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      Donald Trump and Mike Johnson hold ‘election integrity’ press conference – live

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      Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he would “absolutely” testify at his New York criminal trial, which is set to start next week. It is not, however, clear if he will actually do so.Asked if it was “risky” for him to testify, the former president responded, “I tell the truth.” Trump’s testimony has previously hurt him in court, and he was ordered by a jury earlier this year to pay millions to E Jean Carroll for defamation.Trump shared familiar grievances about his various criminal ongoing criminal trials before his “election integrity” press conference with House speaker Mike Johnson came to an end.Vice president Kamala Harris is now speaking in Tucson, Arizona to condemn the 1800s-era ban supported by the state supreme court this week:Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he would “absolutely” testify at his New York criminal trial, which is set to start next week. It is not, however, clear if he will actually do so.Asked if it was “risky” for him to testify, the former president responded, “I tell the truth.” Trump’s testimony has previously hurt him in court, and he was ordered by a jury earlier this year to pay millions to E Jean Carroll for defamation.Trump shared familiar grievances about his various criminal ongoing criminal trials before his “election integrity” press conference with House speaker Mike Johnson came to an end.Donald Trump, speaking at Mar-a-Lago, was asked why voters should trust that he won’t sign a federal abortion ban, when he had previously indicated support. He responded:
      We don’t need it any longer, because we broke Roe v Wade … and we gave it back to the states.”
      He claimed he does not support the unpopular Arizona state supreme court ruling this week supporting a near total abortion-ban dating back to 1864. When asked whether he is “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, he did gave a meandering, unclear response.House speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans are introducing legislation to “require proof of citizenship to vote” despite the fact that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote and there is no evidence of widespread migrant voting (or even many specific examples of this happening).Johnson hasn’t shared a ton of details about the mechanics of the legislation, but claimed that if “hundreds of thousands” of migrants cast votes, it could impact the result of the elections. Research has repeatedly shown that the systems in place have not allowed non-citizens to register or cast ballots.The former president has started his presser with his signature xenophobic rhetoric on immigration, which has become increasingly dehumanizing and viscous on the campaign trail. He has frequently called migrants “animals” and has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US, echoing Nazi speech and the racist, far-right Great Replacement Theory suggesting the left is promoting migration to replace white people.Trump’s introductory remarks included misinformation tying migrants to crime.As we await the joint press conference of Donald Trump and House speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago, here’s a refresher on some of the misleading and false information they have been promoting about non-citizens and voting:
      The two have said they are pushing legislation to ban non-citizens from voting – despite the fact that it is already illegal under federal law for people without US citizenship to cast a ballot.
      Trump has spread racist conspiracy theories on the campaign trail – claiming without evidence that migrants will try to illegally vote and steal the election for him, saying, “They can’t speak a word of English for the most part, but they’re signing them up.”
      As the Guardian’s democracy reporter Rachel Leingang reported: “There is no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting, nor are there even many examples of individual instances of the practice, despite strenuous efforts in some states to find these cases.”
      A study by the Brennan Center of the 2016 election found just 0.0001% of votes across 42 jurisdictions, with 23.5m votes, were suspected to be non-citizens voting, 30 incidents in total.
      The press conference is scheduled for 4.30pm local time. For more background, check out Leingang’s coverage from earlier this week:Donald Trump is set to meet House Republican speaker Mike Johnson in Mar-a-Lago on Friday where the two will hold a press conference on “election integrity”.Earlier on Friday, Johnson told reporters, “I don’t ever comment on my private conversations with President Trump, but I’m looking forward to going to Florida and spend some time with him.”Meanwhile, a senior Trump adviser told CNN that the two will “draw attention to” state proposals and lawsuits that would allow non-citizens to vote.Johnson’s meeting with Trump comes after the Republican speaker secured a crucial win in the House earlier on Friday after the Republican-led chamber voted to pass Fisa reauthorization. The legislation, which allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans by intelligence officials, is supported by Johnson but heavily opposed by hard-right Republicans and Democrats alike.The Wyoming Republican representative Harriet Hageman has also released a video address following the House’s passage of Fisa’s reauthorization.In her address, Hageman, who voted no, said:
      I was a no vote for the reason that the amendment that would have required the intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant to search the records of American citizens was not adopted.
      I truly believe that as members of Congress, it is our responsibility to ensure that all of these agencies are following the constitution and the protecting the civil liberties of American citizens yet that’s not what happened today.
      The Colorado Republican representative Lauren Boebert has released a video address following the House’s passage of Fisa’s reauthorization.In her address, Boebert said:
      … 86 Republicans betrayed you, the American people, today, saying the federal government does not need a warrant to start a query or illegally spy on you or tap your phones or whatever they want to do.
      Boebert went on to point to the Florida Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, who objected to the legislation’s passage and requested a vote to reconsider the legislation. As a result, the bill will not be able to head to the Senate until the House votes on the motion.
      That bill cannot be sent to the Senate until we take another vote on the warrant amendment for Fisa on Monday. That means we need you, the American people, putting pressure on these 86 Republicans who sold you out today,” said Boebert.
      Here is the list of the 86 House Republicans who voted against Arizona’s Republican representative Andy Biggs’ amendment to Fisa’s section 702 which called for the prohibition of warrantless surveillance:The Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar has criticized the House’s passage of the reauthorization of Fisa.In a series of tweets on Friday, Omar, who voted against the legislation, wrote:
      Section 702 still allows the government to collect communications of non-Americans abroad without a warrant. This has enabled warrantless surveillance that disproportionately targets Muslim Americans, African Americans, and other minority communities.
      She went on to add:
      True reform of surveillance powers needs warrants for searches of Americans, strict rules against racial and religious profiling [and] oversight to protect civil liberties.
      Anything less continues a system used to unfairly target Americans under the guise of counterterrorism.
      The 273-147 bipartisan vote reauthorizing Fisa is a win for the embattled House speaker, Mike Johnson, and comes at a time when he faces direct challenges to his leadership.Johnson was seen on the House floor speaking to the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who last month filed a motion to remove Johnson from the speakership.Greene later told reporters she and Johnson spoke about “all sorts of things”, CNN reported.Johnson said he and Greene “agree on our conservative philosophy”, adding:
      We just have different ideas sometimes on strategy. The important part of governing in a time of divided government like we have is communication with members and understanding the thought process behind it, that they have a say in it.
      Johnson is also scheduled to meet with Donald Trump in Florida later on Friday.The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights.Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups.One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly.Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.House conservatives who had blocked the Fisa bill earlier this week amid a push from Donald Trump allowed it to move forward on Friday after striking a deal with the speaker, Mike Johnson.Under the agreement, the new version of the bill would be a two-year reauthorization of section 702 of Fisa, cut down from the original proposed five years.This would mean that if Trump won the presidential election this year, the legislation would be up in time for Trump to overhaul Fisa laws next time around.The far-right Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, speaking to CNN earlier today, said:
      We just bought President Trump an at bat. The previous version of this bill would have kicked reauthorization beyond the Trump presidency. Now President Trump gets an at bat to fix the system that victimized him more than any other American.
      The House passed a two-year reauthorization of the nation’s warrantless surveillance program that had stalled earlier this week amid Republican resistance and after Donald Trump had urged GOP members to “kill” the law.In a 273 to 147 vote, lawmakers renewed section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), which is set to expire on 19 April, through 2026. The bill now heads to the Senate, which is expected to give it bipartisan approval.Section 702 allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.But the law is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the NSA to specifically target US citizens.The White House, intelligence chiefs and top lawmakers on the House intelligence committee have warned of potentially catastrophic effects of not reauthorizing the program.Friday’s vote marks the fourth attempt to pass the bill, which was blocked three times in the past five months by House Republicans bucking their party. Earlier this week, House conservatives refused to support the bill that the speaker, Mike Johnson, put forward.The Republican Ohio congressman Warren Davidson, has responded to the House vote to reauthorize Fisa, calling it a “sad day’.From Punchbowl news’ Mica Soellner:The House’s vote to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Service Act has passed.Following days of Republican infighting that has put House Republican speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership in a precarious position, Fisa passed with a vote of 273 yays and 147 nays in the Republican-led chamber.The vote marks a win for Johnson who has come under fire from hard-right Republicans including Georgia’s representative Marjorie Taylor Greene over his support for Fisa. Greene, who is opposed to Fisa, has repeatedly threatened to oust Johnson as he has “not lived up to a single one of his self-imposed tenets”.With the vote’s passage, the reauthorization of Fisa, specifically its amendments to section 702, allows for intelligence officials to extend their warrantless surveillance on electronic communications between Americans and foreigners abroad.Despite intelligence officials including the FBI director, Christopher Wray, arguing that a warrant requirement would “blind ourselves to intelligence in our holdings”, civil rights organizations such as the ACLU have criticized the legislation.“Given our nation’s history of abusing its surveillance authorities, and the secrecy surrounding the program, we should be concerned that section 702 is and will be used to disproportionately target disfavored groups, whether minority communities, political activists, or even journalists,” it said.A vote to amend Fisa’s section 702 to update the definition of foreign intelligence to help target international narcotics trafficking has passed.The amendment, introduced by Texas Republican representative Daniel Crenshaw, passed after 268 yays and 152 nays.A vote to amend Fisa’s section 702 to require the FBI to report to Congress on the number of queries conducted on Americans has passed.The amendment, introduced by Texas Republican representative Chip Roy, passed after 269 yays and 153 nays. More

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      Joe Biden will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers

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      The Biden administration will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers, the White House said on Friday, the latest in a series of debt cancellations.Joe Biden announced plans on Monday to ease student debt that would benefit at least 23 million Americans, addressing a key issue for young voters whose support he needs as he seeks re-election in November.Those plans include canceling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden’s administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers.The latest round of debt relief affects 277,000 Americans enrolled in the Save Plan, other borrowers enrolled in Income-Driven Repayment plans, and borrowers receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the White House said in a statement.It follows an announcement in March that $6bn in student loans would be canceled for 78,000 borrowers.The administration said on Friday it had approved $153bn in student debt relief for 4.3 million Americans.Biden, a Democrat, last year pledged to find other avenues for tackling debt relief after the US supreme court in June blocked his broader plan to cancel $430bn in student loan debt.The campaign of the former president Donald Trump, Biden’s Republican challenger in the White House race, in March criticized the student loan cancellation as a bailout that was done “without a single act of Congress”.The issue remains high on the agenda of younger voters, many of whom have concerns about Biden’s foreign policy on the war in Gaza and fault him for not achieving greater debt forgiveness.Republicans have called Biden’s student loan forgiveness approach an overreach of his authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while other borrowers received no such relief.Roughly half of federal student loan debt is held by people with a graduate degree, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank. An August 2023 report by the Department of Education said graduate students received the highest share – 47% – of federal student loan disbursements from 2021-22, even though they accounted for only 21% of all borrowers. More

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      How badly has US diplomacy been damaged by the war in Gaza? – podcast

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      Criticism of Israel’s war strategy has been growing in recent months, but last week there was a marked shift in tone from western leaders after seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli strike. The most notable change has come from the US president, Joe Biden, who this week turned on Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring Israel’s approach to the war a ‘mistake’.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to a former negotiator in the Middle East, Aaron David Miller, about whether pressure from within his own party will force Biden to stop supplying arms to the US’s biggest ally in the Middle East, and what the future holds for the relationship between the US and Israel when the war ends

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Tennessee legislature passes bill banning marriage between first cousins

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      The Republican-led Tennessee legislature has overwhelmingly voted to send the Republican governor, Bill Lee, a proposal that would ban marriage between first cousins.The statehouse cast a 75-2 vote on Thursday on the bill after the senate previously approved it without any opposition.A particularly vocal opponent, the Republican representative Gino Bulso, took up most of the debate time, as he argued for an amendment to allow first-cousin marriages if the couple first seeks counseling from a genetic counselor.In a previous committee hearing on the bill, Bulso lightheartedly shared a story about how his grandparents had been first cousins who came to the US from Italy in the 1920s, then traveled from Ohio to Tennessee to get married. He and other lawmakers laughed, and Bulso voted for the bill in that committee.Then, during Thursday’s floor debate, the socially conservative attorney argued that the risk of married cousins having a child with birth defects does not exist for gay couples. He contended there was no compelling government interest to ban same-sex cousins from getting married, saying that would run afoul of the US supreme court’s gay marriage decision.He also couched his argument by saying that he thought the supreme court decision on gay marriage was “grievously wrong”. Bulso has supported legislation aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, including a bill he is sponsoring that would largely ban displaying Pride flags in public school classrooms, which civil liberties advocates have contended runs afoul of the US constitution.“The question is: is there a public health issue with a male marrying a male first cousin?” Bulso said. “And I think the answer is no.”Ultimately, lawmakers voted down Bulso’s amendment and approved the ban proposed by the Democratic representative Darren Jernigan.“I hope it’s safe to say that in 2024, we can close this loophole,” Jernigan said.Jernigan said a 1960 attorney general’s opinion determined that an 1820s Tennessee law restricting some marriages among relatives does not prevent first cousins from marrying. He responded to Bulso that there was no violation to the gay marriage ruling in his bill.Monty Fritts, a Republican representative, was the other lawmaker to vote against the bill. More

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      John Bolton says he will write in Dick Cheney instead of voting for Biden

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump who wrote a tell-all book and now campaigns against him, will cast a write-in vote for the former vice-president Dick Cheney instead of Joe Biden this year – despite saying Trump must not be re-elected.Bemoaning Trump’s focus on the 2020 election, which he lost conclusively but falsely insists was won with electoral fraud, Bolton told CNN that four years ago: “I voted for Dick Cheney.“And I’ll vote for Dick Cheney again this November. He was a principled Reaganite conservative and he still is. Age is no longer a factor in American presidential politics, so his age doesn’t disqualify him.”Cheney, 83, has suffered five heart attacks, the first aged just 37. In 2001, at the beginning of his vice-presidency to George W Bush, he prepared a resignation letter lest he become too ill to do the job. He went on to be by most judgments the most powerful vice-president of all but also an architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and sparked chaos across the Middle East.Three years after leaving office, in 2012 and aged 71, Cheney was given a new heart.Bolton said: “I think he’d do an immensely better job than either Trump or Biden.”Biden is 81. Trump is 77. Both are subject to doubts about their mental and physical capacity to be president.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties. Biden does not.Trump was impeached twice, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and for inciting an insurrection in the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. Attempts to impeach Biden, over alleged corruption involving his son, have failed to produce evidence or momentum.On CNN, Bolton was asked if he had considered writing in Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who lost her seat in Congress over her opposition to Trump and who has flirted with a presidential run.Bolton said: “Well, I like Liz a lot. And, you know, maybe someday she’ll get my write-in vote too. But right now I’ll stick with her father.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope it sways the electorate and prevents both Trump and Biden from being the successful candidate and if I could start a nationwide write-in campaign for Dick Cheney, maybe I should do that.”Trump v Biden round two promises to be settled by razor-thin margins in a small number of battleground states. Both candidates fear the impact of third-party candidates or voters deserting the major party picks in any way.Among other anti-Trump conservatives, Bolton’s choice did not land well.“I think this is so wrong,” said Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman who ran for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2020.“Bolton believes Trump is unfit, yet he won’t vote for Joe Biden, the only person on the ballot this year who can keep Trump out of the White House. Instead he does this. This is wrong.” More

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      Joe Biden has gained an inch in the polls – and Democrats are jubilant | Emma Brockes

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      It is a mark of the bleakness of expectations among American Democrats that, this week, President Biden’s slight rise in the polls has been seized on as cause for giddiness. I did it myself. This was it! The beginning of the correction. Finally, the toll of various lawsuits and expensive judgments was coming home to roost in the form of a drag on Donald Trump’s popularity. New York magazine urged cautious optimism. NBC News lost its mind and used the word “behemoth” in a headline to toast Biden’s burgeoning campaign. All this based on national polling that puts Trump 0.7% ahead.Still, it’s better than the numbers were a few months ago. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground that flipped for Trump in 2016, a recent survey put Biden up 10 points, having led by only one in February. In a national poll conducted by NPR, Biden was actually two points ahead. (The same poll found that 40% of respondents reported being “open to changing their minds”. Who are these people and what is wrong with them?) But while older voters, particularly men, seemed to be moving en masse towards Biden, voters under 45 appeared less sure. Many young people still endorse Biden, but Trump, up a net 15 points in that demographic since 2020, is seemingly gaining ground with younger Americans.Of course, it’s possible that none of this means anything. A two-point lead is too narrow to predict an outcome. It does, however, fit with a sense that things look very different now to the way they did in 2020. In February, the Biden campaign raised $53m in donations, and has built a significant fundraising advantage over Trump. The former Republican president has seemed less visible – or more accurately, less audible – than he did at this point in the run up to the election four years ago. Some of this may be down to a sharpened ability on the part of the electorate simply to screen the man out. But there is a sense, also, of Trump’s attention residing elsewhere. While no individual legal judgment against him appears, ever, to discourage his supporters, Trump’s endless legal wrangles do at least seem to be making demands on his time.Next week, Trump will become the first former US president to face criminal proceedings, with the start of the so-called hush-money trial featuring Stormy Daniels. This is among the weaker of the cases against him, turning as it does on esoteric campaign finance rules that are unlikely to move voters. If anything, the burlesque quality of the episode is perfectly suited to Trump’s ability to spin negative coverage into a joke that delights his supporters; expect the word “porn star” to do a lot of heavy lifting.But there is bigger trouble ahead. Hanging over Trump is the recent $454m judgment against him in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, for which, in March, he was scheduled to pay a $175m bond. In the event, James questioned the paperwork provided by Trump’s insurance company, Knight Specialty Insurance, citing insufficient evidence of funds. A judge will hold a hearing on the probity of Trump’s bond payment on 22 April. If the bond is found inadequate, his assets may be seized.To list Biden’s successes against these liabilities of Trump’s as if the comparison falls within a regular framework is an exercise that plunges us back into the realm of the surreal. The US economy is strengthening, Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme has affected millions of lives and job growth has continued for a record 39 months. Meanwhile, last month, Trump predicted a “bloodbath for the country” if he lost the election, a word he repeated in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan last week.The difference this time is that we’ve heard it all before. In the spring of 2020, reporters were going to Trump rallies and sending back dispatches as if from the moon. Trump voters were given thousands of words to describe their predicaments and grudges. The normalisation of Trump has been largely a bad thing. But if the wild novelty of his campaign – the sheer entertainment value, to some, of his disruptive presidency – accounted for a good proportion of his success at the last election, we may hope, without getting too giddy, that this will be much less of a factor in November.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Appeal court judge denies Trump’s third attempt this week to delay hush money trial – live

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      The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.

      An appeals court judge in New York denied Donald Trump’s third attempt in three days to delay his hush-money criminal trial. Trump was denied his attempt to push back the 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
      Donald Trump said he believes the Arizona supreme court went too far with its ruling upholding a near-total abortion ban. Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, Trump said: “No.”
      In response, the Biden campaign said Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now” and warned that he has banned abortion “every chance he gets”.
      Asked what he would say to the people of Arizona, Joe Biden said: “Elect me. I’m in the … 21st century, not back then.” Biden also said he is “considering” a request from Australia to end the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
      Kamala Harris will visit Arizona on Friday as part of her nationwide reproductive freedoms tour. The White House said Harris would highlight “extremists” in the state who are pushing for abortion bans during her visit.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up withoperatives from Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.
      The House voted to block the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo before a 19 April expiration date.
      House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, a Trump campaign official said. Johnson met with Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday, marking the first time the two have spoken since Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership late last month. Greene described the meeting as “passionate”.
      The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.
      Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006, Reuters neatly recaps.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on Trump’s motion for him to recuse himself. The defense has argued that the judge’s daughter’s work for a political consulting firm with Democratic clients poses a conflict of interest.On Monday, a judge at the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.On Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers and family members of the judge and district attorney Alvin Bragg. Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel.The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.
      The hearing is over at the appeals court in New York where lawyers for Donald Trump are making the argument for the third time in three days that his hush-money criminal trial should be delayed.Jury selection will begin on Monday, so time is running out for Trump. We await the court’s decision.As colleague Cameron Joseph wrote earlier today, this follows a longstanding pattern of Trump freaking out as major threats approach, and his team responding with frenetic energy.Trump’s team throws everything it can at the wall, while Trump continues his tirade against presiding judge Juan Merchan – while pushing the bounds of the judge’s gag order.To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, in the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter put together by Cameron, sign up here.And you can read today’s here.Lawyers for Donald Trump have been back in court for almost the last hour trying to stave off the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, which begins on Monday.In a more technical legal take from NBC, the TV network explains the following:
      The court docket for the state Appellate Division shows Trump’s attorneys filed the challenge as a lawsuit invoking a provision of New York law known as Article 78. Article 78 challenges allow litigants, whether in ongoing litigation or otherwise, to seek relief from allegedly unlawful state or local government action.
      The documents were filed under seal. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it involved Judge Juan Merchan’s refusal to step aside from presiding over the case.
      Trump is a defendant in four criminal cases, two federal and two state. The hush-money case in New York is first up. The Georgia election interference case, the federal election interference case and the federal classified documents case do not have trial dates yet. The presidential election is on 5 November and Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, prior to his expected anointment at the Republican National Convention this summer.Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York appeals court judge on Wednesday that the former US president’s 15 April trial should be delayed because the judge has not yet ruled on their motion for him to recuse himself, in his third last-ditch attempt so far this week to delay the case, Reuters reports.The Republican presidential candidate is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.On Monday, a judge at a mid-level state appeals court known as the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.And on Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers, and family members of the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in the trial on Monday.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, told his allies about his plans to help his former rival during a private gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in south Florida, a DeSantis adviser told NBC News.DeSantis is “committed to helping Trump in any and every way”, said Texas businessman Roy Bailey, who attended the retreat. He said:
      I will follow the governor’s lead and I will do anything that he or President Trump ask me to do to help him win this election.
      A Trump campaign adviser said they were not aware that the Florida governor was going to start raising money for them but added that “everyone should be working towards defeating Joe Biden and electing President Trump”, NBC reported.Joe Biden, during a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, at the White House, said Japan’s attempts to set up a leader-to-leader summit with North Korea is “a good thing” as he reiterated his administration’s willingness for its own talks without preconditions.Biden said:
      We welcome the opportunity of our allies to initiate dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As I’ve said many times, we’re open to dialogue ourselves without preconditions with the DPRK.
      The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed openness to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but has never received a response.House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity”, a Trump campaign official said.The press conference is scheduled to take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, AP reported, citing a source as saying that Johnson and Trump will have a “joint announcement” on Friday.When the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Read the full analysis by the Guardian’s reproductive health and justice reporter: Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 electionThe House has voted to block the reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo ahead of a 19 April expiration date.House Republicans have been fiercely divided over how to handle the issue, and Wednesday’s vote comes months after a similar process to reform and reauthorize the program fell apart before it even reached the House floor.The law allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.It is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the National Security Agency to specifically target US citizens.Joe Biden was asked what he would say to the people of Arizona following the state supreme court’s ruling to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect.The president, referring to the 1864 abortion ban which passed when Arizona was still a territory, replied:
      Elect me. I’m in the 20th century … 21st century … not back then. They weren’t even a state.
      From the Washington Post’s JM Rieger:Cornel West’s announcement that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state.West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by three points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”. West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday”:
      I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors. And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.
      Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”. “How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said.
      So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up with operatives from Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.They fired an opening salvo on Tuesday, tearing into Donald Trump’s “boasting” about overturning federal abortion protections a day earlier, and assailing the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott for supporting Florida’s six-week ban that takes effect next month.Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor and former candidate for the party’s presidential nomination who signed the ban into law, also found himself under fire.The Florida supreme court ruled last week that the six-week ban will take effect on 1 May, as well as allowing a ballot measure for November that could see voters enshrine the right to the procedure into law.The moves instantly propelled the state to the forefront of the national abortion debate, and allowed Democrats, all but wiped out in Florida in successive national elections, to seize on the issue as vote-winner.Biden’s campaign has released a statement following Trump’s criticism of the Arizona abortion ban, warning that he has previously “[banned] abortion every chance he gets”.A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said that Trump will enact a national abortion ban given his track record, adding that the former president “proudly overturned Roe”.
      Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘“an incredible thing’” and ‘“pretty amazing’” just today.
      Trump lies constantly – about everything – but has one track record: banning abortion every chance he gets. The guy who wants to be a dictator on day one will use every tool at his disposal to ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress, and running away from reporters to his private jet like a coward doesn’t change that reality.
      Greene added that Johnson asked if she was “interested” in being apart of a group of advisers for him.Green said:
      I said, ‘I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.’ Right now. he does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine.
      Greene added that she told Johnson he “failed” on the latest government spending dealing and received “a lot of excuses” in return.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have concluded their meeting, with varying descriptions on how it went.The meeting, which lasted over an hour, came after Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership.Greene described the meeting as “passionate”, NBC News reported. When asked if the meeting was “productive”, Greene said:
      He’d have to completely change everything he’s done to be productive.
      Meanwhile, Johnson gave a more diplomatic answer, calling Greene a “friend” even as the two Republicans have differed on “strategy”.
      She’s a colleague. I’ve always considered her a friend … Marjorie and I don’t disagree on philosophy. We’re both conservatives. Sometimes we disagree on strategy.
      From Punchbowl News’ Mica Soellner:Trump also said that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, ABC News reported.Trump further clarified his position while speaking with reporters on Wednesday.In response to the question of if he would sign an abortion ban, Trump said “no” and shook his head.The latest remarks from Trump come as Democrats have warned that he would authorize an extreme ban if elected, noting how federal abortion rights were overturned due to supreme court judges secured during Trump’s administration. More

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      Xavier Becerra reportedly mulls cabinet exit to run for California governor

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      Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, is reportedly considering leaving his post to run for California governor.Becerra has discussed in private conversations his desire to leave Washington in November and join an already crowded field of candidates to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor, Politico reported, citing anonymous sources.Becerra’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.If he enters the 2026 governor’s race, Becerra will be facing off against several fellow Democrats and colleagues, including the lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis, former California senate president pro tempore Toni Atkins and state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond. The current California attorney general, Rob Bonta, is also expected to announce a run.Before taking his post as health and human services secretary, Becerra was California’s attorney general. He is the first Latino to hold both posts. Before that, he served in the US House of Representatives for 26 years. In the Biden administration, he had a role overseeing the Covid-19 response, including the vaccine rollout.Becerra’s critics have decried his lack of public health training and experience; he is an attorney by training and a longtime politician who helped pass the Affordable Care Act into law. But he has nonetheless carved out a role in defending and promoting the administration’s policies to lower drug prices and protect the right to abortion.In recent weeks, he has made visits across the country highlighting the Biden administration’s reproductive rights agenda before the 2024 election.“No woman today should fear [not having] access to the care that she needs. President Biden has made that clear,” Becerra told supporters in Florida last week. He characterized the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban as “medical apartheid”.Becerra sidestepped questions about a gubernatorial run. “It’s a blessing to hear that someone is saying that I’m running for governor because I don’t know who they are,” he told Politico. “I am secretary of HHS and, by law, I have to be secretary of HHS and nothing else. So I’m gonna do my job as best I can. It’s a thrill – I think my mom would be happy to hear that someone thinks I can run for governor as well.” More