Biden says US will airdrop aid to Gaza as Israel policy becomes election issue: Live

After announcing that the faces of January 6 rioters would be blurred to avoid their prosecution by the US Department of Justice, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to reverse course on Friday, saying that it was taking too long.

Last year, Mr Johnson appeared to admit that House Republicans were protecting people who broke into the US Capitol, telling reporters in December that “we have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against, and to be charged by the DOJ, and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”

On Friday, with the release of 5,000 hours of raw footage, his office announced that rioters’ faces won’t be blurred “given the significant logistic hurdles involved and the importance of getting this work completed as responsibly and efficiently as possible”.

Nikki Haley, the last Republican rival facing Donald Trump in the 2024 primaries, has called for all of his legal battles to be “dealt with” before the November election.

The former South Carolina governor is yet to win a state primary or caucus. On Thursday, days after losing big in Michigan, she appeared on NBC News’ Meet the Press and said: “I think all of the cases should be dealt with before November.”

“We need to know what’s going to happen before it, before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don’t think any of it’s going to get heard,” she added.

It projects that the assumed Democratic nominee President Joe Biden will flip North Carolina in Democrats’ favour by less than a percentage point.

It’s no secret that North Carolina’s red has appeared more purple in recent years. Mr Trump barely secured the state in 2020, winning by a margin of 1.3 per cent. Republicans only narrowly won a Senate seat in the 2022 midterms by 3.2 per cent.

Republicans currently have control over the legislature but the governor is a Democrat. With an electorate that is almost completely split between the two parties, neither one can afford to lose any votes.

A former Obama administration official has warned that famine in Gaza is inevitable unless President Joe Biden immediately changes course and applies pressure on Israel to open the territory to all aid deliveries.

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance for three years and worked on famine prevention in Yemen and South Sudan, said the only way to avoid famine would be for Israel to allow “complete access” for aid organisations to enter Gaza, which it has been unwilling to do.

The full transcript of Hunter Biden’s evidence to House Republicans has been released, following his six-hour testimony held behind closed doors.

Read the full transcript below:

The continuing resolution will keep the government open until 8 March. The bill came as part of a larger agreement from Mr Johnson, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries as well as the leadership on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to vote on six of the 12 spending bills by 8 March.

The bill passed in the House by 320 to 99 – Republicans being split on the matter and Democrats making up most of the support for the agreement. Only two House Democrats voted against the legislation. Similarly, the Senate voted 77 to 13 on the stopgap funding bill to head to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Eric Garcia and Gustaf Kilander filed this report from Capitol Hill:

The youngest Republican woman to serve in the US Senate will deliver the response to President Biden’s State of the Union address next week.

Alabama Senator Katie Britt is set to give the remarks – a rebuttal speech to the president’s address made by the opposing party – on 7 March, which she has promised will be a “candid discussion about the future of our nation”.

Mike Bedigan reports on the rising star in the Republican Party:

President Joe Biden on Friday announced that the U.S. will begin airdropping sorely needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Here’s what you need to know:

The Pennsylvania senator claimed that “Hamas alone owns this calamity” and rejected widespread international condemnation — including from the Biden administration — of the “massacre” in a post on X/Twitter on Friday.

“I reject statements from nations with atrocious human rights records: China, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey,” Mr Fetterman wrote.

“Without a doubt, this is a humanitarian tragedy. Hamas alone owns this calamity. We must demand Hamas free the hostages and surrender — ending suffering, death and chaos.”