Trump will appeal immunity ruling, campaign says – live | US immigration

The White House just announced that Joe Biden will speak at 11.45am to press Congress to approve the bipartisan agreement released over the weekend that would enact strict immigration policies and send military aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The proposal, which was negotiated by a trio consisting of a Democratic, a Republican and an independent senator, faces what appears to be insurmountable opposition. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, who has for months demanded the Biden administration take stronger actions to secure the border with Mexico, said he will not put it up for a vote, while a substantial number of GOP senators say they will not vote for it, imperiling its passage in that chamber ahead of a vote scheduled for Wednesday.

If the measure dies, it’s unclear how Congress will find agreement on aiding Ukraine and Israel, two of Washington’s top national security priorities. We’ll cover Biden’s speech live as it happens.

Donald Trump will appeal the court ruling denying him immunity from the federal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election, his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.

He argued that, if the decision is not overturned, all future presidents will face retaliation for actions they took while in office. Trump is the only former president to ever have been criminally indicted.

Here’s Cheung’s full statement:

If immunity is not granted to a President, every future President who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party. Without complete immunity, a President of the United States would not be able to properly function! Deranged Jack Smith’s prosecution of President Trump for his Presidential, official acts is unconstitutional under the doctrine of Presidential Immunity and the Separation of Powers. Prosecuting a President for official acts violates the Constitution and threatens the bedrock of our Republic. President Trump respectfully disagrees with the DC Circuit’s decision and will appeal it in order to safeguard the Presidency and the Constitution.

In their decision, federal appeals court judges Florence Pan, Karen Henderson and Michelle Childs were sharply critical of Donald Trump’s arguments, saying that he essentially wanted to make presidents immune from accountability:

We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.

At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.

Childs and Pan were appointed to the bench by Joe Biden. The Republican former president George HW Bush appointed Henderson.

A federal appeals court has rejected Donald Trump’s claim that he cannot be prosecuted for charges related to attempting to overturn the 2020 election because the alleged misconduct occurred while he was acting is his capacity as president, Reuters reports.

The three judges hearing the matter at the Washington DC-based US court of appeals ruled unanimously against the former president. They had appeared skeptical of the immunity claim last month, when an attorney for Trump made his case before the court. Here’s more about that:

House Republicans may fail in their attempt planned for this afternoon impeach the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, after two lawmakers announced they would vote against the charges.

The GOP controls Congress’s lower chamber by just one seat, but two Republicans say they will not support the effort to bring charges of ignoring laws and breaching the public trust against Mayorkas.

Ken Buck of Colorado has long been skeptical of the effort, and made his opposition official yesterday:

Just a few minutes ago, Tom McClintock of California said he would vote no:

If all Democrats vote against the articles, that will block their passage in the House. Even if the articles are approved, the Democratic-controlled Senate is certain to reject them.

In a behind-closed-doors meeting last night, the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, told his lawmakers that if they didn’t like what was in the immigration policy bill that he had demanded be negotiated then they should vote against it, Punchbowl News reports.

The reason why? Essentially, Donald Trump. Per Punchbowl, the Republican minority leader cited the shifting national mood on immigration, a euphemism for the fact that Trump is now nearly assured to win the GOP presidential nomination again, and wants to campaign on his own draconian approach to the issue. For his part, the former president encouraged lawmakers to reject the bill yesterday.

Remember that McConnell and other Republicans had initially demanded the immigration policy changes as their price for supporting aid to Israel and Ukraine’s militaries. With the legislation to do that facing what appears to be insurmountable opposition ahead of its first Senate vote scheduled for Wednesday, Republicans have managed to kill not only the prospect of enacting some of the strict policies they’ve demanded, but also assistance to two countries Washington views as national security priorities.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives’ Republican leaders made clear they would not, under any circumstances, support a bill to change immigration policy negotiated in the Senate, even though it contains many of the hardline policies they have demanded. Their opposition likely dooms the prospects of Congress approving new military aid to Ukraine’s beleaguered military, or to Israel, because the GOP demanded immigration policy be overhauled in order to approve new assistance. But far from looking for other ways to work with Joe Biden and the Democrats, House Republicans are doubling down on their confrontational stance today, by holding a floor vote in the afternoon on the articles of impeachment against the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. They accuse him of mishandling border security, and while it’s unclear if the impeachment vote, a rare occurrence against a cabinet secretary, will succeed, the Democratic-led Senate is sure to reject the articles.

The biggest consequence of the deadlock over the immigration bill is that there is no obvious way to for Congress to find consensus on aiding either country, particularly with the far right turned against Ukraine. The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, is nonetheless planning to also call a vote today on a standalone aid package for Israel, but Biden has threatened to veto it, arguing it must be coupled with the immigration bill and the aid to Kyiv.

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s what else is going on today:

• Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will at 5.30pm ET hold a White House reception in honor of Black History Month.

• The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will appear before the House financial services committee starting at 10am to discuss the stability of America’s financial system, though lawmakers will likely interrogate her about plenty of other subjects.

• The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre will answer reporters’ questions at 1.30pm.