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    Tech firms sign ‘reasonable precautions’ to stop AI-generated election chaos

    Major technology companies signed a pact Friday to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world.Executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok gathered at the Munich Security Conference to announce a new framework for how they respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. Twelve other companies – including Elon Musk’s X – are also signing on to the accord.“Everybody recognizes that no one tech company, no one government, no one civil society organization is able to deal with the advent of this technology and its possible nefarious use on their own,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in an interview ahead of the summit.The accord is largely symbolic, but targets increasingly realistic AI-generated images, audio and video “that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provide false information to voters about when, where, and how they can lawfully vote”.The companies aren’t committing to ban or remove deepfakes. Instead, the accord outlines methods they will use to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms. It notes the companies will share best practices with each other and provide “swift and proportionate responses” when that content starts to spread.The vagueness of the commitments and lack of any binding requirements likely helped win over a diverse swath of companies, but disappointed advocates were looking for stronger assurances.“The language isn’t quite as strong as one might have expected,” said Rachel Orey, senior associate director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I think we should give credit where credit is due, and acknowledge that the companies do have a vested interest in their tools not being used to undermine free and fair elections. That said, it is voluntary, and we’ll be keeping an eye on whether they follow through.”Clegg said each company “quite rightly has its own set of content policies”.“This is not attempting to try to impose a straitjacket on everybody,” he said. “And in any event, no one in the industry thinks that you can deal with a whole new technological paradigm by sweeping things under the rug and trying to play Whac-a-Mole and finding everything that you think may mislead someone.”Several political leaders from Europe and the US also joined Friday’s announcement. Vera Jourová, the European Commission vice-president, said while such an agreement can’t be comprehensive, “it contains very impactful and positive elements”. She also urged fellow politicians to take responsibility to not use AI tools deceptively and warned that AI-fueled disinformation could bring about “the end of democracy, not only in the EU member states”.The agreement at the German city’s annual security meeting comes as more than 50 countries are due to hold national elections in 2024. Bangladesh, Taiwan, Pakistan and most recently Indonesia have already done so.Attempts at AI-generated election interference have already begun, such as when AI robocalls that mimicked the US president Joe Biden’s voice tried to discourage people from voting in New Hampshire’s primary election last month.Just days before Slovakia’s elections in November, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a candidate discussing plans to raise beer prices and rig the election. Fact-checkers scrambled to identify them as false as they spread across social media.Politicians also have experimented with the technology, from using AI chatbots to communicate with voters to adding AI-generated images to ads.The accord calls on platforms to “pay attention to context and in particular to safeguarding educational, documentary, artistic, satirical, and political expression”.It said the companies will focus on transparency to users about their policies and work to educate the public about how they can avoid falling for AI fakes.Most companies have previously said they’re putting safeguards on their own generative AI tools that can manipulate images and sound, while also working to identify and label AI-generated content so that social media users know if what they’re seeing is real. But most of those proposed solutions haven’t yet rolled out and the companies have faced pressure to do more.That pressure is heightened in the US, where Congress has yet to pass laws regulating AI in politics, leaving companies to largely govern themselves.The Federal Communications Commission recently confirmed AI-generated audio clips in robocalls are against the law, but that doesn’t cover audio deepfakes when they circulate on social media or in campaign advertisements.Many social media companies already have policies in place to deter deceptive posts about electoral processes – AI-generated or not. Meta says it removes misinformation about “the dates, locations, times, and methods for voting, voter registration, or census participation” as well as other false posts meant to interfere with someone’s civic participation.Jeff Allen, co-founder of the Integrity Institute and a former Facebook data scientist, said the accord seems like a “positive step” but he’d still like to see social media companies taking other actions to combat misinformation, such as building content recommendation systems that don’t prioritize engagement above all else.Lisa Gilbert, executive vice-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, argued Friday that the accord is “not enough” and AI companies should “hold back technology” such as hyper-realistic text-to-video generators “until there are substantial and adequate safeguards in place to help us avert many potential problems”.In addition to the companies that helped broker Friday’s agreement, other signatories include chatbot developers Anthropic and Inflection AI; voice-clone startup ElevenLabs; chip designer Arm Holdings; security companies McAfee and TrendMicro; and Stability AI, known for making the image-generator Stable Diffusion.Notably absent is another popular AI image-generator, Midjourney. The San Francisco-based startup didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.The inclusion of X – not mentioned in an earlier announcement about the pending accord – was one of the surprises of Friday’s agreement. Musk sharply curtailed content-moderation teams after taking over the former Twitter and has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist”.In a statement Friday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said “every citizen and company has a responsibility to safeguard free and fair elections”.“X is dedicated to playing its part, collaborating with peers to combat AI threats while also protecting free speech and maximizing transparency,” she said. More

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    Fani Willis hearing struggles to dent Trump prosecutor’s credibility

    Lawyers for Donald Trump’s co-defendants charged over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia struggled on Friday to undermine the credibility of the Fulton county district attorney and her top deputy, with whom she had a romantic relationship, in order to disqualify them from bringing the case.The district attorney, Fani Willis, and her deputy, Nathan Wade, both previously testified there was no financial conflict of interest (the defendants alleged Willis hired him to benefit financially) because the relationship started after Wade was retained as a special prosecutor.At an extended hearing, the defendants called Terrence Bradley, a former divorce lawyer for Wade, on the expectation that he would testify that the romantic relationship started before Wade started work on the Trump case on 1 November 2021.The objective, in essence, was to have Bradley to contradict under oath the testimony of Willis and Wade. Had that happened, that could lead the presiding Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee to discredit, or at least give less weight to, the narrative advanced by the prosecutors.But the lawyers for the defendants were not immediately successful in their approach. Bradley was a particularly reluctant witness and testified he had privileged information about when the relationship started, but not personal knowledge he obtained separate from him representing Wade.That proved to be important because it meant Bradley provided little new evidence to help the defendants as they attempt to have Willis and Wade disqualified from prosecuting them on alleged conflict of interest grounds.The eventual outcome of the hearing – expected to continue potentially next Tuesday for arguments over what legal standards should be applied for disqualification – could have far-reaching implications for the viability of one of the most perilous criminal cases against Trump.If the defendants are able to meet their burden to show a conflict of interest that leads to the disqualification of Willis, it would also mean that the entire district attorney’s office would be disqualified. That would cast into disarray the already complicated racketeering prosecution.After a morning during which Willis did not return to the stand for further testimony – the state told the judge it had no further questions – and two additional witnesses gave evidence that tracked Willis’s narrative from the day before, the defendants called Bradley to testify under subpoena.Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant wanted Bradley to say on the witness stand what he had texted her in January: the relationship between Willis and Wade had started after they met at a judicial conference, long before Wade was hired to work on the Trump case.But the judge restricted the line of questioning to include information that Bradley learned independent of his legal work representing Wade in the divorce case, because that would be protected by attorney-client privilege protections.That led Merchant to try to overcome the privilege by invoking the so-called crime-fraud exception, which pierces privilege if legal advice is used in furtherance of a crime. The judge ruled that did not apply, but allowed the defendants to contest his decision with a sealed filing after the hearing.In a further twist, Merchant appeared to win a partial victory when Bradley testified that the relationship allegations as initially filed by Merchant earlier this year were accurate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat raised the dueling situation that crediting Bradley as a witness meant Willis and Wade had committed perjury, but not crediting Bradley meant he had lied about his former client and committed perjury himself for seemingly no clear reason.The allegations first surfaced in an 8 January motion filed by Merchant, who complained about a potential conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.Roman’s filing, in essence, accused Willis of engaging in a quasi-kickback scheme, in which Wade paid for joint vacations to Florida and California using earnings of more than $650,000 from working on the Trump case. The filing also alleged the relationship had started before he was hired.Whether Willis will be disqualified remains uncertain.Legal experts have generally suggested the evidence to date – there has been almost none, bar Wade’s bank statements showing he paid for a couple of trips – does not show an actual conflict of interest.The potential problem for Willis is that she was previously disqualified from investigating the Georgia lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, over a lower legal standard of “appearance of impropriety”, after she publicly endorsed Jones’s political rival in Jones’s re-election race.The allegations have also threatened to turn the case into political theatre. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has derided the prosecution as scandal-plagued in addition to his usual refrain that the criminal charges against him are a political witch-hunt. More

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    Donald Trump banned from running businesses in New York for three years – live

    The New York fraud case ruling is a massive blow to Trump and his business empire and a big win for New York attorney general Leticia James, who is expected to speak on the ruling at a press conference this afternoon.In addition to the big fine and ban on doing business, Trump also is barred from obtaining loans from New York banks for three years.Trump’s conduct in the case entered into the judge’s opinion.“Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial,” Judge Engoron wrote. “His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”Buried in the middle of judge Arthur Engoron’s almost-100 page judgement in the Trump family business fraud case is a smoothly-delivered but absolutely stinging rebuke of Ivanka Trump’s truthiness.Ivanka was a witness not a defendant in the Trump Org civil case in New York and she took the stand last November, testifying in a calm and orderly manner most memorable for the infamous little phrase “I don’t recall”.Well it didn’t fool Engoron. On Page 45 of his ruling today he excoriates the former president’s older daughter thus: “Ivanka Trump was a thoughtful, articulate, and poised witness, but the Court found her inconsistent recall, depending on whether she was questioned by OAG [Office of the Attorney General] or the defense, suspect.”Ivanka Trump, 42, left her fashion business, which is now discontinued, while she was working as an unpaid senior adviser in the White House for the Trump administration. She’s also been an executive vice president in the Trump Organization and a judge on her dad’s television show The Apprentice.Judge Engoron completed his trump hand today thus: “In any event, what Ms Trump cannot recall is memorialized in contemporaneous emails and documents; in the absence of her memory, the documents speak for themselves.”But the judge canceled his prior ruling from September ordering the “dissolution” of companies that control pillars of Trump’s real estate empire, Reuters reports.Engoron said on Friday that this was no longer necessary because he is appointing an independent monitor and compliance director to oversee Trump’s businesses.Trump’s legal team has responded to the massive fine and three-year ban. Via Reuters:Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement that the ruling was a “manifest injustice” and “culmination of a multi-year, politically fueled witch-hunt” against him.“This is not just about Donald Trump – if this decision stands, it will serve as a signal to every single American that New York is no longer open for business,” Habba said, adding that she plans to appeal.The New York fraud case ruling is a massive blow to Trump and his business empire and a big win for New York attorney general Leticia James, who is expected to speak on the ruling at a press conference this afternoon.In addition to the big fine and ban on doing business, Trump also is barred from obtaining loans from New York banks for three years.Trump’s conduct in the case entered into the judge’s opinion.“Overall, Donald Trump rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial,” Judge Engoron wrote. “His refusal to answer the questions directly, or in some cases, at all, severely compromised his credibility.”The New York attorney general Leticia James secured a fine of more than $350m against Trump, his eldest sons and their associates after a judge found them guilty of intentionally committing fraud by falsifying government disclosures.Judge Arthur Engoron also banned the former president from serving as an officer or director or any New York corporation or entity for three years. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr were issued two-year bans.The full ruling can be found here. We’re reading through it now.The ruling in the New York fraud case against former president Donald Trump has been released, banning Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for three years.The New York attorney general’s office sued Trump for inflating the value of his assets on government financial statements in the case, which also includes Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, and two former Trump Organization executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, as defendants.The stakes in the case relate to Trump’s businesses, but his political career could be affected by the case as well. It’s factored into his 2024 campaign, where he talks about the “witch hunt” he’s facing across multiple court cases.Lawyers who’ve been watching the hearings in the Fulton County case against Trump where defense attorneys are trying to get DA Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade removed from the case have said there’s been little evidence offered of any potential conflict – though the salacious nature of the allegations have done damage to Willis and potentially the case in the court of public opinion.Friday’s hearings have not been as heated or sordid as yesterday’s, instead probing the people surrounding the relationship who may have some information on it. It’s been, at times, tedious and wonky, and the defense hasn’t gotten any kind of smoking gun to prove its claims of a conflict.Terrance Bradley, Wade’s former law partner and onetime divorce attorney, is on the stand now and not offering much to help the defense’s case that the relationship is a conflict of interest or that the timeline of the relationship Willis and Wade have put forward isn’t accurate.Robin Yeartie, a former employee in the DA’s office, had testified that Willis started her relationship Wade before he was hired on the Trump case, but she also affirmed she had been ousted over performance. Other witnesses have not shown evidence of a different timeline, nor did Yeartie.On the southern border of the US and Mexico, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said he’s going to build a military “base camp” in Eagle Pass, the city where there’s an ongoing standoff between US Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard.Here’s more from Reuters:The facility – dubbed Forward Operating Base Eagle – will be an 80-acre complex along the banks of the Rio Grande and house up to 1,800 troops, with the ability to expand to 2,300, Abbott and state officials said at a press conference.The move is part of a broader effort by Abbott to try to stop migrants from crossing the border illegally into Texas, including a makeshift barrier of shipping containers and concertina wire in a city-owned park in Eagle Pass. The state intends to install more barriers north and south of the park, officials said on Friday.U.S. immigration enforcement historically has been the responsibility of the federal government and Abbott’s moves to secure the border have triggered legal standoffs with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.Back to the Fulton County hearing…Special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s former law partner who at one point represented him in his divorce proceeding is on the stand now. Terrance Bradley is testifying on some things, but is limited in what he can talk about because of attorney-client privilege, making for a stilted line of questioning for someone once called the defense’s “star witness.”Bradley may have some texts that would suggest Wade and Fulton County DA Fani Willis were in a relationship earlier than they’ve claimed, but Willis’ attorneys have disputed this and said he can’t talk about the texts anyway because of attorney-client privilege.For now, those texts are off the table in the testimony.During remarks at the White House this afternoon, President Joe Biden touched on the Russian satellite issue that’s caused some alarm over security this week.Biden said there was no sign Russia has decided to deploy an emerging anti-satellite weapon, the Associated Press reports. The White House has confirmed that U.S. intelligence officials have information indicating Russia has obtained such a capability, although such a weapon is not yet operational. Biden said Friday that “there’s no evidence that they have made a decision to go forward with doing anything in space.”“There is no nuclear threat to the people of America or anywhere else in the world with what Russia’s doing at the moment,” Biden said.The president confirmed that the capability obtained by Russia “related to satellites and space and damaging those satellites potentially,” and that those capabilities could “theoretically do something that was damaging.”But Russia hasn’t moved forward with plans yet, and, Biden added: “My hope is, it will not.”Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily halted the Boy Scouts of America’s $2.46 billion settlement of decades of sex abuse claims, which is being appealed by a group of 144 abuse claimants, Reuters reports.Alito’s brief order freezing the settlement gives the court more time to decide a February 9 request by the abuse claimants to block the settlement from moving forward.They contend that the deal unlawfully stops them from pursuing lawsuits against organizations that are not bankrupt, such as churches that ran scouting programs, local Boy Scouts councils and insurers that provided coverage to the Boy Scouts organization.NPR reported last April that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced, as it was emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, that it would establish a $2.4bn fund for those in the organization who were victims of sexual abuse. as it emerges out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, covering more than 82,000 men who said they were victims.The BSA had urged the supreme court on Thursday not to stop the settlement from moving forward, saying that a delay could “throw the Scouting program into chaos” and “potentially destroy BSA’s ability to carry out its 114-year-old charitable mission”, Reuters further reported.Joe Biden commented briefly at the White House a little earlier about the development yesterday where a man at the center of congressional Republicans’ push to impeach the US president was arrested for lying about Joe and Hunter Biden.“He is lying and it [impeachment] should be dropped – and it’s been an outrageous effort from the beginning,” Biden said. He made the brief remark in response to the last question he took from reporters, returning to the lecturn to do so, after appearing to talk chiefly about the deal of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.The news emerged yesterday evening that an FBI informant has been charged with lying to his handler about ties between Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company.Alexander Smirnov, 43, falsely told FBI agents in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 and 2016, prosecutors said on Thursday.Smirnov told the FBI that a Burisma executive had claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, prosecutors said in a statement.The allegations became a flashpoint in Congress over the summer as Republicans demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations as they pursued investigations of Biden and his family. They acknowledged at the time that it was unclear if the allegations were true.The new development sharply undermines the thrust of congressional Republicans’ corruption accusations that the US president was making money from his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine. Full story here.Incidentally, the misconduct hearing in Georgia for the leading prosecutors in the election interference case against Donald Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants has resumed after lunch. It’s in the weeds at the moment, but we’ll bring you highlights.Joe Biden, speaking at the White House moments ago about temporary ceasefire talks with Israel in its war on Hamas, reminded the public that Americans are among the hostages still held inside Gaza.“And my hope and expectation is that we will get this hostage deal, we will get these Americans home, and the deal is being negotiated now,” the US president said.At least 120 hostages are believed still to be held in Gaza by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls the Palestinian territory and took more than 240 hostages from southern Israel after launching a massive attack on the area on 7 October last year. Most of the hostages are Israelis.The White House said earlier this week that it was not known how many of the remaining hostages are still alive.Joe Biden has just spoken at the White House about the death of Russian activist Alexei Navalny but also discussing Nato, Israel and Burisma.The US president expressed outrage at Navalny’s death in a Russian arctic prison camp. Biden’s remarks on that are in our live blog dedicated to Navalny news, here, and his comments responding to Donald Trump’s position on Nato earlier this week will also be in the blog.But Biden also took some questions and one was about the latest on negotiations with Israel and the US demands that Israel have a credible plan for the 1.7 million people trapped in Rafah in the far south of Gaza before attacking the city in continued efforts to destroy Hamas. He said he has had “extensive talks” with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week “over an hour each” during phone calls.“I have made the case and I feel very strongly about it – there has to be a temporary ceasefire to get the hostages out. I’m still hopeful that that can be done,” he said.Biden added: “In the meantime, I do not anticipate … I’m hoping that the Israelis will not make a massive land invasion [of Rafah]. It’s my understanding that that will not happen.”Eight members of the House of Representatives have unveiled a bipartisan proposal to provide $66.3bn in military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as they attempt to make progress in the lower chamber amid the logjam, Politico reports today.The total is lower than the $95bn bill for similar purpose passed by the Senate earlier this week but which has shaky prospects in the Republican-controlled House.Politico writes:
    Spearheaded by Ukraine caucus co-chair Brian Fitzpatrick, Republican of Pennsylvania, the House counterproposal also includes provisions aimed at tightening border security and winning over Republicans who won’t approve Ukraine aid without addressing the border.
    The bill is sponsored by an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. In addition to Fitzpatrick, the bill is co-sponsored by GOP Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mike Lawler of New York and Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon.
    Four centrist Democrats also signed on: Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez of Washington and Jim Costa of California.
    House Speaker Mike Johnson opposes the Senate version, and it’s unclear how he will respond to the new bill. But the new proposal creates yet another bipartisan pressure point as Ukraine advocates look to force a vote on the House floor after months of inaction.
    Full report here.Joe Biden is due to make public remarks shortly about the death in custody of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and courageous critic if Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.Our Guardian colleague in Moscow, Andrew Roth, writes in this report that the death of Navalny, once Putin’s most significant political challenger, is a watershed moment for Russia’s shattered pro-democracy movement, which has largely been jailed or driven into exile since the Ukraine invasion of 2022.Navalny, 47, was being held in a jail about 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where he had been sentenced to 19 years under a “special regime”.We are covering developments and reaction to this tragedy in a dedicated Guardian live blog, which you can follow here.That blog will feature Joe Biden’s remarks as they happen.After Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis was not called back to the stand, the county’s hearing has continued with other witnesses, albeit much less explosive than yesterday’s testimony.
    Former Georgia governor Roy Barnes testified that he was asked to be special prosecutor, but turned it down because it didn’t pay enough and would risk his safety.
    John Floyd, Willis’ father, testified that he hadn’t met special prosecutor Nathan Wade until 2023 and didn’t know they were in a relationship until it became public. He also said he taught his daughter to keep cash on hand, something Willis said she used to pay back Wade for anything he paid for while they dated.
    More witnesses should take the stand this afternoon. You can livestream the courtroom here.
    Beyond the hearing, the big news of the day: US Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, will not run for president, ending speculation that he could spoil the election as a third-party option. That’s a sigh of relief for President Joe Biden.We’re still keeping an eye out for the expected ruling out of New York on the Trump fraud case, which should come sometime today. Stay tuned!Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, announced in a speech today that he officially will not be running for president, ending speculation that he could run as a third-party candidate and throw President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects for a loop.“I will not be a deal breaker or a spoiler,” Manchin said, according to the New York Times.Manchin had considered running under the No Labels banner, a group that’s gotten on the ballot as a party in multiple states and is trying to recruit someone to run as an alternative to Trump and Biden this year. More

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    Trump privately backs 16-week abortion ban with exceptions, report says

    Donald Trump likes the idea of a national ban on abortion past 16 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, the New York Times reported on Friday morning.Trump has veered away from taking a firm stance on abortion during his presidential campaign. He has taken credit for the US supreme court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, since he appointed three of the justices who took part in that decision, but he has also suggested that Republicans who take extreme stances on abortion lose elections.“Know what I like about 16?” Trump told one individual, according to the Times, which based its report on two people with knowledge of Trump’s thoughts. “It’s even. It’s four months.”Trump is waiting until after the conclusion of the Republican primary to publicly discuss his position, the Times reported.Since Roe’s demise, voters have repeatedly rejected attempts to curtail abortion rights and supported state-level ballot measures to protect the right to the procedure. Outrage over Roe is also widely credited with defeating the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and leaving Republicans with fewer victories than anticipated.Last year, Virginia Republicans campaigned in a state election on a pledge to ban abortion past 15 weeks, as a kind of “compromise” position. Their efforts to retake control of the state legislature failed.However, the anti-abortion movement, with its coterie of high-powered activists, has made it clear that they would like to see the procedure totally outlawed. Although most Americans consider themselves “pro-choice”, polling shows they are far less supportive of abortions past the first trimester.After publication of the Times article, the Trump campaign sent out a statement dismissing it as “fake news”.“As President Trump has stated, he would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with,” said Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary. Leavitt then celebrated Trump’s role in overturning Roe and falsely accused Democrats, among other things, of supporting abortion “after birth”, which is infanticide and already illegal in the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, someone may have an abortion later on in pregnancy due to a medical emergency.More than a dozen states have enacted near-total abortion bans, several of which do not have exceptions for rape or incest. And doctors have repeatedly said that carve-outs for abortions in cases of medical emergencies have proven so vague as to be unworkable; dozens of women have now come forward to say that they were denied medically necessary abortions.“Now, after being the one responsible for taking away women’s freedom, after being the one to put women’s lives in danger, after being the one who has unleashed all this cruelty and chaos all across America, Trump is running scared,” Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday afternoon. “He’s afraid that the women of America are going to hold him responsible for taking away their rights and endangering their rights at the ballot box in November. That’s exactly what’s going to happen.” More

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    Joe Biden’s memory lapses: might he take a leaf out of LBJ’s book? | Letters

    Re Joe Biden’s response to questions about his memory and mental capacity (Biden was in a fighting mood for surprise speech – but he didn’t win, 9 February), on 31 March 1968, Lyndon Johnson made a speech supporting his decision not to run for a second term in the White House, on the grounds that he wanted to devote his remaining months in office to finding a way of bringing the Vietnam war to a peaceful conclusion. The subtext of course was that, if he ran, he would almost certainly lose on the grounds of his association with events in Vietnam.Surely here is a precedent that Biden and his advisers might consider seriously? He might announce his withdrawal from the presidential race on the grounds of his determination to use his considerable powers, contacts and experience to resolve issues in Gaza as well as in Ukraine. By doing so, he would turn the focus of the age-related issues sharply towards Donald Trump while giving his party the time and opportunity to create a campaign that would command greater support from members of his party and electors more generally.Michael J RyanHull Marina Hyde is quite right (Trump is too old and incited a coup. Biden is too old and mixes up names. America, how to choose?, 9 January). Biden is too old, he doesn’t walk like a 40-year-old and he does not have the memory of one either. However, he does have the sense to employ younger people who have all their marbles and are law-abiding, and he does not want to be a dictator. Common sense and decency are rare in politics, but essential for the president of the US. His only weakness is that he has not yet found out how to deal with Benjamin Netanyahu.Jeffrey FrankelLisbon, Portugal Re Marina Hyde’s article about Joe Biden, I’m 81, and active and healthy, as are many of my friends. All with long professional careers behind us. We know we couldn’t do it now. Neither can Joe Biden. A fact, not a fault. Paula JonesLondon Regardless of his age, Joe Biden should reassure the US electorate that, like any effective leader, he surrounds himself with experts in every field and relies on their wise counsel to make smart decisions. Only a fool would hire gullible yes men and expect anything other than a disaster.Andrew LugtonHarrow, London More

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    Biden blames Putin for Navalny’s death as Republican ‘apologists’ condemned

    Joe Biden put the blame for the reported death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday squarely on Vladimir Putin, as many US politicians condemned Putin but also reacted angrily to the silence of some Republican lawmakers.“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” the US president said from the White House.“What has happened and evolving is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target citizens of other countries, as we have seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”Meanwhile some leading Republican politicians also decried Navalny’s death, while pointing the finger at some in their own party for appearing to appease the Russian leader.“There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin. RIP Alexey Navalny,” wrote the former vice-president Mike Pence on social media.Pence added: “Putin is a war criminal and only understands strength”, and urged Congress to “set aside the politics of the moment” and to pass legislation supporting aid to Ukraine.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis also criticized Republicans who have expressed qualified sympathies for the Russian president.“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis said.“Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”Both men were apparently referring to members of the Republican party who have in recent weeks slowed the passage of a $60bn military aid package to Ukraine.Last week, the Republican senator Ron Johnson was apparently moved to vote against the aid after watching Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. Johnson said that while Putin “is a war criminal [who is] obviously not telling you the whole truth”, his sit-down with the former Fox News host was “very interesting”, and that “an awful lot of what Vladimir Putin said was right … accurate and obvious”.Others, including the Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a House Freedom caucus member, have recently expressed open admiration for the Russian president.“Putin is a studied man of resolute spirit, and he always comes across as very sincere in his beliefs. You come away from a conversation with him thinking ‘I may not believe what he says, but I know he believes what he says,’” Higgins has said.In his address on Friday, Biden said that “history is watching the House of Representatives” and a “failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It will go down in the pages of history. It’s consequential, and the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”While none of the leaders immediately put out statements about Navalny, the Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who heads the foreign affairs committee, said: “If confirmed, the death of Alexei Navalny is a tragedy. He was a voice for a better Russia amid the corruption and brutality of Putin’s genocidal regime. The Kremlin must be held to account for this outrage.”Democratic leaders, for their part, expressed united outrage at Navalny’s death. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, called Navalny’s death in prison “a further sign of Putin’s brutality”.Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible, and we will have more to say on this later,” Harris said at the top of keynote remarks at the Munich Security Conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReports of Navalny’s death come days after the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, said the US would not defend Nato allies from Russian attack, a core principle of the alliance, if they did not meet their obligation to spend 2% of their national economic output on defense.On Friday, before the Navalny news, the Biden re-election campaign pushed out a fresh ad targeting Trump’s comments. “Trump wants to walk away from Nato. He’s even given Putin the green light to attack America’s allies,” it states, calling the former president’s rhetoric “shameful”, “weak” and “un-American”.Speaking at the White House, Biden took another swipe at Trump for his Nato comments, saying: “All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our Nato allies if they weren’t paying up.”Referring to Trump, Biden went on: “He said if an ally did not pay their dues, he encouraged Russia to, quote: ‘Do whatever the hell they want.’“I guess I should clear my mind a little bit and not say what I’m really thinking, but let me be clear – this is an outrageous thing for a [former] president to say. I can’t fathom it.“As long as I’m president, America stands by our sacred commitment to our Nato allies.”Trump did not mention the Navalny reports on Friday in their immediate aftermath, and instead posted a message about how he would save the Teamster union from the effects of immigration and another about the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley hit out at Trump for his past praise of the Russian leader.“Putin did this,” Haley wrote on Friday morning on X, in response to news of Navalny’s death in prison. “The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends. The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.’”Biden, asked directly by a reporter at the White House whether Navalny’s death was an “assassination”, responded:“We don’t know exactly what happened but there’s no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” More

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    Joe Manchin announces he won’t be running for president

    Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has announced that he will not be launching a presidential campaign, ending speculation about a run for the White House that would have thrown more chaos and confusion into an already tumultuous 2024 election season.Manchin, a centrist Democrat from a deep red state, has long been a thorn in the side of his party and especially its left wing. Since announcing his decision not seek re-election to the Senate, Manchin, 76, has toyed with the idea that he might launch an independent or third-party bid for the White House.“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin said during remarks in Morgantown, West Virginia, on Friday. He insisted that his focus was on bridging divides at a moment of deep political polarization, and said he would not want to play the role of “spoiler” in an all-but-certain rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.“I just don’t think it’s the right time,” Manchin said. “Democracy is at stake right now.”His announcement comes against a backdrop of widespread voter dissatisfaction with both the incumbent, who at 81 years old is seen by many as being too old for a second term, and his predecessor, 77, whose legal travails and extremist rhetoric have spurred fears of a political crisis in the US should he win.“I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president that has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together,” Manchin said. “And right now we’re challenged.”Following his decision in November to forgo a re-election campaign, Manchin had embarked on a nationwide listening tour as he stoked speculation of a presidential run. He aligned himself with No Labels, a centrist organization that has been exploring ways to field a bipartisan, third-party presidential ticket for voters who say they are disenchanted by the prospect of a Biden-Trump repeat in 2024. In July, the senator joined an event hosted by the organization in the early primary state of New Hampshire.As recently as Thursday, a day before his announcement, Manchin told an audience in Cleveland, Ohio, that his top choice of running mate would be Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and retiring Utah senator.“Hypothetically, if I was picking my running mate, really who I would ask right now is Mitt Romney,” Manchin said during a Q&A at a City Club of Cleveland breakfast on Thursday. He also named former Ohio senator Bob Portman, a moderate Republican known for crossing the aisle.Manchin, whose once reliably Democratic state is now overwhelmingly pro-Trump, has been a fierce critic of Biden and sought to portray him as a leftist. But he also has said repeatedly that he did not want his actions to help return Trump to office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile his decision not to seek re-election was a setback for Democrats’ hopes of holding their slim Senate majority, the news that he would not run for president was a welcome one for his party.Democrats are already confronting third-party challenges from Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is considering running on the Libertarian ticket, as well as from Jill Stein, the Green party nominee, and and Cornel West, who is running as an independent.Republicans are favored to claim Manchin’s Senate seat in November, with the governor, Jim Justice, and Congressman Alex Mooney battling for the GOP nomination. More

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    Biden ‘privately defiant’ over chaotic 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, book says

    Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”Ward’s book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump, will be published next week. Axios reported extracts on Friday.Ward adds: “Biden told his top aides, [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan included, that he stood by them and they had done their best during a tough situation.”Ward quotes an unnamed White House official as saying: “There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up.”The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban, which had sheltered the leader of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, was soon ousted but fighting never ceased.Figures for the total US death toll in the country since 2001 vary. The United States Institute of Peace, an independent body established by Congress, says that 2,324 US military personnel, 3,917 US contractors and 1,144 allied troops were killed during the conflict. More than 20,000 Americans were wounded.“For Afghans,” the institute goes on, “the statistics are nearly unimaginable: 70,000 Afghan military and police deaths, 46,319 Afghan civilians (although that is likely a significant underestimation) and some 53,000 opposition fighters killed. Almost 67,000 other people were killed in Pakistan in relation to the Afghan war.”Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Furthermore, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, “four times as many [US] service members have died by suicide than in combat in the post-9/11 wars [including Iraq and other campaigns], signaling a widespread mental health crisis”.Biden entered office determined to withdraw, and in late summer 2021 US forces pulled out, leaving the defense of the country to US-trained Afghan national forces.The Taliban swiftly overran that opposition, and soon scenes of chaos at Kabul airport dominated world news. Tens of thousands of Afghans who sought to leave, fearing Taliban reprisals after a 20-year US occupation, were unable to get out. More than 800 US citizens were left behind, notwithstanding Biden’s promise on 18 August that troops would stay until every US citizen who wanted to leave had done so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWard, Axios said, quotes a senior White House official as saying: “There’s no one here who thinks we can meet that promise.”On 26 August, 13 US service members were killed in a suicide attack. Three days later, a US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians, seven of them children. No Americans faced disciplinary action over the strike, which a US air force inspector general called “an honest mistake”.According to Axios, Ward also details extensive infighting over the withdrawal between the Departments of State and Defense.Biden, Ward says, tended to favour the state department, having been chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee, and to be wary of the Pentagon, having been vice-president to Barack Obama through eight years of inconclusive war. More