Evelyn Reynolds

Hunter Biden’s conviction on gun-ownership charges may have handed his father, Joe, a boost in the forthcoming presidential election, analysts say, because it undermines the image of a president weaponising the US justice system to pursue Donald Trump.Trump, the former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has pushed that line relentlessly to explain his conviction last month on charges related to the concealment of hush-money payments to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election.He has made the claim even though his prosecution was brought in a New York state court that is independent of the Department of Justice, which is overseeing 54 other criminal charges against him that have so far not come to trial.Hunter Biden, by contrast, was prosecuted and convicted under the authority of the justice department, which is part of his father’s administration – an inconvenient fact that weakens Republican claims that it has been turned into a political weapon in the president’s hands.The result, some observers say, is that Hunter’s conviction may help the president in a close race, even though the personal cost of his son’s troubles is heavy.That suspicion was further fuelled by a low-key reaction from Republicans that attempted to switch the focus to other supposed crimes they say, but have never proved, that father and son have committed.“It’s a marginal political gain, that’s what I’m feeling,” said John Zogby, a veteran pollster. “I don’t see it hurting him in any way, and especially when he neutralised the issue when he said he was not going to extend the pardon, which is very painful for him.“It pulls the rug out from under that Republican argument that the justice system is rigged against Republicans to get Trump … a Biden did not get a pass.”Zogby said the verdict – and Biden’s acceptance of it – could revive an image that was electorally helpful in 2020 of “Uncle Joe”, a man of empathy who had known suffering and personal tragedy, through the deaths of his eldest son, Beau, from cancer in 2015, and his first wife and baby daughter in a car accident in 1972.“It could put some folks who have been wavering … on the track towards seeing that more sympathetic fellow, a father who is experiencing pain again,” he said. “You know, enough to give them another point or two. I don’t think it moves mountains, but it may not have to [in a close race].”Larry Jacobs, a professor of politics at the University of Minnesota, said the verdict, while a “personal disaster” for Biden, could boomerang on the Republicans and translate into Democratic gain.“The tragic case of Hunter Biden is painful for Joe and Jill Biden [the first lady], but it is a win for the Democratic party and the Biden campaign,” he said. “It puts a lie to the Republican claims that the justice system is being manipulated by [and for] the benefit of Democrats.“It’s harder for the Republicans to say with a straight face and to audiences not already in their capture that the legal system is captured by the Democratic party.”View image in fullscreenBiden is known to be deeply concerned by the troubles of Hunter, who was found guilty by a jury in Delaware on Tuesday of lying about his drug use and addiction when buying a gun in 2018. Close aides have voiced worries about the emotional strain the matter is putting on the 81-year-old president in the midst of a close election race.“I don’t think voters are going to hold Biden accountable for his son’s addiction or his son’s misbehaviour. But I think the real question is the toll it takes on him and his family,” David Axelrod, a senior Democratic operative and former adviser to President Barack Obama told the Washington Post.“To a guy who’s already experienced great loss and tragedy, this is another heavy brick on the load. And it’s going to take enormous strength to carry that load, given all the other bricks that are on there of the presidency and being a candidate.”Despite the fact that his son now faces a possible jail sentence – and will stand trial again on unrelated tax-evasion charges in September – Biden has said he will not use his presidential powers to pardon him. That message was somewhat clouded on Wednesday when the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, on board Air Force One en route to the G7 summit in Italy, was reported as refusing to rule out a commutation of whatever sentence Hunter receives.Hunter’s conviction followed legal manoeuvring in which some observers said he had received harsher treatment because he is the president’s son. A plea bargain worked out last year that would have seen him plead guilty to the tax charges while avoiding prosecution on the gun charge was dropped following criticism from the judge in the latter case, Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed to the bench by Trump.Republicans, who have pursued Hunter Biden for years in an unsuccessful effort to prove his father profited financially from his business dealings in Ukraine, had denounced it as a sweetheart deal.The president, who travelled on Wednesday to Italy for the G7 summit, said that he would respect whatever outcome the legal process reached – a jarring contrast to Trump’s repeated assaults on the judicial system as “rigged”.“So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery,” Biden said.“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.” More

Hello!More than a dozen Donald Trump supporters collapsed at his rallies amid record high temperatures in the south-west in recent days – presumably missing Trump’s promise at the gatherings to gut Biden’s environmental policies and “drill, baby, drill”. So what would a Trump administration mean for those who hope the world can limit global heating and the climate crisis? We’ll take a look after the headlines.Here’s what you need to know …1. Hunter Biden convicted of gun chargesHunter Biden, the president’s son who has become a bete noire for Republicans, was found guilty of three charges relating to buying a gun while being a user of crack cocaine. Rightwing politicians and media have accused Hunter and his father of various corrupt acts, but a Republican-led House committee spent a year investigating the pair and failed to come up with any corruption charges. The judge will now decide on Hunter Biden’s punishment: the crimes are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, although a lesser sentence is expected.2. Trump awaits his fateTrump was interviewed by probation officers on Monday, ahead of his sentencing in July. The probation interview typically serves to prepare a report on a convicted individual, which will then be considered by the judge when issuing sentence – which in this case could, in theory, include a prison sentence. Trump was convicted of 34 felony crimes related to him falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who claims they had an affair. He is due to be sentenced on 11 July.3. A warning for Republicans?Ohio’s sixth district went to Trump by 29 points in 2020 – but in a special election on Tuesday night, Republican candidate Michael Rulli triumphed by just nine points, which could suggest a lack of enthusiasm among voters. Elsewhere, Trump-endorsed candidates won primary elections in Nevada and South Carolina, including Nancy Mace, a congresswoman involved in the effort to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker: Mace had faced a vengeance-led challenge from a McCarthy-backed candidate, but won comfortably.Trump supporters drop in extreme heat waiting for their climate-denying kingpinView image in fullscreenLast week Trump and his campaign managed to send 17 supporters to the hospital after people wilted in 100F heat at his rallies in Arizona and Nevada. At the Phoenix event, Trumpers were forced to line up outside a megachurch venue for hours in the hot sun, and the stricken received only a brief mention from their leader, with Trump suggesting that people will not “be so thrilled” about waiting outside.The south-west is being blasted by record-breaking heat, with temperatures of 45C (113F) in the last week. Half of Arizona and Nevada were under heat warnings over the weekend, and given that extreme heat is accepted to be a consequence of the climate emergency, we might have expected a presidential candidate to talk up environmental efforts to limit global heating.Nah.“[Biden has] got windmills all over the place, every time you see a windmill going up you need tremendous subsidy, now it kills your birds, it ruins your landscape, ruins your value, if you have a house and you can see a windmill your house is worth half,” Trump told the crowd in Phoenix.He added: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill.”My colleagues Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor, who cover the environment, have previously reported on the Trump team’s plans to increase fossil fuel production in “a frenzy” of oil and gas drilling, while sidelining government climate scientists. In Phoenix, Trump repeated his pledge to scrap key parts of Biden’s climate plans, including rebates for people who buy electric vehicles. And just last week it emerged that Trump had promised lucrative tax favors to fossil fuel executives if they gave his campaign $1bn.Biden, for his campaign, has touted the Inflation Reduction Act, which invested a record $278bn in moving towards renewable energy sources, and in March claimed: “I’m taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world.”But Oliver and Nina Lakhani also reported that Biden is weakening some of his previous climate plans – delaying a regulation to reduce emissions from gas power plans, and relaxing rules about how much carbon cars can emit.Both sides, then, could be doing more. But it’s worth taking into account one analysis that found a second Trump presidency could lead to an additional 4bn tons of US emissions by 2030.By the way: Trump has never been a fan of windfarms, and in May he said would scrap offshore wind projects on “day one” of his presidency. Part of Trump’s reasoning seems to be his incorrect belief that wind turbines cause cancer, while he has previously claimed – also wrongly – that wind turbines lead to whale deaths by making them “batty”.Of course, this wasn’t the first time Trump has expressed an interest in aquatic life, because …Shark!View image in fullscreen… the presidential hopeful has a fascination with, and loathing of, sharks. Trump has previously tweeted that he ranks sharks alongside the “losers and haters of the world”, while Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose silence Trump bought (and was convicted of fudging business accounts to pay for), has said Trump is “obsessed with sharks”. Daniels said he went as far to say: “I hope all the sharks die.”Clearly sharks were still on Trump’s mind this week. In Vegas, he went on a typically meandering monologue, musing whether it would be better to stay on board a sinking electric boat or to jump into shark-infested waters.“You know what I’d do if there was a shark, or you get electrocuted?” Trump asked the crowd. “I’d take electrocution every single time.” Please, please watch the full video.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWho had the worst week: Jesus ChristView image in fullscreenRiding high after his Easter resurrection, things took a turn for the worse for the Son of God this week when he was compared – and not for the first time – to Donald Trump.“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon’,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told a crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.”Trump has previously encouraged the comparison to Jesus.Out and about: El PasoView image in fullscreen“A gut punch.” “Political theater.” “Nonsensical.”That was the reaction from advocates in El Paso the day after Joe Biden announced a clampdown on asylum. Many worried about how the order would affect migrants fleeing violence, poverty and persecution in their home countries.I spoke with them as part of an incredibly well-timed immigration reporting workshop in El Paso, a historically liberal city in west Texas, where Spanish and English are spoken interchangeably and the border is a line many cross daily for work, school or to grab a bite.Many were skeptical. Juan Acereto Cervera, an adviser to the mayor of Juárez, the Mexican city across the border from El Paso, said the policy would do little to stop people from seeking a better life elsewhere.“Nothing’s going to stop the migration, nothing,” he said.That is the conundrum Biden faces as he tries to address an issue that poses both a serious policy challenge and a serious political threat to his re-election campaign.– Lauren Gambino, political correspondent, El Paso, TexasBiggest lie: Charlie KirkView image in fullscreenJoe Biden’s acceptance of the legal process in his son Hunter’s criminal case, and a promise that he wouldn’t pardon him, stands in contrast to how Trump reacted after his conviction of 34 felonies – which the former president has frequently and falsely claimed was orchestrated by the Biden administration.It also provides an example against the Republican-pushed claim that the elder Biden can, and does, rig the courts against Trump. Wouldn’t he have saved his own son?Of course not, say Trump allies, who have started to push a new conspiracy about the Hunter Biden conviction.“This is a fake trial trying to make the justice system appear ‘balanced’,” said Charlie Kirk, the leader of conservative youth group Turning Point USA. “Don’t fall for it.” More

If you didn’t know better, you might think the jury that found Hunter Biden guilty this week knew precisely what they were doing. The evidence against the president’s son – that he lied about his drug use on a firearms form six years ago – was overwhelming, but so too was the impression of a trivial, overegged charge. But, by finding him guilty, the jury in this area of solid Democratic support have potentially done more injury to his father’s political rival than if they had found him not guilty on all counts.For those of us watching, the entire spectacle has at times been an uncomfortable exercise in flushing out biases. Like the Trump children, Hunter Biden has the demoralised air of a scion struggling to escape his father’s shadow, albeit in a different style. If the Trump boys are chinless dimwits, Hunter has about him the seedy air of a second- or third-tier Hollywood actor, clamped behind aviators and accompanied seemingly everywhere by his much younger wife.In September, the 54-year-old will face nine federal tax charges, and the business of the recovered laptop rumbles on (Biden’s laptop, which he accidentally left at a repair shop and the contents of which ended up in the hands of the New York Post, is still the subject of dispute; the Post’s claim that the machine contained evidence of incriminating emails was dismissed by liberals at the time as part of a Russian disinformation campaign – a claim that has never been substantiated). And yet, when he was found guilty this week, I found myself thinking: poor Hunter, what a ridiculous verdict.As an exercise then, I went back over the coverage and tried to read it as if he were one of Trump’s sons. The charges against Hunter Biden were widely regarded as trivial. Still, a lie is a lie and as Biden confessed in his memoir, while addicted to crack cocaine he was an inveterate liar.After the verdict, the president wrote that he was proud to see his son “so strong and resilient in recovery” – a pathetic diversion, surely, from the trouble at hand. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, remarked that “recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time” – a clear appeal not only to give him a free pass, but to find him inspiring because he’s an addict. This is a man, remember, who while dating his own late brother’s widow, got her on crack cocaine, too. There’s addiction, and then there’s being an arsehole.The odd thing about the business of trashing Hunter Biden this week is that Republicans have largely avoided it. In a plan they must have arrived at through strategic consensus, several leading Republicans spoke after the guilty verdict with degrees of sympathy for the president’s son. Senator Lindsey Graham, of all people – a man who fought for Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the supreme court and has sucked up to Trump relentlessly – said: “I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing. I don’t see any good coming from that.”Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, tweeted: “The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.” And other Republicans twisted themselves inside out to applaud the verdict while maintaining their insistence that the justice system under President Biden is rigged.This is the problem they face in the wake of a verdict that, after only three hours of deliberation, came in even quicker than Trump’s 34 guilty counts last month: exactly how to sustain the narrative that US justice is untrustworthy. If Trump’s efforts to get the phrase “Biden crime family” off the ground haven’t flown the way “crooked Hillary” or “lyin’ Ted” did, it is partly because it doesn’t scan, partly because Hunter seems so slight and pathetic a figure, and partly because “Biden” doesn’t have the ring of a dynastic mafia name about it.My own efforts to see past my own biases, meanwhile, foundered when the president, who had earlier stated that if his son were found guilty he wouldn’t pardon him, doubled down on Tuesday with the statement that he would “continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal”.Gets me every time, Joe Biden’s loving but strong-boundaried support of his son. Hunter Biden has, in some ways, had a very hard life, losing his mother and infant sister in a horrific car accident in childhood, and his brother to a brain tumour in 2015. But when the president stands firmly behind him, urging him on, one understands he is the beneficiary of something Trump’s kids have never had, and that should perhaps increase our sympathy for them: a decent, loving parent.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, said that he will block Democrats’ attempts to pass an ethics bill to rein in the US supreme court.Graham told NBC News that he “will object” to the bill on Wednesday, meaning it will not move forward on its legislative journey.The Senate judiciary committee chairman, Dick Durbin, from Illinois, told reporters that Senate Democrats were working to unanimously move the bill forward, the Hill reported. Durbin co-authored the bill with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.“We’re planning on making a move on the floor this week to move the ethics bill for the supreme court,” Durbin said.It follows a series of scandals focusing on the rightwing justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in relation both to gifts and to their capacity to serve with political neutrality.Durbin added that “new evidence” might emerge concerning ethics on the supreme court, elaborating that the evidence “relates to the ethical considerations from some of the justices for gifts they’ve taken and not reported”, the Hill reported.US representatives have also criticized what they call a “crisis of legitimacy” affecting the court.While speaking at a round table on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on Tuesday, the New York progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the court has been captured and corrupted “by money and extremism”.“A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government,” she said.The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who was also at Tuesday’s round table, said: “The highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards.”In recent weeks, Alito has faced calls to recuse himself from election-related cases and for a broader investigation after a flag associated in modern times with the far right was reportedly flying above one of his homes.And Alito, along with his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, came under additional scrutiny after Alito said that one side in the US’s partisan left versus right ideology battle “has to win”, in remarks captured in a secret recording.Martha-Ann also criticized the LGBTQ+ Pride flag, as heard in the same recording.Thomas has repeatedly faced criticism for failing to disclose in the official record that he took lavish vacations paid for by the conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, ProPublica first reported. Thomas belatedly disclosed the luxury trips for the court record last week.Public confidence in the court has also swiftly fallen in the last year to near record lows, according to polling from Gallup. More

Nearly one in 10 eligible voters lack easy access to documents to prove their citizenship, according to a new survey, underscoring how Republican efforts to purportedly prevent non-citizens from voting could disenfranchise millions.If asked to quickly locate a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers to produce proof of citizenship tomorrow, more than 21 million Americans – about 9% of eligible voters – would not be able to, according to the survey, conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, VoteRiders, Public Wise, and the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement (CDCE) at the University of Maryland. Nearly 4 million American citizens – 2% in total – lack access to any form of proof in citizenship.The survey comes as Donald Trump and his allies have seized on fears about immigration to make the threat of non-citizen voting a major talking point ahead of November. Republicans have exaggerated the threat of non-citizen voting – which is already illegal and rare – and have pushed for federal legislation that would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.“We all know – intuitively – that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, said last month.Two states that have already tried measures to require documentary proof of citizenship, Kansas and Arizona, offer case studies in how such a restriction can disenfranchise voters. In Kansas, 30,000 people had their voter registration held up between 2013 and 2016 because of the law. In Arizona, a proof-of-citizenship requirement for state elections has negatively affected tribal voters and college students.Researchers also found racial disparities in who has access to citizenship documents. About 3% of voters of color do not have access to proof-of-citizenship documents, compared with 1% of white Americans. Americans of color were also more likely to not have easy access to the documents compared with their white counterparts.“Our estimates are probably conservative measures of impact,” the researchers wrote in a blogpost announcing their findings. “While it’s true that most Americans can access these documents, most of us don’t walk around town carrying our passport or birth certificate. If those documents were required for voter registration, most would not have them readily available to take advantage of opportunities they encounter at schools, churches or other community spaces where registration drives register many Americans to vote.”About 4% of independents, 2% of Democrats and 1% of Republicans lacked easy access to proof-of-citizenship documents, the survey found.In addition to citizenship, the survey also found that about 21 million Americans of voting age do not have a non-expired driver’s license, with non-white voters less likely to have one.About 30% of Black Americans between 18 and 29 did not have a driver’s license and 47% did not have one with a current name or address. About 5% of white Americans in the same age group did not have a driver’s license, and 42% did not have one with a current name or address.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Millions of eligible voters lack a current form of photo ID – and it’s not easy to get one,” said Lauren Kunis, the executive director of VoteRiders, which helps people get ID. “Getting an ID can mean needing to track down underlying proof-of-citizenship documents like a birth certificate, navigating bureaucracy and paperwork, or spending hours at an ID-issuing office that is hard to reach. For these reasons and many more, voter ID laws make it more complicated, costly and confusing to cast a ballot in America today.”The survey is consistent with a Brennan Center survey nearly two decades ago that found 7% of Americans do not have easy access to proof-of-citizenship documents.“The current protections against non-citizen voting are effective: ballots cast by non-citizens are vanishingly rare,” the researchers wrote. “Requiring proof of citizenship would solve nothing, but it would create major barriers to registration for eligible voters, especially those who already face disproportionate barriers to participation in our democracy. We should be making it easier, not harder, for these citizens to participate.” More

The South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace easily survived a primary challenge on Tuesday, against Kevin McCarthy-backed Catherine Templeton, while a much closer than expected special election in Ohio offered warning signs for Republicans ahead of November.In Ohio’s sixth district, candidate Michael Rulli prevailed in the special election to replace fellow Republican Bill Johnson, who resigned from Congress in January. Rulli’s victory will help expand his party’s razor-thin majority in the House, but his nine-point win over Democratic contender Michael Kripchak may unnerve Republicans, given that Donald Trump carried the district by 29 points in 2020.In South Carolina, McCarthy, the former House speaker, attempted to oust Mace by backing her rival, but the the two-term incumbent received a crucial endorsement from Trump. The grudge match was personal for McCarthy, as Mace was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust the then speaker last year.The high stakes made the race a costly one, with outside groups dumping millions of dollars into the district. The South Carolina Patriots Pac spent nearly $4m backing Templeton’s primary bid, while the Win It Back Pac and Club for Growth Action collectively invested roughly $2.5m supporting Mace. Despite Templeton’s external support, Mace led by 29 points when the Associated Press called the first congressional district race about an hour and a half after polls closed in South Carolina.Mace was not the only South Carolina Republican facing a primary threat on Tuesday. Over in the fourth district, the Republican congressman William Timmons was running neck and neck with state representative Adam Morgan, who leads the South Carolina legislature’s freedom caucus. Like Mace, Timmons had the benefit of Trump’s endorsement, but the race was still too close to call three hours after polls closed.And at least one of South Carolina’s House Republican primaries will advance to a runoff later this month. In the reliably Republican third district, Trump-backed pastor Mark Burns and Air National Guard Lt Col Sheri Biggs will compete again on 25 June to determine who will have the opportunity to succeed Jeff Duncan, the retiring representative.Meanwhile, the fate of South Carolina’s abortion laws rests in part on the results of three Republican primaries in state senate races. State senators Katrina Shealy, Margie Bright Matthews, Mia McLeod, Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson collectively blocked a near-total abortion ban in South Carolina earlier this year. The “Sister Senators” were feted as a profile in courage by the Kennedy Center, but the three Republicans among them – Shealy, Senn and Gustafson – face primary challengers from their right on abortion. If two of the three lose to challengers, abortion foes will have the votes to restrict abortion beyond the current six-week ban.In addition to South Carolina, three other states held primaries on Tuesday. In Maine’s second congressional district, the former Nascar driver turned state representative Austin Theriault resoundingly defeated fellow state representative Michael Soboleski in the Republican primary. Theriault will advance to the general election against Democratic congressman Jared Golden, who faces yet another difficult re-election campaign.Republicans are hopeful that Theriault has the résumé to defeat Golden, but the Democrat has proven politically resilient since he was first elected to Congress in 2018, when he narrowly defeated the Republican incumbent, Bruce Poliquin, thanks to Maine’s ranked-choice voting system. In 2022, Golden again defeated Poliquin by six points in the second round of voting, even though Trump had carried the second district by seven points two years earlier.The Cook Political Report rates Golden’s seat as a toss-up, so Theriault’s victory will kick off what is expected to be a heated and closely contested race in the general election. Just minutes after the AP made Theriault’s primary win official, the left-leaning Pac American Bridge 21st Century began attacking him over his views on abortion access.In Nevada, a dozen Republicans are vying for their party’s Senate nomination, but the primary appears to have become a two-person race between the retired army captain Sam Brown and former US ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter. Polling indicates Brown has a significant lead over Gunter, and Brown has received a last-minute boost from Trump, who made a much-awaited endorsement in the race on Sunday.The winner of the Republican primary will go on to face the Democratic incumbent, Jackie Rosen, in one of the most closely watched Senate races this year, as the Cook Political Report rates the seat as a toss-up.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFurther down the ballot, the Democratic congresswoman Susie Lee faces a tough re-election campaign in Nevada’s third congressional district. Seven Republicans – including video game music composer Marty O’Donnell and former state treasurer Dan Schwartz – are running for the chance to face off against Lee, but Trump has stayed out of the primary so far. The former president’s only House primary endorsement in Nevada went to the former North Las Vegas mayor John Lee in the fourth district, but the winner of that race will face a much steeper climb to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Steven Horsford, in the general election.View image in fullscreenOver in North Dakota, five Republicans and two Democrats are running to replace the Republican congressman Kelly Armstrong representing the state’s at-large congressional district, but no Democrat has won the seat since 2008. Rather than seeking re-election, Armstrong has launched a gubernatorial bid, and he won his primary on Tuesday. Armstrong is widely favored to replace the outgoing governor, Doug Burgum, who has been named as a potential running mate for Trump.North Dakota voters also weighed in on a ballot measure regarding age limits for congressional candidates. If approved by a majority of North Dakota voters, the measure would prevent candidates from running for Congress if they would turn 81 during their term. Although the policy would only apply to congressional candidates, the age cutoff is noteworthy considering Joe Biden, who is four years older than Trump, turned 81 in November. More

The US supreme court has been “captured and corrupted by money and extremism”, provoking a “crisis of legitimacy” that threatens the stability of American democracy, warned the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Speaking during a round table on Capitol Hill, the New York Democrat accused the court of “delegitimizing itself through its conduct”.“A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government,” she said.Sustained scrutiny of the justices prompted the court to adopt its first code of ethics last year, but it lacks any form of enforcement. Meanwhile, public confidence in the court has plummeted to near historic lows.In the two years since it overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, a decision that sparked fierce political backlash from voters across the ideological spectrum, the court has been rocked by ethics scandals involving two of the bench’s most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.“The highest court in the land today has the lowest ethical standards,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, and the ranking member of the House oversight committee, who joined Ocasio-Cortez in convening the discussion.Together they sought to “connect the dots” between what they described as a web of dark money and the events that led to a conservative super-majority, cemented by Donald Trump. Only Democrats attended.“Dark money is the rot in our democracy right now,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator and longtime crusader against secret spending in politics, who appeared as a witness.View image in fullscreenLast week, Thomas officially disclosed that he took luxury vacations paid for by the conservative billionaire, Harlan Crow. The Republican mega-donor also paid private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, ProPublica reported as part of a blockbuster series of revelations about the supreme court justices that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service.ProPublica also reported that Alito flew on a private jet and vacationed with a billionaire who later had business before the court.Alito is facing fresh scrutiny in the wake of reports in the New York Times that his wife flew an upside-down US flag outside his home in Virginia days after the attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters, as well as an Appeal to Heaven flag that flew outside a beach home in New Jersey. The upside down flag is associated with the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the latter with Christian nationalism.In response to the flag incidents, Democrats in Congress have called for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and January 6 defendants.He declined.Democrats have introduced a myriad of bills such as one to establish an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel within the supreme court. Other ideas include limiting the justices to 18 year-terms rather than lifetime appointments and expanding the seats on the court. But reforms are unlikely to happen without Republicans, who have spent decades building the court’s conservative majority.Thomas has also declined calls to recuse himself from cases involving Trump because his wife, Ginni, a well-known conservative activist, supported the former president’s false claims of election fraud and helped lead the campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election.During Tuesday’s roundtable, Ocasio-Cortez questioned why justices aren’t subject to the same ethical standards as the branches of government. As an example, she said members of Congress are prohibited from accepting gifts valued at more than $50.“Americans are losing fundamental rights in the process, reproductive health care, civil liberties, voting rights, the right to organize clean air and water because the court has been captured and corrupted by money and extremism,” she said.Without a binding code of conduct, Raskin said, there was nothing to reign in the justices.“If you can decide presidential elections with five or four votes in Bush v Gore, if you can pack, stack and gerrymander, not just Congress, but the supreme court itself by denying the other party even a hearing, why can’t you have some friend of the court – some amicus curiae – fly you to Bali for vacation, or pay for your family member’s private school tuition or buy you a recreational vehicle or send you on a lavish, all-expense paid vacation, why the hell not?” More

Joe Biden, facing a backlash from young voters over the war in Gaza, has sought to rally support around the issue of gun safety just hours after his son Hunter was convicted of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a firearm.Contrasted his record with election rival Donald Trump, the US president brought an audience that included many students to its feet at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference in Washington on Tuesday.But in a reminder of the issues jostling for priority in voters’ minds, Biden’s remarks were briefly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. One shouted: “You’re complicit in genocide!” As the crowd booed, Biden said: “No, no, no, no … It’s OK. Look, they care. Innocent children have been lost. They make a point.”He went on to give an otherwise uneventful speech that made no mention of Hunter Biden’s conviction in Delaware earlier in the day on three felony counts relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.The conference, which brings together Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers and survivors of gun violence from all 50 states, served as a show of strength for Biden at a time when his position looks fragile in opinion polls.Speakers praised his commitment, compassion and willingness to listen. Julvonnia McDowell, whose 14-year-old son JaJuan was shot and killed by another teenager playing with an unsecured firearm in Savannah, Georgia, told the gathering: “I can say today, standing here right now, he’s been true to his word on the urgency of creating a safer future for families like mine and yours.”She added: “I am proud to stand with him.”Biden was greeted by chants of “Four more years” and “Let’s go, Joe!” He received loud acclaim when he reminded the audience that in June 2022 he signed the most significant federal bipartisan gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. On Wednesday the justice department announced it has charged more than 500 defendants under the new law.There was another big cheer when Biden noted his creation last September of the first White House office of gun violence to coordinate a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence, “overseen by my incredible vice-president”.But perhaps the most enthusiastic response came to the president’s renewed call for a ban on assault weapons, sparking prolonged cheering, whooping and chants of “Four more years!” Biden asked: “Who in God’s name needs a magazine which can hold 200 children?” Someone shouted: “Nobody!” Biden replied: “Nobody. That’s right.”He added: “They’re weapons of war and, by the way, it’s time we establish universal background checks.”Biden asserted that the country’s murder rate saw the highest increase on record in the year before he came to the presidency. But last year saw the largest drop in murder rates in history, he added.He condemned congressional Republicans for seeking to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a law enforcement agency responsible for fighting gun crime. “You can’t be pro-law enforcement and say you are pro-law enforcement and be pro-abolishing the ATF. It’s outrageous.”He went on to take a swipe at Trump, reminding voters of the stakes in November. “After a school shooting in Iowa killed a student and a teacher, my predecessor was asked about it. You remember what he said. He said, have to get over it. Hell no, know enough to get over it!“More children are killed in America by guns and cancer and car accidents combined. My predecessor told the NRA [National Rifle Association] convention recently he’s proud that ‘I did nothing on guns when I was president’ and by doing nothing, he made the situation considerably worse.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s why Everytown, why all of you here today are so damned important. We need you. We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, so many politicians when they oppose commonsense gun legislation.”In the 2024 election cycle the NRA has contributed a total of $191,900 to 166 House Republicans, according to the non-profit group OpenSecrets. It gave nearly $75,000 to Senate Republican candidates and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. The NRA has spent more than $100m to help elect Republicans over the past decade.Trump has said there is “no bigger fan” of the NRA and is vowing to roll back the measures and implement national concealed carry reciprocity legislation which, critics say, will weaken states’ gun safety laws and harm law enforcement.A 2022 poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.Believing this to be an arena where the electoral choice is clear cut, the Biden campaign is seeking to make a major push on gun safety. Last week the vice-president Kamala Harris held a gun violence prevention campaign event in Maryland with Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks and hosted a Students for Biden-Harris organising call.Voters cited addressing gun violence as their third most important issue during the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Politico-Harvard survey. But in this cycle it is competing with the cost of living, immigration, abortion rights, the defence of democracy and the war in Gaza.Drew Spiegel, 19, a gun violence survivor and student from Deerfield, Illinois, said: “Joe Biden has done the most any administration in my life has done for gun violence prevention. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was the first comprehensive gun reform we got in 30 years, which is remarkable and I am super proud of his administration for that.“I believe that Biden is certainly on the right track, which is why it’s critical to keep him in office. We saw what Donald Trump has in store and he has no intentions of making our communities safer, of keeping guns off the hands of dangerous people. He will cosy up to the NRA, as he has already done, and not only will they stop reform from happening but they will actively take us in the opposite direction.” More