Midterm elections 2022: Republicans still waiting on House results as Trump pitches for 2024 – live – The Guardian US

A Democratic congressman is proposing legislation that would keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House on the grounds that he violated the 14th amendment by inciting insurrection against the United States.

In a letter to colleagues obtained by the Guardian, Rhode Island’s David Cicilline pointed to the amendment’s language barring people from serving as public officials in the United States who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

“This language in our Constitution clearly intended to bar insurrectionists from holding high office in the United States,” Cicilline writes in the letter released before Trump’s announcement last night that he’d stand for president again in the 2024 election.

“Given the proof – demonstrated through the January 6th Committee Hearings, the 2021 impeachment trial, and other reporting – that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6th with the intention of overturning the lawful 2020 election results, I have drafted legislation that would prevent Donald Trump from holding public office again under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In the letter, Cicilline invites lawmakers to cosponsor the legislation. The congressman does not appear to have introduced the bill yet.

He might be returning to the campaign trail, but Donald Trump is still the subject of a number of investigations into events that occurred before, during and after his time in the White House.

One of them is a Georgia special grand jury’s inquiry into attempts by the former president and his allies to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win in the state. The jurors empaneled in Fulton county, where Atlanta is located, have interviewed a number of ex-Trump White House officials, and CNN reports that former aide Cassidy Hutchinson was seen going into the court this morning:

Hutchinson was the source of several explosive revelations when she testified before the January 6 committee in June, including that Trump got into a physical altercation with the Secret Service when they denied his request to go to the Capitol on the day of the insurrection.

The Guardian’s Joanie Greve reports that Donald Trump’s speech announcing another White House run was typical for the former president – in that it was full of misleading statements and outright falsehoods:

Donald Trump’s announcement that he will run for president again in 2024 was met with joy, dismay and mockery across the political spectrum.

Making the widely anticipated announcement at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, Trump delivered remarks that would feel quite familiar to anyone who has watched one of his many campaign rallies. Looking back on America as he left the presidency in early 2021, Trump painted a rosy and often misleading picture of a nation that had established secure borders, a strong economy and global peace.

Trump largely ignored the global pandemic that defined his final year as president and killed more than 400,000 Americans before he stepped down. He made the bizarre claim that the country had gone decades without a war while he was president, even though the war in Afghanistan was still unfolding at the end of his term. And Trump delivered the baseless declaration that the US-Mexican border had been “erased” since Joe Biden was sworn in.

Trump used these consistently exaggerated and frequently false talking points to make his case for a third presidential bid.

“Two years ago, we were a great nation, and soon we will be a great nation again,” Trump said. “In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”

Ivanka Trump served as an adviser to her father during his time in the White House, but said she’s staying out of his latest campaign.

That’s according to ABC News, which obtained a statement from Ivanka:

Add the Murdoch family to the list of one-time Donald Trump supporters who have soured on his brand.

The Murdoch-owned New York Post is known for its eyebrow-raising headlines, and gave an absolutely brutal treatment to Trump’s announcement of his presidential run last night:

Over the past week, evidence has emerged that the conservative media moguls are not in favor of Trump returning to the campaign trail, with some Murdoch family members backing Florida governor Ron DeSantis instead.

Donald Trump’s announcement of another presidential run is proving to be about as divisive as expected – including for Republicans. Here’s what one former White House chief of staff thought of Trump’s announcement, as reported by Martin Pengelly:

Donald Trump’s announcement of a third consecutive run for the presidency is bad for the Republican party because he is the only Republican who could lose in 2024, Trump’s own former White House chief of staff said on Tuesday night.

Asked on CNN if he thought Trump’s announcement at Mar-a-Lago was good for the Republican party, Mick Mulvaney said: “No I don’t. I think he’s the only Republican who could lose.”

The former South Carolina congressman was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and then his third chief of staff, in an acting capacity between 2018 and 2020. He then became the US special envoy for Northern Ireland.

The GOP needs to win only one of the ten House races that have not been called to get a majority – and it’s possible Lauren Boebert will deliver them that victory.

A rightwing lawmaker known for her extreme rhetoric – she’s decried the constitutional separation of church and state and made Islamophobic remarks – Boebert has faced an unexpectedly tight challenge from Democrat Adam Frisch in her right-leaning district. She currently leads him by more than 1,000 votes, after a lengthy counting process in which Frisch has occasionally taken the lead.

There are between 4,000 to 6,000 votes left to count, and with the margins so narrow, Colorado Public Radio reports both campaigns are scrambling to contact voters to fix problems with their ballots, in hopes the outreach will give them a crucial edge.

But even if Boebert loses, the Republicans have other opportunities to clinch victory in Congress’s lower chamber. As this New York Times table makes clear, their candidates are currently leading in three California districts that could also deliver them the majority.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Believe it or not, we still don’t know which party will lead the House of Representatives for the next two years, but odds are, it’ll be the Republicans. They’re one seat away from taking back the majority in the chamber, and it’s possible ballot counting could wrap up today in one of the outstanding races trending their direction. We’ll let you know as soon as that happens. Meanwhile, expect to hear even more than usual about Donald Trump – last night he made his long-expected announcement of another run for the White House in 2024.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• The Senate is set to vote to advance a bill codifying the ability for same-sex couple to marry, in response to signals from the conservative-led supreme court that they could revisit their precedent establishing the right.

• Mike Pence will appear at a CNN event this evening at 9pm eastern time, where he’ll no doubt face questions about his fraught relationship with Trump and whether the former vice-president plans to run for the White House in 2024.

• George W Bush was expected to interview Volodymyr Zelenskiy at 9am eastern time, but the Ukrainian president’s participation is now tentative due to Russia’s missile assault on the country on Tuesday.