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      Supreme court chief justice declines to meet US senators about Alito upside-down flag furor – as it happened

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      In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
      No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
      The Biden campaign launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else happened today:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
      John Roberts, the supreme court’s chief justice, declined a request for a meeting from two Democratic senators concerned over Alito’s flag flap.
      Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
      Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could reach a variety of conclusions.
      Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for potentially violating the terms of a settlement over his father’s estate, a New York state appeals court ruled.
      Should Donald Trump win the November election, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports that his ally, speaker of the House Mike Johnson, is prepared to move quickly to pass his agenda through Congress. Here’s what Johnson told Semafor he is looking at:Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.In an interview with Semafor, Johnson said he had already spoken to Trump about introducing an omnibus package immediately after he retakes office.“I told him that I believe he can be the most consequential president of the modern era, if we are focused on a policy and agenda-driven administration and Congress – and that’s our intention,” Johnson said.“We don’t want to make the mistake that we made in the past. Back in the 2017 timeframe and in previous years, we Republicans kind of took a single-subject approach. We did one round of healthcare reform, one round of tax reform. But for [fiscal year 2025], we want to have a much larger scope, multiple issues to address in addition to the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”For the second time in as many days, Donald Trump has defended supreme court justice Samuel Alito amid criticism from Democrats over his display of flags associated with rightwing causes.Alito, an appointee of Republican president George W Bush, is a reliably conservative vote on the court, and Trump has loudly denounced the Democratic lawmakers who have called for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January. Here’s what the ex-president wrote, on Truth Social:
      ‘Playing the Ref’ with Justice Alito doesn’t work. It works with many others, but not with him!
      Here’s more from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington about the firestorm around conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito, and the rightwing flags found flying at his residences:Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election-interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.In his letter to the Democratic leaders of the Senate judiciary committee, supreme court chief justice John Roberts argued it would be inappropriate to meet with them.“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” wrote Roberts, who was appointed by Republican president George W Bush, and is considered among the more moderate of the court’s conservative justices.He continued in the letter addressed to the committee’s chair Dick Durbin and senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the subcommittee on federal courts:
      As noted in my letter to Chairman Durbin last April, apart from ceremonial events, only on rare occasions in our Nation’s history has a sitting Chief Justice met with legislators, even in a public setting (such as a Committee hearing) with members of both major political parties present. Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances. Moreover, the format proposed – a meeting with leaders of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the Court – simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.
      Last week, the two Democrats had requested a meeting with Roberts, after reports emerged that conservative justice Samuel Alito had flown flags associated with rightwing causes at two of his properties.“We therefore call for Justice Alito to recuse himself from certain proceedings as outlined above, renew our call for the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, and request a meeting with you as soon as possible. Until the Court and the Judicial Conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote to Roberts.John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, has rebuffed a request from senior Democratic US senators to meet as the lawmakers push for supreme court justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases before the court that relate to Donald Trump and will ripple into the 2024 presidential election.Roberts declined an invitation to talk about supreme court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Alito, the Associated Press further reports.Roberts’ response came in a letter to Democratic senators Dick Durbin a day after Alito separately wrote to them and House of Representatives members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major cases involving Trump and the January 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by some rioters at the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin of Illinois and senator and committee member Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and ask that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the January 6 attack or former president Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Trump, the Guardian adds, is being prosecuted in a federal criminal case on charges relating to election interference and obstructing an official proceeding. The supreme court will rule next month on two cases before it that have grave implications in that case, and for the election.A recap that a year ago a judge in New York threw out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit accusing New York Times reporters of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.Trump was ordered to pay all attorneys’ fees and legal expenses that the Times and its reporters had incurred. The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper sought out Trump’s niece Mary Trump and persuaded her “to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office”.At the time, Trump’s claim against his niece had not been ruled on. Today, we learned that Donald is permitted to proceed with suing Mary.The Times’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories relied on information from Mary Trump to cast doubt on the ex-president’s claims that he was a self-made millionaire, showing that he had inherited hundreds of millions through “dubious tax schemes”. The series also revealed a history of tax avoidance.Robert Reed, the New York supreme court justice, said at the time of his ruling, in May 2023, that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”, which allows for reporters to engage in legal, ordinary news-gathering. “These actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,” Reed wrote.Alina Habba, a lawyer for Donald Trump, said the former president looked forward to holding his niece, Mary Trump, “fully accountable for her blatant and egregious breach of contract” in her exchanges with New York Times journalists for a story about her uncle’s finances and evasive tax habits.Thursday’s decision upheld a June 2023 ruling by Justice Robert Reed of the New York state supreme court.Also, Reed had dismissed Donald Trump’s claims against the New York Times and three reporters, and in January ordered him to pay $392,639 of their legal fees, Reuters reports.In November 2022, Reed dismissed Mary Trump’s separate lawsuit accusing her uncle and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.The New York Times’ reporting challenged Donald Trump’s claim that he was a self-made billionaire. It said he received the equivalent of $413m from his father, largely the result of “dubious” tax schemes in the 1990s, including undervaluing his family’s real estate holdings. Donald Trump has denied wrongdoing.Mary Trump previously identified herself as a Times source in her 2020 tell-all bestseller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.Here’s more on the news that a court has said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump.The court in New York ruled that the former president can sue Mary Trump, 59, a psychologist and writer, for supplying information to the New York Times as part of its coverage into the then president’s finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes. The coverage won the Pulitzer prize.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.A five-judge panel said it was unclear whether Mary Trump’s disclosures were subject to confidentiality, or how long both sides intended the provisions to remain in effect. It also signaled that Donald Trump might deserve only minimal damages, not the $100m he sought.The court said:
      At a minimum, nominal damages may still be available on the breach of contract claim even in the absence of actual damages.
      Lawyers for Mary Trump said the lawsuit violated a state law barring frivolous cases designed to silence critics and “chill and retaliate against” their free speech. These cases are called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps.Anne Champion, Mary Trump’s lawyer, said in a statement:
      Mary has made valuable contributions to the public’s knowledge of the former president with her unique perspective as a family member. We are confident she will be vindicated as the case proceeds.
      Champion also said Donald Trump “can claim no injury for the publication of truthful information.”A New York state appeals court said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for giving the New York Times information for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 probe into his finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.More to come on this. Adding from the Guardian, Trump originally sued his estranged niece and the New York Times in 2021 over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices that was partly based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper’s reporters, and there has been a whole legal odyssey ever since.The Biden campaign has launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black racial slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
      Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
      Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could rule in any direction.
      In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
      No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
      In addition to handing the National Rifle Association a lifeline in its lawsuit against New York state, the supreme court also denied resentencing to an Arizona man on death row, the Guardian’s Joanna Walters reports:The US supreme court issued opinions on Thursday relating to free speech and the death penalty, in one case clearing the way for a National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuit against a former New York state official.The court gave a boost to the influential gun rights group that has accused the official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with it and, in the process, violating the NRA’s free speech rights.The justices, in a unanimous decision from the nine-member bench, threw out a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the NRA’s 2018 lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York’s department of financial services.The NRA, in the case NRA v Vullo, claimed that Vullo unlawfully retaliated against it following a mass shooting in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.The NRA was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Biden administration argued some of its claims should go forward, an unusual alliance between often opposing parties considering the NRA is a strongly Republican-aligned organization.Meanwhile, the supreme court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down an appeals court ruling giving Danny Lee Jones a new sentencing hearing in a death penalty case in Arizona. The conservative supermajority decided that errors in Jones’s legal defense, in the case Thornell v Jones, did not justify him having a chance at resentencing.The supreme court just scheduled its next opinion release day.The court is expected to issue more decisions on Thursday, 6 June. Among the pending cases is Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two lawsuits related to abortion access. More

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      Man who allegedly rammed Trump sign at police on January 6 arrested by FBI

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      The FBI has arrested a South Dakota man on charges that he stood among the first participants in the January 6 insurrection, allegedly breaking police lines and ramming a large sign toward officers during the riot.William Knight, 37, of Rapid City, faces two felony charges of obstructing law enforcement and resisting or impeding officers, the justice department announced on Thursday. He also faces five misdemeanor charges, including engaging in violence on the day supporters of Donald Trump tried to derail certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.He was arrested by the FBI on Sunday and was expected to make his first appearance in court on Thursday.Knight was featured prominently in several videos that were taken during the riot, helping the FBI build its case against him. Investigators were able to match Knight’s appearance in his videos to his state driver’s license, which prominently shows tattoos on his neck.Prosecutors accuse Knight of being one of the first rioters to breach a restricted perimeter at the Capitol on January 6. Multiple times, he gestured aggressively and threateningly toward officers. He broke police lines and was sprayed with a chemical spray at one point, but he kept pursuing officers, prosecutors say.“We ain’t leaving! We ain’t going nowhere!” Knight could be heard yelling at police in one of the videos, according to court documents. “Here are the bitches. Here are the bitches.”At one point, documents say, Knight and a large group of rioters picked up a giant metal-frame “TRUMP” sign and rammed it toward officers. After, he allegedly shoved a police officer and removed barriers that police had put in front of the crowd.He allegedly continued to chant “Stop the steal!” with other protesters, referring to Trump’s lies that electoral fraudsters rigged Biden’s victory.Knight’s case is being prosecuted by the US attorney’s office in Washington DC and the justice department.Nearly 1,500 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection, according to the justice department. More than 100 of those people have been sent to prison for sentences ranging from a few days to 22 years, the length of the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio’s sentence from last fall.The US supreme court is expected to rule soon on whether the justice department can prosecute rioters on an obstruction statute.A decision against the department could jeopardize the prosecution of hundreds of defendants who received obstruction charges. More

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      Ex-Apprentice producer claims Trump used racial slur for Black contestant

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      Donald Trump used a racial epithet to reject the prospect of a Black winner on the debut season of The Apprentice, the Emmy-nominated series that transformed the former president into a reality TV star and fuelled his political career.Trump rejected the views of close aides that Kwame Jackson, a broker who worked for Goldman Sachs, had been the most impressive contestant, saying, “Would America buy a [N-word] winning?”, according to a producer who worked on the NBC show’s opening series in 2004, when it was called Meet the Billionaire.The anecdote is related by Bill Pruitt in a long essay in the online magazine Slate, titled The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice.According to Pruitt, Jackson had emerged from a field of candidates to contest the final with a white competitor, Bill Rancic, after being assigned the task of overseeing a Jessica Simpson benefit concert at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.Jackson reportedly impressed two Trump advisers with his ability to overcome obstacles, including his handling of a difficult fellow contestant who had earlier been eliminated but whom he had hired to help stage the concert.Yet when one adviser, Carolyn Kepcher – who ran Trump’s hospitality units and one of his golf clubs – praised Jackson, saying he “would be a great addition to the organisation”, Trump demurred, winced – and then uttered the racial slur.“Kepcher’s pale skin goes bright red,” Pruitt writes. “I turn my gaze toward Trump. He continues to wince. He is serious, and he is adamant about not hiring Jackson.”He adds: “None of us thinks to walk out the door and never return. I still wish I had.”Trump’s racist remarks were subsequently unmentioned at the production meetings, and Rancic was duly announced as the winner.Their disclosure comes at a time when Trump – who has a history of racist rhetoric – is making efforts to woo Black voters, a bedrock of Joe Biden’s support, amid polling evidence that some are warming to him as he seeks a second presidency in November. Last week, Trump addressed a rally in New York’s Bronx borough, whose audience was about a quarter Black or Hispanic.His outreach to a voting bloc that backed the Democrats by more than nine to one in his 2020 election victory over Trump – but has shown apparent signs of apathy to Biden in polling – has alarmed the incumbent president and prompted him to launch his own charm offensive to retain its loyalty.Race is not the only sensitivity uncovered by Pruitt. He paints Trump as a confidence trickster incapable of delivering his lines to the camera or remembering contestants’ names – but who was falsely portrayed as competent, prescient and insightful by careful production treatment in the interests of making a successful series.“While filming, he struggled to convey even the most basic items,” Pruitt writes. “He could barely put a sentence together regarding how a task would work.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe presumptive Republican presidential nominee – who on Thursday awaited the verdict in a trial alleging that he arranged for hush money to be paid to an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels – is also depicted as sexist. At one point, he reportedly ordered a female camera operator out of an elevator where she was about to film him, calling her “too heavy”.Pruitt also describes being taken by Trump to one of his houses, which the then property tycoon suggests was a venue for his illicit sexual trysts, adding with a snicker: “Melania [then his fiancee, now his wife] doesn’t even know about this place.”He recalled meeting the architect of the clubhouse at the Trump National Golf Club, who told him that he was proud of the building but bitter that Trump did not pay him what he owed. “Trump pays half upfront,” he quotes the architect as saying. “But he’ll stiff you for the rest once the project is completed.”According to Pruitt, even the show’s trademark “you’re fired” line was not Trump’s work but was coined by producers after the star of the show had initially used a convoluted line to a losing contestant about taking an elevator down to the street that was deemed unfit to broadcast.None of this made it on to the final edit seen by the viewing public.“The truth is, almost nothing was how we made it seem,” Pruitt writes in mea culpa style. “So, we scammed. We swindled. Nobody heard the racist and misogynistic comments or saw the alleged cheating, the bluffing, or his hair taking off in the wind. Those tapes, I’ve come to believe, will never be found.”Contacted by Slate to comment on the allegations, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, called it a “completely fabricated and bullshit story that was already peddled in 2016” and attributed its current publication to the Democrats, who he said were “desperate”. More

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      ‘It’s bullshit’: voters on what Trump’s hush-money case means to them

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      For Josh Ellis, a refrigerator technician from southern Wisconsin, Donald Trump’s trial in New York is a sideshow. He’s not convinced of the prosecution’s narrative, or the former president’s – and the verdict will probably not affect his vote in November anyway.“Biden’s running this country into the ground,” said Ellis, who said the economy was his main concern. At 49, Ellis has long viewed politicians as out of touch on economic issues; he used to vote for Democrats, but switched in 2016 to vote for Trump, who he saw as possibly offering a change.The jurors in Trump’s New York trial are deliberating over the question of whether or not Trump unlawfully falsified business records to hide a sex scandal before the 2016 election – and it’s not clear how much of an impact their verdict will have on voters, despite the historic nature of a possible conviction.Like Ellis, voters across the country seem ambivalent about Trump’s criminal charges.Denise White, who helps manage a social services agency in Atlanta, wears her cynicism about the trial like armor.“Privilege,” she said. “Patriarchy. All of that is on full display right now. And I am not confident that there will be a just outcome.”It doesn’t matter, politically, if he is convicted or not: people have made up their minds, White said. “They’re not going to look at him differently there. I think a lot of people are expecting him to be acquitted. If he’s found guilty, I feel like he’s still gonna have a strong support system. And they are going to stand by his side and they’re not going to believe that he was found guilty.”For Annie, a 60-year-old who lives in Tampa, Florida, who asked her last name not be used for privacy, a guilty verdict would demonstrate Trump’s victimhood and potentially galvanize his base. In contrast, a not guilty verdict could lead to increased scrutiny of the prosecution and the criminal justice system, she said.“It’s bullshit,” she said, laughing.“There is no case. He hasn’t committed a crime. It is legal for him to make an agreement with a consenting adult not to talk about something.”The Trump trial has prosecutors playing saints, she said, adding that the trial was reminiscent of something she might see where she was born in China before emigrating to the US. “I came to this country for a great America. I didn’t come to this country for a losing country.”Any verdict is likely to deepen polarization, she said. With an acquittal, “the ones who hate him, will hate him more,” she said. “The people who support him will support him more. But the people in the middle will see him as a victim.”During the Republican primaries, Trump’s initial indictment in the New York case had little impact on his popularity – even galvanizing Republican voters who saw the charges as unfair. A felony conviction, though, could play out differently during the general election, where Biden and Trump will be vying for a segment of independent and swing voters who could be sufficiently turned off by a guilty verdict to abandon Trump.In a 23 May poll by the Marquette University Law School, respondents across the country who were asked how they would vote in November if Trump is convicted leaned toward Biden by 4%. Given a “not guilty” verdict, Trump enjoyed a six-point advantage among a separate group polled.Charles Franklin, a professor of government and the director of the Marquette poll, cautioned that while its results provide some indication that a guilty verdict could affect Trump’s performance in November, “there are a couple of reasons to be skeptical” about polling on the trial’s overall impact on voters.“We’ve seen pretty substantial stability in opinion for the last 18 months that we’ve been following the presidential race,” said Franklin, who noted that during Trump’s first impeachment, polling revealed very little change in public opinion.“I actually added extra polls during [the impeachment] because I thought we should catch, for history, whatever opinion change took place,” said Franklin, “and – damn, no change at all.” More

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      Joe Biden tells Black voters ‘I need you’ to beat Trump in campaign rally in Philadelphia – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has wrapped up his speech in Philadelphia aimed at mobilizing Black voters, where he made plain that without their support, it was unlikely that he would return to the White House after November’s election.“I’m still optimistic, but I need you,” Biden said in his address, which was delivered at private preparatory school Girard College.His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?”The crowd stood up as they shouted back: “Yes.”As he has done in many of his speeches since the start of the year, the president singled out Donald Trump for attack, accusing him of not believing in “honesty, decency and treating people with respect”. See the moment here:Winston Cameron, a registered independent, said that he came to the event to “hear from the horse’s mouth.”Cameron voted for Biden in 2020 and was uncertain if he would vote for him again. For Cameron, a 35-year-old student originally from Jamaica, immigration and the economy are the issues he’s most concerned about.“It could be better,” Cameron said about Biden’s accomplishments in those arenas. “I can see the positive changes that he’s trying to implement, but I think it’s still a weak stance.”Nevertheless, Cameron said, he was satisfied with Biden’s attention to Dreamers, immigrants who arrived to the US as children. Earlier this month, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give healthcare coverage to Dreamers.Melissa Hellman was at the rally in Philadelphia and spoke to voters who were there:Zelma Carroll, a 57-year-old certified nursing assistant from Philadelphia, was grateful that Biden wiped away some of her daughter’s student loans from Penn State University. Carroll had canvassed for the Biden-Harris campaign four years ago and plans to do so again soon. “I just hope that they get in our neighborhoods and let people know where we’re going, where we need to be and we can’t go back,” Carroll said. “We can’t let Trump in.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris held a joint rally in Philadelphia to mobilize Black voters behind their re-election campaign. The president laid in to Donald Trump, and told the audience “I need you”, in a sign of how important African-American support is to his chances of winning another four years in office. Speaking of Trump, the former president may soon be a convicted felon – or not. The New York city jury that has spent weeks hearing arguments from both sides over whether he is guilty of committing business fraud has begun their deliberations, and a verdict could come at any time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Samuel Alito, a conservative supreme court justice, refused to recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election, despite demands from Democrats incensed at his display of flags associated with rightwing causes.
      The House ethics committee has opened an investigation of Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar, who was federally indicted on charges of accepting bribes.
      Trump praised Alito for refusing to step back from cases dealing with the 2020 election. The court is expected to in the coming weeks rule on his petition for immunity from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.
      Jill Biden predicted her husband’s poll numbers would improve as the election draws nearer.
      Abandon Biden, which is encouraging voters to deny the president a second term over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza, planned to protest his rally in Philadelphia.
      Biden and Harris got an enthusiastic reception in Philadelphia earlier today. Here’s a video of the crowd chanting “four more years” when Biden took to the podium:Here are some of the pictures from the Biden-Harris rally that have dropped on the newswires:The House ethics committee announced it has opened an investigation into Henry Cuellar, a Democratic congressman who was indicted earlier this month on charges related to receiving $600,000 in bribes.In a terse statement, Republican chair Michael Guest and Democratic ranking member Susan Wild said the committee had voted unanimously to establish a subcommittee to investigate Cuellar, in accordance with House rules. The committee “shall have jurisdiction to determine whether Representative Cuellar solicited or accepted bribes, gratuities, or improper gifts; acted as a foreign agent; violated federal money laundering laws; misused his official position for private gain; and/or made false statements or omissions on public disclosure statements filed with the House,” the statement said.Guest and Wild noted that they intended to avoid interfering with the justice department’s investigation of Cuellar:
      The Committee is aware of the risks associated with dual investigations and is in communication with the Department of Justice to mitigate the potential risks while still meeting the Committee’s obligations to safeguard the integrity of the House. No other public comment will be made on this matter except in accordance with Committee rules.
      Here’s more on the charges against Cuellar:In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump praised conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito, who announced this afternoon that he would not heed Democratic lawmakers’ demands to recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election.Top Democrats, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin, had called on Alito to step back from cases, such as Trump’s petition for immunity from prosecution over attempting to overturn the 2020 election, after rightwing flags were found to have flown at two of his properties.Here’s what Trump had to say about Alito:
      Congratulations to United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and “GUTS” to refuse stepping aside from making a decision on anything January 6th related. All U.S. Judges, Justices, and Leaders should have such GRIT – Our Country would be far more advanced than its current status as A BADLY FAILING NATION, headed by the Worst President in American History, Crooked Joe Biden!
      Verna Hutchinson-Toler, a 75-year-old voter from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said that she came out in support of Biden because she’s passionate about “voter registration as a social determinant of health.”As a chaplain at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Hutchinson-Toler has seen patients who are the victims of gun violence, which has fueled her advocacy for gun control.“Personally I feel his track record has been amazing,” she said about Biden’s crack down on unserialized firearms known as ghost guns.Joe Biden has wrapped up his speech in Philadelphia aimed at mobilizing Black voters, where he made plain that without their support, it was unlikely that he would return to the White House after November’s election.“I’m still optimistic, but I need you,” Biden said in his address, which was delivered at private preparatory school Girard College.His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?”The crowd stood up as they shouted back: “Yes.”As he has done in many of his speeches since the start of the year, the president singled out Donald Trump for attack, accusing him of not believing in “honesty, decency and treating people with respect”. See the moment here:Biden vows to put racial equality at the center of everything and have an administration “that looks like America”.He lists the things he’s done to achieve this, including:
      appointing the first Black supreme court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson
      appointing more Black women to the federal circuit courts than all other presidents combined
      keeping unemployment and the racial wealth gap at a record-low
      Cutting the gap of home appraisals between communities of color and white communities
      removing lead pipes and the legacy of pollution in communities adjacent to industrial facilities, which are disproportionately inhabited by people of color
      increasing access to affordable high-speed internet
      protecting and expanding Obamacare
      ‘Do you remember when the pandemic hit?’Biden calls on the crowd to recount the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic when “20 million people were out of work, when businesses and schools shut down, and emergency rooms were overwhelmed. Black folks were hit harder than anyone else.”Biden took a jab at former president Trump, who he said absolved himself of responsibility for the pandemic and how it was handled.“When I came to office, I promised we’d do everything we can to get us through that pandemic. And that’s what we did. That folks, was a promise made and a promise kept.”Biden has taken the stage.“It’s good to be almost home,” the president told the crowd. “I used to live down the road a little bit,” referencing his former home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.“Because Black Americans voted in 2020, Kamala and I are president and vice-president of the United States. Because you voted, Donald Trump is the defeated former president,” Biden said.His next line was met with cheers from the crowd: “With your vote in 2024, we’re going to make Donald Trump a loser again.” More

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      Alito refuses to step aside from Trump supreme court cases amid flag scandal

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      Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.The paper also reported that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown outside the justice’s beach home in New Jersey last summer. Both flags were carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.Alito said he was unaware that the upside-down flag was flying above his house until it was called to his attention. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” he wrote in nearly identical letters to Democrats in the House and Senate.Trump praised Alito’s rebuff of demands for his recusal, posting on his Truth Social account that the rightwing justice had showed “INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’”. Writing as he waited for the jury to return its verdict at his criminal hush-money trial in New York, Trump added: “All US Judges, Justices and Leaders should have such GRIT”.Alito’s flat-out refusal to address doubts about his impartiality in the wake of the flags scandal underlines the weakness of the supreme court’s current ethical guidelines. Following a public outcry over undeclared luxury trips and other gifts that had been received by Alito and his fellow hard-right justice Clarence Thomas, the court was forced to adopt its first ethics code last November.To the dismay of advocates of judicial reform, however, the code contained no enforcement provision. Individual justices are left to their own devices to decide whether or not they should recuse from cases in which there might be an appearance or reality of conflict of interest or impartiality.Thomas has also been accused of conflict of interest after he became the only vote on the court to oppose the release of digital communications to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. It later transpired that the stash of documents included emails between Thomas’s wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas, and Trump’s then top White House aide Mark Meadows over how to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.The lack of response from either Thomas or Alito to the welter of criticism over their ethical positions is starting to attract the attention of Congress.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Jamie Raskin, the Democratic Congress member from Maryland who led the second impeachment trial of Trump, said that it was “unfathomable that the two justices could get away with deciding for themselves whether they can be impartial in ruling on cases affecting Donald Trump’s liability for crimes he is accused of committing on January 6”.Raskin proposed a solution to the conundrum: the US justice department could petition the other seven justices on the nine-member supreme court under the federal recusal statute to require Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the January 6 cases. “The supreme court cannot disregard this law just because it directly affects one or two of its justices,” Raskin wrote.Democratic leaders in the US Senate are also pressuring the court to take more robust action. The Senate judiciary chairman, Dick Durbin, and fellow committee member Sheldon Whitehouse have written to the chief justice, John Roberts, asking for a meeting to discuss what he was proposing to do about Alito’s refusal to recuse himself.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr files election complaint over CNN debate rules

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr filed an election complaint on Wednesday alleging CNN is colluding with Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to exclude him from a debate the network is hosting next month.Kennedy alleges the requirements to participate in the 27 June debate were designed to ensure only Biden and Trump would qualify and Kennedy claims he is being held to a higher standard.“CNN is making prohibited corporate contributions to both campaigns and the Biden committee and the Trump committee have accepted these prohibited corporate contributions,” a lawyer for Kennedy, Lorenzo Holloway, wrote in a letter to the Federal Election Commission.CNN said the complaint was without merit.Biden and Trump agreed this month to the CNN debate and a second on 10 September hosted by ABC, bypassing the non-partisan commission that has organized debates for nearly four decades. The first debate will come before Biden and Trump have been formally nominated by their parties this summer.Kennedy has looked to the debates as a singular opportunity to stand alongside Biden and Trump, lending legitimacy to his long-shot bid, and to convince people inclined to support him that he has a shot at winning. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns fear he could play spoiler.Kennedy still has time to meet the requirements, though the window is narrowing.CNN has said candidates will be invited if they have secured a place on the ballot in states totaling at least 270 votes in the electoral college, the minimum needed to win the presidency, and have reached 15% in four reliable polls by 20 June.Kennedy’s campaign says he has submitted signatures or other paperwork to appear on the ballot in nine states – California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah – with a combined 171 electoral votes, though not all have affirmed his name will be listed. California, the largest prize on the electoral map with 54 votes, will not certify any candidates until 29 August.“The law in virtually every state provides that the nominee of a state-recognized political party will be allowed ballot access without petitioning,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday. “As the presumptive nominees of their parties both Biden and Trump will satisfy this requirement. As an independent candidate, under applicable laws RFK Jr does not. The mere application for ballot access does not guarantee that he will appear on the ballot in any state.”Kennedy also has not met the polling criteria, the statement said.Biden and Trump have easily cleared the polling threshold but will not be certified for the ballot until their parties formally nominate them. Both have secured enough delegates to lock in their nominations. More

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      Trump reportedly considers White House advisory role for Elon Musk

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      Donald Trump has floated a possible advisory role for the tech billionaire Elon Musk if he were to retake the White House next year, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.The two men, who once had a tense relationship, have had several phone calls a month since March as Trump looks to court powerful donors and Musk seeks an outlet for his policy ideas, the newspaper said, citing several anonymous sources familiar with their conversations.Musk and Trump connected in March at the estate of billionaire Nelson Peltz. Since then, the two have discussed various policy issues, including immigration, which Musk has become vocal about in recent months.“America will fall if it tries to absorb the world,” Musk tweeted in March.Musk has said he will not donate to either presidential campaign this election, but has reportedly told Trump he plans to host gatherings to dissuade wealthy and powerful allies from supporting Joe Biden in November.It has only been just a few years since Musk and Trump were exchanging insults. At a rally in 2022, Trump called Musk “another bullshit artist”. Meanwhile, Musk tweeted that Trump should “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset”.Musk briefly served on Trump’s White House business advisory group early during his presidency, but Musk dropped out after Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord in 2017.Now, relations appeared to have softened. When Musk acquired Twitter, renaming it X, in 2022, he reinstated Trump’s account. Musk has since asked Trump to be more active on X, according to the Journal, though Trump has largely been loyal to his Truth Social platform.In March, after meeting Musk at Peltz’s estate, Trump told CNBC: “I’ve been friendly with him over the years. I helped him when I was president. I helped him. I’ve liked him.”As the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has benefited from federal government policies and contracts over the last several years, including rocket-service contracts and tax credits for electric vehicles.Trump in March said he and Musk “obviously have opposing views on a minor subject called electric cars”, with Trump opposing ramping up electric vehicle production and supporting tariffs against foreign EV manufacturing.Peltz, an investor, has been a key connector between Trump and Musk. Peltz and Musk have told Trump that they are working on a large data-driven project designed to ensure votes are fairly counted, though details on the project remain opaque. More