Nation & World Glance
ASSOCIATED PRESS House Speaker Mike Johnson is committed to advancing Ukraine aid. But it will be a difficult task
WASHINGTON — For over a month, house Speaker mike Johnson has sat on a funding package that would send desperately needed ammunition and weaponry to ukraine, mulling how best to gain a grasp of what is expected to be a difficult lift in the house.
The republican speaker has indicated he will attempt to push for approval of tens of billions in wartime funding for ukraine, as well as Israel, once the house returns in april. Yet it will be perhaps his most difficult task since he took the speaker’s gavel late last year.
“We’ll turn our attention to it and we won’t delay on that,” the Louisiana representative said of the ukraine package at a news conference last week.
Still, Johnson has waited to act at a time when russia is renewing its missile attacks on Kyiv. In ukraine’s eastern regions, soldiers are running low on ammunition as they attempt to hold off a surge of russian soldiers to the frontlines. European leaders and analysts are warning that the conflict could grow into a much larger clash that involves nato allies and direct american military involvement if russia prevails in ukraine.
Johnson is facing dilemmas himself in congress. Should funding for ukraine’s government be loans or a typical grant? Should the $95 billion package that the Senate approved for ukraine, Israel and other allies be handled as one or broken into pieces? and how decisively should he push for the house to act when his own leadership position is being threatened?
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats’ VP pick in 2000, dead at 82
hartford, conn. — Former u.s. Sen. Joe Lieberman of connecticut, who nearly won the vice presidency on the democratic ticket with al Gore in the disputed 2000 election and who almost became republican John mccain’s running mate eight years later, has died, according to a statement issued by his family.
Lieberman died in new York city on Wednesday due to complications from a fall, the statement said. he was 82.
The democrat-turned-independent was never shy about veering from the party line.
Lieberman’s independent streak and especially his needling of democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential contest rankled many democrats, the party he aligned with in the Senate. Yet his support for gay rights, civil rights, abortion rights and environmental causes at times won him the praise of many liberals over the years.
Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in New York hushmoney criminal case
NEW YORK — donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the new York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his april 15 hush-money criminal trial, making a fallacious claim about his daughter and urging him to step aside from the case.
In a social media post, the former president suggested without evidence that Judge Juan m. merchan was kowtowing to his daughter’s interests as a democratic political consultant. he also made a claim — later repudiated by court officials — that she had posted a social media photo showing Trump behind bars.
Trump, the presumptive republican nominee, complained on his Truth Social platform that the gag order issued Tuesday was “illegal, un-american, unconstitutional.” he said that merchan, a veteran manhattan jurist, was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First amendment right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by democratic rivals.
Trump claimed that merchan’s daughter, Loren merchan, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other democrats, had recently posted a photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him jailed.
In a statement, a spokesperson for new York’s state court system said that claim was false and that the social media account Trump was referencing no longer belongs to Loren merchan. It appears to have been taken over by someone else after she deleted it about a year ago, court spokesperson al Baker said.