Biden calls for federal investigation into Miami condo collapse – live

Former president Donald Trump went hard at his former attorney general William Barr this weekend after an upcoming book excerpt was published in the Atlantic revealing that Barr thought Trump’s election fraud claims were “all bullshit”.

Trump snarked a bit at senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who had urged Barr to come out publicly against the election fraud claims, referring to him as “another beauty”. But today he released another statement all about McConnell, blaming him for losing two senate seats in Georgia and “making the Republicans the minority in the Senate”.

“Had Mitch McConnell fought for the Presidency like he should have, there would right now be Presidential Vetoes on all the phased Legislation that he has proven incapable of stopping,” Trump said in the statement.

As rescuers continue to scour the wreckage in the Miami suburb of Surfside, where 151 people are still missing, Joe Biden called for a federal investigation into what caused the condo building to suddenly collapse, killing at least 10 at last count.

At Monday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “does believe there should be an investigation” and that a number of federal agencies were already on the ground, including Fema building science experts, officials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Osha and the FBI.

“We want to play any constructive role we can play with federal resources and getting to the bottom of it and preventing it from happening in the future,” Psaki said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki fielded a question about Gwen Berry, the Olympic hammer thrower who turned away from the American flag during a medal ceremony at the US Olympic trials this weekend.

“The anthem doesn’t speak for me,” Berry said. “It never has.”

The White House press briefing kicked off today with talks about the infrastructure package and what’s to come. To recap: a lot of legislating.

Joe Biden declared “we have a deal” with the almost $1tn bipartisan package last week, but then opened the door to a veto – saying he would only sign the bipartisan plan into law if Congress simultaneously sends him a bill, crafted separately by the Democrats, to shore up the nation’s social infrastructure: the reconciliation bill.

Biden has since had to do some backtracking after he upset some Republicans who do not see those bills as linked.

“I think he made pretty clear in his statement that we issued this weekend that that was not the message he intended to send,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell went hard separating the two bills, putting out a statement applauding the president for delinking the bipartisan bill and the reconciliation bill, and calling for him to bring Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in line.

Pelosi has remained firm, however, that there won’t be a bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill. And Biden seems to be trying to say one thing while doing another. “The president intends to sign both pieces of legislation into law,” Psaki said.

Gavin Grimm, the student who fought the Virginia school board after it banned him from using the boys’ restrooms, has issued a statement after the Supreme Court declined to hear his case, upholding a lower court’s decision that the school board had practiced sex-based discrimination:

Speaking of book excerpts, the latest from Michael Wolff takes a look into what Donald Trump was up to on 6 January, the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

In the book Landslide, excerpted in New York magazine, Trump allegedly told his supporters he would march with them to the Capitol, but then abandoned those plans after a stern talking-to from his chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

“You said you were going to march with them to the Capitol,” Meadows reportedly said. “How would we do that? We can’t organize that. We can’t.”

“I didn’t mean it literally,” Trump reportedly replied.

Wolff wrote that Trump was confused by “who these people were with their low-rent ‘trailer camp’ bearing and their ‘get-ups’, once joking that he should have invested in a chain of tattoo parlors and shaking his head about ‘the great unwashed’.”

Two New York lawmakers are suing the New York police department after they said they were beaten with bicycles and pepper-sprayed during the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests in Brooklyn last summer.

State senator Zellnor Myrie and assemblywoman Diana Richardson named New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and six individual officers as defendants in their lawsuit. They accused them of violating their first amendment rights to free speech and protest, assaulting them and illegally detaining Myrie, who was wearing a neon green shirt that said “Senator Myrie” on the back in block letters to make himself easily identifiable that day.

“The experience was a painful and humiliating reminder that following the rules and complying with police orders does not protect Black Americans from police brutality, not even Black Americans who have ascended to elected office,” the suit states.

Read the whole lawsuit here.

The Supreme Court declined today to hear a case that would decide whether schools must allow students to use the bathroom that match their gender identities, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling in a victory for transgender rights.

Gavin Grimm was a student who was denied the right to use the boys’ restroom by the Virginia school board. Last August, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the school board had practiced sex-based discrimination and violated Grimm’s 14th Amendment rights by prohibiting him from using the boys’ restroom.

In not hearing the case, the Supreme Court upholds that decision, which sets a strong legal precedent. But in not hearing the case, that also means there is no nationwide ruling on the issue.

Joe Biden declared last week that “we have a deal” with the bipartisan $1tn infrastructure package. Then there was a veto threat, and the walking back of the veto threat. Now it’s time to get into the legislative nitty-gritty.

Read more about what’s to come here:

In another excerpt, this one previewed in Axios, Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, reportedly “yelled” at Donald Trump, prompting the Trump to yell back: “You can’t fucking talk to me like that!”

Milley had been arguing with Trump that he was not and would not be in charge of the federal response to protests for racial justice.

“I said you’re in fucking charge!” Trump reportedly shouted.

“Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley allegedly yelled back.

This excerpt came from Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Michael Bender, a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Ahoy there, liveblog readers. It appears that the release of multiple books on the Trump administration is imminent, which means we the public are now privy to a wealth of previously unreported details in the form of long-form excerpts.

A particularly explosive one published in the Atlantic had Donald Trump railing against former attorney general William Barr in a three-page statement this weekend. In the excerpt from the upcoming book Betrayal, Barr told journalist and author Jonathan Karl that Trump’s claims of election fraud were “all bullshit”.

“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr said. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

Barr told Karl that then-senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had urged him to speak out about the fraud claims since mid-November. McConnell had concerns about the GOP’s ability to win the Georgia senate races.

“It’s people in authority like Bill Barr that allow the crazed Radical Left to succeed,” Trump said in a statement, in which he also referred to McConnell as “another beauty”.