Kamala Harris to castigate Trump in Florida speech as state’s strict abortion ban takes effect – live | US Congress

The day so far

‘There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump,’ Biden says as Florida abortion ban takes effect

Harris in Florida to castigate Trump as state’s strict abortion ban goes into effect

Signs emerge rank-and-file Democrats will not support Greene’s ouster attempt at Johnson

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Joan E Greve on far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vow earlier this morning to force a vote next week on removing Mike Johnson as House speaker. As things stand right now, it does not seem to have the support to succeed:

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move to force a vote next week on removing her fellow Republican Mike Johnson as House speaker, even though the measure appears certain to fail.

“I think the American people need to see a recorded vote,” Greene said at a press conference. “And so next week, I am going to be calling this motion to vacate – absolutely calling it. I can’t wait to see Democrats go out and support a Republican speaker and have to go home to their primaries and have to run for Congress again.”

The news came one day after House Democratic leaders issued a statement indicating they would vote to table, or kill, Greene’s motion to vacate if it came up for a vote. In the statement, Democratic leaders cited Johnson’s successful effort to shepherd a foreign aid package through the House last month to justify blocking Greene’s motion.

“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” the leaders said. “We will vote to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate the chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”

Control of the House will also be up for grabs in the November election, and a crucial aspect in determining which party has the advantage is how congressional district lines are drawn at the state level. Under a judge’s ruling, Louisiana was set to get a second Black-majority district, likely giving Democrats the advantage, but the Associated Press reports an appeals court has just forbidden that map from going into effect:

A new congressional map giving Louisiana a second majority-Black House district was rejected on Tuesday by a panel of three federal judges, fueling new uncertainty about district boundaries as the state prepares for fall congressional elections.

The 2-1 ruling forbids the use of a map drawn up in January by the legislature after a different federal judge blocked a map from 2022. The earlier map maintained a single Black-majority district and five mostly white districts, in a state with a population that is about one-third Black.

“We will of course be seeking supreme court review,” the state attorney general, Liz Murrill, said on social media. “The jurisprudence and litigation involving redistricting has made it impossible to not have federal judges drawing maps. It’s not right and they need to fix it.”

The governor, Jeff Landry, and Murrill had backed the new map in a January legislative session after a different federal judge threw out a map with only one mostly Black district.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by former attorney general Eric Holder, said backers of the new map will probably seek an emergency order from the supreme court to keep the new map in place while appeals are pursued.

The nationwide protests at college campuses were sparked by Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October attack. But as the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports, all signs point to them emerging as significant issue for Joe Biden as he pursues re-election in November:

The policies of Joe Biden and Democrats towards Israel, which have prompted thousands of students across the country to protest, could affect the youth vote for Biden and hurt his re-election chances, experts have warned, in what is already expected to be a tight election.

Thousands of students at universities across the US have joined with pro-Palestine rallies and, most recently, encampments, as Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people.

Some of the protests began as a call to encourage universities to ditch investments in companies that provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military. But as the Biden administration has continued to largely support Israel, the president has increasingly become a focus of criticism from young people. Polling shows that young Americans’ support for Biden has been chipped away since 2020.

With Biden narrowly trailing Trump in several key swing states, it’s a voting bloc the president can ill afford to lose.

“The real threat to Biden is that younger voters, especially college-educated voters, won’t turn out for him in the election,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I wouldn’t expect that the protesters on campuses today are going to vote for Trump, almost none of them will. That’s not the danger here. The danger is much simpler: that they simply won’t vote.”

In addition to the police’s dispersal of protesters at Columbia University, yesterday saw violent clashes break out at the University of California, Los Angeles, involving pro-Israel counterprotesters.

We have a separate live blog following the latest in the demonstrations, which you can read here:

Police moved in yesterday evening to clear a Columbia University building that had been taken over by protesters, making dozens of arrests. Here’s what happened at the college that has become a flashpoint for the nationwide wave of protests against Israel, from the Guardian’s Diana Ramirez-Simon, Jonathan Yerushalmy, Edward Helmore and Erum Salam:

Dozens of students have been arrested after hundreds of New York City police officers entered Columbia University on Tuesday night to clear out an academic building that had been taken over as part of a pro-Palestinian protest.

Live video images showed police in riot gear marching on the campus in upper Manhattan, the focal point of nationwide student protests opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Police used an armoured vehicle with a bridging mechanism to gain entry to the second floor of the building.

Officers said they used flash-bangs to disperse the crowd, but denied using teargas as part of the operation.

Before long, officers were seen leading protesters handcuffed with zip ties to a line of police buses waiting outside campus gates. An NYPD spokesman, Carlos Nieves, said he had no immediate reports of any injuries following the arrests.

Punchbowl News reports that the House oversight committee will be paying a visit to George Washington University in Washington DC to see the encampment set up by pro-Palestinian protesters:

The visit by the GOP-led committee, which has spent much of the past nearly year and a half investigating the Biden administration, comes as Republicans turn up the heat on administrators of universities where protests against Israel’s invasion of Gaza are taking place.

Just a few minutes ago, Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who is a high-ranking member of House leadership, called on the trustees of Columbia University, one of the campuses at the center of the protest wave, to remove Minouche Shafik as president, citing the recent storming of a university property by demonstrators:

This violence is a direct result of the appeasement policies president Minouche Shafik has used to address antisemitism on campus. President Shafik has allowed campus to be taken by mob rule, and she must immediately be removed so this occupation can be met with swift and overwhelming response to retake campus, restore order and protect Jewish students.

How does the speaker of the House lose his job?

Johnson says ouster attempt ‘wrong for the country’