Trump news – live: Esper says he stopped ex-president from doing ‘terrible things’

Joe Manchin, the centrist Democratic senator whose opposition to the president’s Build Back Better agenda torpedoed that legislation last year, could be on the verge of breaking with his party again.

Asked by CNN on Monday whether he would join with Democrats to vote to advance their bill codifying abortion rights into federal law, he replied: “I’m going to wait — until tomorrow,” apparently meaning he has not made up his mind.

The West Virginia senator opposed a similar bill in February, and also has long stood in opposition to using federal money to support abortion services.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is swinging at his successor, Kamala Harris, after she criticised the Supreme Court’s apparent impending decision that would upend 40 years of protected abortion rights in the US.

Ms Harris was speaking at an event hosted by the pro-choice EMILY’s List group when she questioned last week: “Those Republicans leaders who are trying the weaponise the use of the law against women, well we say, how dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body?”

Mr Pence fired back in response at an anti-abortion group’s event on Friday, exclaiming: “I say with the lives of 62 million unborn boys and girls ended in abortion since 1973, generations of mothers enduring heartbreaking loss that can last a lifetime: Madam Vice President, how dare you?”

Read more about the growing US divide on abortion rights from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

Arizona’s highest court has ruled that activists seeking to block three GOP lawmakers from the ballot in November over their support for efforts to overturn the 2020 election will not succeed.

The move ends the effort to block US House members Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar as well as state Rep. Mark Finchem from running for reelection in 2022; the three are loyal supporters of Donald Trump and vocally supported his false claims about the 2020 election being supposedly stolen by Joe Biden.

Similar efforts were kicked off in numerous states including North Carolina and Georgia targeting other allies of the former president like Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene in response to the violence on January 6.

Read more from The Associated Press:

National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, a veteran of US Supreme Court coverage, theorised on Sunday that a conservative justice or a clerk working for them may have leaked the draft opinion of the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in order to pressure one of the Court’s other members.

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, she explained that many experts are considering the possibility that the draft was leaked to avoid one of the conservative justices moving to support a more watered-down expansion of abortion restrictions by the Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“The leading theory is a conservative clerk who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion,” she said.

Read more in The Independent from Andrew Feinberg:

A Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin was cited last year for bringing a loaded gun to an airport

Derrick Van Orden’s campaign described what it said was a “mistake” after the GOP candidate apparently brought a loaded weapon to a security checkpoint; the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel first reported the incident’s occurance this week.

While relatively mild in nature, the incident mirrors a similar accident that North Carolina Rep Madison Cawthorn was cited for earlier this year.

Read more from The Independent’s Johanna Chisholm:

Democrats are wasting no time in pivoting to the issue of protecting abortion rights from federal bans in swing-district races.

The candidates embracing the issue as a talking point include Maggie Hassan, a senator running for reelection in New Hampshire, as well as Beto O’Rourke, who is running to unseat Texas’s governor.

Read more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

While there has been some grumbling among the president’s conservative base, particularly from those on the religious right, about his endorsements for author JD Vance and TV host Dr Mehmet Oz it appears the vast majority of the president’s supporters are coming around to Mr Trump’s picks.

After Mr Vance won the Ohio GOP Senate primary last week more and more MAGA loyalists are rallying around Dr Oz, who has rocketed to the top of the GOP pack in Pennsylvania.

The Washington Post is taking home the Pulitzer Prize for public service in recognition of its coverage of January 6, the Pulitizer organisation announced on Monday.

No individual pieces were recognised but instead the extent of the newspaper’s coverage of the day, which has continued in the months since the attack, was awarded with the prize.

“I’m enormously pleased and very honored that the whole breadth and sweep of the Post coverage is what was recognized,” Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee said.

Rep Jim Jordan kicked off a Twitter debate on Monday when he tweeted that “your 401k” wishes former President Donald Trump was still in office, a reference to the better performance of the stock market under the 45th president.

The debate was still raging as of Monday afternoon, with many commenters pointing out that their criticism of Mr Trump were more important that economic issues. Others hammered the Biden administration for their financial woes.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned on Monday that the nation was at “serious risk” of the GOP and broader conservative right pushing for a national ban on abortion.

She made the remarks at her daily press briefing, pointing to a general unwillingness by Republicans to state their position on the issue and the hesitance of Mississippi Gov Tate Reeves over the weekend to even say whether he’d sign a bill banning contraception into law.

Read more from The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg: