Biden to meet with congressional leaders as government shutdown looms once again – live

Biden will speak with Mike Johnson, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell to see if they can come to an agreement to avoid a shutdown

Good morning, US politics blog readers. We find ourselves at a familiar place: a government shutdown is looming, and a Congress riven with divisions over how to spend Washington’s money is struggling to pass legislation to head it off. This time is a little different from the many similar instances that came before, in that it would be a partial government shutdown, with the legislation funding departments including agriculture, transportation and veteran affairs expiring on Friday, while the deadline for the rest is 8 March. But that hasn’t changed the fact that a shutdown of any length or breadth is something Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress apparently don’t want to see happen, and this morning, Joe Biden is getting personally involved. He has invited Congress’s leaders – Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer and Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell – to the White House to see if they can’t sort it out. They meet at 11.30am ET.

Here’s what else is going on today:

Michigan voters are casting ballots in their state’s primary. It’ll probably be another romp for Donald Trump, who on Saturday evening crushed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley on her home turf. Perhaps the bigger question is how many people in the state with a large Arab-American population will vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary in protest of Biden’s support for Israel.

Julie Su, Biden’s beleaguered appointee to head the labor department, will testify before the Senate health and education committee at 12.30pm. She’s in the role in an acting capacity, since there’s not yet enough support in the Senate for her confirmation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre meets the press at 2pm, and may elaborate on how Biden’s meeting with congressional leaders went.

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