NY grand jury case to resume in April

The Manhattan grand jury weighing the hush money case involving former President Trump is not set to consider the case again until the end of April, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday.

Trump had said he expected to be arrested last week regarding the investigation, though there’s no indication charges have been filed.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) could still change the schedule, but for now, the jury is set to hear a different case next week before heading on a pre-scheduled two-week break.

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker appeared before the jury a second time on Monday. Last week, the jury heard from attorney Robert Costello, who sought to discredit Michael Cohen.

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and longtime personal fixer, made the hush money payment shortly before the 2016 election to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleged she had an affair with Trump.

Trump has denied an affair and any wrongdoing related to the payment.

Cohen previously pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations related to the payment, among other charges. He testified before the grand jury on March 13.

See more background on the case here.

Welcome to Evening Report! I’m Amee LaTour, catching you up from the afternoon and what’s coming tomorrow. Not on the list? Subscribe here.

• A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to recoup up to five years of compensation from top executives at banks that fail and require a federal takeover.

• Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is launching his first ad campaign, a six-figure blitz in early states Iowa and New Hampshire.

   

• The Biden administration auctioned 2,600 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico to oil companies, as required by a provision in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act added to secure Sen. Joe Manchin‘s (D-W.Va.) support.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is set to return to the Senate the week of April 17, a source told The Hill’s Al Weaver on Wednesday afternoon.

Fetterman has been absent from the upper chamber since mid-February after he checked into Walter Reed Medical Military Hospital for treatment for clinical depression.

High-profile hearings into Starbucks and recent bank collapses took up much of the attention on the Hill on Wednesday. Here’s a recap:

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz testified at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing following a National Labor Relations Board judge’s ruling earlier this month that the chain violated labor laws hundreds of times. Starbucks is appealing that ruling.

When asked whether he’d threatened or coerced workers who were considering joining a union, Schultz said he “had conversations that could have been interpreted in a different way than I intended.”

Some Republicans on the committee defended Schultz and criticized the labor relations board, The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom reported. More on the hearing here. …

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Meanwhile, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing, members questioned officials from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.

Lawmakers pressed officials after the government earlier this month used the deposit insurance fund (DIF) to back deposits above the standard $250,000 for two banks that had collapsed.

From The Hill’s Tobias Burns: “…House Democrats said Wednesday that banks need to have higher liquidity requirements and their own type of insurance policies in place, known as contingent convertible bonds, in order to avoid using money from the DIF.”

“Meanwhile, Republicans said Federal Reserve regulators were asleep at the wheel,” Tobias wrote. Read more here. 

At a news conference with other House Democrats, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) responded to previous comments from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) about the school shooting in Nashville on Monday.

Burchett said “we’re not gonna fix it, criminals are gonna be criminals,” adding later, “We’ve got evil in this country, and everybody just needs to tone down the rhetoric a little bit ‘cause all that does is gin it up, in both sides, and then they point the finger and nothing happens.”

“If you think Washington’s gonna fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not gonna fix this problem; they are the problem,” Burchett said.

Escobar referenced a photo of a child crying on a bus leaving The Covenant School in Nashville, saying, “I want you all to remember the photograph. …  A photograph of a Nashville little girl inside a school bus wheezing, sobbing, her face filled with pain and trauma.”

Escobar said “that Republican member of Congress and his entire conference are telling that family and that little girl, ‘we’re not going to fix this.’”

“Well guess what? We have to fix it, it is our job to fix it,” she said.

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) called for votes on an assault weapons ban and background checks.

The Senate voted 66-30 to repeal the authorizations for use of military force (AUMFs) for the Iraq and Gulf wars, from 2002 and 1991, respectively.

That means “all eyes are now on the House, where a bill to repeal the two AUMFs has been introduced but has yet to advance out of committee,” The Hill’s Brad Dress and Al Weaver wrote. “Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other Republicans have signaled support for the legislation, or at least a debate on the issue.”

While the wars each AUMF authorized ended years ago, Brad and Al noted that former President Trump cited the 2002 AUMF three years ago in ordering the missile strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Read more here. 

Australian company Vow mixed mammoth and African elephant genetic data and put it into a sheep cell to cultivate the product, with the goal of getting the (meat)ball rolling on a conversation about cultured meat as an alternative to livestock-based meat. “We wanted to get people excited about the future of food being different to potentially what we had before,” Tim Noakesmith, founder of Vow, told The Associated Press.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Narcan, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, for over-the-counter sale. It should be available over the counter by late summer. Read more about the approval and current Narcan availability here.

IQ scores appear to be dropping after a long stretch of climbing. Between 2006 and 2018, “Researchers tracked falling scores in logic, vocabulary, visual and mathematical problem-solving and analogies, the latter category familiar to anyone who took the old SAT,” The Hill’s Daniel de Visé wrote. Spatial reasoning IQ scores, however, rose. Read more here.

“The GOP is lost. Can it find its way back to the party of Lincoln and Roosevelt?” — William S. Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations on climate and energy policies. (Read here)

“It is not too late for President Biden to protect asylum seekers” — Hans Van de Weerd, the International Rescue Committee’s senior vice president of Resettlement, Asylum and Integration. (Read here)

587 days until the presidential election.

Congress will wrap up for a two-week recess.

There a story you think should be getting more attention? Something people should be talking about? Drop me a line: alatour@thehill.com