Biden news - live: GOP senator claims ‘fake’ Trump supporters caused riot as distracted Ted Cruz taps on phone

Stacey Abrams, whose voting rights work helped make Georgia into a swing state, exhorted Congress on Thursday to reject “outright lies” that have historically restricted access to the ballot as Democrats began their push for a sweeping overhaul of election and ethics laws.

“A lie cloaked in the seductive appeal of election integrity has weakened access to democracy for millions,” Ms Abrams, a Democrat who narrowly lost Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race, said during a committee hearing for the bill, which was introduced as H.R. 1 to signal its importance to the party’s agenda.

Read more on the coming fight over voting access.

West Virginia’s senator Joe Manchin has proved an occasional thorn in Joe Biden’s side, despite them both being Democrats.

Independent Voices’ Andrew Feinberg has this look at the powerful centrist senator.

Republicans shouting about transforming the party into a place for the working class are doing little to support that notion. Yet senator Mitt Romney is quietly doing the work, argues Jay Caruso in this Voices piece.

Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has welcomed the Biden-ordered airstrikes on Syria as the right move.

“Responses like this are a necessary deterrent and remind Iran, its proxies, and our adversaries around the world that attacks on U.S. interests will not be tolerated,” McCaul said.

Suzanne Maloney, of the Brookings Institution think tank, said the strikes showed the Biden administration could negotiate with Iran on the nuclear deal while pushing back against the militias it backed.

“Good move by... Biden (administration) demonstrating US can walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said on Twitter.

Earlier Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the airstrikes targeted “infrastructure utilised by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria”.

Meanwhile over in Orlando, a Florida lawyer and anti-Republican political campaigner says he has almost raised enough funds to fly a banner over the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that reads “Welcome Insurrectionists”, a reference to last month’s Capitol riots.

The activist in question is the same lawyer who dressed up as a grim reaper to stalk the state’s beaches in protest at their reopening, and Florida’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in general.

He says they are close to raising the $10,000 needed for a banner plane over CPAC on Friday as top Republicans arrive for the conference.

Full details here:

Here’s the clip in which Mitch McConnell, the most powerful elected Republican in the country, says he would “absolutely” support Donald Trump were he to receive the Republican presidential nomination for 2024.

It comes despite Mr McConnell’s public condemnation of the president over his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection last month - an incident the Senate minority leader suggested Mr Trump could be criminally investigated over.

It appears to be quite an about turn by Mr McConnell, who is likely to be watching closely when the former president delivers his first post-White House speech on Sunday at CPAC.

Perhaps summing up this year’s vibes at CPAC, a Bloomberg reporter has shared footage showing staff at the annual conservative conference wheeling a golden statue of Donald Trump across the conference floor.

“That’s so cool,” one attendee can be heard saying, while someone chants “Four more years!” - a jokey reference to a popular chant by Trump supporters when he was still president.

Mr Trump is due to give his first post-White House speech at CPAC on Sunday.

Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of Donald Trump, has hinted that she is open to the idea of running for Senate from North Carolina in 2022 after incumbent senator Richard Burr’s last term at office from the state.

Ms Trump, who was involved in the former president’s campaign, has long been rumoured to be looking at taking a plunge in the US electoral politics.

She is expected to run from her home state for a seat that will become vacant as Mr Burr, 65, has already announced that this would be his last term.

Read more here:

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has said that the top Republican presidential candidates for 2024 “all have Trump as their last name”.

Mr Meadows told Fox News Donald Trump’s CPAC speech on Sunday will mark the “start of planning for the next administration”, as the brewing Republican Party civil war - between pro- and anti-Trump wings - looks set to escalate over the coming months.

Freshman representative Lauren Boebert on Thursday hinted that she still brings a firearm “to work” at Congress, even though members are forbidden from carrying guns inside the House floor under new rules following the Capitol insurrection on 6 January.

In an interview with TMZ on Thursday, Ms Boebert, who was on her way to the Congress when she spoke to a reporter, was asked if at some point she feels she’d be able to carry a gun to work.

“Who says I don’t,” responded the Republican politician.

Read more here: