Chuck Schumer’s call for new Israeli elections condemned as ‘grotesque’ and ‘inappropriate’ by Republican leaders – live | Israel-Gaza war

The protest vote against Joe Biden’s stance on Gaza continued in Washington and Georgia this week, where thousands of voters chose no one, sending a message to the president that their votes depend on a ceasefire.

Washington, a reliably blue state, saw support from local elected officials and major unions in its multi-faith push for “uncommitted” delegates. They spent about $20,000 and began organizing on 24 February. More than 56,000 voters selected uncommitted delegates on the ballots counted so far, though more than 200,000 ballots remain uncounted there as of Thursday morning.

Georgia’s ballot didn’t have an uncommitted option, so organizers there put together a “leave it blank” campaign, calling on voters to cast a ballot, but not fill it out, to send a message to Biden on Gaza. Nearly 6,500 voters there left it blank. And nearly 9,000 voters chose Marianne Williamson, which some protest voters have selected because she supports a ceasefire. Combined, the votes exceed Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020, which was about 12,000 votes.

The uncommitted movement started in Michigan’s presidential primary, where more than 100,000 Democratic voters chose the protest vote in a state with a large proportion of Muslim and Arab Americans. Next, Super Tuesday saw several states push for uncommitted, with Minnesota seeing the highest percentage of such voters, at 19%. Then came Hawaii, where 29% of voters in a low-turnout primary voted for uncommitted. All three states got enough votes to earn delegates to the Democratic national convention in August.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, described Chuck Schumer’s call for new leadership in Israel as “highly inappropriate” and “plain wrong”.

Johnson, at a last-minute press conference alongside House GOP leaders, said:

This is not only highly inappropriate, it’s just plain wrong for an American leader to play such a divisive role in Israeli politics while our closest ally in the region is in an existential battle for its very survival.

Speaking to reporters during House Republicans’ annual retreat at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, Johnson added:

We need to be standing with Israel, and we need to give our friends and allies our full support we have to stand with and support them right now. But what you’re seeing from the White House and clearly from the Senate Democrats is really exactly the opposite.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has hit back at Chuck Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor calling for new elections in Israel, describing the Senate majority leader’s comments as “grotesque and hypocritical”.

In a statement following Schumer’s speech, McConnell accused the Democratic party of having “an anti-Israel problem”, adding:

It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.

He added:

Israel is not a colony of America whose leaders serve at the pleasure of the party in power in Washington. Only Israel’s citizens should have a say in who runs their government. This is the very definition of democracy and sovereignty. Either we respect their decisions, or we disrespect their democracy.

Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has criticized statements by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, calling for new elections in Israel.

Schumer, the first Jewish majority leader in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, strongly criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a lengthy speech this morning on the Senate floor.

Netanyahu had put himself in a coalition of far-right extremists and “as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows”.

Posting to X, Herzog wrote:

Israel is a sovereign democracy. It is unhelpful, all the more so as Israel is at war against the genocidal terror organization Hamas, to comment on the domestic political scene of a democratic ally. It is counterproductive to our common goals.

Congressman Marc Molinaro of New York said he was co-sponsoring a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), becoming the first Republican to do so.

In a statement on Wednesday, Molinaro said he would be cosponsoring the Access to Family Building Act with Democratic congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania as “a parent who has personal experience with IVF”.

Molinaro said he was “troubled” by the ruling by Alabama’s supreme court that found frozen embryos are children, adding that he supports “all women and families who choose IVF to bring life in to the world”.

“Protecting it is just common sense,” he added.

Molinaro, a vulnerable Republican seeking re-election, becomes the first GOP member to back legislation to protect the right to IVF.

Another Republican, congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, was previously reported to have supported the bill but later said she was “added to the bill without confirmation” and that there “are amendments that would need to take place” for her to support it.

Martin Pengelly

Katie Britt, the Alabama senator who delivered a much-mocked State of the Union response last week, rued the “irony” of being told by the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, that “it’ll be fine” before giving her disastrous speech.

Speaking to the hard-right Texas senator Ted Cruz, on his Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast, Britt said Johnson told her:

‘People are going to tell you horror stories about all of these things that happen and people’s career being blown up over it.’ And he’s like, ‘It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.’

It was not fine. Her speech focused on Republican talking points prominently including immigration and crime. But Britt’s bizarrely dramatic delivery, in particular in a lurid section on sex trafficking and immigration subsequently picked apart by factcheckers and the subject of the story herself, prompted widespread mockery.

Martin Belam

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer used a speech on the Senate floor to call for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and say that Israel has lost its way in its war on Gaza, adding that Benjamin Netanyahu should call an election.

Schumer said it was a “grave mistake” for Israel to reject a two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, Reuters reported.

His intervention comes five months after Israel launched its military assault on Gaza after the 7 October surprise attack inside southern Israel that killed about 1,140 people and during which about 240 people were abducted and seized as hostages by Hamas.

The Hamas-led ministry of health in the territory says the Israeli military operation has claimed over 31,340 Palestinian lives, many of them women and children. Much of the population of Gaza is displaced, and UN agencies have warned there is a severe risk of famine as the distribution of humanitarian aid has been restricted.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has called for Israel to hold new elections, arguing that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “no longer fits the needs of Israel”.

Schumer, long a strong supporter of Israel and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, strongly criticized the Israeli leader in a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor.

Israel must make “significant course corrections” to achieve lasting peace with the Palestinians, he said, adding that it would be a “grave mistake” for Israel to reject a two-state solution.

Netanyahu had put himself in a coalition of far-right extremists and “as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows”, Schumer said. He added:

If prime minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down, and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.

He added:

As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice.

Hugo Lowell

Lawyers for Donald Trump are arguing for why US district judge Aileen Cannon should order the case charging him with mishandling classified documents should be dismissed, claiming they were his to keep because he designated them personal records while he was president.

The decision to designate the documents as personal records under the Presidential Records Act meant it was an official act of his presidency for which he could not face prosecution, his lawyers wrote in a 22-page filing last month.

Classified information is material owned by the United States and cannot, by definition, be personal.

Trump’s request to toss the charges amounted to an extraordinary interpretation of presidential power that would allow presidents to use national security secrets as they liked when they left office, legal experts suggested.

Previously, during the criminal investigation, Trump suggested documents were automatically declassified when he took them to the White House residence or that he could declassify using his mind.

Joe Biden has come out in opposition to the planned sale of Pittsburgh’s US Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel, arguing that the US needs to “maintain strong American steel companies powered by American steel workers”.

Nippon Steel announced in December that it planned to buy US Steel for $14.1bn in cash, raising concerns about what the transaction could mean for unionized workers, supply chains and US national security.

In a statement, Biden said:

I told our steel workers I have their backs, and I meant it. US Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century, and it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated.

The announcement comes as Biden is campaigning in the midwest, and ahead of next month’s White House visit by Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida. Biden has made restoring American manufacturing a cornerstone of his agenda as he seeks reelection.

Donald Trump has arrived at a federal courthouse in Florida, where a judge will hear arguments on whether to dismiss the criminal case accusing the former president of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House.

The motorcade carrying Trump arrived shortly before the hearing was set to begin before the US district judge Aileen Cannon.

Steven Mnuchin, the former Treasury secretary, said he is assembly a group of investors to make a bid to buy TikTok, a day after the House passed a measure to force ByteDance to either sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the US.

Mnuchin, speaking on CNBC this morning, said:

I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold. It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.

The bill is now headed to the Senate, where its future is uncertain, though Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation if it passes.

Mnuchin said:

This should be owned by US businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China.

TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US, has stated that it is not clear if China would approve any sale.

Good morning US politics readers. Kamala Harris today will visit a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota that provides abortion services, marking the first time a president or vice president has been to a reproductive health clinic, according to her office.

Harris’s trip to the Twin Cities is part of a nationwide tour she began in January to draw attention to the fallout after the reversal of Roe v Wade, and comes as Democrats play up their opposition to the rollback of reproductive rights ahead of the November election. Harris, the first woman elected vice-president, has emerged as the administration’s most vocal and prominent defender of abortion access. She has pointedly attacked Donald Trump for saying he was “proud” of helping to limit abortions, and blasted Republicans as extremists while pledging to push for federal legislation to restore the federal right to abortions.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

• A federal judge in Florida will hear arguments on whether to dismiss the federal criminal case against Donald Trump involving his handling of classified documents. In addition to Trump, his co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, are expected to attend the hearing.

• 10am. The Senate will meet to take up Dennis Hankins’ nomination as US ambassador to Haiti, with a vote at noon.

• 2pm. Joe Biden will participate in a campaign event in Saginaw, Michigan.