The Biden administration is reversing Trump-era tariffs on Ukrainian steel for an initial period of one year, the New York Times is reporting, citing a document it says is a copy of an announcement coming from the White House later in the day.

Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign steel in 2018, the former president claiming at the time that cheap overseas metal was harming the US steel industry and posing a threat to national security.

The newspaper says that although Ukraine is only a minor provider, its 218,000 metric tons of steel to the US in 2019 ranking it 12th in overseas suppliers, the administration sees it as an important additional way to assist the country as it fights the Russian invasion.

The Ukraine prime minister Denys Shmyhal, in a visit to Washington DC last month, told administration officials that some Ukrainian steel mills were starting to produce again after initially shutting down because of the invasion.

The Times said Shmyhal asked the Biden administration to suspend the tariffs, citing a senior commerce department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly before the official announcement.

New York’s attorney general Letitia James has just given a press briefing at which she announced a program to expand abortion access to residents, and those from states where the procedure will become illegal if Roe v Wade is overturned:

We know what happens when women are unable to control their own bodies and make their own choices and we will not go back to those dark times.

New York must lead the fight to keep abortion safe and accessible for all who seek it.

According to an accompanying statement released by James’s office, clinics in New York already perform at least 7,000 abortions a year for women from out of state, 9% of its annual total.

If the supreme court ends almost half a century of abortion protections, as last week’s leaking of its draft ruling suggested it was about to do, New York expects a massive surge from states with “trigger laws” that would immediately make the procedure illegal.

From Ohio and Pennsylvania alone, the statement predicts, an additional 32,000 women will come to New York each year seeking an abortion.

The measure announced by James includes a reproductive freedom and equity program within the New York state department of health “that would provide funding to abortion providers and non-profit organizations to grow the capacity of providers and meet present and future care needs”.

Members on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on 6 January are moving closer to issuing subpoenas to Republican members of Congress to compel their cooperation in the inquiry – though it has started to dawn on them that they may be out of time.

The panel is expected to make a final decision on the subpoena question over the next couple of weeks, according to sources directly familiar with internal deliberations, with House investigators needing to start wrapping up their work ahead of public hearings in June.

While the members on the select committee remain undecided about whether to subpoena Republican members of Congress, their refusal to assist the investigation in any form has caused the sentiment to turn towards taking that near-unprecedented action, the sources said.

The shifting view has come as a result of the dismay among the members in January, when House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and others turned down requests for voluntary cooperation, turning to anger after three more of Donald Trump’s allies last week refused to cooperate.

What has changed in recent weeks in the select committee’s assessment is that they cannot ignore the deep involvement between some Republican members of Congress and the former president’s unlawful schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the sources said.

The recent letters to House Republicans Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Ronny Jackson – Trump’s former White House doctor – provided just a snapshot of the entanglement, the sources said, with the Trump White House, and potentially the militia groups that attacked the Capitol.

House investigators are particularly interested in any potential connections between Republican members of Congress and the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militia groups, the sources said, since those groups were actually involved in the riot element of January 6.

Read more:

The US Senate will today channel a week of anger, acrimony and fractious debate over abortion rights into the formal step of setting up a vote to enshrine a woman’s right to the procedure into law.

By passing cloture (the official term for cutting off debate), senators will move towards a floor vote Wednesday on legislation proposed by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Abortion rights defenders have been demanding action ever since the supreme court’s draft ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade opinion was leaked last week.

Democrats know the legislation is doomed to fall, because it won’t reach the 60 votes it needs in the bitterly divided chamber.

But Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer will not consider it an outright failure. He’s playing a longer game, in which he sees Republicans’ refusal to support abortion rights working in Democrats’ favor in November’s midterms. After all, polls show overwhelming support nationally among voters for abortion rights.

“Every American will see how every senator stands,” Schumer said at a press conference Sunday in which he called the supreme court’s draft ruling “an abomination”.

With Democrats predicted to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November, some see the abortion debate coming at a fortuitous time. Comments by Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate minority leader, as reported by The Hill, that a national abortion ban “is possible”, will only serve to strengthen pro-choice activists’ outrage.

This Bloomberg article examines how the Democratic party is tapping into voters’ fury over abortion to avoid a midterms blowout.

We’ll keep you abreast of today’s developments as they happen.

While we wait, here’s a look at how Republicans in numerous states are moving in the opposite direction, and towards even more restrictive abortion legislation.