McCarthy says Trump ‘stronger today than in 2016’ after doubting his ability to win earlier – live

Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Donald Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016”, hours after he appeared to question whether the former president was the strongest GOP nominee to win the 2024 election.

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McCarthy, in an interview with Breitbart News, said:

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As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DoJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.

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He pointed to a Morning Poll published today that showed Trump with a three-point lead over Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match. McCarthy said:

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Just look at the numbers this morning – Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.

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It comes after he was asked, in an interview earlier today with CNBC, whether Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles. McCarthy replied:

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Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.

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Kamala Harris is out with a statement cheering the supreme court’s decision in the Moore v Harper case out of North Carolina, but acknowledging that more must be done to safeguard voting rights across the United States.

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Here are the vice-president’s thoughts:

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Voting is the bedrock of our democracy. Today’s decision preserves state courts’ critical role in safeguarding elections and protecting the voice and the will of the American people. We know that more work must to (sic) be done to protect the fundamental right to vote and to draw fair maps that reflect the diversity of our communities and our nation. The President and I will keep fighting to secure access to the ballot box, but we cannot do this alone. We continue to call on Congress to do their part to protect voters and our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

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If the supreme court had ruled in favor of Republicans in a major election law case decided today, it would have represented a “truly horrible” blow to American democracy, a congressman from North Carolina, the state at the heart of the decision, said in an interview.

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Speaking to the Guardian’s US politics live blog, Wiley Nickel, a first-term Democratic House representative from the Raleigh area, said that while the decision handed down might represent a victory in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, he still expects Republicans who control North Carolina’s state legislature to proceed with redrawing congressional maps to their advantage.

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“We had something truly horrible that didn’t happen and it would have been the beginning of the end of democracy in America if the court had sided with Tim Moore in the Moore v Harper case,” Nickel said, referring to the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives whose name was on the supreme court case.

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But because the US supreme court has now ruled against North Carolina’s Republicans and declined to endorse a fringe theory that could have prevented state courts from weighing in on federal election rules, “It’ll mean that we have a check with the courts and with our constitution … it just moves us on to the next stage of the fight to make sure that we get fair maps in this next election.”

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Nickel was elected last year after North Carolina’s supreme court struck down a GOP-drawn congressional map and replaced it with one that produced a 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state’s delegation following the midterm election. While Democrats still lost control of the US House, that ruling was one of many factors that helped the party’s lawmakers across the country perform better than expected.

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In North Carolina, the GOP has since taken the majority on its top court, which, together with the party’s control of the House and Senate, will allow it to move forward with a partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.

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Nickel expects that the boundaries of his district, which leans slightly Republican, will remain pretty much the same, but other Democratic congressional representatives may be at risk.

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“It goes back to our state legislature and they’re going to draw maps and it’s going to be, I think, bad overall for Democrats,” he said. How bad it is will be yet another factor determining whether Joe Biden’s allies are able to retake control of the House in the next election, set for November 2024.

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In the long run, Nickel supports federal legislation to end partisan gerrymandering, but acknowledges that among the current crop of Republicans in the House, “The majority of them right now, if anything, they’re going in the opposite direction.”

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He takes some solace from another supreme court ruling released earlier this month that maintains parts of the Voting Rights Act and could help Democrats hang onto some districts in North Carolina and elsewhere in the south. Nickel also noted that if the Tar Heel State’s Republicans push too hard to make maps that disadvantage Democrats, it raises the chances a legal challenge against them will succeed.

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“Every single time we talk about maps in North Carolina, the real question is, how greedy are they going to get? And if they get too greedy, the state courts, federal courts are going to get involved,” he said.

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Democracy advocates are cheering after the supreme court struck down an attempt by Republican state lawmakers in North Carolina to get the justices’ endorsement of a fringe legal theory that could have greatly worsened partisan gerrymandering nationwide. Meanwhile, Walt Nauta, the valet to Donald Trump who was indicted alongside him for charges related to the classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, missed his arraignment today. The hearing will now take place on 6 July.

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Here’s a rundown of what has happened today so far:

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• The supreme court will release more opinions on Thursday. The nine justices have seven cases left to decide, including those dealing with affirmative action and Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan.

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• Alabama’s Republican governor has called a special legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional maps, after the supreme court earlier this month ruled the current districts discriminated against Black voters.

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• Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, outlined plans to find agreement with Republicans on a bunch of different pieces of legislation.

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The impacts of the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper extend to redistricting, and beyond.

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Its most immediate effect is to preserve longstanding norms over state courts’ ability to weigh in on legislatures’ actions when it comes to federal elections, as the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

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The 6-3 decision in Moore v Harper is a blow to North Carolina Republicans who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory – the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. Such a decision in the case would have been a major win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do. Some of the conservative justices on the court had urged the bench to embrace the idea.

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“We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent at an earlier stage in the case that was joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. “If the language of the elections clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections.”

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The court’s decision means that state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.

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But Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor focusing on American elections, sees broader implications in the justices’ rejection of the fringe independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which Republican lawmakers from North Carolina has asked them to endorse in the case:

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First, the ISL theory could have unraveled all instances where states implemented election policies for federal elections that did not include the state legislature. That includes voter-approved ballot initiatives for policies like mail balloting, same-day registration, etc.

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) June 27, 2023

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Here’s more from Sam on the case:

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The supreme court has announced that it will release more opinions on Thursday.

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It has seven cases left to issue verdicts on, including challenges to Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt, and a case that could see the court’s conservative majority dismantle affirmative action in college admissions.

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The supreme court has rejected a conservative challenge to the ability of state courts to weigh in on congressional maps, batting away a petition that could have transformed redistricting across the United States.

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We are reading the decision just handed down in the case of Moore v Harper, and will let you know more about what it means for American politics.

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Donald Trump’s valet charged in the classified documents case will not be arraigned until early July after he was unable to find an attorney admitted to the Florida bar, and was also unable to appear in court after repeated flight delays, according to people familiar with the matter.

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The valet, Walt Nauta, was scheduled to be answer the charges against him at federal district court in Miami on Tuesday morning, after he previously could not be arraigned at the same time as Trump because – unlike the former president – he did not have a lawyer admitted to the Florida bar.

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Nauta’s hearing has now been rescheduled to 6 July.

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In about three minutes, the supreme court will begin releasing decisions.

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There’s no telling how many they will put out, or which cases they will issue opinions on, but we will follow it all here as it happens.

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The arraignment of Walt Nauta, Donald Trump’s valet who was indicted alongside him over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, has been thrown into uncertainty, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:

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NEW: Currently unclear whether Trump valet Walt Nauta’s arraignment will take place today as scheduled — Nauta had difficulty getting down to Miami last night because of repeated flight cancellations, and his lawyer wanted him to meet Florida counsel candidates before retaining.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 27, 2023

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Nauta was supposed to appear in a Miami federal court this morning to be hear the charges against him and enter a plea.

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There’s no telling what decisions the supreme court will release at 10am eastern time today, but the chances are high that the nine-justice bench, where conservatives hold a majority and last year showed a willingness to upend longstanding practice in American society, will issue opinions on several weighty matters that they have been considering.

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Here are some of the cases that could have the biggest impacts:

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• The court is considering a challenge to race-conscious admissions at universities. Proponents of the practice say it has helped schools admit more students of color and diversify their classes, while opponents equate it to racial discrimination.

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• Another case could see the justices endorse a legal theory that would strip state courts of their power to rule on congressional maps. This could have huge consequences for redistricting across the United States, and for the greater battle for control of the House of Representatives.

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• Several Republican-led states have sued over Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt. The supreme court kept the program blocked while considering the challenges against it, and could kill it for good with a ruling.

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• The justices could weigh in on the case of Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from making websites for same-sex couples. LGTBQ+ advocates fear a ruling in her favor could open up new avenues of discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people.

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Good morning, US politics blog readers. The supreme court will release another batch of opinions at 10am eastern time today, and chances are high that we’ll get the conservative-dominated court’s decisions on several outstanding cases that could have big impacts on American life. The justices still have not weighed in on challenges to Joe Biden’s student loan relief act, a case that could transform the congressional redistricting process, or another that could lead to the end of affirmative action in college admissions, among others. There are no guarantees that decisions in those matters will come today, but chances are better than ever; this is the last week of the court’s term, and the supreme court has only 10 outstanding cases remaining.

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That’s not all that’s going on today:

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• Walt Nauta, Donald Trump’s valet who was indicted alongside him earlier this month on federal charges related to helping hide classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago, will be arraigned in Miami.

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• Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a leading rival for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, are both campaigning in early primary state New Hampshire.

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• Anthony Fauci, the US public health chief who became a household name after Covid-19 broke out, will teach at Georgetown University in Washington DC after retiring from the National Institutes of Health last year.

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Donald Trump has responded to a leaked audio recording from July 2021 in which he repeatedly talked about a document on Iran that he described as having come from the “defense department”.

The audio of the recording, played publicly for the first time by CNN and obtained by the Guardian, casts doubt on his recent assertions that the material he was referring to was a stack of printed news clippings.

The tape reveals the full extent of Trump’s discussion that was only partially included in the indictment and could make for a compelling presentation if deemed admissible at trial.

Trump said he “didn’t even see the recording”, adding that he was a “legitimate person”.

A New York appeals court has ordered that Ivanka Trump be dismissed from a civil fraud case filed by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children.

James’s lawsuit, filed last September, accused Trump of lying from 2011 to 2021 about the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate and Trump Tower penthouse, as well as his own net worth, to receive favorable loans. The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s children were involved in a conspiracy to commit the crimes.

The lawsuit seeks at least $250m in damages from the former president, his sons Donald Jr and Eric, his daughter Ivanka and the Trump Organization, and to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York.

The appellate division in Manhattan, in today’s unanimous ruling, dismissed the claims brought against Ivanka Trump by James, noting that those claims were barred by New York’s statute of limitation. It said:

The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.

The appeals court has returned the case to the state supreme court judge presiding over the case to determine whether the claims against the other defendants should be limited.

A trial is scheduled to begin 2 October.

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has said “what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting” after her rival, Francis Suarez, appeared not to have heard of the persecuted Chinese minority group.

Haley, during a foreign policy speech about China in Washington, said:

We promised never again to look away from genocide, and it’s happening right now in China. And no one is saying anything because they’re too scared of China.

Part of American foreign policy should always be that we fight for human rights for all people. And what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting. And the fact that the whole world is ignoring it is shameful.

Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Donald Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016”, hours after he appeared to question whether the former president was the strongest GOP nominee to win the 2024 election.

McCarthy, in an interview with Breitbart News, said:

As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DoJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.

He pointed to a Morning Poll published today that showed Trump with a three-point lead over Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match. McCarthy said:

Just look at the numbers this morning – Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.

It comes after he was asked, in an interview earlier today with CNBC, whether Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles. McCarthy replied:

Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.

Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office are set to interview Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in Atlanta, as part of the federal investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results.

Raffensperger’s interview, first reported by the Washington Post, will be his first with US justice department investigators.

Smith’s office subpoenaed Raffensperger back in December, but NBC News reports that the move was for documents and not for him to appear or testify in person.

In a phone call after the 2020 election, Trump demanded Raffensperger “find” the votes needed for him to win Georgia – a state Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes.

Trump told Raffensperger:

All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.

A new federal law that requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant and postpartum employees took effect on Tuesday, providing protections to millions of eligible people.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide “reasonable accommodations” to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition, NBC News reported.

The legislation covers accommodations for a myriad of pregnancy-related conditions including morning sickness, pregnancy loss and postpartum depression.

Examples of possible accommodations include being able to sit and drink water, having flexible hours and having uniforms that fit properly, according to information from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Accommodations could also include time off for childbirth recovery and time to access an abortion, the 19th News reported.

Under the act, a pregnant employee can request accommodations from their employer, with both parties having a discussion on if the accommodation can be granted.

Read the full story here.

Kamala Harris is out with a statement cheering the supreme court’s decision in the Moore v Harper case out of North Carolina, but acknowledging that more must be done to safeguard voting rights across the United States.

Here are the vice-president’s thoughts:

Voting is the bedrock of our democracy. Today’s decision preserves state courts’ critical role in safeguarding elections and protecting the voice and the will of the American people. We know that more work must to (sic) be done to protect the fundamental right to vote and to draw fair maps that reflect the diversity of our communities and our nation. The President and I will keep fighting to secure access to the ballot box, but we cannot do this alone. We continue to call on Congress to do their part to protect voters and our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

If the supreme court had ruled in favor of Republicans in a major election law case decided today, it would have represented a “truly horrible” blow to American democracy, a congressman from North Carolina, the state at the heart of the decision, said in an interview.

Speaking to the Guardian’s US politics live blog, Wiley Nickel, a first-term Democratic House representative from the Raleigh area, said that while the decision handed down might represent a victory in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, he still expects Republicans who control North Carolina’s state legislature to proceed with redrawing congressional maps to their advantage.

“We had something truly horrible that didn’t happen and it would have been the beginning of the end of democracy in America if the court had sided with Tim Moore in the Moore v Harper case,” Nickel said, referring to the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives whose name was on the supreme court case.

But because the US supreme court has now ruled against North Carolina’s Republicans and declined to endorse a fringe theory that could have prevented state courts from weighing in on federal election rules, “It’ll mean that we have a check with the courts and with our constitution … it just moves us on to the next stage of the fight to make sure that we get fair maps in this next election.”

Nickel was elected last year after North Carolina’s supreme court struck down a GOP-drawn congressional map and replaced it with one that produced a 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state’s delegation following the midterm election. While Democrats still lost control of the US House, that ruling was one of many factors that helped the party’s lawmakers across the country perform better than expected.

In North Carolina, the GOP has since taken the majority on its top court, which, together with the party’s control of the House and Senate, will allow it to move forward with a partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.

Nickel expects that the boundaries of his district, which leans slightly Republican, will remain pretty much the same, but other Democratic congressional representatives may be at risk.

“It goes back to our state legislature and they’re going to draw maps and it’s going to be, I think, bad overall for Democrats,” he said. How bad it is will be yet another factor determining whether Joe Biden’s allies are able to retake control of the House in the next election, set for November 2024.

In the long run, Nickel supports federal legislation to end partisan gerrymandering, but acknowledges that among the current crop of Republicans in the House, “The majority of them right now, if anything, they’re going in the opposite direction.”

He takes some solace from another supreme court ruling released earlier this month that maintains parts of the Voting Rights Act and could help Democrats hang onto some districts in North Carolina and elsewhere in the south. Nickel also noted that if the Tar Heel State’s Republicans push too hard to make maps that disadvantage Democrats, it raises the chances a legal challenge against them will succeed.

“Every single time we talk about maps in North Carolina, the real question is, how greedy are they going to get? And if they get too greedy, the state courts, federal courts are going to get involved,” he said.

The third “Florida Man” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez, suffered an embarrassment during an interview with a conservative radio host when he was asked about the plight of the oppressed Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.

“The what?” Suarez replied when asked by the presenter Hugh Hewitt if he would be talking about them during his campaign, reported by the Miami Herald.

“The Uyghurs,” Hewitt repeated.

“What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked.

“OK, we’ll come back to that. You gotta get smart on that,” Hewitt said.

“What did you call it, a Weeble?” Suarez asked at the conclusion of the 15-minute conversation.

In a later tweet, Hewitt called Suarez’s interview “pretty good for a first conversation”, apart from the “huge blind spot” on the Uyghurs.

In a statement, Suarez claimed he had merely misheard. “Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China,” he claimed.

“China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That’s on me.”

You can listen to the interview here.

Speaking of Donald Trump and 2024, Kevin McCarthy made a curious comment this morning in an interview with CNBC.

Asked if he thought Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles, the Republican House speaker replied, “Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer. But can … anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them.”

Make of that what you will. Here’s the full clip:

During his campaign swing through New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis was asked about his views on the January 6 insurrection.

Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted DeSantis, who is his closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but that apparently isn’t enough to earn the Florida’s governor’s condemnation of the former president’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol:

Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, has also praised the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper.

Posting to Twitter, Pelosi said:

Today, the Supreme Court rejected a fringe, far-right assault on a sacred pillar of American Democracy: the right to vote.

With its ruling in Moore v. Harper, the Court refused the MAGA Republicans’ radical theory and reaffirmed our Founders’ vision of checks and balances.

The White House has responded to the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper, calling it a “critical” move for voting rights.

White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said the “extreme” legal theory would have let politicians undermine the will of the people.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at a campaign event in Hollis, New Hampshire, also vowed to tear down Washington’s traditional political power centers, AP reports.

Asked about people who had voted twice for Donald Trump because of promises to “drain the swamp” in the nation’s capital, DeSantis replied:

He didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been.

He said he would take power out of Washington by instructing cabinet agencies to halve the number of employees there, adding:

I want to break the swamp.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has vowed to succeed where Donald Trump failed and to “actually” build the wall between the US and Mexico, as the two held dueling campaign events in New Hampshire.

DeSantis, at a town hall in Hollis, spoke about his new immigration policy proposal which includes calling for ending birthright citizenship, finishing the border wall and sending US forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels, AP reports.

He said:

We’re actually going to build the wall. A lot of politicians chirp. They make grandiose promises and then fail to deliver the actual results. The time for excuses is over. Now is the time to deliver results and finally get the job done.