Welcome to our live coverage of US politics and the ongoing impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump. The Senate will reconvene at noon EST today – 1700 GMT – when his lawyers will begin to present their defense.
- That defense may not last very long. Trump’s lawyers are pretty certain they have enough Republican jurors on their side to secure an early acquittal, and may not use all of their 16 allotted hours.
- Yesterday Democrats rested their case that the commander-in-chief committed ‘incitement of insurrection’ with a warning that Trump remains a threat.
- President Joe Biden has kept clear of commenting on the trial as it goes on, but said yesterday “my guess is some minds may be changed” based on the presentation by the House impeachment managers.
- There were 105,353 new coronavirus cases in the US yesterday, and 3,877 further deaths.
- Emergency crews in Richmond, California, are rushing to clean up an estimated 600 gallons of oil that spilled from a Chevron refinery into the San Francisco Bay.
- Senior US lawmakers have called on the UK to live up to its “moral responsibility” and help end both countries “complicity” in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
- Today Biden and vice president Kamala Harris will meet with a bipartisan group of governors and mayors at 11.15am to discuss “the vital need to pass the American Rescue Plan”. Biden and Harris will also lunch together, and receive an Ovel office economic briefing from treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
