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      Trump hush-money sentencing delayed until September – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders after his disastrous debate performance last week.The meeting with governors is likely to be mostly virtual, according to Associated Press, and marks the strongest indication yet that Biden is attempting to reassure those in his own party that he is capable of continuing his reelection campaign.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York postponed his sentencing to 18 September, agreeing to pause proceedings to weigh whether the supreme court’s recent ruling on immunity could imperil the conviction.
      The first congressional Democrat broke ranks and called on Joe Biden to withdraw his presidential candidacy following last week’s calamitous debate performance. Lloyd Doggett, a House member for Texas, became the first Democrat in the House of Representative to urge the president to step aside.
      Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said. The comments came after Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, admitted that questions over whether Biden’s debate performance were “an episode” or “a condition” were legitimate.
      Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders.
      Biden will sit down for his first TV interview since his debate performance. The interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos will air on Friday.
      The former New York City mayor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, was disbarred in New York after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.
      People who have spent time with Joe Biden over recent months have said that the 81-year-old president’s lapses appear to have grown “more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome”, according to a New York Times report.Several current and former officials have noticed that Biden has increasingly appeared “confused or listless”, with recent moments of disorientation generating concern among advisers and allies, the report said. According to the report:
      Last week’s debate prompted some around him to express concern that the decline had accelerated lately. Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him.
      The Democratic congressional candidate for Colorado, Adam Frisch, has called on Joe Biden to step aside.Frisch, who is running for Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, said in a statement on Tuesday that neither Biden nor Donald Trump is “fit for office”.“We need a President that can unite America to realize our nation’s unlimited potential,” Frisch said, adding:
      We deserve better. President Biden should do what’s best for the country and withdraw from the race.
      Joe Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said, after the president’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last week.The White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in a briefing with reporters today, said Biden had a cold and a “hoarse voice” during the debate, as she admitted “it was a bad night”.Asked if there was any consideration given to releasing a more robust set of medical records, Jean-Pierre replied:
      We have been transparent. We have released thorough reports from his medical team every year since he’s been in office.
      Asked about former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments earlier today in which she said both Biden and Trump should provide the public with test results regarding physical and mental health, the White House spokesperson said:
      His medical team have said it is not warranted. In this case, we have put forward a thorough, transparent annual report on his health. They have said that is not warranted. It is not necessary.
      Here’s a look at the announcement by judge Juan Merchan in which he postpones Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case to 18 September, as shared by Law360’s Frank G. Runyeon.Merchan’s announcement comes after Manhattan prosecutors earlier today said they did not oppose a request by Trump’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing, originally set for 11 July.Trump’s lawyers asked to have the case re-evaluated, and the sentencing postponed, in light of the supreme court’s decision on Monday that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts undertaken in office.Judges typically grant motions when they are unopposed. The postponement marks an unexpected setback for prosecutors and for the prospect of criminal accountability for Trump before the 2024 election, given that the other cases are indefinitely delayed.Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case has been postponed to September after the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, agreed to consider the possible impact of Monday’s supreme court ruling on presidential immunity.Trump became the first US president to be criminally convicted last month when a Manhattan jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an illicit hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The sentencing had previously been set for 11 July.The postponement sets the sentencing for 18 September, well after the Republican National Convention, where Trump will formally to accept the party’s presidential nomination.Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, has said that questions over Joe Biden’s ability to serve after his debate performance were “legitimate”.Pelosi, in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, backed Biden’s achievements and said the president “has a vision. He has knowledge. He has judgment. He has a strategic thinking and the rest.”But she conceded there was “mixed” feedback from Democratic donors about whether Biden was able to run for another term in office, adding that Donald Trump should be given the same scrutiny. She said:
      I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘is this an episode or is this a condition?’ And so when people ask that question, it’s legitimate, of both candidates.
      Julián Castro, the former housing secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that Joe Biden should step aside, and that he believes there are stronger options out there for Democrats, including Kamala Harris.Castro, in an interview with MSNBC today, said:
      I believe that another Democrat would have a better shot at beating Trump and because, as Congressman Doggett said in his statement that it’s too risky to let Donald Trump walk into this in November, … I think the Democrats would do well to find a different candidate.
      Castro, who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, criticized Biden shortly after the president’s debate performance last week.“Tonight was completely predictable,” Castro told reporters after the debate. Biden “had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that”, he said, adding that the president had “seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump”.Joe Biden said in his remarks in Washington DC, moments ago that extreme weather is affecting everyone across the US “and beyond”.He noted the heat records that have been being “shattered” in the west and south-west in the early summer, in places such as Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, and said that extreme heat is the primary weather-related killer in the US.He also mentioned deadly Hurricane Beryl that’s roaring across the Caribbean right now as the earliest category 5 hurricane on record to brew out of the Atlantic.“Ignoring climate change is deadly, dangerous and irresponsible,” he said.The US president spelled out further action his administration plans to take in five areas: federal safety standards for excessive heat in the workplace; greater resilience to withstand flooding; more funding for communities to take action to protect against extreme weather; an Environmental Protection Agency report to be prepared showing “the continued impacts of climate change on the health of the American people” and a White House summit later this summer on the issue of extreme heat.Joe Biden has just given a straightforward, short speech on weather and climate at an event in Washington, DC.It’s not a press conference or anything where, so far, there has been any scope for journalists to question the US president, he is at the city’s emergency operations center, with the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser.And he did not make any reference in his remarks to the political heat he’s getting after his feeble debate performance last week that only topped off months of concern about his advanced age and ability to campaign for and execute the job of president for a second term.Reading from a teleprompter and sounding assertive, though with the odd verbal stumble, Biden spelled out initiatives his administration is taking to deal with extreme weather in the US, especially heat and flooding, that is exacerbated by the human-driven climate crisis.And he criticized “my predecessor and the MAGA Republicans” for undermining action on climate change and planning to undo Biden’s actions if Donald Trump regains the White House this November.“They still deny climate change even exists – they must be living in a hold somewhere – at the expense of the safety of their constituents,” Biden said, adding: “It’s not only outrageous, it’s also willfully stupid…dumb.” More

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      Texas congressman becomes first House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw

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      The first congressional Democrat has broken ranks and called on Joe Biden to withdraw his presidential candidacy following last week’s calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump.Lloyd Doggett, a House member for Texas, became the first Democrat in the House of Representative to urge the president to stop aside amid continuing signs of underlying alarm in the wider party over his electability triggered by his faltering display in Atlanta.As senior party figures continued to offer Biden public support even amid fevered behind-the-scenes concern, Doggett brought his own misgivings into the open, saying he had hoped last week’s debate “would give some momentum” to the president’s stagnant poll ratings in key battleground states.“It did not,” he said. “Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”He urged Biden to follow the path of a previous Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, and announce that he would not accept the party’s nomination as candidate – a potential move commentators have dubbed as an “LBJ moment” (after Johnson’s full initials).“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” Doggett said. “President Biden should do the same.”Johnson withdrew from the 1968 election race amid a a popular groundswell of opposition to the war in Vietnam and primary challengers in his own party, including from Robert F Kennedy, whose son is running as an independent candidate in the 2024 election and polling at levels that could further hurt Biden in a close race.Doggett – at 77, just four years younger than the 81-year-old president – praised Biden’s legislative achievements in office but said the time had come to hand over to a younger generation, pointing out that he had pledged during the 2020 election campaign to be a transitional figure.“While much of his work has been transformational, he pledged to be transitional,” he said. “He has the opportunity to encourage a new generation of leaders from whom a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process.“My decision to make these strong reservations public is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved.“Recognising that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.”It remains to be seen if Doggett’s public stance will encourage other worried Democrats to put their heads above the parapet amid a steady drip of anecdotal and polling evidence that last Thursday’s CNN debate has had a corrosive effect on the president’s standing.A new poll in New Hampshire – a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020 – showed him now two points behind Trump since the debate.While Biden’s campaign have tried to frame the debate as one-off and pledged a fierce fightback, there have been mutterings of discontent within Democrat ranks.State governors – some of whom have been touted as potential replacements – have reportedly complained that Biden has not personally reached out to them since the debate, while similar gripes have been attributed to Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate respectively.Other ostensibly supportive figures, including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn, a representative from South Carolina, have issued statements that hinted at ambivalence.“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate – of both candidates,” Pelosi told MSNBC, adding that she heard “mixed” views on whether Biden was fit for the presidential campaign.In another sign of simmering discontent, Peter Welch, a Democratic senator for Vermont, criticised the Biden campaign for dismissing concerns over the president’s age as “bedwetters”.“But that’s the discussion we have to have,” he told Semafor. “It has to be from the top levels of the Biden campaign to precinct captains in the South Side of Chicago. … The campaign has raised the concerns themselves … So then to be dismissive of others who raise those concerns, I think it’s inappropriate.” More

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      House Democrat pledges amendment to reverse Trump immunity ruling

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      A Democratic congressman is calling for a new constitutional amendment to reverse the supreme court’s ruling granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a decision that could hamstring the federal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Congressman Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, raised the idea on Monday, just hours after the supreme court issued its 6-3 decision, which fell along ideological lines.“I will introduce a constitutional amendment to reverse Scotus’s harmful decision and ensure that no president is above the law,” Morelle wrote on X. “This amendment will do what Scotus failed to do – prioritize our democracy.”But Morelle’s plan is highly unlikely to succeed. A constitutional amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate or by a constitutional convention, which may be called by two-thirds of state legislatures.With Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and a majority of state legislative chambers, that hurdle appears impossible to overcome. Republicans largely celebrated the court’s ruling as a win for the rule of law, despite legal experts’ warnings that the decision could set a dangerous precedent for future presidents.“Today’s ruling by the court is a victory for former president Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, said on Monday.Even if a two-thirds majority of Congress members did somehow come together to propose Morelle’s suggested amendment, it would need to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures to be added to the constitution. Given that Democrats control just 41% of state legislative chambers, ratification efforts would almost certainly prove futile.With few options to challenge the court’s ruling, Democrats seem intent on turning the immunity case into a campaign issue. As he addressed the court’s decision on Monday evening, Joe Biden called on Americans to prevent Trump from returning to the White House at a time when “he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases”.“Now the American people have to do what the court should have been willing to do and will not,” Biden said. “The American people have to render a judgement about Donald Trump’s behavior.” More

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      Joe Biden is taking advice from his son, Hunter. This does not inspire confidence | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The moment Joe Biden walked off the debate stage last Thursday night, the clock started ticking. There was a small window of time after the president’s disastrous performance in which he could have made a dignified exit from the 2024 race. He could have called a press conference on Monday morning and said he had carefully assessed the calls made by the New York Times editorial board and high-profile pundits and political consultants urging him to step down. He could have said he had decided it was the best thing to do for the future of the US and democracy itself. Biden would have looked selfless; a man putting country before ego. The Democratic party could have gone swiftly to work, rallying behind a replacement.I am not saying this scenario would have been simple. Of course not. It would have been a mess! But not as much of a mess as the situation we find ourselves in now. The window for a dignified exit has passed. Doubts about Biden’s cognitive fitness, meanwhile, are only increasing. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll, 72% of registered voters don’t think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president; the same percentage don’t think he should be running for president. Among Democratic registered voters, 46% don’t think he should be running for president, up from 36% earlier this year.Biden disagrees. The president, it seems, has dug in his heels and is determined to stay the course for a rematch with Donald Trump. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is apparently on board with making this happen. Bloomberg reported on Monday afternoon that the DNC is considering formally nominating Biden as early as mid-July to “stamp out intraparty chatter of replacing him”.The president’s family, a major influence on him, reportedly bear much responsibility for this decision. The Biden clan gathered at Camp David on Sunday and, according to multiple reports, urged him to “keep fighting”. The New York Times stated: “One of the strongest voices imploring Mr Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son, Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice.” Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence: Hunter has poor judgment and a well-documented history of scandals. (To be clear, I am not sneering at his drug use; addicts deserve empathy. Drugs aside, his questionable business dealings and chaotic personal life make it difficult to look at Hunter and think: “Yeah, that’s a guy I should take advice from.”)Fingers are not just being pointed at Hunter. The conservative pundit Tucker Carlson reportedly told his audience that Jill Biden is keeping her husband away from people who would convince him to drop out. Meanwhile, the billionaire Bill Ackman ranted on X that Jill Biden doesn’t want to give up the perks of being first lady and is forcing her husband to stay on. This narrative may be in bad faith and of questionable veracity. Still, it doesn’t help that the first lady is on the cover of the July issue of Vogue, which dropped on Monday, with her nose in the air alongside the words: “We will decide our future.” It’s terrible timing and conservative commentators are gleefully using this to argue that the Biden family are power-hungry autocrats.To be fair, it is not just Biden’s family who don’t think he should drop out. He still has plenty of cheerleaders including Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the results of nine out of the 10 most recent presidential elections through his 13 “keys” to the White House. Lichtman recently told CNN calls to replace Biden are “foolhardy nonsense”. Lichtman says debate performance isn’t a factor that determines the outcome of an election: “Debate performances can be overcome.”Of course, one bad debate performance can be overcome. But Biden has been battling questions about his mental and physical fitness for a long time; it will take more than a few perky public performances to put people’s minds at rest. Then there are Biden’s other challenges. The president had already alienated progressives because of his unconscionable Gaza policy. Yes, many progressives will still hold their nose and vote for him in November, but will they campaign for him? Will they sacrifice spare hours to knock on doors and staff the phonelines for a man nicknamed Genocide Joe? Will they devote unpaid time to convincing the important undecided voting bloc that Biden is up to the job? I don’t think so. The Democratic party has treated activists and young progressives with disdain. Now, more than ever, they will need their energy and enthusiasm to win. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘Waiting in the wings’: as Biden stumbles, Gavin Newsom’s name is on everyone’s lips

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      To paraphrase Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch, lately it’s been “Newsom, Newsom, Newsom” all day long.He’s been at the Vatican for a climate summit, and in Alpharetta, Georgia, for a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s all over the TV, actually – on Fox News and MSNBC, and in advertisements airing in Tennessee.And ever since Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance at the first presidential debate on CNN, his name has popped up in nearly every list of possible successors. With just four months to go until the presidential election, chances that the president would step aside now are exceedingly remote – but that hasn’t stopped the speculation. Online political betting odds that Gavin Newsom, the California governor, would end up at the top of the presidential ticket this year tripled to a one-in-four chance last week.For the ambitious governor of the most populous US state, this crowning moment has been a long time in the making. For years, Newsom’s flair for a photo op and steady pursuit of network news spots have fueled speculation about his presidential ambitions, and sparked scepticism among constituents who’d rather he stick to his day job. Now, it seems, the man who has spent the last several years seeking a national stage has finally found himself at the centre of one.“I think it’s been clear that he’s been waiting in the wings for some time,” said Emily Hoeven, an opinion columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and politics reporter who has followed Newsom’s career closely. “But I think that now there is a far bigger opening for him than there ever has been.”View image in fullscreenThe governor was swarmed by the press the moment the debate ended. “It was like human piranhas descending on the governor after the end of this debate,” marvelled MSNBC host Alex Wagner, as she settled in for a post-debate interview with him.Newsom, who is top surrogate for Biden’s 2024 campaign, waved away the buzz about whether he would replace Biden on the Democratic ticket. When Wagner asked about growing calls for Biden to step down, he quickly said such talk was “unhelpful and unnecessary” – before highlighting Biden’s record on the economy and abortion, and the threats his opponent poses to the continuation of US democracy.“I think what you’ve seen is this, what Gavin Newsom has to say is really not so different from what Joe Biden has to say,” said Bill Whalen, a policy fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Palo Alto, California. “But he takes Joe Biden’s message, and he delivers it much more effectively.”For Democrats across the US, Whalen said, Newsom is living out a dream scenario – leading a blue state with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, where he can easily pass liberal reforms that would be nearly impossible to get through in other states or at a national level. “A lot of what Democrats would love to do nationally, California is doing,” Whalen said.It has also helped that as California governor – one who handily defeated a recall campaign in 2021 – Newsom has amassed formidable political funds that he has been using not only to aid other Democratic candidates including Biden, but also his own political aspirations. Since his easy re-election in 2022, the governor has funnelled millions in campaign funds towards ads and appearances outside his home state.Whether he can translate that momentum into a successful national campaign remains uncertain, Whalen and other political analysts said.View image in fullscreenWhile he has been busy pursuing the national limelight, his reputation at home has soured. Only 47% of likely voters in California approved of his job performance in a Public Policy Institute of California survey in June, down from 57% in March 2023.It may not help Newsom’s case that amid recent budget shortages, the state has been grappling with a spiralling homelessness crisis, an underperforming education system and growing economic inequality.“I think that his actions demonstrate that his priorities are increasingly lying outside of California,” said Hoeven. “And I think that that is frustrating to Californians who obviously did not elect him to be the president.”In recent months, Newsom has appeared to abandon some of his more progressive political stances – including backtracking on support for supervised injection sites, vetoing a bill to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms and occasionally siding with Republicans and against allies in the legislature – which some supporters have perceived as an appeal to swing voters.But it remains unclear whether the liberal governor of a blue state will ever truly have what it takes to amass national support in an increasingly divided country. And while his powerful political connections have helped his star rise in California, it is unclear whether he will be able to shed a certain elitist affect that has dogged his campaigns here.Then there’s the enduring image that’s haunted the governor’s political career for two decades: a photograph of Newsom stretched across a luxurious rug in Ann Getty’s penthouse, with his ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle – who is now a rightwing TV personality and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.View image in fullscreenIt will be easy for opponents to hearken back to the governor’s infamously ill-timed visit to the Michelin-starred French Laundry restaurant amid a Covid-19 surge, or to point out his family’s decision to move, part-time, from California’s capitol in Sacramento to the wealthy Bay Area enclave of Marin – to enrol their child in a private academy.In a recent bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live, comedian Josh Meyers plays “your lovin’ Govin” in a fake political ad where Meyers-as-Newsom attempts a bench press in his signature startup-chic navy business jacket and half-buttoned white shirt while promoting “lunar power”. He huffs a vape and when someone asks for a hit he says: “Sure, but I only vape merlot” without breaking out of his toothpaste commercial smile.“There is such a thing as perhaps being too attractive, or, more to the point, looking like the person whose photo comes with the new wallet that you buy at the department store,” said Whalen. “That’s Gavin Newsom.”Hoeven thinks back to Newsom’s inauguration in 2023, when he led what was billed as an “anti-January 6 march to the capitol”. He was meant to march about a quarter-mile, alongside supporters, down to the governor’s office. “But in reality, there were these massive fences up on either side of the promenade, basically, so the average person could not participate or really even watch the parade,” she recalled.The governor walked only a little bit, before getting into a car. “It was emblematic of some of the ways that he’s failed to connect, I think, with the average person,” she said. More

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      Democrats warn of ‘dangerous precedent’ set by Trump ruling; Republican House speaker calls decision ‘common sense’ – as it happened

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      Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, has warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      No one, including the twice-impeached former president, should be above the law. The constitution is sacredly obligatory upon all. That’s what makes America special.
      The supreme court ruled on Monday that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, a major victory for Donald Trump that guts the 2020 election subversion case against him and any prospect of a trial before November.Here’s a recap of what happened today:
      In a 6-3 decision, the court found that presidents were protected from prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of his office, but could face charges for unofficial conduct.
      Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said a former president is entitled to “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority”.
      Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion, warned that a consequence of the ruling is that “the President is now a king above the law”. The decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law”, she added.
      Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and many Republicans.
      But Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy. “This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision was “an assault on American democracy”, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The supreme court’s decision to confer broad immunity to former presidents is likely to eviscerate numerous parts of the criminal prosecution against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, to apply a three-part test to decide which actions were protected – but Chief Justice John Roberts pre-emptively made clear that some were definitively out.On some of the closer calls, Roberts also gave suggestions on behalf of the majority conservative opinion, which could bear on Chutkan when she eventually weighs each allegation line by line and decides whether it can be introduced in any future trial.Most crucially for special counsel Jack Smith, his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official and struck from the case, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, including two counts of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, conspiring to defraud the government and conspiring to disenfranchise voters.The alleged illegal conduct came in five categories: Trump pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud, Trump pressing his vice-president to return him to the White House, Trump trying to obstruct Congress from certifying the election, Trump giving a speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors .Roberts undercut at least three of the five alleged categories in the opinion.Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, was also inspired by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in today’s immunity ruling.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Mary Trump posted to X, quoting Sotomayor, accompanied by a link selling T-shirts inspired by the justice’s dissent.The supreme court has wrapped up its 2023-2024 term, issuing a string of blockbuster decisions with enormous implications for American democracy, individual and civil rights, and the basic functioning of the federal government.Once again, the conservative supermajority, with half its justices appointed by Donald Trump, was in the driver’s seat – strengthening the power of the presidency in its immunity ruling for Trump, and overturning precedent in a dramatic blow to the administrative state.There were crumbs of comfort for liberals, including a gun rights ruling related to domestic violence and a unanimous decision upholding access to a key abortion pill, but what the US public increasingly sees as an activist court majority continues in full swing.Read our full report on the supreme court’s biggest cases this term.Hillary Clinton, responding to the supreme court’s immunity ruling, said it will be up to the American people to hold Donald Trump accountable in the November election.Posting to X, Clinton said she agreed with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion, in which she said that she had “fear for our democracy”.Former attorney general Eric Holder was also highly critical of the supreme court ruling, warning that American democracy has been “gravely wounded” as a result.Posting to X, Holder described the decision as “absurd and dangerous”.New York congressman Jerrold Nadler, a ranking member of the House judiciary committee, has described the supreme court’s immunity decision as “revolutionary”.The ruling is “far cry from the democracy envisioned by our founding fathers”, Nadler said in a statement.
      Once again, Donald Trump’s extremist rightwing court has come to his rescue, dramatically expanding the power of the presidency and removing any fear of prosecution for criminal acts committed using official power. If elected to a second term, this decision has set the stage for an unchecked dictatorship by the former president, who has already made clear his intentions to weaponize the presidency to seek revenge on his political opponents.
      Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, said it was “disgraceful” that justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito “brazenly” refused to recuse themselves from the Trump immunity case.The supreme court’s decision “threatens the rule of law”, Durbin wrote in a series of posts on X responding to the ruling.In May, Alito declined to recuse himself from cases related to Donald Trump and his 2020 election defeat following reports that flags used to support the “Stop the Steal” movement had been displayed at his homes.Calls for Thomas to recuse himself from the immunity case were also ignored, after critics cited past efforts by the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, to reverse the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor.Nancy Pelosi said the supreme court has “gone rogue” with today’s immunity ruling, saying it was “violating the foundational American principle that no one is above the law”.Posting to X, the former House speaker said:
      The former president’s claim of total presidential immunity is an insult to the vision of our founders, who declared independence from a King.
      House Republicans on Monday filed a lawsuit against the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, for the audio recording of Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel in his classified documents case, asking the courts to enforce their subpoena and reject the White House’s effort to withhold the materials from Congress, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit filed by the House judiciary committee marks Republicans’ latest broadside against the justice department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign. The legal action comes weeks after the White House blocked Garland from releasing the audio recording to Congress by asserting executive privilege.Republicans in the House responded by voting to make Garland the third attorney general in US history to be held in contempt of Congress. But the justice department refused to take up the contempt referral, citing the agency’s “longstanding position and uniform practice” to not prosecute officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.The lawsuit states that House speaker Mike Johnson made a “last-ditch effort” last week to Garland to resolve the issue without taking legal action but the attorney general referred the Republicans to the White House, which rebuffed the “effort to find a solution to this impasse”.Garland has defended the justice department, saying officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to the committees about special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation, including a transcript of Biden’s interview with him.Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, said on Monday she would use a new role as chair of the US-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) to step up her husband’s struggle against Russian president Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.The New York-based HRF said in a statement on Monday it had appointed Navalnaya to succeed former world chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov as chair of the non-profit rights group, which provides humanitarian aid to Ukraine and runs campaigns against authoritarian leaders around the world.Navalnaya, who is located outside Russia and had two children with Navalny, accused Putin of having her husband murdered. The Kremlin denied the allegation.Navalnaya said after her husband’s death that she wanted to continue his work and has since met world leaders and suggested sanctions she believes would hasten the end of the current political system in Russia.Navalnaya, 47, said in the HRF statement:
      As someone who has personally witnessed the threat dictatorships pose to our loved ones and the world at large, I am deeply honored to take on the role of chair of the Human Rights Foundation.
      Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden sued conservative news outlet Fox News on Monday for publishing nude photos and videos of him in a fictionalized “mock trial” show focused on his foreign business dealings, Reuters reports.Hunter Biden alleges Fox violated New York state’s so-called revenge porn law, which makes it illegal to publish intimate images of a person without their consent. He is also suing for unjust enrichment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Fox aired The Trial of Hunter Biden: A Mock Trial for the American People on its Fox Nation streaming platform in October 2022 but later took it down under threat of a lawsuit by Biden’s attorneys.Fox News said in a statement:
      This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit.
      It only removed the program out of an abundance of caution, it said.Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The series depicted a fictional trial of Hunter Biden on illegal foreign lobbying and bribery charges, crimes he has never been indicted for.Americans are digesting the monumental supreme court decision this morning that’s dominating the news. And Trump sidekick Steve Bannon has reported to a prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month term for contempt of Congress. There’s no shortage of US politics happenings, so stay tuned.Here’s where things stand:
      Some prominent Democrats in the House have blasted the US supreme court ruling that US presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for “official” acts taken while in office. Progressive caucus chair and Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called it “another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court” while New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision is “an assault on American democracy”.
      And Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding that “the framers of the constitution … did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity”.
      But Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, welcomed the immunity decision. He said it was a victory for Donald Trump “and all future presidents” and, on the principle, added that the court “clearly stated that presidents are entitled to immunity for their official acts. This decision is based on the obviously unique power and position of the presidency, and comports with the constitution and common sense.”
      Donald Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The three liberal justices on the US supreme court, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all dissented from the majority opinion granting US presidents immunity for “official acts” while in office. Sotomayor wrote the dissent, saying: “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
      Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform shortly after the court issued its decision on his immunity case, writing: “Big win for our constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American.”
      The US supreme court ruled that US presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from prosecution for “official acts”. The court held that a former president – in this case Donald Trump – has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers. The decision fell along party lines, with six conservative justices ruling against three liberal ones. But the court also ruled that former presidents are not entitled to immunity from prosecution for actions taken in a private capacity. It’s now down to interpretation which acts are which.
      Pramila Jayapal, the Democratic representative for Washington, has described the supreme court’s immunity ruling as a “bad decision”.Posting on X, she wrote:
      This is another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court that strips protections for people and empowers conservative special interests. More

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      Sotomayor says immunity ruling makes a president ‘king above the law’

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      In a stark dissent from the conservative-majority US supreme court’s opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was a “mockery” that makes a president a “king above the law”.The court ruled Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for “official acts” he took while president, setting up tests for which of the federal criminal charges over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election are considered official and sending the case back to a lower court to decide.“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”Sotomayor, writing in a scathing tone, said the court would effectively allow presidents to commit clear crimes without punishment, an expansion of presidential powers that puts democracy at risk. She and fellow liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson lay out hypothetical ways the court’s ruling could create crises in the US.“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote.“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.“Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”Until now, presidents have operated under the assumption that their actions were not immune from criminal prosecution if they used their office, and the trappings of their office, to commit crimes, she writes. But going forward, presidents won’t be so concerned.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” she concluded.Jackson wrote a separate dissent, though noted that she “agree[s] with every word of her powerful dissent,” and wanted to lay out the “theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States”.The ruling changes the balance of power among the three branches of government and gets rid of the ability to deter presidents from abusing their power, “to the detriment of us all”, Jackson wrote. The “practical consequences” of the majority decision “are a five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance and the normal operations of our Government”.In a footnote in her dissent, Jackson games out the “oddity” of deciding whether a president is immune from prosecution based on the character of a president’s powers.“While the President may have the authority to decide to remove the Attorney General, for example, the question here is whether the President has the option to remove the Attorney General by, say, poisoning him to death,” Jackson wrote. “Put another way, the issue here is not whether the President has exclusive removal power, but whether a generally applicable criminal law prohibiting murder can restrict how the President exercises that authority.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, claims it hems in presidential immunity in some ways, Sotomayor takes that idea to task. The majority opinion is an “embrace of the most far-reaching view of Presidential immunity on offer”. No one has claimed that purely private acts would be immune from prosecution, she writes, making their exclusion an “unremarkable proposition”.The court effectively expanded what is considered an official act in a way that will capture events beyond a presidential’s core duties and ensnare unofficial acts, she claims. And a prohibition on bringing up these official acts during a prosecution of unofficial acts “deprives these prosecutions of any teeth”.She lays out an example: “For instance, the majority struggles with classifying whether a President’s speech is in his capacity as President (official act) or as a candidate (unofficial act). Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.”The majority wrote that immunity is necessary because it allows the nation’s top elected official to execute his duties “fearlessly and fairly” and take “bold and unhesitating action” without the threat of looming prosecution. But, Sotomayor hits back, it’s more dangerous for a president to feel empowered to break the law.“I am deeply troubled by the idea, inherent in the majority’s opinion, that our Nation loses something valuable when the President is forced to operate within the confines of federal criminal law.”The testy dissent was replete with digs at the conservative-dominated court, which, aided by justices Trump appointed when he was in office, now counts just three liberal justices and has moved the country further to the right in recent years as a result.Sotomayor directs readers to “feel free to skip over those pages of the majority’s opinion” about one area in the conservatives’ arguments. She said the majority “invents an atextual, ahistorical, and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law”. The conservatives relied on “little more than its own misguided wisdom”, she wrote. She added that “it seems history matters to this Court only when it is convenient.”“In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them,” she wrote. More

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      Republicans hail Trump immunity ruling as Democrats warn ‘we will not have a democracy’

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      While Republicans applauded the supreme court’s decision to grant Donald Trump immunity for official acts undertaken as president, Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy.The court’s six conservative justices ruled that presidents have “absolute immunity” for official acts but no immunity from unofficial acts. The distinction could hamper the federal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and makes it even less likely that the case will go to trial before election day in November.Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson.“Today’s ruling by the court is a victory for former President Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” Johnson said.“As President Trump has repeatedly said, the American people, not President Biden’s bureaucrats, will decide the November 5 election.”Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, weighed in as well. “Hyper-partisan prosecutors like Jack Smith cannot weaponize the rule of law to go after the administration’s chief political rival, and we hope that the left will stop its attacks on President Trump and uphold democratic norms,” Jordan said.Democrats, meanwhile, condemned the decision as a disgrace, describing it as an attack on the separation of powers and a black mark on the supreme court’s reputation.“This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader.“This disgraceful decision by the Maga supreme court – which is comprised of three justices appointed by Mr Trump himself – enables the former president to weaken our democracy by breaking the law. This decision undermines the credibility of the supreme court, and suggests that political influence trumps all in our courts today.”Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said the ruling “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding: “The Framers of the constitution envisioned a democracy governed by the rule of law and the consent of the American people. They did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity.”Legal experts voiced similar concerns about the ruling’s implications, highlighting liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning that the decision could enable a future president to claim immunity for blatantly illegal acts such as ordering the assassination of a political rival or organizing a military coup to stay in power.“Scotus’s immunity decision will in time rank as among the court’s worst decisions in its many year history,” Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Any US president can now violate the law to remain in power as long as he cloaks it in the trappings of his office.”Joyce Alene, a law professor at the University of Alabama, concluded: “It’s up to American voters. We held Trump accountable at the polls in 2020 [and] must do it again in 2024. Because the supreme court won’t.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJoe Biden’s campaign team agreed that the ruling only heightened the stakes of the presidential race, and they urged voters to reject Trump in November to avoid a repeat of the violence seen on 6 January 2021.On a Biden campaign press call, the congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said the ruling underscored how Trump’s re-election would endanger Americans’ fundamental freedoms.“We’re talking about reproductive freedom, freedom to access the ballot box, freedom to love who you want, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to live the life you want to live,” Crockett said. “We can’t underestimate Donald Trump’s threat or his dark vision for our future.”Harry Dunn, a former US Capitol police officer who working during the January 6 insurrection, told reporters that the ruling amplified Trump’s status as “the single greatest threat to our democracy”.“We don’t need nine supreme court justices to tell me that Donald Trump was responsible for January 6,” Dunn said. “I was there. Those people that attacked us, they attacked us in his name on his orders.”Congressman Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who previously served as lead majority counsel in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, went even further by framing Trump’s re-election as “far and away the biggest threat since the civil war”.Goldman said: “If Joe Biden is not elected in November, we will not have a democracy that we have known for 250 years.” More