Weekly Recap: May 4th - May 10th
Weekly Recap: May 4th - May 10th
A recap of the big political stories affecting the United States this past week.
The story dominating headlines this week is that President Biden has withheld the latest military aid shipment to Israel. For months Biden has been pushing Netanyahu to be more careful with avoiding civilian casualties as the Palestinian death count has grown to over 35,000.
As Israel announced its plans to invade the city of Rafah, Biden pushed back on those plans urging Netanyahu against the attack. Rafah is where many displaced Palestinians now reside, and there are over one million civilians within the city.
Israel told civilians to leave the city, but there aren’t really options of where to go that have food, shelter, and water at this point in the war. Biden has withheld the arms delivery to pressure Israel into not attacking Rafah.
Republicans wasted no time calling press conferences to attack Biden for withholding the aid where they claimed that he was abandoning Israel. This comes despite the fact that House Republicans held up the aid in Congress for six months and that many Republicans in both the House and Senate voted against the aid.
Withholding military aid to force a change of strategy from Israel is also not unique to the Biden presidency. Several previous Presidents, including the Republican icon Ronald Reagan, have done the same.
Marjorie Taylor Greene made headlines once again as she initiated her vote to vacate Speaker Johnson. As she delivered her speech before the vote, Greene was booed and heckled by both sides of the aisle. A motion to table was quickly voted on and succeeded, ending Greene’s month-long threat against Johnson. In the end, only 11 Republicans voted to keep Greene’s motion moving forward, showing how unpopular the vote was.
Several Republican House members held a press conference after the failed vote where they attacked Greene for sowing chaos. Greene followed up with numerous social media posts blaming the “uniparty” for her failure before going on an interview with Steve Bannon to continue attacking Speaker Johnson.
Trump was fined again for violating his gag order and once again threatened with jail time if he violated the order again in the future.
This came ahead of Stormy Daniels testimony. Due to the defense challenging the validity of Daniels claims, including saying they doubted Daniels had sexual relations with Trump, the prosecution was allowed to ask Daniels about their encounters.
The defense offered few objections to the line of questioning, which allowed sordid details to be discussed openly. As the first day of Daniels's testimony finished, the defense asked for a mistrial because of that testimony. The judge denied it and said he was surprised at how little the defense objected to the questioning. The following day, as more testimony was heard from Daniels, the defense again asked for a mistrial and was again denied.
During cross-examination, the defense seemed to blunder by attempting to attack Daniels's character and profession, only to end up having Daniels handle the questioning smoothly while getting in more jabs against Trump.
Overall, the trial is moving along quickly. The prosecution says they only have a couple of more witnesses to call and could wrap up their portion in the next one to two weeks.
Republicans made a big show of bringing forward a bill that would make all Americans show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. The stated intention of the bill is to prevent non-citizens from voting as Republicans have continued the false narrative that Democrats are letting migrants enter the country to gain their votes.
There are already laws prohibiting non-citizens from voting in federal elections, and past investigations have found non-citizens voting in elections is even less of an issue than the non-existent voter fraud that Republicans have been claiming. Fewer than 1 in 1 million votes are cast by non-citizens.
This bill plays into the overall Republican narrative of fear-mongering about migrants while obstructing border legislation and claiming that our elections aren’t safe. It is a message that Trump has been pushing since he lost the 2020 election, and Republicans have adopted it as their main election strategy this year.
Ending with some bizarre news, third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he had been experiencing memory lapses and brain fog in the past and that when he went to the doctor, it was determined that a parasitic worm had been eating his brain and died inside his head. RFK’s campaign later released a statement stating that it would have no effect on the candidate’s ability to serve as President.