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Mitch McConnell tells lawmaker he still backs agreement after uproar over reports Trump wanted to sink the deal so he can attack Biden
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Yesterday kicked off with the somewhat shocking news that Senate Republicans were, at Donald Trump’s behest, willing to walk away from a deal they had been negotiating with Democrats for months to implement some conservative immigration policies in exchange for approving new aid to Ukraine and Israel’s militaries. The reason, the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell told his lawmakers in a private meeting, was that Trump wanted to be able to attack Joe Biden over immigration on the campaign trail, and passing the deal would undermine that. The comments unsurprisingly sparked outrage from Democrats and some Republicans, and later on Thursday, McConnell seems to have walked them back.
According to Politico, he again convened his party to tell them that he was still behind the deal. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen – the odds of enacting legislation in an election year dealing with one of the most divisive issues in American politics, immigration, were also going to be long, but the parties seem resolved to at least try. We’ll see what more is revealed about this kerfuffle over the course of the day.
Trump will once again be in a New York City courtroom for author E Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against him, where closing arguments are expected today.
The top UN court ordered Israel to “take all measures” to prevent genocide during its military campaign in Gaza, but did not order a ceasefire, as the country’s critics had hoped. Follow our live blog for more on this developing story.
Joe Biden paused all pending natural gas export permits over concerns they’d further fuel climate change.
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