Biden latest news: GOP mocked for hypocrisy on president’s ‘cheat sheet’ as Trump asks Russia for Hunter

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield expressed skepticism over Russia’s announcement that it would scale back military operations near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv during negotiation talks in Turkey.

She says the Biden administration views any movement of Russian forces as a “redeployment and not a withdrawal” and “no one should be fooled by Russia’s announcement.”

“The world should be prepared for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” Ms Bedingfield said. “Everyone should expect that we’re going to continue to see attacks across Ukraine.”

Mr Durbin, who also serves as Senate majority whip, made the remarks on Tuesday when discussing Ms Jackson’s confirmation hearing during Democrats’ weekly press conference. He was quick to add that most Republicans conducted themselves properly.

Eric Garcia reports for The Independent from Capitol Hill.

The White House says Biden’s remark in Poland this weekend about Putin not being able to remain in power was not raised during the president’s call with Europeans leaders Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Mario Draghi, and Boris Johnson.

Communications director Kate Bedingfield says the White House defers to the Ukrainians to discuss the specifics of the negotiations with Russia that are currently underway.

She also echoes the Pentagon’s line on Russia’s troop moves, saying that any movement of Russian forces away from Kyiv is a redeployment, not a withdrawal.

President Joe Biden’s “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” in the fiscal year 2023’s budget proposal could create bills of $215bn (£164bn) among the country’s top ten billionaires.

The proposal to impose higher taxes on the wealthy was part of the Biden administration’s budget blueprint released on Monday that calls for lower federal deficits, more money for police and greater funding for education, public health and housing.

The proposal “eliminates the inefficient sheltering of income for decades or generations”, the White House said.

Sravasti Dasgupta reports.

Five years and eight months after he asked Russia to release damaging information on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump still hopes Russia is listening even in the midst of its attack on Ukraine.

In an interview with right-wing publication Just the News, Mr Trump said Russian president Vladimir Putin should release information about a Russian widow’s investment into a company Republicans claim is connected to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s younger and sole surviving son.

Andrew Feinberg reports on the latest in the right’s continuing obsession with Mr Biden.

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined the small but growing list of Democratic lawmakers calling for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s resignation on Tuesday as the blowback continues over text messages the justice’s wife sent a top Trump official.

Rep Jamie Raskin delivered a fiery speech during the 6 January committee’s session on Monday night during which the members voted to hold former Donald Trump aides Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt.

During the vote, Democratic Congressman Raskin took aim at Mr Navarro’s claim that his communications were covered by “executive privilege”, a principle that Mr Raskin pointed out was “nonsense talk” and has now been “rejected by every court that has looked at it”.

“This is America and there is no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trade advisers, to plot coups and organise insurrections against the people’s government and the people’s constitution and then to cover up the evidence of their crimes,” Mr Raskin said.

Johanna Chisholm reports.

New reporting has revealed that the White House records from 6 January 2021 obtained by the select committee investigating the Capitol riot show a seven-hour gap in Donald Trump’s phone logs – a period of time that spans the all-important hours before, during and after the incident.

According to CBS News and the Washington Post, White House records turned over to the committee by the National Archives and Records Administration do not include any made or received by Mr Trump between the hours of 11:17am and 6:54pm a period which includes the time just before he exhorted supporters gathered at the White House to march to the Capitol, and the hour at which police regained control of the US legislature’s building.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, DC.

More than a century after such legislation was first introduced, President Joe Biden has signed into law a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime, condemning the “pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”

The president signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act – named after the Black teenager whose murder in 1955 reflected Jim Crow-era violence that galvanised the Civil Rights movement – at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden surrounded by civil rights advocates and Black legislators.

“From the bullets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery, to countless acts of violence, countless victims both known and unknown … racial hate is not an old problem, it’s a persistent problem,” the president said on 29 March. “Hate never goes away. It only hides, it hides under the rocks. Given just a little bit of oxygen it comes roaring back out, screaming. What stops it is all of us, not a few.”