Republican House speaker Johnson says decision will come ‘very soon’ on Biden impeachment The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden. His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden. Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea. The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today: Closing summary The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to the GOP pressing on. Republicans have been showing off evidence they say proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says Biden merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night. Here’s what else happened: The White House said Biden would veto the House GOP’s proposal to send Israel security assistances while slashing funding to the IRS, and Senate leader Chuck Schumer said he would not bring the bill up for a vote anyway. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process. Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection. Indiana’s supreme court found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made about an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old rape survivor. Indiana’s supreme court has found that the state’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, “engaged in attorney misconduct” for comments he made to Fox News about a doctor in the state who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had traveled from Ohio, the Indianapolis Star reports. The incident was one of the first high-profile examples of the fallout from the supreme court decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to ban abortion entirely. In Ohio, a state law immediately went into effect that cut off access to the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, but it was later halted by a court ruling. The Indiana supreme court took issue with Rokita’s description of Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist, as an “abortion activist acting as a doctor – with a history of failing to report” in a Fox News interview in July 2022. In September, the supreme court’s disciplinary commission filed charges against Rokita, saying he violated professional conduct rules, and three of the state’s five supreme court justices agreed in today’s ruling. The court has ordered that Rokita receive a public reprimand and pay a $250 fine, though the two justices who dissented said the punishment was too lenient. Ohio voters will next week decide on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution. Here’s the latest on that, from the Guardian’s Carter Sherman: The Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, now says the House GOP’s Israel aid proposal will not be put up for a vote in his chamber: That means that even if the House approves the bill, the Senate will not send it to Joe Biden’s desk – whose administration said he will veto it anyway. White House threatens to veto Republican bill to help Israel while excluding Ukraine, border security Joe Biden would veto a proposal by House Republicans to send military aid to Israel while slashing funding for the IRS tax authority, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at today’s briefing. “The president would veto an only Israel bill. I think we’ve made that clear,” Kirby said. Biden last month requested a $106b security measure to help Israel respond to Hamas’s terrorist attack, shore up Ukraine’s defenses against Russia’s invasion and improve border security. Led by speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans responded by offering to approve Israeli security assistance, while considering funding for Ukraine and the southern border at a later date. Johnson has billed cutting the IRS as a way to pay for the cost of the foreign assistance, but an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office yesterday found it would actually cost the government money because it would lower tax revenues. The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that a call by Joe Biden on Wednesday evening for a pause in fire by both Israel and Hamas in Gaza “does not mean we are calling for a general ceasefire”. At the daily press briefing from the west wing, Kirby asked rhetorically whether the White House thought a strategic and temporary “pause by both sides” was a good idea to help facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the evacuation of foreign citizens and hostages taken by Hamas from southern Israel on 7 October. Kirby answered himself: “You betcha we do.” He went on to explain why the US is willing to accept Qatar’s assistance with the passage of Americans and hostages out of Gaza, despite the small Arab country’s harboring of Hamas members, including the leader Ismail Haniyeh. Reporters questioned Kirby about this at the daily briefing at the White House moments ago. “Qatar has lines of communication with Hamas that almost no-one else has,” Kirby said. A reporter asked why the US was not asking Qatar to hand over the Hamas chief. Kirby said the US was busy working with Qatar on evacuations “and we are also helping Israel go after Hamas”. Kirby also said the US supports pauses in hostilities, not just a single pause. This is a point he’s made before. Kirby said the White House “has not seen evidence that Hezbollah is ready to go full force”. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group, said it had attacked 19 positions in Israel on Thursday evening in the latest escalation on Israel’s northern border. The Guardian’s report is here. The Guardian’s global live blog with all the details on the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war is here. Antony Blinken has urged Russia to hold to its commitment not to resume nuclear weapons testing, Reuters reports. The secretary of state said the US is deeply concerned by Moscow’s planned action to withdraw its ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). “Unfortunately, it represents a significant step in the wrong direction,” Blinken said in a statement released by the state department. The latest development happened this last month, when, the Guardian’s Julian Borger reported, a senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow will revoke its ratification of the CTBT, in a move Washington denounced as jeopardising the “global norm” against nuclear test blasts. Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the international nuclear agencies in Vienna, was speaking after Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow might resuming testing for the first time in 33 years, signalling another downward turn in relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers. Ulyanov said on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Russia plans to revoke ratification (which took place in the year 2000) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. “The aim is to be on equal footing with the #US who signed the Treaty, but didn’t ratify it. Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.” The US signed the CTBT in 1996 but the Senate did not ratify the treaty. Successive US administrations however have observed a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons. Any Russian nuclear test would be the first since 1990, the last conducted by the Soviet Union. Renewed testing by a nuclear superpower would undo one of the principal advances in non-proliferation since the cold war. Since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin and other Russian officials have frequently drawn attention to the country’s nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world, in an attempt to deter other countries from helping Ukraine resist the invasion. US says 74 dual citizens have been allowed to leave Gaza The US has been able to get 74 Americans with dual citizenship out of Gaza, Joe Biden said at the White House a little earlier, one day after evacuees began crossing into Egypt, Reuters reported. Meanwhile the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, talked to reporters before leaving Washington for a flight to Israel and said the US is determined to prevent escalation of the war there on all fronts, including southern Lebanon, the West Bank or elsewhere in the region. He will be talking to the Israeli government “and partners” in the region, he said. You can follow more details on all the developments in the crisis in Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war in our global live blog, here. This post was updated at 2.56pm ET to reflect a clarifying detail in a later wire piece by Reuters to specify that the 74 dual citizens Biden referred to were Americans with dual citizenship. The day so far The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says the party will soon decide on whether to continue their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, but all indications point to them pressing on. The GOP has been showing off evidence it says proves the president received money from a Chinese company, but the White House says the president merely received a loan repayment from his brother during the period when he was out of office. Elsewhere in the House, George Santos survived a removal attempt, while Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious at some of her Republican colleagues for refusing to support her resolution to censure progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, which died on the House floor last night. Here’s what else is going on: Jamie Raskin, a Democrat who voted against expelling Santos, said he did so over concerns for due process. Biden appeared to endorse “a pause” in Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The Minnesota supreme court began hearing a case in which voters want to keep Donald Trump off the ballot for his involvement in an insurrection. All signs point to the House GOP continuing its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. Yesterday, the oversight committee, one of three bodies tasked with handling the effort, published an infographic purporting to show how the president received money from a Chinese company that was funneled through his family members: They even have an image of the check: The White House replied by saying that the money was a loan repayment to Biden from his brother, James, and it all took place in the period after Biden concluded his term as vice-president, and before he returned to the White House in 2021. As Ian Sams, the Biden administration spokesman handling the GOP’s inquiries, put it: This post has been corrected to say Biden received the loan repayment from his brother James. Republican House speaker Johnson says decision will come ‘very soon’ on Biden impeachment The Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson said a decision will be made “very soon” on whether to push forward with the effort to impeach Joe Biden. His predecessor Kevin McCarthy announced the inquiry into the president’s conduct in September, weeks before rightwing Republicans and Democrats removed him from the speaker’s post. The investigation centers on allegations of corruption surrounding the president and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden. Republicans held a single committee hearing into the matter, which was widely seen as a flop after their witnesses said the investigation had merit but there was still no evidence the president broke the law. Another blow to the effort came when Ken Buck, a conservative Republican who yesterday announced he would not seek re-election in 2024, wrote a column in the Washington Post to argue that impeaching Biden was a bad idea. The investigation was put on pause for weeks while the House grappled with McCarthy’s ouster, and whether and how to continue it is one of the major issues Johnson has to decide. Here’s what the speaker had to say when asked about it at a press conference today: