Members of the Republican National Committee are meeting in Southern California to discuss how the party should position itself for the 2024 election in the aftermath of disappointing midterm results.
Divisions about the way forward are on display ahead of the RNC chair election on Friday.
What else is going on in politics?
The National Archives has written to former presidents’ and vice presidents’ representatives, requesting that they investigate whether they have classified information.
The California State Bar is attempting to revoke Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman’s law licence.
Biden accuses Republicans of “threatening to destroy” the economy with their positions on the debt limit and proposed cuts to domestic programmes at a Virginia union hall.
Elaine Chao, former Transportation Secretary, responded to Trump’s repeated racist remarks about her.
Schiff declares Senate candidature: Rep. Adam Schiff, who was barred from serving on the House Intelligence Committee again this week, plans to run for Senate in California. There has been no word on whether the current occupant of that seat, Senator Dianne Feinstein, will run again.
Senators are looking ahead to 2024. Several senators have already launched reelection campaigns for 2024, and primary challengers in some races are emerging.
A video of the attack on Pelosi’s husband will be made public: Late Wednesday, a California judge ruled that video footage of Paul Pelosi’s attack could be released.
McCarthy and Jeffries have a meeting with Elon Musk.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy joked to reporters after a closed-door meeting about a rare 58th birthday gift: a visit from Elon Musk.
It appears that Musk and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met for business.
The tech billionaire was seen entering the speaker’s office late Thursday afternoon, as the House debated over 20 amendments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act.
Following the meeting, the Twitter CEO took to social media to explain his appearance on Capitol Hill. “I just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy and @RepJeffries to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties,” Musk tweeted.
His visit comes just two weeks before House Oversight Committee hearings on what Republicans call collusion between Twitter and the federal government. They claim the social media platform censored GOP views on the platform and suppressed information about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Employees of Twitter have been invited to testify.
Before the release of body camera footage in the Tyre Nichols case, Biden calls for “peaceful protests.”
President Joe Biden said Tyre Nichols’ family deserves a “swift, full, and fair investigation” into his death and called for “peaceful protests” after five former Memphis police officers were charged with second-degree murder on Thursday.
“I understand the outrage, but violence is never acceptable,” Biden said in his first statement on the Nichols case. “Violence is destructive and illegal. It has no place in peaceful demonstrations for justice.”
Nichols, 29, died on January 7 following a traffic stop that resulted in “two confrontations with police,” according to Memphis police. Nichols “complained of shortness of breath,” according to police. The interaction will be captured on video by police-worn body cameras and released Friday evening. Nichols was a black man. The five officers charged in the case are also African-American.
“We cannot ignore the fact that fatal encounters with law enforcement have disproportionately impacted Black and Brown people,” Biden said, renewing his call for legislation to reform policing, which stalled in Congress last year.
California will seek to bar Trump lawyer John Eastman from practising law.
The state bar of California is attempting to revoke the law licence of John Eastman, the lawyer who led an effort to use fake elector slates in battleground states to overturn the 2020 election in favour of former President Donald Trump.
Eastman is accused of violating his duty to uphold the United States and California state constitutions in an attempt to “usurp the will of the American people and overturn election results for the highest office in the land,” according to the state bar.
Republicans are threatening to destroy the economy over the debt ceiling, according to Biden.
President Joe Biden accused Republicans on Thursday of “threatening to destroy” the economy over the debt limit standoff and Republican cuts to domestic programmes.
“They seem determined to be the party of chaos and catastrophe,” Biden said from a steamfitters union hall in Springfield, Virginia, following the release of a new GDP report that showed better-than-expected growth in the fourth quarter of last year.
Republicans in the House have yet to release a unified economic plan. Last year, the Republican Study Committee, comprised of approximately 160 Republicans, endorsed raising the retirement age to 70 in order to qualify for Social Security benefits. Nonetheless, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Republicans have no plans to cut Social Security or Medicare, despite Biden’s warning that both programmes could be cut if Republicans get their way.
Financial markets are concerned that failure to raise the debt limit will result in the country’s first-ever default, a scenario that economists fear will send the economy into a slump. Biden has stated that he will not negotiate with Republicans who want to use the debt ceiling to implement unspecified spending cuts.
Elaine Chao responds to Donald Trump’s racist remarks about her.
This week, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao chastised her former boss, former President Donald Trump, for repeatedly making racist remarks about her.
Trump used Truth Social on Monday to target Chao and her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an attempt to link them to classified documents discovered in a Washington, D.C. office previously used by President Joe Biden. Chao responded by slamming the former president for using slurs against her on numerous occasions.
“When I was younger, some people deliberately misspelt or mispronounced my name,” Chao, an Asian-American who served as Transportation Secretary in Trump’s administration, told USA TODAY. “Asian Americans have worked hard to improve that experience for the next generation. He doesn’t seem to get it, which says a lot more about him than it ever will about Asian Americans.”
The National Archives has asked former presidents and vice presidents to recheck their offices for classified material.
According to a source familiar with the situation, the National Archives has sent a letter to representatives of former presidents and vice presidents dating back to the Reagan administration, asking them to investigate whether they have classified information in their possession.
The request was apparently prompted by investigations into the handling of classified material by former President Donald Trump, current President Joe Biden, and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan’s offices, as well as former vice presidents Dick Cheney, Al Gore, and Dan Quayle, have all received National Archives requests.
An official from one of the recipient offices confirmed the letter but declined to comment. Obama, Bush, and Clinton’s administrations have all stated that they have no classified material in their possession.
Former presidents and vice presidents are being asked to “re-check their personal records for any classified documents or other presidential records in the wake of classified documents discovered in the homes of” Trump, Pence, and Biden, according to CNN.
‘Rules are there for a reason,’ says FBI Director Christopher Wray of classified document rules.
FBI Director Christopher Wray addressed growing concerns about officials’ handling of classified documents on Thursday, saying “rules are there for a reason.”
While not specifically commenting on the ongoing special counsel investigations involving former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, Wray stated that such inquiries are a “regular part” of the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division’s work, in addition to new disclosures about the recovery of documents at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home.
“And people need to be aware of the rules governing classified information,” Wray said at a separate Justice Department briefing. “Those rules exist for a reason.”
