Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Conversely, Democratic and Republican candidates automatically get on ballots due to state laws that reward parties for voter support during previous elections. Speaker Johnson pushes Biden on border shift in White House meeting Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson pressed President Joe Biden on Wednesday to recast U.S. immigration policy during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House about funding for Ukraine.

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

Trump defamation accuser Carroll expected to resume trial testimony

The writer who accused Donald Trump of shattering her reputation by denying he assaulted her nearly three decades ago is expected on Thursday to finish testifying at a civil trial to determine how much the former U.S. president owes in damages. E. Jean Carroll, 80, a former Elle magazine advice columnist testified on Wednesday that Trump's lies destroyed her reputation for telling the truth and exposed her to online attacks that persist.

Biden aims for North Carolina as 2024 election comes into focus

U.S. President Joe Biden will fix his gaze on one of the prizes of the 2024 election three days after Donald Trump's Iowa Republican primary triumph, taking his economic pitch to closely contested North Carolina on Thursday. After Trump's 51% win in the Iowa caucus cemented his front-runner status for Republicans, Biden heads to North Carolina, the state his Democrats are most optimistic about converting in 2024. Trump narrowly won the state in 2020 by 74,483 votes and 1.3 percentage points.

A day in Trump's world: morning in courtroom, evening on campaign trail

Donald Trump's schedule on Wednesday summed up the unprecedented nature of this year's election: spend the day in court fighting a defamation case and the evening rallying supporters in his bid to become the next U.S. president. That is how the former president, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination and the world's most famous defendant, has chosen to divide his time this week as he pursues his political comeback.

Factbox-How US states make it tough for third parties in elections

For third-party U.S. presidential candidates, getting on state ballots is challenging and expensive, thanks to a patchwork of U.S. laws designed by Republicans and Democrats, the dominant parties which control statehouses nationwide. In many cases, outsider challengers can seek to qualify either as an independent candidate or a candidate from a minor party, though not all states have multiple options. Conversely, Democratic and Republican candidates automatically get on ballots due to state laws that reward parties for voter support during previous elections.

Speaker Johnson pushes Biden on border shift in White House meeting

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson pressed President Joe Biden on Wednesday to recast U.S. immigration policy during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House about funding for Ukraine. Republicans in Congress have blocked emergency funding that Biden has requested for Ukraine and threaten to force a partial shutdown of the government in an effort to push new security policies along the U.S.-Mexico border. They blame Biden's policies for an influx of immigrants into the United States.

Trump is warned he may be ejected from Carroll trial

A federal judge warned Donald Trump on Wednesday he could be kicked out of writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation trial if he kept making disparaging comments that the jury could hear.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's threat came after a lawyer for Carroll said Trump was talking loudly with his lawyers during testimony by Carroll, who said the president lied by denying in 2019 that he had raped her decades earlier.

US Congress scrambles to pass stopgap bill to avert government shutdown

The U.S. Senate on Thursday will aim to approve a stopgap measure keeping the federal government funded through early March, averting a partial shutdown that would begin in less than two days if Congress fails to act. The Democratic-majority Senate and Republican-controlled House of Representatives are far behind in carrying out their basic duty of funding the government for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, with lawmakers scrambling to keep the lights on through early March, to give them more time to pass a full-year bill.

Biden allies plot to thwart third party bids that threaten his reelection

American Bridge is the Democratic Party's primary opposition research organization, spending tens of millions of dollars to track Republican rivals and produce attack ads. But in 2024, the deep-pocketed ally of President Joe Biden is adding a new role that could help shape the Nov. 5 presidential election: third-party suppressor.

US Justice Dept to release report on Uvalde school shooting response

The U.S. Justice Department plans to release a report on Thursday on the much-criticized delayed police response to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers. The report will detail the results of the department's "Critical Incident Review," of the law enforcement response, a review which began days after the shooting at the request of Uvalde's mayor.

Iowa sues TikTok alleging parents misled about inappropriate content

Iowa's attorney general on Wednesday sued TikTok, accusing the video-based social media platform of misleading parents about their children's access to inappropriate content on the company's app. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird in a lawsuit filed in a state court in Polk County accused TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance of lying about the prevalence on its platform of content including drugs, nudity, alcohol and profanity.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)