Miller ‘to testify today to 6 January panel’
Big news from the House investigation into the 6 January Capitol riot: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former top adviser, will give testimony to the panel today, according to the Associated Press.
Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
The reported cooperation of Miller is further evidence that the inquiry is lapping at the doors of the Trump Oval Office, after the former president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both former senior White House advisers, gave their own testimony in recent weeks.
According to two sources cited by the AP, it is unclear if Miller will appear in person or virtually before the nine-member bipartisan panel.
But the fact he is appearing at all is a significant development, and likely another major blow to Trump’s ongoing efforts to shield information about his movements on the day of the insurrection and subsequent efforts to overturn the presidential election he lost to Joe Biden.
Miller, considered Trump’s top aide through the entirety of his single term in office, has fiercely resisted previous efforts to get him to testify after receiving a subpoena in November, the AP says.
At the time, Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the panel, said Miller had “participated in efforts to spread false information about alleged voter fraud,” the basis of Trump’s big lie that his election defeat was fraudulent.
How cooperative Miller will be in terms of the testimony he has to offer remains to be seen. It is likely that Miller’s decision to appear was prompted by last week’s House vote to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for their refusal to comply with their own subpoenas.
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As promised, here’s some more on the Economic Report of the President, White House economists’ annual assessment published today, and this year an apparent finger-pointing exercise too.
It’s no secret that the economy is weighing down the Biden administration’s ambitions, with inflation this week reaching a four-decade high of 8.5% and little prospect of Democrats advancing recovery measures in a bitterly-divided Congress.
Republicans have been quick to label it the Biden inflation crisis, while the president himself says it’s “Putin’s price hike,” asserting that the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has sent the global economy haywire.
Biden, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the backing of the economists’ report, which apportions blame to the Ukraine war, as well as other factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and natural weather disasters, which have affected manufacturing and contributed to supply chain issues:
The fact that inflation has accelerated in so many countries underscores its common drivers. Pandemic-induced changes in behavior led to relatively more demand for goods than services.
This phenomenon of recovering demand for goods interacting with supply constraints can help to explain the relatively higher inflation in the United States, where the recovery was relatively stronger.
As for the supply chain disruption, the economists warn that could last much longer than the pandemic which helped to cause it:
Though modern supply chains have driven down consumer prices for many goods, they can also easily break.
The Covid-19 pandemic is not the first time that supply chains have been disrupted; the production and distribution of goods have been regularly snarled by natural disasters, cyberattacks, labor strikes, supplier bankruptcies, industrial accidents, and climate-induced weather emergencies.
The pandemic simply exposed just how complex and interconnected modern supply chains have become.
Rupert Neate
Elon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for more than $40bn, saying he wants to release its “extraordinary potential” to boost free speech and democracy across the world.
The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. The news came just days after he bought a 9.2% stake in the social media company and was subsequently offered a seat on the board, but then refused to take up the position.
In a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, Musk said the site was not thriving as a company or a tool for improving freedom of speech, and “needs to be transformed as a private company”.
Musk, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, said if his offer was not accepted he would “reconsider my position as a shareholder” as he did not have “confidence in [Twitter’s current] management”.
“This is not a threat,” he added. “It’s simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made.”
In the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Thursday, Musk said he had offered to buy all Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each – a total of $41.4bn (£31.5bn) based on 763.58m shares outstanding, according to data from the financial information provider Refinitiv.
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President to tout US innovation and leadership as approval rating falls
Joe Biden is looking to sign off for the Easter break on an upbeat note with today’s trip to an engineering research complex in North Carolina to plug his “building a better America” plans.
The president will tout the bipartisan innovation act, a bill designed to boost American manufacturing and global technological leadership, but his remarks are sure to cover wider issues of the US economy and jobs growth.
Inflation, immigration and the Ukraine war are all weighing on his administration, and Biden is seeking to kickstart his stalled domestic agenda with the appearance in Greensboro before heading off to Camp David to spend the Easter holiday.
The president, however, will board Air Force One shortly with more bad news ringing in his ears – a new Quinnipiac poll puts Biden’s approval rating at only 33%, matching his previous low from January, with 54% disapproving of the job he’s doing.
Biden has struggled with his domestic agenda: his flagship $2tn Build Back Better initiative boosting social spending and addressing the climate crisis was opposed by Republicans and ultimately killed by the moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin, whose vote would have been crucial in the divided 50-50 chamber.
While progress at home has stalled, inflation has soared to 8.5%, a 41-year high, with analysts saying the president is failing with his messaging. That’s why he’ll be talking up the bipartisan nature of the innovation act, which has Republican support in both the House and Senate.
White House experts are shifting blame for the country’s economic woes, including soaring inflation, away from Biden. The council of economic advisers’ annual report published this morning says the Ukraine war and climate crisis are contributory. We’ll have more on that shortly.
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy White House press secretary, will conduct the final briefing of the week, a so-called gaggle aboard Air Force One as Biden heads for North Carolina.
Good morning, and welcome to our Thursday US political blog.
Joe Biden will spend the final working day before the Easter break seeking a reset of his stalled domestic agenda, as inflation, immigration issues and Russia’s war in Ukraine weigh on his administration.
The president will head to North Carolina this morning, where he will tour an engineering research complex in Greensboro before delivering lunchtime remarks touting the Bipartisan Innovation Act, a bill designed to boost American manufacturing and global technological leadership.
Here’s your daily reminder that every development in the Ukraine-Russia war can be found on our 24-hour live blog here.
And here’s what else we’re looking at in the US today:
- A new Quinnipiac poll has Joe Biden’s approval ratings in the tank. Only 33% approve of the job he’s doing, and 54% disapprove, matching his previous low from January.
- White House economists warn in their annual report that supply chain issues will outlast the Covid-19 pandemic, and that the climate crisis and natural disasters are at least partly to blame.
- Beto O’Rourke, Texas governor hopeful and a prominent rising figure in the Democratic party, is criticizing the Biden administration for ending the Title 42 immigration policy next month without a plan to deal with an expected surge of migrants.
- The Biden administration is unveiling its “equity action plans” today for dozens of federal agencies and all cabinet departments, seeking to make federal policies fairer for diverse communities.