U.S. and world news for March 21

Biden impeachment investigation: Lev Parnas, who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani who was working with Donald Trump in trying to overturn results of the 2020 presidential election testified in front of the House committee that is conducting an impeachment investigation of President Biden. Parnas testified that the allegations the Trump supporters were making that Biden was corrupt and had received payoffs from businesses in Ukraine were phony and they had no evidence to support the phony charges. Parnas said that some of the allegations against Biden were fed to them by Russia.

Fundraising: Donald Trump has conducted another online fundraising effort, asking his supporters to send money to help him post the $464 million bond or cash as ordered by a court as a result of his conviction on bank, insurance and tax fraud. This latest effort comes as campaign filings show the Trump campaign raised $10.9 million in February and had $33.5 million cash on hand. President Biden’s campaign reported raising $21.3 million in February and had $71 million on hand.

Loan forgiveness: President Biden announced that he is using his executive power to forgive $5.8 billion in student loans for 78,000 public service workers. The administration plans to send emails to the public service workers who are eligible. The Supreme Court last year threw out Biden’s original student loan forgiveness program but Biden and the Department of Education have used existing authority to forgive loans for certain specific categories of borrowers.

Middle East: Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said today that he will invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress. Netanyahu has already invited Johnson to speak to the Israeli Knesset. In Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held fresh meetings with Egyptian officials in efforts to bring about a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that would include a release of hostages being held by Hamas. Sources indicated that progress had been made in the talks.  

Ukraine: Russia launched a new attack on Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv this morning, firing about 30 missiles toward city. Ukraine said its air defense forces shot down the incoming missiles but falling debris did cause some damage. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said that so far in March Russia has fired 130 missiles at his country and used 320 explosive drones in various attacks.

Government spending: A push to build support is expected on Capitol Hill today as a $1.2 trillion government spending package is introduced in a bipartisan effort to keep the government open after the current spending package expires at midnight tomorrow night. The new spending package includes $886 billion for the defense department, an increase of about 3% from the current spending level. The House may not vote on the government funding until tomorrow and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he’d bring it up for a Senate vote as soon as sent to the Senate following House passage.