freedom.

Please stick with us, there’s more to come this afternoon.

Kevin McCarthy received a standing ovation from Republican congress members this morning as he defended recorded conversations with party leaders following the 6 January insurrection that have threatened to derail his chances of becoming House speaker.

The Associated Press reports that McCarthy, the minority leader, told the House Republican caucus that he never asked then-president Donald Trump to resign over the deadly insurrection by Trump’s supporters.

The AP cited two Republicans at the private morning meeting at GOP headquarters, who were granted anonymity to discuss it.

McCarthy, who is in line to become House speaker if Republicans, as predicted, win control in the November’s midterm elections, received a standing ovation, the lawmakers said, according to the news agency.

It’s worth noting here that the allegation against McCarthy, per the damaging tapes released by the New York Times, was not that he lied about directly asking Trump to resign, but rather that he had discussed with other party officials that he would do so, then denied that.

One of the Times’ audio clips captured him in conversation with the the-third most senior House Republican Liz Cheney, whom he later ousted from her leadership role, saying he would tell Trump he should stand down.

Today, one Republican in the room said the meeting was “cathartic” for lawmakers, the AP said. Another voiced confidence that McCarthy would be the next speaker.

McCarthy, however, was challenged by two of the party’s extremist members, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said they felt “singled out” by the Republican leadership team.

One Republican congressman, Wisconsin’s Glenn Grothman, berated the media as he left the meeting.

“You guys obsess over January 6. Nobody cares,” he said.

An ABC poll this January found that 72% of Americans think the deadly attack on the Capitol, amid Trump’s frantic efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes, “threatened democracy”.

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