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What we know about today's San Jose earthquake

An earthquake took place near San Jose late Tuesday morning, causing ground shakes for Silicon Valley and Bay Area residents, though apparently not inflicting major damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) preliminarily reported a 5.1 magnitude quake about nine miles east of Seven Trees, Calif. at 11:42 a.m. local time.

The agency reported the shaking spanned hundreds of square miles, recorded as far west as Nevada and as far south as Santa Paula, Calif.

“Additional shaking from aftershocks can be expected in the region,” the California Geological Survey tweeted. “We are continuing to monitor this region.” 

USGS recorded a second 2.9 magnitude quake nearby five minutes after the initial report.

The governor’s Office of Emergency Services indicated they were assessing any preliminary damage, but local authorities have reported minimal impacts.

“We’re happy to report no emergency calls related to this morning’s quake,” the San Jose Fire Department tweeted.

The San Jose Police Department similarly said they received no reports of damage or injuries.

Northern California is no stranger to earthquakes.

The state government indicates California generally gets between two and three earthquakes per year large enough to cause moderate structural damage, measured as any quake with a magnitude of 5.5 and higher.

But seismologist Lucy Jones indicated that Tuesday’s quake was the largest in the Bay Area since 2014, when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake took place near Napa, Calif., which is located north of San Francisco.

Tuesday’s earthquake took place along the Calaveras Fault, a branch of the San Andreas Fault, which runs roughly 750 miles through California along the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

The Calaveras Fault has caused multiple earthquakes in recent decades, including the 1984 Morgan Hill earthquake, which clocked in with a magnitude of 6.2, and a 5.6 magnitude quake near Alum Rock, Calif., in 2007.

Source: TEST FEED1

Progressives go on damage control after Ukraine diplomacy letter

House progressives are doing damage control after retreating from a letter that stirred outrage among Democrats by questioning President Biden’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine war two weeks before the midterm elections.

The letter, blamed Tuesday on poor staff work, raised questions about the political acumen of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and its leader, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who is eyeing a run at leadership in the next Congress. 

“The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting. As Chair of the Caucus, I accept responsibility for this,” Jayapal wrote in a Tuesday statement. 

The letter, which asked Biden to explore diplomacy with Russia to end the war, muddled the Democrats’ message that a GOP takeover of the House could undermine U.S. unity behind Ukraine.

Just last week, Democrats had blasted House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) for saying there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine from a GOP House, a statement that led to pushback from various Republicans including former Vice President Mike Pence. 

“I believe in the power of diplomacy, and I believe it’s always better to talk to people than not,” said Jim Manley, who served as a senior adviser to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “But a key part of diplomacy is timing. And the timing here is absolutely lousy.”

“It’s embarrassing for the signers, it undercuts not only the administration but the Ukrainians at a key moment in time,” he added. 

It also gave a political gift of sorts to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to put pressure on Ukraine’s government to make concessions to Moscow. Putin illegally annexed four territories in eastern Ukraine after what much of the international community called “sham” elections. The annexations came as Russia has lost territory amid a Ukrainian counteroffensive. 

The success of that counteroffensive has left Ukraine in no mood to offer concessions to Russia, which is the aggressor in the war and in 2014 invaded and annexed the region of Crimea from Ukraine. And the Biden administration has said arming Ukraine is the best way to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in eventual negotiations.

In rescinding her letter, Jayapal tried to assuage Democrats’ concerns that her caucus was sending a message that goes against the White House at a critical juncture. She had previously raised the idea that there are other ways for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine and that the Biden administration should consider direct talks with Moscow.

But by Tuesday, as pressure escalated among lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in Democratic campaigns, she issued a total reversal of her group’s stance, a move that is exceptionally rare among progressives who are used to digging in their heels. 

Jayapal said that the initial release unintentionally muddied the water between where Democrats and Republicans stand. 

“Because of the timing, our message is being conflated by some as being equivalent to the recent statement by Republican Leader McCarthy threatening an end to aid to Ukraine if Republicans take over,” she wrote. 

“The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats, who have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people, are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian forces.”

Multiple sources close to the letter’s drafting told The Hill that it was written during the summer months, and they were unaware of why a lawmaker in a leadership position would not consider the global implications of the ask and the sensitive nature of the midterms before distributing it. 

“The screw up here is the lack of coordination with signers,” said a Democratic congressional source. “You just don’t do that. You don’t hold on to a letter for like four months.”

Some outside advocacy groups have pressed progressives to push for diplomacy, but those groups did not want to make the message so close to Election Day. 

“At least one of the NGOs who endorsed the letter really didn’t want to go through with it right now, but they pressed ahead,” the congressional source told The Hill.

But not all groups shared that view. Code Pink, a grassroots group advocating for peace, put out a statement expressing its disappointment over the blowback to the letter.

“It is sad that we live in such a political climate where being an advocate for peace and a policymaker that seeks diplomacy is met with such fierce opposition and political backlash,” the group said. 

Progressives in the House previously battled with Biden over a massive health, tax and climate package last fall, holding up passage of a separate infrastructure bill to win leverage. The standoff was widely seen as hurting Democrats and Biden, whose approval rating sank during those negotiations and remains underwater even a year later.

The short-lived pushback on Ukraine was a reminder of that infighting, all just weeks from an election where Democrats are worried they will lose their House majority — and possibly the Senate as well.

It left Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) trying to ease fears about where her caucus stands when it comes to Biden and Ukraine. 

“On behalf of the Congress, I made absolutely clear that America’s support for Ukraine will continue until victory is won,” Pelosi said during a summit in Croatia.

Few progressives on Tuesday were willing to defend Jayapal or the Progressive Caucus’s messages, particularly as they shifted over the past two days. 

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, noted that while she was a progressive, she was not a signatory to the letter. She deflected a question about whether sending it had been a mistake. 

Others privately took shots at Jayapal, arguing the misstep was part of a broader problem.

“Jayapal can blame her staff all she wants, but this is a small part of a long record of poor leadership and management of the Progressive Caucus,” said a Democratic strategist who works on progressive down-ballot campaigns. “I look forward to next year’s Progressive Caucus election.”

Left-wing Democrats often advocate for diplomatic solutions to foreign wars, but some said the debacle over the letter would make their efforts more difficult. 

“That’s what’s a bummer,” said the first Democratic congressional source. “I think it raised some important points, but if the goal here, as I think it should be, is to protect political space for diplomacy, this seems to have done the opposite.”

Source: TEST FEED1

White House says Ukraine aid 'will remain strong' amid fallout from progressive letter

The White House on Tuesday said that U.S. support for Ukraine “will remain strong” until the war with Russia is over, comments that come after the Progressive Caucus withdrew a letter they sent to President Biden on his Ukraine strategy after sparking backlash.

“Our support for Ukraine will remain strong until the end of this war,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that she had no comment on the letter itself.

The letter, which was withdrawn on Tuesday amid blowback over its release on Monday, asked Biden to push harder for peace negotiations with Russia.

Jean-Pierre said that it’s up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on when or if to negotiate with the Russians to end the war.

“Our job, as we see it today, as we’ve seen it for this past year — more than a year — is to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs on the ground, as we see this war happening in Ukraine,” Jean-Pierre said. “We’re doing this to strengthen their hand, not just on the battlefield, but if they choose, if Ukraine chooses to negotiate. But again, that is up to President Zelensky and he will make that decision for his country.”

The Progressive Caucus chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), while issuing the unusual backtrack on Tuesday, said in a statement that the letter was “released by staff without vetting.”

Many of the House’s top liberals signed on to the official memo written by Jayapal, who also said it’s been conflated with the GOP opposition and is a distraction at this time. The Hill reported earlier on Tuesday that the letter was written over the summer.

“Because of the timing, our message is being conflated by some as being equivalent to the recent statement by Republican Leader McCarthy threatening an end to aid to Ukraine if Republicans take over,” she said, referring to widely criticized remarks from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a recent interview that a GOP majority would not give a “blank check” to Ukraine.

Source: TEST FEED1

Progressive Caucus withdraws letter on Ukraine strategy amid blowback

Top House progressives backed off their position questioning President Biden’s Ukraine policy on Tuesday afternoon, withdrawing a letter released Monday that perplexed and angered many Democrats.

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the caucus chairwoman, wrote in a statement, representing a stunning shift in their call for a diplomatic push to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

“The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting. As Chair of the Caucus, I accept responsibility for this,” Jayapal wrote. “Because of the timing, our message is being conflated by some as being equivalent to the recent statement by Republican Leader McCarthy threatening an end to aid to Ukraine if Republicans take over.”

The Hill reported earlier on Tuesday that the letter was written over the summer and released this week without consideration of the timing two weeks ahead of midterm elections.

Jayapal said that her caucus’ stance towards the Biden administration’s approach to the war unintentionally created the perception that they were aligned with “Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian forces.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” she added. “Every war ends with diplomacy, and this one will too after Ukrainian victory. The letter sent yesterday, although restating that basic principle, has been conflated with GOP opposition to support for the Ukrainians’ just defense of their national sovereignty. As such, it is a distraction at this time and we withdraw the letter.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was widely criticized over an interview published last week in which he said a GOP majority would not give a “blank check” to Ukraine, indicating it would instead focus on relieving economic pain at home.

Developing

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Hope Hicks to appear before Jan. 6 panel

Former White House aide Hope Hicks is scheduled to appear before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Hicks, who served as a counselor to former President Trump during her second stint in the White House, left the administration shortly after Jan. 6.

Hicks, who worked for the Trump organization and the Trump campaign before working at the White House, has been considered one of the former president’s closest advisers. 

Her appearance shows that the committee continues to interview those close to Trump in the days surrounding Jan. 6.

But it’s unclear how helpful Hicks will be. During a prior interview with the House Judiciary Committee in 2019, she refused to answer numerous questions about her time in the White House.

The committee declined to comment on Hicks’s scheduled appearance.

But in recent days, the committee has noted the extent it has gained cooperation from Republicans.

“When you look back at what has come out through this committee’s work, the most striking fact is that all this evidence has come almost entirely from Republicans,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in the committee’s likely final hearing earlier this month.

Source: TEST FEED1

Progressives 'didn’t consider election timing' with letter on Biden's Ukraine strategy

Progressives worked over the summer to get nearly three dozen House Democrats to sign off on a letter that would call into question President Biden’s handling of Ukraine and urge him to engage diplomatically with Russia, according to two sources directly familiar with the negotiations. 

At the time, the midterms were on the back burner, according to both sources, who said the group of lawmakers didn’t have Nov. 8 on their minds at all when they crafted their request.

“They waited to get about 30 and released,” one source texted The Hill on Tuesday morning, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal negotiations. “Didn’t consider election timing.”

A House aide said the letter was “circulated for signatures” in June. “We aren’t sure why it was released now.”

That’s the question Democrats are now facing, with many wondering about the potential fallout from the move they consider puzzling, worrisome, and in some cases, downright infuriating right before the midterms.

On Monday, many of the House’s top liberals signed on to an official memo written by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) asking Biden to push harder for negotiations with Russia over the war that it started eight months ago.

“We urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire,” wrote Jayapal.

In an unusual backtrack, Jayapal and the CPC sought to clarify their request by issuing a new statement later Monday reaffirming their support for Ukraine and support for Biden’s handling of the war.

But the move immediately opened the door to further questions about the party’s foreign policy strategy just days before the elections.

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a member of the CPC, did not sign the letter and criticized it in a tweet Monday, writing “The way to end a war? Win it quickly. How is it won quickly? By giving Ukraine the weapons to defeat Russia.”

Gallego told The Hill Tuesday that he did not think the 30 members signed on “fully knowing the consequences.”

“And also the timing seems weird too,” he added.

The Hill has reached out to Jayapal and the CPC for comment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) released a lengthy statement on Tuesday reiterating the need for continued support for Ukraine, after attending the First Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform.

“Congress on a bipartisan and bicameral basis will not waver in our efforts to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable,” she said. “On behalf of the Congress, I made absolutely clear that America’s support for Ukraine will continue until victory is won.”

Rafael Bernal contributed reporting

Source: TEST FEED1

Thomas? Kavanaugh? Roberts? Conservatives dominate Supreme Court but lack clear leader

The Supreme Court’s six Republican-appointed justices clearly dominate the bench, but as they reshape American law there is little consensus among court watchers over who is the conservative wing’s true leader.

Some legal experts say it’s Brett Kavanaugh, the court’s median justice. Others point to the longest tenured justice, Clarence Thomas, whose hard-line conservatism has increasingly moved from the court’s fringes to its frontiers as the bench has swung rightward.

Some mention the “attack dog” role of Samuel Alito, an unapologetic conservative in a hyperpolarized era whose defiant opinion scuttling Roe v. Wade erased the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion and earned him conservative plaudits. Others say leadership varies by issue, noting for instance that Chief Justice John Roberts may end up writing majority opinions in hot-button cases this term.

What is clear enough is that after a term that saw the overruling of Roe, the expansion of gun rights and the narrowing of environmental regulatory power, the 6-3 conservative majority court is showing no signs of slowing down, with the justices taking up disputes this term over affirmative action in colleges, voting rights and LGBTQ discrimination.

According to Adam Feldman, a political scientist who runs the statistical analysis blog Empirical SCOTUS, court leadership is a question of the justices’ ideology and relative power.

“On the relative power of the justices right now,” Feldman said, “I think we can say that Kavanaugh is probably the most powerful.”

The court veered sharply right with the addition of former President Trump’s three nominees. As a result, the justice who now occupies the court’s ideological median position is Kavanaugh, according to the influential Martin-Quinn score.

Kavanaugh’s position means he counts four members to his left — Roberts and the court’s three liberals — as well as four justices to his right, in Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Alito and Thomas. This gives him leverage.

In cases where Roberts and the liberals are pitted against the court’s four more conservative justices, Kavanaugh not only represents the tie-breaking vote, but he can also use his vote to sway the extent of the court’s opinion, Feldman said. This is possible because under Supreme Court procedure, it falls to the senior-most justice in the majority to choose who writes the governing opinion.

“Kavanaugh can say, look, I’m only going to venture out this way if I get the opinion myself, or else I’m going in the other direction,” Feldman said. “So he has power in a few different ways, and ultimately he can force the hand of the person who’s assigning the case if he’s that vote.”

While previewing the court’s new term, Irv Gornstein, executive director of Georgetown Law’s Supreme Court Institute, indicated that he sees Kavanaugh as wielding the most influence.

“We’ve known for some time that the court was headed in a rightward direction, with the only questions being how far and how fast,” Gornstein said. “Last term tells us the answer depends on Justice Kavanaugh.”

“Make no mistake,” he added, “for now and the foreseeable future, this is Justice Kavanaugh’s court.”

Other legal experts saw the conservatives’ power dynamic differently.

Two former Thomas clerks — Carrie Severino, who heads the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, and attorney Helgi Walker — depicted their onetime boss as a commanding intellectual force among the court’s conservatives.

“His vision, his consistency and adherence to principles have all been something that many members of the current bench were already looking to and learning from well before they came to the court,” Severino said. “He’s been working in the area of originalism and textualism for 30 years and it’s just taken that long where there’s finally been a majority of justices who agree with him.”

Walker, a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said no discussion of conservative court leadership would be complete “without talking about Justice Thomas as a central figure.” She remarked on Thomas’s “intellectual horsepower, the longevity, and the moral authority,” and recalled her former boss’s sense of humor and gregarious personality.

Robert Tsai, a constitutional law professor at Boston University, said in his view, “it’s Clarence Thomas’s court.”

He described Thomas, 74, as an adherent of conservative “movement ideology,” meaning he is “a true believer in originalism who will employ that methodology in the service of socially conservative outcomes.” Thomas exerts influence over the conservative wing in more formal ways too. When Roberts is outflanked to his right, the duty falls to Thomas to assign opinion writing.

“When Roberts is in a majority, he will be pulled right or lose the power to assign and be a hapless dissenter,” Tsai said. “The others don’t have the experience or gravitas yet to hold together a group whose members might occasionally get cold feet.”

When the court last June eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, Roberts wrote a concurring opinion saying he would have reined in Roe but not overturned it. Significantly, Roberts’s absence from the majority opinion meant Thomas could tap Alito to write the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that fundamentally changed America.

Steve Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, described Alito as the conservative’s “attack dog,” as reflected by Alito’s “no-holds-barred, in-your-face, and take-down-everything-at-any-cost approach.”

“I agree that Roberts and Thomas are the true leaders,” Schwinn said, “in that they’ll get to decide when to unleash Alito.”

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe said the current court has no single conservative leader.

“I suppose I’d say leadership these days varies by issue because the court is more deeply divided and fragmented than ever,” he said, “and the chambers are suspicious of one another even if they’re on the same side of various disagreements, especially after the extraordinary leak of the Alito draft in Dobbs.”

“With respect to matters of racial preference and affirmative action, in cases like those about to be argued this Halloween, Roberts will certainly write for the court and is bound to play a leading role on the question of just how far back to turn the clock,” Tribe added.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School, said that with six conservatives on the bench and a solid conservative majority, no one justice among them controls the conservative agenda.

But if he had to pick one, he’d point to Roberts. “Notwithstanding Dobbs and a few others,” Chemerinsky said, “he is usually with the conservatives and assigns the majority opinion.”

“Ideologically, I think it is Alito who most articulates the conservative agenda,” he added. “Thomas is by himself too often to be that person.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Getting the call right: Projection pressure rises for news organizations

News organizations readying for the midterms are facing a tougher atmosphere than ever when projecting winners on election night.  

Former President Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, his fury at Fox News for calling Arizona for Joe Biden and the dozens of GOP candidates who have followed his lead in questioning the validity of election results is making the projection of races an even more fraught process than before. 

“You can go back to the 2000 election, you can go back to certainly the last election, the way that Fox News made the call in Arizona and the way the Trump campaign responded, it’s a difficult position news organizations find themselves in the sense that they don’t want to find themselves in the center of the story,” said Benjamin Toff, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

“For the people involved it’s a really uncomfortable position to be in and so they’re all very careful about not wanting to prematurely call a race based on insufficient data and evidence,” he said. 

David Scott, who as vice president of news strategy and operations at The Associated Press oversees one of the largest election coverage operations in the country, told The Hill this week the AP is prepared for the biggest election night spotlight the outlet has been in since 2020.   

“Even in this moment for our democracy where there is a lot of misinformation and intense focus on the vote count, we take comfort in the standard that we’ve used and the care and the effort that goes into calling races. That has always served us well and is also the right one for this moment,” Scott said.   

Across the country, dozens of news leaders are prepping plans to deliver race calls in real-time, a complicated and painstaking science that uses reporting from various localities, data from recent elections and exit polling to quantify leaders and eventual winners in races for the House, Senate and other contests.

Projections have been controversial or wrong in the past. The night of the presidential election of 2000, networks inaccurately called the race for either Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W. Bush.

More recently, Trump was infuriated and complained about the Arizona projection to the highest levels of Fox’s management before falsely telling his supporters he had won.   

Fox stood by the call and has brought Decision Desk Director Arnon Mishkin, who took intense flak from Trump supporters in 2020, back for the network’s coverage of the 2022 and 2024 elections.  

Trump has continued to push unsubstantiated claims about the election, and a number of Republicans running for office in this year’s midterms have backed those allegations.

Those denials are having an effect on public opinion. An ABC News poll earlier this year found only 20 percent of Americans have a high level of confidence in election systems.  

Because of this, industry experts say it is more imperative than ever that news organizations peel back the curtain for their audiences and explain the nuances of how votes are counted and projections are made.   

“We put the Decision Desk right in the studio and I can talk directly to our viewers, so that you get it straight from us. When we’re seeing something, we show it to viewers,” said Anthony Salvanto, CBS News’s director of elections and surveys. “My goal is to always be able to deliver an explanation for what’s happening in very specific terms.”  

Salvanto said his network will this cycle have a renewed emphasis on outlining for viewers which ballot types are being counted on election night, citing partisan trends in same-day versus early or mail-in voting.  

“That will be a challenge because it’s something we’ve seen emerge over the last couple of cycles in greater numbers,” he said.  

Especially for the national television networks, pressure to fill airtime with election result analysis can be immense as results are reported, in some cases slowly, from local governments and others counting votes across the country.  

“The things the networks need to be careful about, and for the most part they are, is making sure the audience understands what a Steve Kornacki or a John King are doing on Election Day,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, a former network executive and now dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University. He referenced the MSNBC and CNN personalities connected to analysis and election night projections at those two networks.

“They are not predicting the outcome, they are not sitting there with the results telling you, ‘Here’s how we think people are going to vote.’ What they are saying is, ‘Based on the historical models, we believe that once all the votes have been counted this is where it’s gonna land.’ That’s a subtle but important distinction.”    

Complicating matters further for the media organizations tracking election results minute by minute is the declining nationwide trust in public opinion polling and exit polls on election night.  

In recent years, media companies have found content relating to how voting works has resonated with audiences and are looking to capitalize on that trend as they work to create more transparency and faith in the process.  

“Readers, viewers, news consumers, voters … they are super interested in that. They want that information,” Scott said. “Some of the content that we would call explanatory journalism where we are pulling back the curtain and explaining what we’re doing is some of the most popular stories and videos and story telling that we do on election night. It really signals an interest in democracy. People want to know what’s taking place.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Pelosi pushes back on the left on Ukraine aid

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday vowed more aid for Ukraine when lawmakers wrap up must-pass government funding legislation later this year, the day after a group of House progressives called for a renewed push to find a diplomatic solution to the war there.

Pelosi, speaking during a visit to Croatia, pledged more support while touting the aid Congress has allocated for Ukraine so far under the Biden administration.

“When I had the privilege of leading a congressional delegation to Kyiv in May and met with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky and the Speaker and others, we conveyed a message of America’s unwavering support for Ukraine. Under President Biden, America’s delivered on that promise,” Pelosi said at the First Parliamentary Summit of the International Crimea Platform.

She went on to note the billions of dollars in military, economic, humanitarian and budget assistance the U.S. has provided Ukraine amid its war with Russia, saying, “more will be on the way when we pass our omnibus funding bill this fall.”

The Speaker also doubled down on the nation’s support for Ukraine in a follow-up statement issued on Tuesday: “Under President Biden, our support for Ukraine — and our determination to defend democracy — is here to stay until victory is won. Slava Ukraini!”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus had raised eyebrows on Monday with a letter to Biden calling for a shift in his administration’s response to the ongoing invasion, including pushing for talks with Russia in hopes of a “realistic framework for a ceasefire.”

The caucus put out second statement clarifying its position later in the day, after the earlier request prompted questions and pushback from some Democrats.

“In a letter to President Biden today, my colleagues and I advocated for the administration to continue ongoing military and economic support for Ukrainians while pursuing diplomatic support to Ukraine to ensure we are helpful partners on efforts to reach ‘a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said.

“Let me be clear: we are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom in the face of the illegal and outrageous Russian invasion, and nothing in the letter advocates for a change in that support,” Jayapal added.

Lawmakers have approved more than $60 billion in aid for Ukraine so far, including $12.3 billion in security and financial assistance as part of a larger government funding bill Congress passed last month.

Members on both sides have expressed support for continued assistance in recent weeks, but there have been questions about how much aid the U.S. will provide in the coming Congress, particularly as Republicans have also faced internal rifts around the funding.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an interview last week that Republicans will not write “a blank check” to Kyiv if they seize the majority in next month’s midterms, prompting Biden to say he feared for the future of U.S. support.

“I am worried about it because they said they would cut it,” Biden said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump discussed nuclear weapon systems with Woodward  

Former President Trump openly discussed nuclear weapons with veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, according to newly released audio of their interviews.  

“I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump said in a tape aired on CNN’s “Tonight.” 

Woodward reportedly looked into Trump’s claims about the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and a source expressed surprise that the former president had shared details about the weapons with the journalist. 

“It’s true. Xi and Putin would not know about it. But why is Trump bragging about it?” Woodward said Monday in conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. 

“I once said to Trump, because he was kind of asking, ‘what do you think the president’s job is?’ And I said, it is to ascertain the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country, not one party or a bunch of interest groups, and then develop a comprehensive plan and execute it. And he said:  ‘Oh, that’s good. That’s great.’ Never did he do this,” Woodward said.  

Woodward is promoting his new audiobook, “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump.”

In some of the interviews, Trump can also be heard discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and what he described as his “good chemistry” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

“He doesn’t understand democracy,” Woodward said of Trump in the CNN interview, during which he also knocked the former president for his inaction during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The United States was one of the rare countries formed on an idea. And that idea is democracy. He doesn’t understand that the Jan. 6 committee has proven that. He does not understand that he’s got to take care of the people. He’s got to give them advice, warning. And he didn’t do this.” 

Source: TEST FEED1