very dangerous, and i hope that as the nation watches that we to say we should sound the alarm across the nation we re entering dangerous territory. that was one of two democrats in tennessee that was just expelled after participating in a gun violence protest on the floor of the statehouse. we ll have much more on this partisan punishment just ahead meanwhile on capitol hill one of donald trump s most vocal allies in congress sends a subpoena to a former prosecutor in the manhattan district attorney s office we ll explain why this move may backfire on jim jordan, and we ll dig into a bombshell report exclosing years of lavish vacations taken by supreme court justice clarence thomas, all paid for by a gop mega donor all right, good morning. and welcome to way too early on this friday, april 7th. i m sam stein in for the irreplaceable jonathan lemire. republican legislators in tennessee voted yesterday to expel two black democrats from the statehouse over their protest o
a lot of people are afraid of him. i ve been doing it for 22 years. i m not the least bit afraid of him. chris christie sure seems to be dropping more hits about a possible presidential campaign as he continues to criticize donald trump we ll have more of those comments straight ahead. and weeks after the first lady said he s running again, president joe biden finally appears ready to make it official, we think plus, the fight for endorsements in florida is not going well for ron desantis, his cool touch to republicans hadn t paid any dividends yet we re going have to have new reporting on trump s personal efforts to connect with lawmakers. good morning and welcome to way too early on this friday, april 21st i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day with us. we begin with this news. president joe biden is preparing to formally announce he is running for re-election next week the president s team is plning to launch his 2024 campaign soon potentially as early a
especially those in certain districts, who fear democrats can be looking like they re not willing to work with the other side, who want to see democratic leaders, including the president, to say they have been able to have some conversations based on what has been presented, even if what is presented isn t viewed as a plan by those on the left. we should note just the fundamentally different approaches here. the white house is saying, look, debt ceiling and the budget are separate issues. let s get the debt ceiling done, then we can have negotiations about the budget mccarthy is trying to link them. what is the latest there is there any discussion or negotiation scheduled between the two sides? not as of now i mean, republicans are still trying to figure out where they stand on this. i mean, mccarthy can only afford to lose about four votes with what he has proposed he has to make sure he has the support to move forward with what he has presented. axios has some new reporting,
erington what is the situation in the house respect caucus as you know, republicans are supposed to be associating with the white house right now to prevent a default on the national debt, but it is not going anywhere reports are there mccarthy is frustrated with one of his top lawmakers, steve scalise, and eg statements that mccarthy hasn t been prepped on. other lawmakers are needing to get in the process so republicans don t make a mistake or have a bad view, impression, i guess, on the american public when it comes to balancing the budget mccarthy is flatly denying there is any tension or beef between his top lawmakers, but there doesn t seem to be significant progress on the issue.