Clarence Thomas discloses travel paid for by rightwing billionaire five years later – as it happened

In a speech on the Normandy coastline, Joe Biden honored the US soldiers who stormed the strategic Pointe du Hoc on D-day, and likened the war against Nazi Germany to today’s struggle against Vladimir Putin. The day before, Biden gave a rare sit-down interview to ABC News, and hit back at Donald Trump’s comment that his executive order on immigration was “weak and pathetic”. “Is he describing himself?” Biden quipped. In Washington DC, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas returned to the news when he belatedly disclosed that he had gone on two trips with conservative activist Harlan Crow – which generated much controversy among Democrats when they were first revealed last year.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Trump raked in big bucks at a fundraiser hosted by tech figures in San Francisco.

• Late-night hosts cracked wise about Biden’s age as the president visited D-day veterans who were even older than him.

• The supreme court may issue more opinions next Thursday. Trump’s immunity petition and two major abortion cases remain pending before the conservative-dominated court.

• Rudy Giuliani is looking to sell his apartment as he goes through bankruptcy.

• More GOP senators are pledging not to work with the Democrats over Trump’s felony convictions.

Meanwhile, the ranks of Republican senators who have signed a pledge vowing not to work with Democrats on issues like spending bills and confirming judges in protest of Donald Trump’s conviction have grown.

Eight Republicans initially signed on after a jury found Trump guilty of felony business fraud charges last week, and the number has now grown to 14, Utah’s Mike Lee announced:

Donald Trump’s felony conviction may have been a boon for his fundraising, but as the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports, it may be costing him support in his general election rematch against Joe Biden:

After a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last week, Republicans rallied around the former president, insisting the verdict would only damage Joe Biden’s standing in the presidential election.

But some new polling data casts doubt upon that argument, as a small but crucial number of Americans in key voting blocs appear to be moving toward Biden in the aftermath of the verdict.

According to a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys, Trump’s advantage over the president has narrowed from three points to one point. That shift may seem insignificant, but it could prove decisive in a close presidential election, as is expected in this year’s contest. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across three battleground states prevented a tie in the electoral college.

Perhaps more worrisome for Trump is the specific areas where he appears to be bleeding support. According to the Times analysis, disengaged Democratic-leaning voters and those who dislike both Trump and Biden were more likely to say that the verdict made them reconsider their options in the election.

Donald Trump may be raking in the dough, but the same cannot be said for some of his closest allies.

His attorney Rudy Giuliani is moving to sell his Manhattan apartment, after he late last year filed for bankruptcy:

Giuliani’s financial woes intensified in December, when two Georgia election workers won a massive defamation judgment against him after he falsely claimed they tampered with ballots in the swing state after the 2020 election:

San Francisco is known for its liberal politics, but Donald Trump yesterday brought in $12m from a fundraiser in the city hosted by tech and crypto entrepreneurs friendly to his campaign to the White House, Reuters reports.

Trump has seen a fundraising surge following his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges in New York. Here’s more from Reuters about how yesterday’s fundraiser, which brought Trump-flag waving supporters to San Francisco’s chilly, foggy streets, came about:

Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks’ wife Jacqueline, held the reception and dinner with Trump at the Sacks’ swanky mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.

The gathering – where top tickets were $500,000 per couple – was sold out, a source with knowledge of the fundraiser told Reuters. It raised some $12 million, according to Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon and another source.

While San Francisco is heavily liberal – Democrat Joe Biden won 85% of the city’s vote in the 2020 election against then-President Trump – a growing number of high-profile local venture capitalists and crypto investors have thrown their support behind Trump ahead of his November rematch against Biden.

“President Trump is relaxed, happy, and cracking jokes about AI,” Dhillon, a conservative lawyer, posted on X from the event.

Executives from crypto exchange Coinbase, crypto investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and other crypto leaders were in attendance, Dhillon added. Trump talked about how Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has warned about crypto being used by scam investors and criminals, is “going after crypto,” according to Dhillon.

Biden last week vetoed what he described as a Republican-led resolution that would “inappropriately constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues” relating to cryptocurrency assets.

Trevor Traina, a San Francisco-based tech executive and former Trump ambassador to Austria, said business regulations implemented during Biden’s presidency had alienated some people in the tech industry.

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has just released a television advertisement slamming Donald Trump for comments it characterizes as derogatory towards the US military and its veterans.

Its release comes after the president spent the last couple of days marking the 80th anniversary of D-day, including with a speech earlier today about the importance of democracy. See the ad here:

The supreme court may issue another batch of opinions on Thursday, 13 June, when it will next convene for a non-argument session.

The conservative-dominated body has a number of high-profile matters it has yet to weigh in on. These include Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two cases dealing with abortion access. One deals with whether abortion pill mifepristone can remain available, and the other over whether the Biden administration can require federally funded hospitals carry out abortions in emergencies, even in states with bans on the procedure.

And despite the demands of Democrats, conservative justice Samuel Alito is poised to consider Trump’s immunity case, even though reports emerged that flags supporting rightwing causes were displayed at his properties.

Other justices cashed in on book deals.

Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh, collected $340,000 in royalties from the Javelin Group and Regnery Publishing for a book that has not yet been published and Neil Gorsuch, reported $250,000 from royalties for his book “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” which will be published by HarperCollins.

Also included in newly released annual reports of the finances of the supreme court justices are details surrounding Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who collected nearly $900,000 last year for her upcoming memoir and was gifted four Beyoncé concert tickets by the singer valued $3,700.

Thomas belatedly reported the trips paid for by Crow, including a hotel room in Bali, Indonesia as well as food and lodging in Sonoma County, California, a region known for its fine wine.

Thomas’s amendments to include Crow’s gifts are part of the financial disclosures of almost all nine supreme court justices that were released on Friday. (Justice Alito received a nearly three-month extension to release his).

Clarence Thomas’s acknowledgement of travel with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow comes after Democrats recently demanded supreme court justice Samuel Alito recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election after two flags linked to rightwing causes were reported to have flown at his properties. Last week, Alito declined to that, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:

Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.

In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.

Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.

“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.

The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.

Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.

The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.

Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, has belatedly acknowledged that he went on two trips paid for by rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, NBC News reports.

The admission comes in an amended financial disclosure covering 2019:

Last year, ProPublica broke the story of the entanglements between Thomas and other conservative supreme court justices, including Samuel Alito, and rightwing figures with interests before the court such as Crow.

It drew objections from Democrats, who called for the supreme court to adopt an enforceable ethics code. But their efforts to hold the conservative-dominated body to account have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the justices, and the fact that they do not have the votes to pass legislation addressing the court.

In attendance for Joe Biden’s speech earlier at Pointe du Hoc was John Wardell, a 99-year-old veteran who came ashore about a week-and-a-half after D-Day.

For late-night talkshow hosts, Biden’s visit with World War II veterans was the perfect opportunity to crack wise about the president’s advanced age. Here’s our round-up of their zingers:

Before he began speaking at Pointe du Hoc, Joe Biden was given a tour of the site by its superintendent, Scott Desjardins.

The White House pool reporter covering the president today spoke to Desjardins, who said Biden was impressed by the bravery of the US army rangers that scaled the promontory and fought off German counter attacks for two-and-a-half days.

“He was impressed of course. This is an impressive story. It’s hard not to be impressed,” said Desjardins, who noted Biden saw a link to the importance of Nato:

He made it very clear that this is required. No one can go at this alone anymore.

Joe Biden spoke from atop a former German bunker at Pointe du Hoc, a promontory that was a site of a fierce battle on D-Day:

Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan spoke from the very same spot:

When it comes to marking D-day’s anniversary, times have certainly changed, as C-SPAN points out.

Joe Biden’s speech today was mostly about the importance of democracy, though he did name drop Vladimir Putin, and liken the threat he poses to Europe to that of the Nazis.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined Biden and other western leaders for the commemoration in France, but when Barack Obama marked the occasion 10 years ago, Putin was in attendance: