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      ‘Will you shut up, man?’: memorable moments from Biden’s past debates

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      According to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is either a very accomplished or utterly incompetent debater.When details of the presidential debate, which takes place in Atlanta on Thursday, were announced last month, Trump mocked Biden as “the WORST debater I have ever faced”, adding: “He can’t put two sentences together.” And yet, while speaking to the All-In podcast last week, Trump commended Biden’s showing in the 2012 vice-presidential debate.“He destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “So I’m not underestimating him.”The flip-flop could be Trump’s belated effort to temper expectations of how he will perform against an incumbent president with extensive debating experience. With four presidential campaigns and two terms as vice-president on his résumé, Biden is no stranger to the debate stage, and he has shown a sharp ability to deliver pointed attacks on his opponents.But as a sitting president who has reckoned with historically high inflation and multiple wars abroad since he took office, Biden goes into his next debate with a unique set of challenges that he must overcome to sell voters on re-electing him. Although Biden, 81, is only a few years older than Trump, 78, voters have expressed more concern about the president’s age than his opponent’s, and he will be looking to address those fears at the debate.These five memorable moments from Biden’s past debate performances offer some insight into the president’s strengths – and vulnerabilities:A lasting dig at GiulianiIn 2024, Biden is the president of the United States while Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s disgraced former lawyer. But in 2007, both men were presidential candidates. As the former mayor of New York who led the city through the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Giuliani was widely viewed as a frontrunner in the 2008 Republican primary race.During a Democratic primary debate, Biden mocked Giuliani as “the most under-qualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency”, arguing he was incapable of making a coherent pitch for his candidacy.“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. There’s nothing else,” Biden said.The debate audience greeted the quip with laughter and applause, and the remark became one of the most enduring criticisms of Giuliani, whose presidential campaign eventually failed in spectacular fashion, giving way to an even more disgraceful downfall. Biden will be looking to deliver similarly memorable attack lines against Trump on Thursday.A sorrowful moment during the Sarah Palin debateBefore the 2008 vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin had already made headlines for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric and Tina Fey’s devastating impersonation of the self-proclaimed “hockey mom” from Alaska.Biden’s debate strategy rested on amplifying his credentials without descending into condescension against Palin, who invoked the importance of “Joe Six-pack” Americans in an apparent effort to paint her opponent as out of touch. Biden confronted the criticism head-on by referencing his family background and the death of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash, demonstrating how he had known hardship in his life.“I understand what it’s like to be a single parent,” Biden said. “I understand what it’s like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says: ‘I’ve got to leave, champ, because there’s no jobs here … ’“The notion that, somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to make it – I understand. I understand as well, with all due respect to the governor or anybody else, what it’s like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They’re looking for help.”The exchange marked one of the most humanizing moments of the debate for Biden, who has now developed a reputation as the consoler-in-chief. Biden’s ability to connect his personal story with voters’ lives could give him an advantage over Trump, who has struggled to do the same.A challenge to Paul Ryan’s expertiseWhile Biden may have pursued a more careful debate strategy in 2008, he came out swinging in 2012 against Paul Ryan, who was then Mitt Romney’s running mate.As Ryan explained his plan to cut taxes by 20% while still preserving benefits for middle-class workers, Biden slammed the proposal as “not mathematically possible”. Any time Ryan attempted to justify the policy, Biden was quick to cut in with criticism.Ryan then said: “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and increased growth.”Biden replied: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe comment alluded to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen’s infamous mockery of Republican Dan Quayle at the 1988 vice-presidential debate, and it appeared to successfully deflate some of Ryan’s grandiose vision for a new tax system.If Biden pursues a similar approach on Thursday, it may serve two aims of undercutting Trump and mitigating concerns about the president’s mental sharpness.A rebuke to Trump’s constant interruptionsThe first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 was defined by chaos. Trump repeatedly talked over Biden, while even moderator Chris Wallace struggled to get a word in edgewise. At one point, Biden attempted to answer a question about the supreme court, but he kept getting derailed by Trump’s comments about the “radical left” and efforts to “pack the court”.Then, Biden reached his breaking point. “Will you shut up, man?” he said to Trump. “This is so unpresidential.”The comment could have come off as petulant, but instead, it seemed to resonate with viewers as an attempt to inject order into a debate badly in need of it. Looking ahead to Thursday, CNN’s decision to mute the candidates’ mics when it is not their turn to speak may prevent similar interruptions, but Biden’s willingness to stand up to Trump could still play to his advantage.An unforgettable instruction to the Proud BoysPerhaps the most memorable moment from Biden and Trump’s first debate came when Wallace asked Trump to specifically condemn white supremacist and militia groups. Despite the simplicity of the request, Trump tried and failed to brush off the question.“Almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” Trump said. Pressed by Wallace, he added: “I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”Biden replied: “Say it. Do it. Say it.”Trump then asked: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”Biden supplied the name of the Proud Boys, a far-right and neo-fascist group, and Trump then issued this infamous instruction: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”The comment bolstered Democrats’ warnings about Trump empowering the far-right faction of his party, which appeared prescient after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. (The former national chair of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the attack.)As he prepares for his next debate, Biden will be looking to again put Trump on the record about his relationship with far-right groups and the violence they have caused. More

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      I’m worried about Biden’s debate with Trump this week | Robert Reich

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      I just turned 78, and frankly I’m scared about what might come down on Thursday evening when the oldest candidates ever to compete in a presidential race debate each other.I’m less worried that Joe Biden will suffer a mental lapse or physically stumble than I am that Biden will look weak and Donald Trump appear strong.One of Trump’s most successful ploys has been to frame the upcoming election as a contest between strength and weakness, and to convince many Americans that stridency and pugnacity are signs of strength while truth and humility signal weakness.In 1960, when I watched John F Kennedy square off against Richard Nixon, character and temperament were the most important variables.According to the legend, most people who listened to the first debate on the radio called it a draw or thought Nixon had won, but Kennedy won handily among television viewers.Television hurt Nixon, and not just because of his paler complexion. Kennedy stared directly into the camera when he answered each question. But Nixon looked off to the side to address the various reporters who asked questions, which came across as shifting his gaze to avoid eye contact with the public – a move that seemed to show evasiveness, the character flaw that had earned Nixon the moniker “Tricky Dick”.I last watched a tape of the Kennedy-Nixon television debate in 1992, when sitting beside Bill Clinton, who used it to prepare for his debate with George HW Bush and Ross Perot. Clinton wanted to emulate Kennedy’s character – his confidence, humor and optimism.Perot’s whiny indignation turned viewers off. George HW seemed over the hill. Clinton was effusive and charming, and connected with viewers.Which brings me back to character. Over 78 years, I’ve met or observed a small number of people in American public life whom I’d characterize as vile. Senator Joseph McCarthy, Governor George Wallace and Speaker Newt Gingrich come immediately to mind, along with Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes.What made them vile to me was their cynical opportunism – the eagerness with which they exploited people’s fears to gain power or notoriety, or both. All had the character of barnyard bullies.Donald Trump is the vilest by far.Trump’s loathsomeness extends to every aspect of his being – his continuous stream of lies, the eagerness with which he seeks to turn Americans against each other, his scapegoating of immigrants, his demeaning of women and the disabled.And Trump’s utter disrespect for the office of the presidency – for the laws of the land, for the United States constitution, for the senators and members of Congress and staff and police whose lives he intentionally endangered on 6 January 2021, and for hundreds of thousands of election workers whose lives he directly or indirectly threatened with his baseless claims of election fraud.Character will not be debated on Thursday night, but I hope Americans who have not yet made up their minds or who are wavering in their support of Joe Biden will pay attention to it. Character is – must be – on the 2024 ballot.I remember debating Arizona’s former Republican governor Jan Brewer before the 2016 election. I asked her whether she thought Trump had the character and temperament to be president. When Brewer temporized, I asked again. Finally she said yes. Her answer may have been the most dishonest thing anyone said during that election season – other than Trump’s own rapacious lies.A few days ago, I was talking with a young conservative who admitted that Trump was an “odious thug”, in his words, but argued that the US and the world had become such a mess that we need an odious thug as president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Think of Putin, Xi, Kim, Ali Khamenei, Netanyahu – they’re all odious thugs,” he said. “We need our own odious thug to stand up to them.”I demurred, saying that direct confrontation could lead to more bloodshed, even nuclear war.He continued: “We need an odious thug to shake up Washington, stir up all the ossified bureaucracies now destroying America, do all the things no one has had the balls to do.”When I looked skeptical, he charged: “We need someone to take control!”As soon as he uttered those last words, he and I both knew the conversation was over. He had spilled the beans. He was impatient with the messiness and slowness of democracy. He wanted a dictator.I’m not sure how many Americans attracted to Trump feel this way. It’s consistent with the strength-versus-weakness framework Trump is deploying.Trump may be loathsome, they tell themselves, but at least he’s strong, and we need strength over weakness.I was born 78 years ago. At that time, the world had just experienced what can occur when a loathsome person who exudes “strength” takes over a major nation and threatens the world. A number of my distant relatives died fighting Nazis or perished in Nazi concentration camps.I can’t help but wonder if the young conservative I spoke with would feel differently were he 78.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Silicon Valley wants unfettered control of the tech market. That’s why it’s cosying up to Trump | Evgeny Morozov

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      Hardly a week passes without another billionaire endorsing Donald Trump. With Joe Biden proposing a 25% tax on those with assets over $100m (£80m), this is no shock. The real twist? The pro-Trump multimillionaire club now includes a growing number of venture capitalists. Unlike hedge funders or private equity barons, venture capitalists have traditionally held progressive credentials. They’ve styled themselves as the heroes of innovation, and the Democrats have done more to polish their progressive image than anyone else. So why are they now cosying up to Trump?Venture capitalists and Democrats long shared a mutual belief in techno-solutionism – the idea that markets, enhanced by digital technology, could achieve social goods where government policy had failed. Over the past two decades, we’ve been living in the ruins of this utopia. We were promised that social media could topple dictators, that crypto could tackle poverty, and that AI could cure cancer. But the progressive credentials of venture capitalists were only ever skin deep, and now that Biden has adopted a tougher stance on Silicon Valley, VCs are more than happy to support Trump’s Republicans.The Democrats’ romance with techno-solutionism began in the early 1980s. Democrats saw Silicon Valley as the key to boosting environmentalism, worker autonomy and global justice. Venture capitalists, as the financial backers of this new and apparently benign form of capitalism, were crucial to this vision. Whenever Republicans pushed for measures favourable to the VC industry – such as changes in capital gains tax, or the liberalisation of pension fund legislation – Democrats eventually acquiesced. On issues such as intellectual property, Democrats have actively advanced the industry’s agenda.This alliance has shaped how the US now finances innovation. Public institutions such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health fund basic science, while venture capitalists finance the startups that commercialise it. These startups, in turn, build on intellectual property licensed from recipients of public grants to design apps, gadgets and drugs. A good chunk of these profits, naturally, flows back to the venture capitalists who own a stake in these startups. Thanks to this model, Americans now pay some of the highest drug prices in the world – yet when politicians have tried to curb these egregious outcomes, they have been met with accusations from the VC industry that they’re undermining progress.Venture capitalists have been keen to emphasise the role they play in delivering progress. Through podcasts, conferences and publications, they have successfully recast their interests as those of humanity at large. For a clear distillation of this worldview, look no further than The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, a 5,200-word treatise by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Its jarring universalism suggests that all of us – San Francisco’s venture capitalists and homeless alike – are in this together. Andreessen urges readers to join venture capitalists as “allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life”. Yet his text quickly reveals its true colours. “Free markets,” he writes, “are the most effective way to organise a technological economy.” (Andreessen has criticised Biden without endorsing Trump.)Andreessen isn’t celebrating technology in the abstract, but promoting what he calls the “techno-capital machine”. This system allows investors like him to reap most of the rewards of innovation, while steering its direction so that alternative models to Silicon Valley hegemony never achieve the kind of take-up that would allow them to drive out for-profit solutions. Andresseen, like all VCs, never stops to consider that a more effective technological economy might not revolve around free markets at all. How can VCs be so sure that we wouldn’t get a better kind of generative AI, or less destructive social media platforms, by treating data as a collective good?View image in fullscreenThe tragedy is that we won’t be trying anything like this any time soon. We’re shackled by a worldview that has fooled us into thinking there is no alternative to a system that relies on poorly paid workers in the global south to assemble our devices and moderate our content, and that consumes unsustainable volumes of energy to train AI models and mine bitcoin. Even the idea that social media might promote democracy has now been abandoned; instead, tech leaders seem more concerned with evading responsibility for the role their platforms have played in subverting democracy and fanning the flames of genocide.Where do we find the much-needed alternative? While researching my latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, I stumbled on a series of debates that took place in the 1970s and pointed in the right direction. Back then, a small group of hippy radicals were advocating for “ecological technology” and “counter-technology”. They weren’t satisfied with merely making existing tools more accessible and transparent: they saw technology as the product of power relations, and wanted to fundamentally alter the system itself. I came across a particularly compelling example of this thinking in a quirky 1971 manifesto published in Radical Software, a small but influential magazine. Its author was anonymous, and signed themselves as “Aquarius Project”, listing only a Berkeley-based postal box. I eventually tracked them down, partly because the points they made in that manifesto are so often lost in today’s debates about Silicon Valley. “‘Technology’ does nothing, creates no problems, has no ‘imperatives’,” they wrote. “Our problem is not ‘Technology’ in the abstract, but specifically capitalist technology.”Being hippies, the group struggled to translate these insights into policy demands. In fact, somebody else had done this three decades earlier. In the late 1940s, the Democratic senator Harley Kilgore saw the dangers of postwar science becoming “the handmaiden for corporate or industrial research”. He envisioned a National Science Foundation (NSF) governed by representatives from unions, consumers, agriculture and industry to ensure technology served social needs and remained in democratic control. Corporations would be forced to share their intellectual property (IP) if they built on public research, and would be prevented from becoming the sole providers of “solutions” to social problems. Yet with its insistence on democratic oversight and sharing IP riches, his model was eventually defeated.Instead, our prevailing approach to innovation has allowed scientists to set their priorities, and does not require companies that benefit from public research to share their IP. As Biden’s Chips Act directs $81bn to the NSF, we must now question if this approach still makes sense. Shouldn’t democratic decision-making guide how this money is spent? And what about the IP created? How much will end up enriching venture capitalists? Similar questions arise with data and AI. Should big tech firms be allowed to use data from public institutions to train privately owned, lucrative AI models? Why not make the data accessible to nonprofits and universities? Why should companies such as OpenAI, backed by venture capital, dominate this space?Today’s AI gold rush is inefficient and irrational. A single, authoritative, publicly owned curator of the data and models behind generative AI could do a better job, saving money and resources. It could charge corporations for access, while providing cheaper access to public media organisations and libraries. Yet the merchants of Silicon Valley are taking us in the opposite direction. They are obsessed with accelerating Andreessen’s “techno-capital machine”, which relies on detaching markets and technologies from democratic control. And, with Trump in the White House, they’ll waste no time repurposing their tools to serve authoritarianism as easily as they served the neoliberal agendas of his Democratic predecessors.Biden and his allies should recognise venture capitalists as a problem, not a solution. The sooner progressive forces get over their fascination with Silicon Valley, the better. This won’t be enough, though: to build a truly progressive techno-public machine, we need to rethink the relationship between science and technology on the one hand and democracy and equality on the other. If that means reopening old, seemingly settled debates, so be it.
      Evgeny Morozov is the author of several books on technology and politics. His latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, is available now
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      Progressive Jamaal Bowman loses New York House Democratic primary

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      Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democratic congressman whose criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza made him a target for pro-Israel lobbying groups, lost his primary race on Tuesday night.The Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district became the most expensive House primary in history after Bowman was challenged by George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist.The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and an affiliated group spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, a former middle school principal, who has been one of the few Democrats to consistently criticize Israel since it began a military campaign on Gaza that has killed a reported 37,000 Palestinians.Latimer, a vocal advocate of Israel who has been involved in local politics for more than three decades, is likely to win the congressional election in November, given the heavily Democratic make-up of the district.Our Revolution said the primary outcome “puts the glaring hypocrisy of Democratic party elites on full display”. Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the organization founded by Bernie Sanders, said: “Hillary Clinton and other establishment Democrats who supported Bowman’s challenger like to parade around as champions of democracy … [but] lack the backbone to call out the broken system that allows Democratic primaries to be sold to the highest bidder.”Bowman had appeared with Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally on Sunday, as progressive Democrats launched a last-ditch attempt to drive people to the polls.“Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to take this borough back? Are you ready to win this country back? Are you ready to fight for peace on earth and ceasefire in Gaza?” Ocasio-Cortez said as she introduced Bowman, hinting at what has become the key issue in the race between him and Latimer.Bowman has accused Israel of committing genocide and has called for the Biden White House to “stop all funding” to Israel.That prompted Aipac to wade into the race: since the start of the primary, the United Democracy Project, a Super Pac connected with Aipac, has spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, who is facing a primary challenge from Latimer, a pro-Israel Democrat. DMFI Pac, another pro-Israel group, has spent more than $1m to support Latimer and unseat Bowman, helping to turn the race into an unprecedentedly expensive contest.While the Israel issue has been a driver for Aipac, Bowman was also seen as vulnerable due to issues within his control. In September, he was criticized after pulling a fire alarm before a crucial House vote; Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, the maximum applicable under Washington DC law. Early this year, the Daily Beast reported that Bowman had touted 9/11 conspiracy theories on a since-deleted blogpost.In New York City, TV ads attacking Bowman have been ever-present in recent weeks, although Bowman raised plenty of cash of his own. Since the start of his campaign, Bowman raised $4.3m and had support on the ground from progressive groups, including Justice Democrats, a progressive organization that backed his campaign in 2020 and spent $1.3m to support Bowman this election cycle.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe race became contentious in recent weeks. Bowman suggested Latimer’s campaign darkened his skin in campaign literature and accused Latimer of pushing the “angry Black man” stereotype.In the final debate between the pair on Tuesday, Bowman accused Latimer of dragging his feet on desegregation as Westchester county executive. Latimer, who has claimed Bowman has an “ethnic benefit”, said Bowman has “cornered the market on lies”.With Bowman being a high-profile progressive who is popular with young people and the left, the race took on wider implications.“We believe that the squad [a group of progressive politicians who include Ocasio-Cortez] is just the start of our voice being truly represented in the halls of Congress,” said Ella Weber, an activist with Protect Our Power, an organization that seeks to keep progressive Democrats in Congress and that spent time campaigning in Bowman’s district.“The threat of them not winning is gen Z as a whole continues to lose faith in our political process. That’s definitely not what we want, and I don’t think that’s what the Democratic party wants.” More

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      Lauren Boebert, hard-right Republican, wins Colorado primary after moving districts

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      Despite a series of personal scandals, Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Colorado Republican who narrowly avoided defeat in 2022, won out over a crowded field of other Republican primary candidates in the fourth congressional district – previously led by Ken Buck – which leans more heavily Republican.Boebert’s primary win is one of the most closely watched results of Colorado’s primary elections, which chose the winners in several bitter intra-party fights among the state’s Republicans, including in two competitive House districts that could help determine control of Congress in November.Boebert had moved from one politically divided congressional district in Colorado to a more safely Republican district, which will allow her to avoid a rematch with the Democratic opponent who nearly defeated her last election cycle.In Boebert’s former district, Jeff Hurd, who is seen as a more old-school and mainstream Republican, won the GOP primary and will face Adam Frisch, the Democrat who came within 546 votes of defeating her in 2022, is likely to face a tighter race against the winner of the Republican primary there. Voters in the district supported Trump with 53% of the vote in 2016 and 2020.Colorado’s most competitive US House race this fall will probably be in the eighth congressional district, where first-term congresswoman Yadira Caraveo is running unopposed in the Democratic primary. Her Republican opponent will be either state representative Gabe Evans, an army veteran and former police officer, or former state representative Janak Joshi, a retired physician who has the state party’s endorsement.Colorado’s primary landscape was reshaped by the sudden resignation this March of Buck, a former Republican congressman and staunch conservative. Buck cited his frustration with his own party in his resignation, telling CNN: “Instead of having decorum – instead of acting in a professional manner – this place has really devolved into this bickering and nonsense.”The fierce Republican infighting through the primary election has prompted accusations that the state GOP chair, Dave Williams, is running an “inquisition” and “has decided he must purify and purge the Republican party”, as former GOP chair Dick Wadhams said at an event hosted by Axios in Denver.Williams has faced allegations that he has improperly used the state party’s email list to announce his campaign for Congress and that he spent party money to buy mailers that included an attack on political consultant and talk radio host Jeff Crank, his Republican primary opponent.The GOP chairman also faced criticisms for asking party candidates to fill out a policy questionnaire that was also an explicit loyalty test, with questions such as “​​Do you support President Trump’s populist, America-first agenda?”Williams is “cannibalizing the Republican party so he can go to Congress”, Kelly Maher, a veteran GOP operative who filed a complaint against Williams with the Federal Elections Commission, told the Associated Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBuck, the former Republican member of Congress who resigned from his seat in March, triggered a special election for a candidate who will serve out the remaining six months of his term. The race appears on the ballot alongside the regularly scheduled primaries on Tuesday.Former Parker mayor Greg Lopez is seen as likely to win in this race, but he is seen as a placeholder who plans to step down after the general election winner is sworn into office in January.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      New York judge partially lifts Trump’s gag order in hush-money case

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      The New York judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush-money trial has partially lifted a gag order that has been hanging over the former president since he was convicted of the accounting fraud charges last month.Under the revised order by Judge Juan Merchan, Trump is now free to criticize trial witnesses, which includes Stormy Daniels and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, but must maintain restrictions on his comments about individual prosecutors and others involved in the case.Trump’s lawyers argued in court motions that the broad gag order stifled his campaign speech, and could limit his ability to respond to Joe Biden when the two meet in the first presidential debate of 2024 on Thursday.They also argued Trump’s political opponents were using the restrictions as a “political sword” and that Trump was unable to respond to public attacks from Cohen and Daniels.The office of Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said limits imposed on Trump’s speech about witnesses were no longer needed, but they had urged Merchan to keep restrictions on Trump’s comments about jurors, court staff and individual prosecutors “at least through the sentencing hearing and the resolution of any post-trial motions”.The gag order, in its totality, will be terminated after “the imposition of sentence”.Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement on Tuesday that the order “leaves in place portions of the unconstitutional Gag Order, preventing President Trump from speaking freely about Merchan’s disqualifying conflicts and the overwhelming evidence exposing this whole Crooked Joe Biden–directed Witch Hunt,” according to NBC News.Cheung added it was “another unlawful decision by a highly conflicted judge, which is blatantly un-American as it gags President Trump” and vowed to appeal it.Merchan issued Trump’s gag order on 26 March, a few weeks before the start of the trial and later expanded it to prevent comments about his own family, including his daughter, who Trump had identified as a “part of the Democrat machine”.After his conviction, Trump continued to test the judge’s ruling, saying he was under a “nasty gag order” and indirectly calling Cohen, his former fixer, “a sleaze-bag”.Trump plans to appeal is conviction and denies having an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Daniels. Sentencing is scheduled for 11 July, days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on 15 July to formalize his nomination as the party’s presidential candidate.Last week, an appeals court in New York declined to hear Trump’s appeal against the gag order in the case, asserting that “no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”.Trump’s lawyers had argued that the gag order restricted Trump’s “core political speech on matters of central importance at the height of his presidential campaign … and thus it violates the fundamental right of every American voter to hear from … [a] candidate for president on matters of enormous public importance”.New York prosecutors opposed the appeal, urging the court to dismiss it, and cited Trump’s “well-documented history of leveling threatening, inflammatory and denigrating remarks against trial participants”.Merchan imposed the gag order before the trial began in April, finding that Trump’s history of threatening statements posed a threat to the proceedings. Trump was later fined $10,000 for 10 violations of the order and threatened with incarceration if he continued. More

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      Mar-a-Lago search warrant was properly granted, says Trump documents judge

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      The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case for retaining classified documents suggested she would deny his attempt to exclude the documents the FBI seized at the Mar-a-Lago club, saying at a hearing Tuesday that the warrant for the search was properly granted.The former president’s lawyers had contended the warrant was unconstitutionally vague and the FBI affidavit, used to convince the magistrate judge to find there was probable cause for a crime at the club, contained contextual omissions.But the US district judge Aileen Cannon suggested she considered the warrant was sufficiently specific about what items FBI agents could seize at Mar-a-Lago, and told Trump’s lawyers the omissions would have made no difference on whether there was probable cause.The attempt by Trump to suppress the Mar-a-Lago evidence came through a request for a Franks hearing, where a judge applies a four-part test to decide whether false or misleading statements in the affidavit meant the evidence obtained through that search needed to be suppressed.Even before Cannon, who has shown a proclivity for ruling in his favor on motions about evidence, Trump’s request was ambitious because the legal threshold to get a Franks hearing is onerous. Trump needed to make a “substantial preliminary showing” that the affidavit had parts that were recklessly false.The evidence Trump’s lawyers presented was limited to complaints that the FBI agent omitted the fact that some top FBI officials preferred a consensual search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI tying the need for a warrant to the National Archives, and Trump did not need a security clearance as president.Cannon suggested she found those omissions unavailing. “Why would it have changed the magistrate judge’s determination of probable cause” if the omissions had actually been included, Cannon asked Emil Bove, who argued on behalf of Trump.Trump’s lawyers also complained that the warrant itself was too broad, arguing for instance that the warrant allowed FBI agents to seize any documents that fell under the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act, without defining the technical terms in the statutes.That meant the agents were making unilateral on-the-fly decisions about whether they could seize a particular document, Trump’s lawyers said, suggesting that the warrant should have outlined what “national defense information” meant under the Espionage Act.But Cannon appeared similarly unconvinced by that argument. “It just seems like you’re making policy arguments. It seems far afield from whether the affidavit reached the probable cause standard. I’m unclear what you think should have been included” in the warrant, Cannon told Bove.The hearing came after a morning session where Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, behind closed doors, to revoke prosecutors’ access to transcripts of voice memos made by Trump’s ex-lawyer Evan Corcoran, which constitute key evidence in the obstruction of justice part of the documents case.The Guardian first reported last week that Trump’s lawyers would ask the judge to exclude the memos, arguing they should not have been given to prosecutors on the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to see privileged communications if legal advice is used in furtherance of a crime.The sweeping request could have far-reaching consequences since the memos – with, for example, Trump asking whether they could ignore the subpoena, or a later suggestion to “pluck” out some classified documents instead of returning them to the FBI – are the strongest evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent.Even if the judge excludes only some of the passages, it could dramatically undercut the strength of the obstruction case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the worst case for prosecutors, their evidence of Trump’s obstructive intent could be reduced to CCTV footage of boxes being moved at Mar-a-Lago by his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, logs of Trump’s calls with Nauta, and testimony about Nauta’s movements.The obstruction charges center on Trump’s incomplete compliance with an 11 May 2022 grand jury subpoena that demanded the return of any classified documents in his possession, months before the FBI seized 101 classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago.The Corcoran memos – the contents of which were first reported by the Guardian last year – have played a major role in bolstering the charge that Trump conspired with Nauta and De Oliveira to play a “shell game” in hiding boxes of classified documents so Corcoran could not ensure their return.The indictment quoted the memos as saying Trump responded: “Well, what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” and “Well, look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?”After Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room, his memos recount Trump asking him, “Did you find anything? …… Is it bad? Good?”, and made a sort of plucking motion, suggesting “if there’s anything really bad in there, like, pluck it out”.Trump’s lawyers were expected to argue that the chief judge in Washington was overly broad in turning over more than 60 pages of memos, and that the instances of Trump asking whether he needed to comply with the subpoena are questions that every defendant asks to understand the full scope of their obligations.Trump’s lawyers were also expected to argue that none of the commentary – about Trump asking whether they needed to comply with the subpoena, or the plucking motion – satisfied the crime-fraud exception because it did not amount to Trump using Corcoran’s legal advice for a crime. More

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      Judge partially lifts Trump gag order in hush-money case – as it happened

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      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, amid a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else happened today:
      Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order imposed on Trump in his New York hush-money case and allowed him to attack jurors and witnesses.
      Joe Biden’s approval ticked up slightly in June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, but Trump maintained the edge when it came to handling of the economy.
      Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
      Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
      Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
      Federal prosecutors have released new photos of the classified documents they discovered two years ago at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in a filing that rejects an attempt by the former president’s lawyers to get the case against him thrown out.The photos reveal that top secret documents were mixed in with keepsakes like copies of the New York Times, Maga hats and cases of Diet Coke:Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, on the latest revelations from prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith in the long-running case:Hillary Clinton has, interestingly enough, debated both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, though it is of course her general election loss to the former for which she is best remembered. Ahead of the Trump-Biden debate scheduled for Thursday, she offered some thoughts on what debating the ex-president is like, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:Hillary Clinton has said it would be a “waste of time” for Joe Biden to attempt to refute Donald Trump’s contentions in Thursday’s presidential debate because “it’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are”.The former secretary of state wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that Trump “starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather”.“This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated,” she said.Clinton debated Trump while unsuccessfully running for the White House against him in 2016 – and she had also debated Biden during a presidential primary eight years earlier.Trump was later accused of speaking over Clinton and looming over her in a way that she later described as “really weird”.Clinton predicted in her op-ed that Trump’s strategies would “fall flat” if Biden “is as direct and forceful as he was” during his State of the Union address in March.Referring to Trump, she added: “Expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”Reuters and Ipsos just dropped a new poll ahead of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s Thursday’s debate face-off, which shows the former president has the edge among voters when it comes to concerns about the economy, while the current White House occupant is more trusted to preserve America’s democracy.It also found a slight bump in Biden’s approval rating, from a not-great 36% in May to a still-not-great 37% this month.The survey does not tell us much we do not know, since previous polls have shown Trump with the edge on economic matters, though it does underscore the validity of the Biden campaign’s strategy of characterizing Trump as a threat to democracy.The survey found Trump was viewed as the better choice for the economy, the top concern of voters, by 43% of respondents, against Biden’s 37%. He was also the preferred pick of respondents when it came to handling foreign policy and terrorism, with 40% support against Biden’s 35%.The second-biggest concern for respondents was the state of the country’s democracy, and when it came to that, Biden was the pick of 39% of those polled, while Trump picked up 33% support.Speaking of attacks, a CNN presenter’s interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson went awry yesterday, when she began criticizing the moderators of the ex-president’s upcoming debate against Joe Biden, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:CNN abruptly terminated a live interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson on Monday after she criticised the two journalists whom the network chose to moderate the much anticipated upcoming debate between the former president and Joe Biden.Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Kasie Hunt, the presenter of CNN This Morning, after saying Trump would be entering a “hostile environment on this very network” when he debates the incumbent president in Atlanta on Thursday.Asked what strategy Trump would pursue on the debate stage, she said he would be contending “with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known … and their biased coverage of him”.Leavitt’s comments were aimed, without initially naming them, at the moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They triggered an immediate reaction from Hunt, who defended her colleagues.“So I’ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle,” Hunt said. Citing analysts of previous debates, she added: “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.”Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial that resulted in the former president’s conviction in New York City on charges related to hush-money payments, told CNN he won’t be intimidated by Trump’s attacks.His comment came after Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order on Trump, and allowed him to make statements about witnesses in the case – such as Cohen.Here’s what he told CNN:And now we wait to see if Donald Trump unleashes a new volley of insults against those involved in his criminal conviction last month in New York City.The place to watch is his Truth Social account, which the former president has used in place of his account on X (formerly Twitter) to comment on a variety of subjects, his criminal trials included. He has left his account on X dormant since owner Elon Musk allowed him back on to the site two years ago, with the sole exception of tweeting out the mug shot taken in Georgia, when charges were brought against him in the election subversion case.Before its modification, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump for repeatedly violating the gag order imposed against him in his hush money case. Here’s more on that:The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.More than a dozen Nobel prize-winning economists have warned that inflation will soar once again if Donald Trump takes back the White House in November.In a letter obtained by Axios, 16 Nobel laureates wrote that the presumptive Republican nominee’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy.
      While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump.
      They go on to write that a second Trump term would have “a negative impact on the US’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the US’s domestic economy.”
      Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.
      Hunter Biden’s license to practice law in Washington DC has been suspended after he was convicted earlier this month of three federal gun charges.The filing on Tuesday by the DC court of appeals states that Hunter Biden, the president’s eldest living son, is “suspended immediately” from practicing law in the city.The appeals court also directs the DC board on professional responsibility to to hold additional proceedings to “determine the nature of the offense and whether it involves moral turpitude.”Hunter Biden was found guilty earlier this month on three felony counts related to a handgun purchase while he was a user of crack cocaine.US senator Rand Paul celebrated Julian Assange’s freedom, but criticized the US plea deal as harmful.In a post to X, Paul said that he was “relieved” Assange was being reunited with his family, but argued that Assange’s plea deal was dangerous for first amendment rights and criminalizing to journalism.
      I’m relieved Assange is finally free and reuniting with his family after years of wrongful persecution. Yet, this plea deal sets a dangerous precedent, criminalizing journalism and damaging our First Amendment rights. The “Land of the Free” can and must do better.
      Follow the Guardian’s coverage of Julian Assange’s plea deal here.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, in a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
      Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
      Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
      Voting is ongoing in New York, where progressive congressman Jamaal Bowman is facing a tough challenge in the Democratic primary from George Latimer, the executive of Westchester county.On X, Bowman posted a video encouraging volunteers to come to his district and knock on doors to rally voter support, or to work phone banks:Latimer has meanwhile been calling attention to his endorsements. Here’s Ken Jenkins, the deputy executive of Westchester county, in New York City’s suburbs: More