President Joe Biden walks on stage to speak during the NAACP national convention Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Las Vegas.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to propose a major Supreme Court overhaul in the coming week that would include term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday citing two sources familiar with the plans.

Mr. Biden is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad presidential immunity, the Post reported, adding that Mr. Biden discussed at the move in a video conference with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday.

ALSO READ | Gun control, the Second Amendment and the judges of the U.S. Supreme Court | Explained 

Mr. Biden has previously shunned calls to overhaul the top court with term limits or by expanding the number of seats on the bench. Some Democrats have made calls for the changes following former President Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices.

In October, a bipartisan group of legal experts expressed their support for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices as a way to deter partisanship and improve the judiciary’s reputation.

File picture of Dr. Sampat S. Shivangi
| Photo Credit: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Eminent Indian-American physician Dr. Sampat Shivangi has been elected as an official delegate to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this month that would formally nominate former U.S. president Donald Trump as the party’s presidential candidate.

Mr. Trump, 78, is the presumptive Republican Party candidate for the presidential election.

An influential Indian-American community leader, Dr. Shivangi, has been elected as a National Delegate at the convention for the sixth time.

“It is a great pleasure and honour to share the news that I have been nominated and elected as (an) official delegate at the upcoming Republican National Convention to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from July 13 to July 19, 2024,” Dr. Shivangi said.

The four-day Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, would formally nominate Mr. Trump as the party’s candidate for the November 5 presidential election.

The nomination process would be completed by Republican delegates from across the country.

Dr. Shivangi, a lifelong member of the Republican Party and a founding member of the Republican Indian Council and the Republican Indian National Council, has been nominated as RNC delegate six consecutive times.

“This will be my sixth time serving as a National Delegate at the Republican National Convention to nominate the Republican Party nominee to contest the national presidential election,” he said.

“My nomination began as early as when President George W. Bush was nominated in New York, then-Senator George McCain, Governor Mitt Romney, (and) President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Now again to re-elect President Donald Trump in 2024 in Milwaukee,” he said.

He is the national president of the Indian American Forum for Political Education, one of the oldest Indian American Associations.

Over the past three decades, he has lobbied for several bills in the U.S. Congress on behalf of India through his enormous contacts with U.S. Senators and Congressmen.

“I feel this is a unique honour and an opportunity for an Indian American to represent the community at the national level,” he said.

Dr. Shivangi said he would be part of the luncheon hosted by Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi in honour of the delegates at Northern Lights in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16, for the Mississippi delegates.

A Police Department vehicle blocks a road after a fatal shooting on June 16, 2024, in Round Rock, Texas, U.S.A. Multiple people were shot at the park during a Juneteenth celebration.
| Photo Credit: AP

A weekend shooting in a Texas park in the U.S. left two people dead and six wounded, including two children, authorities said.

The victims were shot shortly before 11 pm Saturday during a Juneteenth celebration at Old Settlers Park in Round Rock, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) north of Austin.

An altercation began between two groups during a concert at the event and someone started shooting, Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks said during a news conference at the scene.

The two victims who were pronounced dead at the scene were not involved in the argument, Mr. Banks said. The shooting occurred near a vendor area away from the stage set up for the concert, he added.

Police officers and fire department personnel present at the event immediately began providing emergency medical care to the wounded, who were then taken to hospitals, said Mr. Banks.

Six people — four adults and two children — were taken to local trauma facilities, all with potentially serious injuries, according to a post on X by Austin-Travis County EMS.

Police said Sunday they did not have a suspect in custody and investigators did not know how many shooters were involved.

“It breaks your heart for a family that was coming out to enjoy their evening and now their life is forever changed as a result of somebody who could care less about somebody else’s life,” Mr. Allen said.

Representational image of the seal of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System
| Photo Credit: AP

United States Federal Reserve officials will likely make official what’s been clear for many weeks: With inflation sticking at a level above their 2% target, they are downgrading their outlook for interest rate cuts.

In a set of quarterly economic forecasts they will issue after their latest meeting ends, the policymakers are expected to project that they will cut their benchmark rate just once or twice by year’s end, rather than the three times they had envisioned in March.

The Fed’s rate policies typically have a significant impact on the costs of mortgages, auto loans, credit card rates and other forms of consumer and business borrowing. The downgrade in their outlook for rate cuts would mean that such borrowing costs would likely stay higher for longer, a disappointment for potential homebuyers and others.

ALSO READ | Recalcitrant jumbo: Editorial on inflation

Still, the Fed’s quarterly projections of future interest rate cuts are by no means fixed in time. The policymakers frequently revise their plans for rate cuts — or hikes — depending on how economic growth and inflation measures evolve over time.

But if borrowing costs remain high in the coming months, they could also have consequences for the presidential race. Though the unemployment rate is a low 4%, hiring is robust and consumers continue to spend, voters have taken a generally sour view of the economy under President Joe Biden. In large part, that’s because prices remain much higher than they were before the pandemic struck. High borrowing rates impose a further financial burden.

The Fed’s updated economic forecasts, which it will issue Wednesday afternoon, will likely be influenced by the government’s May inflation data being released in the morning. The inflation report is expected to show that consumer prices excluding volatile food and energy costs — so-called core inflation — rose 0.3% from April to May. That would be the same as in the previous month and higher than Fed officials would prefer to see.

ALSO READ | Rationale behind raising interest rates

Overall inflation, held down by falling gas prices, is thought to have edged up just 0.1%. Measured from a year earlier, consumer prices are projected to have risen 3.4% in May, the same as in April.

Inflation had fallen steadily in the second half of last year, raising hopes that the Fed could achieve a “soft landing,” whereby it would manage to conquer inflation through rate hikes without causing a recession. Such an outcome is difficult and rare.

But inflation came in unexpectedly high in the first three months of this year, delaying hoped-for Fed rate cuts and potentially imperiling a soft landing.

In early May, Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank needed more confidence that inflation was returning to its target before it would reduce its benchmark rate. Powell noted that it would likely take more time to gain that confidence than Fed officials had previously thought.

Last month, Christopher Waller, an influential member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, said he needed to see “several more months of good inflation data” before he would consider supporting rate cuts. Though Mr. Waller didn’t spell out what would constitute good data, economists think it would have to be core inflation of 0.2% or less each month.

Mr. Powell and other Fed policymakers have also said that as long as the economy stays healthy, they see no need to cut rates soon.

“Fed officials have clearly signaled that they are in a wait-and-see mode with respect to the timing and magnitude of rate cuts,” Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said in a note to clients.

The Fed’s approach to its rate policies relies heavily on the latest turn in economic data. In the past, the central bank would have put more weight on where it envisioned inflation and economic growth in the coming months.

Yet now, “they don’t have any confidence in their ability to forecast inflation,” said Nathan Sheets, chief global economist at Citi and a former top economist at the Fed.

“No one,” Mr. Sheets said, “has been successful at forecasting inflation” for the past three to four years.

Columbia University on Monday, April 29, began suspending students who refused to leave a ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ after negotiations with protesters failed and the students decided to ignore a warning that remaining would lead to their suspension and eviction.

Columbia said the nearly two-week-long protest violated university policies, created an unwelcoming and “intolerable” environment for Jewish students and that “external actors” have contributed to a “hostile environment” around university gates and it had become a “noisy distraction” for students.

‘Free Palestine’

Tensions have escalated at universities across the U.S. with Columbia under the spotlight since its leadership called the New York Police Department to break up anti-war protesters’ encampments. Encampments and sit-ins at universities across the country expanded following the arrests at Columbia earlier this month. Police have arrested students at top American universities including Harvard, Yale, New York University, and Columbia amid widespread protests in solidarity with Palestine amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

ALSO READ | Why are students protesting across U.S. campuses? | Explained

Meanwhile the University of Southern California cancelled its main commencement ceremony, citing safety concerns amid the protests. On Monday, chaos erupted at the University of Texas in Austin as law enforcement moved in to make arrests and forcibly dismantle a pro-Palestine protest encampment amid chants of “Free Palestine”.

On Monday morning, around 10 a.m., Columbia University administrators distributed a notice to the encampment stating that negotiations with student protest leaders were at an impasse.

‘Disclose! Divest’

The notices, viewed by this correspondent, asked protesters to identify themselves to a university official and sign a form agreeing to an alternative resolution for the university policy violations that the encampment posed. The university had told student demonstrators to vacate by 2 p.m. or else “be suspended pending further investigation” and barred from completing the spring semester.

At the encampment, now in its second week, students voted nearly unanimously to stay put as participants chanted: “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be.”

Students at the encampment, accompanied by numerous supporters comprising fellow students, staff, and faculty, spent a tense afternoon gathering around the location in a display of solidarity aimed at preventing the forceful removal of the tents. Around 2:45 p.m. — after the 2 p.m. warning time to leave — protesters marched around the encampment and chanted “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!’” and “Free Palestine.”

ALSO READ | Nemat ‘Minouche’ Shafik: Columbia University president under fire

Just outside the encampment, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected. As the 2 p.m. deadline neared, faculty members stood in front of the encampment linking their arms.

Jennifer Lena, an Associate Professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said she came to ensure that the students were safe from threats of eviction. “I am here to ensure that our students can speak their minds safely on campus… and I am here to make sure that they can continue to do that as safely as possible.”

On April 18, University president Minouche Shafik’s decision to authorise the NYPD’s sweep of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which led to the mass arrest of over 100 protesters, had left many community members stunned. Over 100 faculty members from the University on April 22 gathered on the campus for a walkout to condemn the suspension and arrests of students and call for amnesty and protection of academic freedom.

However, by 4 p.m., as uncertainty loomed while there were no signs of police intervention, majority of protesters started to scatter while some students and approximately 80 tents remained within the encampment. Around 5:30 p.m. Columbia University began suspending students who defied orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m.

“We have begun suspending students,” Ben Chang, vice president for communications and a spokesperson for the university, said about three hours after the deadline passed. The university did not say how many students were suspended.

Mass arrests

Over the past two weeks hundreds of students have been arrested across U.S. for taking part in anti-war protests. The protesters at Columbia have inspired similar demonstrations on campuses across the country.

Columbia University doubled down on its stance regarding Israel making its position clear it ‘won’t’ divest from Israel’—a key demand of the students protesting in the encampment.

Sueda Polat, a student organiser with the encampment, said the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”

Ms. Polat said university officials “have shown a clear disregard” for the protesters’ demands.

The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of administrators came under heavy criticism and attracted a wave of angry protests.

“We called on NYPD to clear an encampment once,” Ms. Shafik, the University president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees. “But we all share the view, based on discussions within our community and with outside experts, that to bring back the NYPD at this time would be counterproductive, further inflaming what is happening on campus.”

Though Columbia had previously suspended approximately 50 students for participating in the initial encampment on an adjacent lawn, the action did not dissuade a broader coalition of protesters from establishing the current encampment.

Joseph Howley, Associate Professor at Columbia University, said, “first, for six months, the university has capitulated to the extremist ideological position that political speech about Palestine, on behalf of Palestine is anti-Semitic. It’s not true and is an extreme position and the university leadership keeps adopting it over and over again for no good reason.”

Mr. Howley was part of the faculty who joined members in encircling the encampment to protect the students on Monday.

“Second, the only thing that has increased in terms of anti-Semitism and other form of prejudicial harassment on and around this campus has been the university, calling the police last week making the campus a flashpoint attracting bad actors and radicals from all over the city. We have had ugly things said outside campus… while on campus, the encampment has been peaceful and calm, and orderly and on message. So if there’s a problem here, it’s being created by the university leadership and NYPD and political pressure from outside,” Mr. Howley added.

‘Intimidation tactic’

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student and the lead negotiator on behalf of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student coalition that has organised the encampment, called the deadline “just another intimidation tactic from the university”.

Columbia was the first institution struck by protests in support of the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from investments that support weapons manufacturing and Israel amid the backdrop of the war on Gaza, in which more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the coalition organising the encampment protest, said in a statement on Monday: “These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or we are moved by force.”

The group criticised the university’s “threat to mass suspend, evict and possibly expel students” with just hours’ notice as a violation of the school’s rules.

“We have paused negotiations until Columbia comes to the table in good faith, without the threat of violence. If the university does not come forward with real, concrete proposals that address our demands, we will have no choice but to escalate the intensity of protest on campus,” the group said.

Columbia University spokesperson did not respond to queries on whether the administration will allow NYPD on the campus again to disperse the students from the encampment.

Anisha Dutta is a freelance journalist based in New York.

The war in Gaza spurred large protests outside a glitzy roast with U.S. President Joe Biden, journalists, politicians and celebrities on April 27 but went all but unmentioned by participants inside, with Mr. Biden instead using the annual White House correspondents’ dinner to make both jokes and grim warnings about Republican rival Donald Trump’s fight to reclaim the U.S. presidency.

An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Biden focuses on Trump

Mr. Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Mr. Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.

Despite being similar in age, Mr. Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Mr. Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Mr. Trump’s reelection bid.

But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Mr. Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.

“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” he told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump did not attend Saturday’s dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president.

In 2011, he sat in the audience and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Mr. Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Mr. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Mr. Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.

Mr. Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel’s 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza.

In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, Ms. O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.

The event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.

Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Mr. Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Mr. Jost said. “He’s only 99.”

Protesters condemn Biden, Western news outlets

To get inside Saturday’s dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Mr. Biden for his support of Israel’s military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was under coverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Also read: Why are students protesting across U.S. campuses? | Explained

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Mr. Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

Boycott calls

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organiser complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released on April 26 by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

The House swiftly approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.

With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the separate bills forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

“We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well,” said a weary Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who risked his own job to marshal the package to passage.

Biden, in a statement, thanked Johnson, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and the bipartisan coalition of lawmakers “who voted to put our national security first.”

“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

“Thank you, America!” he said.

The scene in Congress was a striking display of action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine. Johnson relied on Democrats to ensure the military and humanitarian funding — the first major package for Ukraine since December 2022 — won approval.

The morning opened with a somber and serious debate and an unusual sense of purpose as Republican and Democratic leaders united to urge quick approval, saying that would ensure the United States supported its allies and remained a leader on the world stage. The House’s visitor galleries were crowded with onlookers.

“The eyes of the world are upon us, and history will judge what we do here and now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Passage through the House cleared away the biggest hurdle to Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low.

The GOP-controlled House struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance for Ukraine be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico border, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker’s office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes as a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

“Sometimes when you are living history, as we are today, you don’t understand the significance of the actions of the votes that we make on this House floor, of the effect that it will have down the road,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is a historic moment.”

Opponents, particularly the hard-right Republicans from Johnson’s majority, argued that the U.S. should focus on the home front, addressing domestic border security and the nation’s rising debt load, and they warned against spending more money, which largely flows to American defense manufacturers, to produce weaponry used overseas.

Still, Congress has seen a stream of world leaders visit in recent months, from Zelenskyy to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all but pleading with lawmakers to approve the aid. Globally, the delay left many questioning America’s commitment to its allies.

At stake has been one of Biden’s top foreign policy priorities — halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advance in Europe. After engaging in quiet talks with Johnson, the president quickly endorsed Johnson’s plan, paving the way for Democrats to give their rare support to clear the procedural hurdles needed for a final vote.

“We have a responsibility, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans to defend democracy wherever it is at risk,” Jeffries said during the debate.

While aid for Ukraine failed to win a majority of Republicans, several dozen progressive Democrats voted against the bill aiding Israel as they demanded an end to the bombardment of Gaza that has killed thousands of civilians. A group of roughly 20 hard-right Republicans voted against every portion of the aid package, including for allies like Israel and Taiwan that have traditionally enjoyed support from the GOP.

At the same time, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has loomed large over the fight, weighing in from afar via social media statements and direct phone calls with lawmakers as he tilts the GOP to a more isolationist stance with his “America First” brand of politics.

Ukraine’s defense once enjoyed robust, bipartisan support in Congress, but as the war enters its third year, a majority of Republicans opposed further aid. Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., offered an amendment to zero out the money, but it was rejected.

The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus has derided the legislation as the “America Last” foreign wars package and urged lawmakers to defy Republican leadership and oppose it because the bills did not include border security measures.

Johnson’s hold on the speaker’s gavel has also grown more tenuous in recent days as three Republicans, led by Greene, supported a “motion to vacate” that can lead to a vote on removing the speaker. Egged on by far-right personalities, she is also being joined by a growing number of lawmakers including Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is urging Johnson to voluntarily step aside.

The package included several Republican priorities that Democrats endorsed, or at least are willing to accept. Those include proposals that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl; and legislation to require the China-based owner of the popular video app TikTok to sell its stake within a year or face a ban in the United States.

Still, the all-out push to get the bills through Congress is a reflection not only of politics, but realities on the ground in Ukraine. Top lawmakers on national security committees, who are privy to classified briefings, have grown gravely concerned about the tide of the war as Russia pummels Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate would begin procedural votes on the package Tuesday, saying, “Our allies across the world have been waiting for this moment.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, as he prepared to overcome objections from his right flank next week, said, “The task before us is urgent. It is once again the Senate’s turn to make history.”

A jury of 12 people was seated Thursday in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, propelling the proceedings closer to opening statements and the start of weeks of dramatic testimony.

The jury includes a sales professional, a software engineer, a security engineer, an English teacher, a speech therapist, multiple lawyers, an investment banker and a retired wealth manager.

The first-ever trial of a former American president will unfold in the middle of this year’s race for the White House, ensuring that the legal troubles of the presumptive Republican nominee will be a dominant issue in the contest against Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.

The trial will almost certainly feature unflattering testimony about the Trump’s personal life before he became president, with allegations that he falsifying business records to suppress stories in the final days of the 2016 election about his sexual relationships.

The jury selection process appeared wobbly earlier in the day when two jurors were dismissed, one after expressing doubt about her ability to be fair following disclosure of details about her identity and the other over concerns that some of his answers in court may have been inaccurate.

But lawyers who began the day with only five jurors settled on the remaining seven for the panel in quick succession, along with one alternate. Judge Juan Merchan has said his goal is to have six alternates.

In other developments, prosecutors asked for Trump to be held in contempt over a series of social media posts this week, and the judge barred reporters from identifying jurors’ employers after expressing privacy concerns.

The trial centers on a $130,000 payment that Cohen made shortly before the 2016 election to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the race’s final days.

Prosecutors say Trump obscured the true nature of the payments in internal records when his company reimbursed Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2018 and is expected to be a star witness for the prosecution.

Trump has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, and his lawyers argue that the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He could get up to four years in prison if convicted, though it’s not clear that the judge would opt to put him behind bars. Trump would almost certainly appeal any conviction.

Appeals and legal wrangling have caused delays in the other three cases charging Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 election results and with illegally hoarding classified documents.

The jury selection process picked up momentum Tuesday with the selection of seven jurors. But on Thursday, Merchan revealed in court that one of the seven, a cancer nurse, had “conveyed that after sleeping on it overnight she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case.”

And though jurors’ names are being kept confidential, the woman told the judge and the lawyers that she had doubts after she said aspects of her identity had been made public.

“Yesterday alone I had friends, colleagues and family push things to my phone regarding questioning my identity as a juror,” she said. “I don’t believe at this point that I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision making in the courtroom.”

A second seated juror was dismissed after prosecutors raised concerns that he may not have been honest in answering a jury selection question by saying that he had never been accused or convicted of a crime.

The IT professional was summoned to court to answer questions after prosecutors said they found an article about a person with the same name who had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down political posters pertaining to the political right in suburban Westchester County.

A prosecutor also disclosed that a relative of the man may have been involved in a deferred prosecution agreement in the 1990s with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting Trump’s case.

Because the juror was questioned Thursday at the judge’s bench, off-microphone and out of earshot of reporters, it was not known whether the man confirmed or denied either instance was connected to him.

The process of picking a jury is a critical phase of any criminal trial but especially so when the defendant is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Prospective jurors have been grilled on their social media posts, personal lives and political views as the lawyers and judge search for biases that would prevent them from being impartial.

Inside the court, there’s broad acknowledgment of the futility in trying to find jurors without knowledge of Trump. A prosecutor this week said that lawyers were not looking for people who had been “living under a rock for the past eight years.”

After dismissing from the jury the nurse who had already been selected, Merchan ordered journalists in court not to report prospective jurors’ answers to questions about their current and former employers.

“We just lost, probably, what probably would have been a very good juror for this case, and the first thing that she said was she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press, and everything that had happened,” Merchan said after dismissing the juror.

Prosecutors had asked that the employer inquiries be axed from the jury questionnaire. Defense lawyer Todd Blanche responded that “depriving us of the information because of what the press is doing isn’t the answer.”

The district attorney’s office on Monday sought a $3,000 fine for Trump for three Truth Social posts they said violated the order. Since then, prosecutors said he made seven additional posts that they believe violate the order.

Several of the posts involved an article that referred to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen as a “serial perjurer,” and one from Wednesday repeated a claim by a Fox News host that liberal activists were lying to get on the jury, said prosecutor Christopher Conroy.

Trump lawyer Emil Bove said Cohen “has been attacking President Trump in public statements,” and Trump was just replying.

The judge had already scheduled a hearing for next week on the prosecution’s request for contempt sanctions over Trump’s posts.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is headed to a China determined to avoid open conflict with the United States, yet the world’s two largest economies still appear to be hashing out the rules on how to compete against each other.

There are tensions over Chinese government support for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and solar panels, just as the U.S. government ramps up its own aid for those tech sectors. There are differences in trade, ownership of TikTok, access to computer chips and national security — all of them a risk to what has become a carefully managed relationship.

The 77-year-old Yellen, a renowned economist and former Federal Reserve chair, laid out to reporters the issues that she intends to raise with her Chinese counterparts during her five-day visit. Ms. Yellen is headed to Guangzhou and Beijing for meetings with finance leaders and state officials. Her engagements will include Vice Premier He Lifeng, Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, former Vice Premier Liu He, leaders of American businesses operating in China, university students and local leaders.

Ms. Yellen, speaking to reporters Wednesday during a refueling stop in Alaska en route to Asia, said her visit would be a “continuation of the dialogue that we have been engaged and deepening” ever since U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in 2022 in Indonesia. She noted that it would be her third meeting with China’s vice premier.

Ms. Yellen recently accused China of flooding global markets with heavily subsidised green energy products, possibly undercutting the subsidies the U.S. has provided to its own renewable energy and EV sector with funds provided by the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. She said she intends to repeat her concerns to Chinese officials that they’re flooding the global market with cheap solar panels and EVs that thwart the ability of other countries to develop those sectors.

“We need to have a level playing field,” Ms. Yellen told reporters. “We’re concerned about a massive investment in China in a set of industries that’s resulting in overcapacity.”

Ms. Yellen didn’t rule out taking additional steps to counter Chinese subsidies in the green energy sectors, adding, “It’s not just the United States but quite a few countries, including Mexico, Europe, Japan, that are feeling the pressure from massive investment, in these industries in China.”

The Treasury secretary’s travels come after Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi held their first call in five months on Tuesday, meant to demonstrate a return to regular leader-to-leader dialogue between the two powers. The leaders discussed Taiwan, artificial intelligence and security issues.

The call, described by the White House as “candid and constructive,” was the leaders’ first conversation since their November summit in California, which renewed ties between the two nations’ militaries and enhanced cooperation on stemming the flow of deadly fentanyl and its precursors from China.

Still, it appears to be difficult for the two countries to strike a balance between competition and antagonism.

For instance, Mr. Xi last week hosted American CEOs in Beijing to court them on investing in China. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden last August issued an executive order that instructed an inter-agency committee, chaired by Ms. Yellen, to closely monitor U.S. investment in China related to high-tech manufacturing.

Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said, “the Biden administration’s efforts over the last year to stabilize the relationship are clearly working, but the main friction points all remain unresolved and will likely challenge the relationship for the foreseeable future.”

“For the time being, a managed rivalry’ might be the best we can hope for, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of the relationship really going off the rails,” he said.

Ms. Yellen last week said China is flooding the market with green energy that “distorts global prices,” and plans to tell her counterparts that Beijing’s increased production of solar energy, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries poses risks to productivity and growth to the global economy.

China began to broaden its presence in the global economy more than two decades ago, exporting cheap goods that appealed to U.S. consumers at the expense of factory jobs in many of those consumers’ hometowns. Research by the economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson into what’s known as the “China Shock” led to the steady demise of many factory towns, and in some cases led to greater political discontent.

Still, some experts see a benefit in an economic showdown to produce green products.

Shang-Jin Wei, a professor of Chinese business at Columbia University, says that a subsidy war could ultimately help consumers in both countries buy more climate-friendly products, which is an aim of the Biden administration.

“In contrast, a U.S. tariff on EV imports could raise the price of EVs in the U.S. and is therefore counterproductive for the purpose of inducing a green transition.”

Ms. Yellen’s trip will run from April 4 to 9. It’s intended as a follow-up to Ms. Yellen’s travel to China last July, which resulted in the launch of a pair of economic working groups between the two nations’ finance departments to ease tensions and deepen ties.

But this visit falls in an election year, where tough talk on China has increased by Democrats and Republicans — who criticize Chinese ownership of popular social media app TikTok, the nation’s censorship and human rights record and hold a deep mistrust over recent acts of espionage such as hacking and the use of a spy balloon.

Scheherazade S. Rehman, a professor of International Business and Finance and International Affairs at George Washington University, said while “it’s an election year, so all the rhetoric is going to be sharper, the U.S and China are in a symbiotic trading relationship and ultimately need each other.”

China is one of the United States’ biggest trading partners, and economic competition between the two nations has increased in recent years. Yellen stressed Wednesday that the United States has no interest in decoupling from China.

China’s support of Russia as it continues its invasion of neighboring Ukraine is another issue that will come up during the meetings. As the U.S. and its allies sanction Russian officials and entire sectors of the Russian economy, like banking, oil production and manufacturing, trade between China and Russia has increased.

Now that Nikki Haley has ended her U.S. presidential campaign, one person who voted for her refuses to back former President Donald Trump and plans to reluctantly vote for President Joe Biden. Another Haley primary supporter acknowledges that he was probably always a “closet Trump fan” and will vote for the former president again in November.

The former U.N. ambassador’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Mr. Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican nomination. But in what’s shaping up to be a tight rematch between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the apparent splintering of Ms. Haley’s voters and donors could hurt Mr. Trump’s general election chances, particularly in battleground states full of suburban voters who remain dubious of a Mr. Trump return to the White House.

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For now, interviews with Ms. Haley’s supporters suggest they could go in a variety of directions — some backing Mr. Trump, some going to Mr. Biden and others seeking third-party options or avoiding making a decision about the presidential race yet.

Ms. Haley has not spoken publicly since leaving the race and urging Mr. Trump to reach out to all Republicans. She has not endorsed Mr. Trump and suggested she may not at all.

“She said it’s up to him to earn the support of those who supported her, and he’s got to earn it,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime GOP donor who was Ms. Haley’s Georgia campaign’s co-chairman. “Right now, I’m definitely not there. It tells me there are things that are still up in the air among other key Haley donors waiting for a sign.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Glenn Swanson caucused for Mr. Haley after seeing her campaign in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. At the time, the retired architect said he was open to a Trump alternative. Now, he’s coming back to the candidate he supported in both 2016 and 2020, despite his concerns about the four felony indictments and other civil cases facing Mr. Trump.

“For sure I’m going to vote for Mr. Trump,” Mr. Swanson said in an interview. “In a sense I was kind of a closet Mr. Trump fan all along, but I really wanted to see if somebody else would emerge to get away from some of the drama.”

John Wynstra, a database administrator who attended that same event, had been deciding between Mr. Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before choosing to caucus for her. Mr. Wynstra said he’s strategically supporting Mr. Trump and the party’s platform — as a stance primarily against Biden — although he seemingly left the door open to possibly supporting a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I will vote against Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Mr. Wynstra said this week. “If Kennedy were viable and if his positions were palatable, I would consider him.”

In Ms. Haley’s home state of South Carolina, high school teacher Michael Burgess said that save an unlikely independent run by Haley or a moderate like former Rep. Liz Cheney, he would be supporting Biden and criticised Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“I will reluctantly vote Biden,” Mr. Burgess said. “We can survive bad policy, but we cannot survive the destruction of the Constitution at the hands of a morally bankrupt dictator lover in Trump who, supported by his congressional MAGA minions, would do just that.”

Like many who were drawn to Ms. Haley, Mr. Tanenblatt, who was her Georgia campaign’s co-chairman, became disenchanted with Mr. Trump for what he called “inflammatory rhetoric,” chiefly in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the Capitol.

But he also says Mr. Trump’s opposition to military aid to Ukraine is a fundamental policy difference. Mr. Tanenblatt has talked individually with former Haley supporters weighing a role with No Labels, the third-party group that is moving forward with attempting a unity ticket of opposing party presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

By and large, Ms. Haley’s donors have paused, with key bundlers noting they have not heard from Mr. Trump’s team as well as their reluctance to make any decisions.

“I really think there’s a period of recalibrating for a number of us who were very involved in Nikki’s campaign. This was a calling, something bigger than any one of us,” said Simone Levinson, a Florida-based Haley fundraiser who hosted events for her in New York and Florida.

Those donors could be helpful to Mr. Trump were they to come to the former president’s side.

For now, Mr. Trump and national Republicans are lagging far behind Mr. Biden and national Democrats in fundraising, with Trump’s campaign and allied groups holding $37 million cash on hand at the end of February compared to the $155 million in Democratic coffers.

In one sign of her influence going forward, Ms. Haley ended last month with $11.5 million, just days before she suspended her campaign. That’s slightly more than the Republican National Committee at $11.3 million.