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      Trump rebuked for sharing video showing Biden hog-tied on pickup truck

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      Donald Trump drew an angry response from the Joe Biden White House as well as other opponents after he posted a video containing the image of the president hog-tied on the tailgate of a passing pickup truck.The Biden campaign communications director, Michael Tyler, said the provocative image of the truck festooned with Trump 2024 insignia on Friday night could be construed as suggesting physical harm toward the former president’s political rival.“Trump is regularly inciting political violence and it’s time people take him seriously – just ask the Capitol police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6,” Tyler said, referring to the day in early 2021 when the ex-president’s supporters attacked Congress.The Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, replied that the picture in question depicted the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway.“Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against president Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him,” Cheung said.Cheung’s remark was a clear reference to more than 80 criminal charges pending against Trump for attempts to forcibly overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, retention of classified materials after his presidency and hush-money payments. Trump is also facing multimillion-dollar civil penalties for business practices that have been deemed fraudulent and a rape claim which a judge has determined to be substantially true.The image of Biden in the truck as well as the reaction to it cap another week of scripted – and unscripted – drama on a presidential campaign trail that is becoming increasingly tense.Biden’s polling number have risen in crucial swing states since a punchy State of the Union address. And his campaign is beating presumptive Republican nominee Trump in fundraising to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.On Thursday night, Biden held a fundraiser at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall with former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The glitzy event raised a reported $25m, though it was repeatedly interrupted by demonstrators protesting against the military aid that Biden’s administration has provided to Israel in its strikes in Gaza.Trump, meanwhile, was at the wake of New York police officer Jonathan Diller, 31, who was shot to death during a traffic stop. The former president called Diller’s murder “a horrible thing” and said “police are the greatest people we have”.Yet Trump’s remarks also earned him criticism, with commenters noting that the January 6 US Capitol attack carried out by his supporters injured dozens of officers. The attack – a failed, desperate effort to keep Trump in office despite his defeat to Biden – was also linked to some officers’ suicides.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, a caption on the video with the image of a hog-tied Biden said it had been taken in Long Island, New York, just as the former president attended Diller’s memorial and condemned the violence that killed the officer.Trump’s posting of the hog-tie video comes less than three weeks before the former president is due to stand trial in a criminal case alleging that he covered up payments to two women ahead of the 2016 election to suppress information about extramarital sexual encounters they said he had with them years earlier.The prosecutor in that case, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has also been the subject of violent pictorial representation posted by Trump. The former president last year shared a picture showing him holding a baseball bat next to Bragg. More

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      ‘Feeble, desperate, mentally unfit’: Biden changes tack to mock Trump

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      With November set to be one of the most consequential elections in US history, it would be understandable if Donald Trump and Joe Biden reached for soaring, lofty rhetoric: if they attempted to match the high-minded ideals of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the nation’s founding fathers.American voters, and the country’s political class, are long used to Trump’s insult-laden and often crude rhetoric. “Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit,” Trump said in Georgia earlier this month, during a rally at which he also also mocked Biden’s stutter.But recently Biden and his campaign team appear to have decided to fight fire with fire, after previously seeking to stay above the fray. It’s a shift that seems to accept that Trump has moved the standards of US politics and that it’s more effective to embrace that notion than remain out of the fight.But it also probably reflects the unique threat that Trump’s bid to return to the White House for a second term represents to American democracy and that the time to sugarcoat the fight against that is long past. For many, Biden and his team’s insults aren’t just political hardball, they also smack of the truth.In recent months, Biden has dubbed Trump “mentally unfit”, while this week his campaign declared that the US “deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump”.The president’s campaign has dubbed Trump “weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for president”. They’ve also taken to calling Trump, who says he is a multibillionaire but was recently unable to pay a court-ordered $454m bond, “Broke Don”.It’s a remarkable shift for Biden, who less than a month ago raised eyebrows for only referring to Trump as “my predecessor” during his State of the Union speech.Marjorie Hershey, professor emeritus of political science at Indiana University Bloomington, suggested to the Guardian Biden’s reason for this shift was “very straightforward.“What he was doing before obviously wasn’t working. Typically, we all learn from bad experience and Biden has been behind in the polls to a candidate who is quite frankly hated by almost half of the American electorate,” she said.“I think that Biden was under considerable pressure from his advisers, from activists, to do something different.”Notably, polling this week showed Biden gaining on Trump in six key states – after his supporters previously had a wake-up call when the incumbent reported dismal numbers.View image in fullscreenSo far, Biden seems to be fully embracing his new persona. On Wednesday, the president, not known for his comic timing, even cracked a joke at his rival’s expense.“Just the other day, this defeated-looking man came up to me and said: ‘Mr President, I need your help. I’m in crushing debt. I’m completely wiped out,’” Biden chortled.“I said, ‘Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.’”While negative campaigning is not new, Trump took the practice to a new level almost from the moment he announced his run for president in June 2015. At the time, he claimed his rivals for the presidential nomination had “sweated like dogs” during their own campaign events, and said Mexico was sending “rapists” into the US.With Trump having spent the last four years peppering Biden with insults, it seems Biden and his team have decided they need to respond in kind.“We’ve learned that ignoring negative campaigning doesn’t work well,” Hershey said.“People are more likely to remember negative charges than positive statements. People are more likely to give negative statements greater weight than they do positive statements.“And so trying to take the high road and create a contrast between yourself and a negative opponent by not responding simply doesn’t work.”With Biden in the political ring throwing verbal punches back at Trump, he has hewn closer to the “Dark Brandon” meme that is popular among some of his supporters. That concept, which frequently sees Biden depicted with red laser eyes, imagines Biden as a sort of edgy hero or even antihero – the kind of person who wouldn’t think twice about sarcastically congratulating an opponent on a golf tournament win.If we rewind back to the 1980s, there were plenty of negative, and nasty, political campaigns afoot. The New York Times reported from the 1982 Tennessee Senate race that the Republican candidate Robin Beard hired an actor to dress up as Fidel Castro in an attempt to paint his opponent as soft on Cuban communism – but there is hard evidence that Trump dragged things to a new low.According to a study published in 2023, “the frequency of negative emotion words” used by American politicians “suddenly and lastingly increased” when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race.Researchers analyzed quotations from politicians from millions of news articles, and found that the use of negative language by politicians had begun to decrease during Barack Obama’s presidency.“Then in June 2015, precisely the month when Trump started his campaign, there was a massive jump in negativity,” said Robert West, a professor in the school of computer and communication sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and one of the co-authors of the study.View image in fullscreenIt wasn’t just Trump’s own language that accounted for the increase. When West and his colleagues removed all Trump quotations from the data, they found that the amount of negative language had still gone up: people had begun to copy Trump’s tone, just as Biden appears to have done.“It’s very sad that the other side is now starting to play the same game. This looks like we’ve lost as a society, because everyone plays that game now,” West said.For now, it is hard to tell whether Biden cracking jokes about Trump will be a winning strategy. There is evidence, however, that Republican and Democratic voters increasingly view members of the opposing party with contempt.In 2022, Pew Research found that 72% of Republicans consider Democrats to be “more immoral” than the average American, compared with just 47% who felt that way in 2016 (63% of Democrats thought Republicans were more immoral, up from 35% in 2016). In this climate, perhaps there is a real appetite among Biden supporters for him to swing for Trump’s kneecaps.While some say a negative campaigning strategy is effective, others point out – like Stephen Craig, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has studied political campaigns – that is not always the case.View image in fullscreen“There is a humongous amount of literature testing the effectiveness of negative ads, and negativity in other media as well – whether its speeches, radio or mail – and the bottom line is sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” Craig said.“And no one can tell in advance when something is going to work and when it won’t.”In the modern era, it is only Trump who has fully embraced mockery and insults as presidential campaigning, although during the 1988 presidential election George HW Bush’s team got plenty of mileage from making fun of Michael Dukakis, his opponent, for trying to look tough in a military tank.But going back in time, it turns out the founding fathers weren’t really all that polite. The 1796 presidential election, in which John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson, saw Adams’s camp claim Jefferson would promote prostitution and incest, and suggest that Jefferson had an affair with an enslaved woman.Jefferson’s backers, meanwhile, claimed Adams was a hermaphrodite, and dubbed Adams, who they said was overweight, “His Rotundity”.Neither Biden nor Trump have gone quite that low yet – although there are still seven months to go until election day. More

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      Prosecutors suggest Trump violated gag order by attacking judge’s daughter

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      Manhattan prosecutors asked the judge presiding in Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial on charges of covering up hush money to a porn star before the 2016 election to confirm that a recent gag order preventing the former president from making inflammatory comments extends to the judge’s family members.The prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested in a two-page letter on Friday that, as far as they were concerned, Trump had violated the gag order by attacking the judge’s daughter in a recent social media post and should be sanctioned for future violations.“The court should warn defendant that his recent conduct is contumacious and direct him to immediately desist. If defendant continues to disregard such orders, he should face sanctions under judiciary law,” said the letter to New York supreme court justice Juan Merchan, referencing statutes for criminal contempt that include possible jail time.At issue was a post Trump sent on Wednesday assailing the judge’s daughter on his Truth Social platform for supposedly using a photo of Trump behind bars as her profile picture for her X account. The photo “makes it completely impossible for me to get a fair trial”, Trump wrote.The problem for Trump was that the account appears to be bogus. The handle for the X account did belong to the judge’s daughter, Lauren Merchan, but she has since deleted that account, a court spokesperson said. Someone else – it is unclear who – took over the handle and used the photo.But Trump and his supporters have remained undeterred, despite the formal denial. Trump’s surrogates have maintained that the account supposedly is still connected to the judge’s daughter in order to perpetuate claims that the entire family is partisan against the former president.The fixation on the judge’s daughter appears to be spurred in part by the fact that she has worked as an executive at Authentic, a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic political candidates. Trump has previously tried, but failed, to have the judge removed over his daughter’s work.Whether the judge will find that Trump violated the gag order is unclear.The gag order against Trump in the hush-money case was entered on Tuesday, after Merchan rebuked the former president for making statements about the case he deemed “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” ahead of trial, scheduled to start on 15 April.Under the order, Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, public statements about trial witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial, prosecutors other than the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg himself, and members of the court staff or the district attorney’s staff.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe order notably also barred Trump from assailing the family members of any counsel or staff member, if his comments were made with the intention to interfere with their work in the case, or with the knowledge that his comments were likely to interfere with their work.But it was uncertain whether the judge considered himself as court staff, and therefore whether the prohibition on commenting on the family of court staff extended to his daughter. Trump’s lawyers contended in their own filing on Friday that they considered the judge’s family as fair game.Merchan did not specify how he would enforce the order. Typically, judges impose escalating fines as punishment but, in extreme circumstances, can ultimately order a defendant to be jailed pre-trial if they are found to be in criminal contempt of the order. More

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      Senate Democrats demand end to rightwing ‘judge shopping’ but move draws immediate attack from Republicans – as it happened

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      Senate Democrats including majority leader Chuck Schumer have today called for the federal courts’ policymaking body to stand firm against conservative attacks on its new rule intended to curb the practice of “judge shopping”.The term is a reference to the practice of litigants suing over government policies in certain jurisdictions where federal judges may be sympathetic to their cause. An example of this may be seen in the lawsuit by a conservative group attempting to remove the abortion medication mifepristone from pharmacies, which was first filed before a Donald Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas who previously worked for a rightwing Christian law firm.Earlier this month, the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a new policy that “addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, ‘whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.’ In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.”The policy drew attacks from Republicans including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who described it as “half-baked”.In a letter sent today to the Judicial Conference’s secretary, Schumer and eight other Democratic senators specifically singled out the mifepristone case, and wrote:
      This judge-shopping tactic is more pernicious than it might appear. Even though there are only a few courts subject to this issue, single district judges can issue rulings that thwart congressional statutes and stymie agency actions on a nationwide basis. That means certain plaintiffs are motivated to file their cases in divisions where they know the judge hearing the case is aligned with their goals.
      …
      The anti-democratic practice of judge shopping erodes the rule of law and the public’s trust in the judiciary. Your new policy rebalances our court system and will help to restore Americans’ confidence in judicial rulings. We encourage you to defend it as courts across the country implement it.
      Senate Democrats feuded with their Republican counterparts over the practice of “judge shopping”, which critics say a conservative group used to get their challenge to abortion medication mifepristone before the supreme court – though the justices sounded skeptical. In a letter sent today to the body overseeing federal courts, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer and eight colleagues urged them to stand firm against Republican attacks on a new policy to cut down on the practice. But there is one thing the top lawmakers in Congress agree on: Russia’s imperative to free jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested one year ago today. Joe Biden joined the calls for his release, while the Journal made a renewed push to raise public awareness of his plight.Here’s what else happened:
      Biden raised big bucks at a fundraiser in New York City last night, but faced familiar disruptions from pro-Palestine protesters.
      Donald Trump also has plans to rake in money, with an event scheduled for next week in Florida.
      The Biden administration has reportedly approved another shipment of weapons to Israel despite growing protests over the death toll in Gaza.
      A proposal to free jailed Americans, Gershkovich included, and Alexei Navalny fell apart after the Russian dissident’s death last month, the Journal reports.
      Trump and eight co-defendants reportedly appealed a judge’s ruling allowing Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the Georgia election subversion case.
      This year’s presidential election is set to be like no other, because one of the two major candidates is facing criminal charges in two states and at the federal level.But whether any of Donald Trump’s cases will be resolved before election day remains a major unanswered question. One of the indictments got its trial date set this week, but the rest are mired in pre-trial motions. Have a look at our explainer for an idea of where things stand:Donald Trump and eight of his co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case have appealed a judge’s ruling allowing Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:Earlier this month, the group argued that Willis should be removed from the case because she had a conflict of interest in hiring as a special counsel Nathan Wade, who she had had a romantic relationship with.Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could stay as prosecutor, but only if Wade quit, which he did. However, McAfee also allowed Trump and the others to appeal his ruling, which they have now done.Needless to say, the appeal could further delay the trial of one of the four criminal indictments Trump is facing, potentially leaving it to be settled after the November presidential election. Here’s more on that:The Biden administration’s decision to supply Israel with more weapons comes as the state department said famine conditions “quite possibly” are present in parts of northern Gaza. Here’s more about that, from the Guardian’s Peter Beaumont:Famine is already probably present in at least some areas of northern Gaza, while other areas are in danger of falling into conditions of starvation, the US state department said on Friday a day after the world’s top court ordered Israel to admit food aid into the territory.“While we can say with confidence that famine is a significant risk in the south and centre but not present, in the north, it is both a risk and quite possibly is present in at least some areas,” a state department official told Reuters.The US comments add to a growing and powerful consensus that Israel’s military offensive in the Palestinian coastal territory has triggered a famine.The number of trucks distributing aid in south and central Gaza had nearly reached 200 a day, an increase on a month ago, but more were needed, the state department official said.“You need to address the full nutrition needs of the population of Gaza of all ages. That means more than just that minimal survival level feeding,” the official said, adding that malnutrition, and infant and young-child mortality was a significant, growing problem.“It has to be addressed by additional assistance coming and the right kind of assistance coming in,” he said.Joe Biden signed off on another transfer to Israel of military jets and bombs, including 2,000-pound munitions linked to devastating strikes in Gaza, despite growing concerns among Democrats of the civilian toll in the country’s campaign against Hamas, the Washington Post reports.The Biden administration has repeatedly sent arms to Israel following Hamas’s 7 October attack, and continues to press Congress to approve legislation authorizing $14bn in military aid. The support has sparked a backlash towards the president from protesters concerned over the death toll in Gaza, where 32,000 people have died following Israel’s invasion.Here’s more on the weapons transfer, from the Post:
      The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000 pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. These officials, like some others, spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because recent authorizations have not been disclosed publicly.
      The development underscores that while rifts have emerged between the United States and Israel over the war’s conduct, the Biden administration views weapons transfers as off-limits when considering how to influence the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
      “We have continued to support Israel’s right to defend itself,” said a White House official. “Conditioning aid has not been our policy.”
      Some Democrats, including allies of President Biden, say the U.S. government has a responsibility to withhold weapons in the absence of an Israeli commitment to limit civilian casualties during a planned operation in Rafah, a final Hamas stronghold, and ease restrictions on humanitarian aid into the enclave, which is on the brink of famine.
      “The Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview. “We need to back up what we say with what we do.”
      The Israeli government declined to comment on the authorizations.
      Georgia state legislators have changed laws that will make it easier to challenge a voter’s registration. The Guardian’s George Chidi reports:Georgia legislators changed state election laws in the midnight hours of Friday, widening the criteria to challenge a voter’s registration, removing bar codes from printed ballots and increasing the documentation local elections officials must produce to certify elections.The proposals will take effect 1 July, assuming the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, signs the legislation into law.Voting rights groups expressed their highest concern about how Senate Bill 189 potentially expands challenges to voter registrations. Conservative advocates have been issuing large-scale systematic challenges to voters – dozens or hundreds at a time in some districts, like Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb counties. Each challenge under existing law has to be considered on its individual merits under current law, which can exhaust the resources of local election officials, voting rights advocates argue.For the full story, click here:Joe Biden said on Friday that he will visit Baltimore next week, Reuters reports.Biden’s expected visit follows the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge earlier this week after the Singaporean-flagged cargo ship Dali crashed into it.Six men, who were filling potholes on the bridge, are presumed dead. The bodies of two of the men who were trapped in their vehicle were recovered from the Patapsco River on Wednesday.The authorities identified the men as Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, a 35-year-old originally from Mexico who was living in Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, who was from Guatemala and was living in Dundalk, Maryland.Democratic National Committee rapid response director Alex Floyd issued the following statement on Friday in response to Michael Whatley’s appointment as the new chair of the Republican National Committee:
      Donald Trump hand picked Michael Whatley to take over the RNC because he parroted Trump’s baseless lies about the 2020 election, and Whatley is returning the favor by making election denialism a key litmus test to join the GOP.
      Putting an election denying extremist like Whatley in charge of the RNC makes it clear that the future of our democracy is on the ballot in this election – and the American people will once again reject Trump and his MAGA allies this November.
      Senate Democrats are feuding with their Republican counterparts over the practice of “judge shopping”, which critics say a conservative group used to get their challenge to abortion medication mifepristone before the supreme court, which nonetheless sounded skeptical. In a letter sent today to the body overseeing federal courts, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer and eight colleagues urged them to stand firm against Republican attacks on a new policy to cut down on the practice. But there is one thing the top lawmakers in Congress agree on: Russia’s imperative to free jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested one year ago today. Joe Biden joined the call for his release, while the Journal made a renewed push to raise public awareness of his plight.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Biden raised big bucks at a fundraiser in New York City last night, but faced familiar disruptions from pro-Palestine protesters.
      Donald Trump also has plans to rake in money with an event scheduled for next week in Florida.
      A proposal to free jailed Americans, Gershkovich included, and Alexei Navalny fell apart after the Russian dissident’s death last month, the Journal reports.
      The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, is not happy with Democrats or the Judicial Conference for the attempt to limit “judge shopping”.McConnell has been transformative when it comes to the federal courts. As Senate leader in 2016, he famously blocked Barack Obama from filling a supreme court vacancy, giving Donald Trump the opportunity to appoint three justices – all of whom have generally signed on to conservative decisions, including the overturning of Roe v Wade.The Judicial Conference’s new rule does not specifically deal with the supreme court, but rather the path that lawsuits take to get there. But in a floor speech earlier this month, before the Senate departed for its ongoing recess, McConnell criticized Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer for supporting the new policy.“Democrats are salivating at the possibility of shutting down access to justice in the venues favored by conservatives,” he said. McConnell went on:
      If Republicans see a federal judiciary that is using its procedural independence to wade into political disputes, any incentive we may have to defend that procedural independence will vanish, as well.
      This was an unforced error by the Judicial Conference. I hope they will reconsider. And I hope district courts throughout the country will instead weigh what is best for their jurisdictions, not half-baked “guidance” that just does Washington Democrats’ bidding.
      While Democrats are upset over how a conservative group used “judge shopping” to pursue a lawsuit against abortion medication mifepristone, the Guardian’s Carter Sherman reports that most supreme court justices did not appear ready to decide the case in their favor during arguments earlier this week:The supreme court on Tuesday seemed skeptical of arguments made by anti-abortion doctors asking it to roll back the availability of mifepristone, a drug typically used in US medication abortion. The arguments were part of the first major abortion case to reach the justices since a 6-3 majority ruled in 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade and end the national right to abortion.The rightwing groups that brought the case argued that the justices should roll back measures taken since 2016 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand the drug’s availability. A decision in the anti-abortion doctors’ favor would apply nationwide, including in states that protect abortion access, and would probably make the drug more difficult to acquire.Medication abortion now accounts for almost two-thirds of abortions performed in the US.Much of Tuesday’s arguments focused on whether the anti-abortion doctors who sued the FDA, a coalition known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, have standing, or the right to bring the case in the first place. The doctors claim they will suffer harm if they have to treat women who experience complications from mifepristone, an argument the Biden administration, which appealed the case to the court, has rejected as too speculative.Senate Democrats including majority leader Chuck Schumer have today called for the federal courts’ policymaking body to stand firm against conservative attacks on its new rule intended to curb the practice of “judge shopping”.The term is a reference to the practice of litigants suing over government policies in certain jurisdictions where federal judges may be sympathetic to their cause. An example of this may be seen in the lawsuit by a conservative group attempting to remove the abortion medication mifepristone from pharmacies, which was first filed before a Donald Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas who previously worked for a rightwing Christian law firm.Earlier this month, the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a new policy that “addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, ‘whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.’ In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.”The policy drew attacks from Republicans including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who described it as “half-baked”.In a letter sent today to the Judicial Conference’s secretary, Schumer and eight other Democratic senators specifically singled out the mifepristone case, and wrote:
      This judge-shopping tactic is more pernicious than it might appear. Even though there are only a few courts subject to this issue, single district judges can issue rulings that thwart congressional statutes and stymie agency actions on a nationwide basis. That means certain plaintiffs are motivated to file their cases in divisions where they know the judge hearing the case is aligned with their goals.
      …
      The anti-democratic practice of judge shopping erodes the rule of law and the public’s trust in the judiciary. Your new policy rebalances our court system and will help to restore Americans’ confidence in judicial rulings. We encourage you to defend it as courts across the country implement it.
      Joe Biden may have had a big night of fundraising in New York yesterday, but Donald Trump is looking to outdo him next week, the Guardian’s Joanna Walters and Martin Pengelly report:Joe Biden and Donald Trump are in a new phase of a heavyweight fundraising smackdown as the US president raised a record $25m at a glitzy event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Thursday night, while Trump’s Republican campaign claimed it would outdo Biden next week with a $33m event in Florida, according to reports.Biden and his Democratic predecessor headlined a star-studded fundraiser with Clinton at the Radio City Music Hall event, hosted by Mindy Kaling and featuring Lizzo, Queen Latifah and Stephen Colbert.Obama and Biden flew to the city on Air Force One together in a show of unity and Democratic campaign heft as the 2024 election enters an important phase between the main primary season and the summer nominating conventions, which are expected to anoint Biden and Trump as their parties’ candidates.The glittering Democratic fundraiser was punctuated by protests not just outside but also inside the auditorium, as attendees rose at several different moments to shout over the discussion, referencing Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.“Shame on you, Joe Biden,” one yelled, according to Reuters. More

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      ‘Join us’: Biden campaign urges Haley supporters to turn against Trump

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      Joe Biden’s presidential campaign released an ad targeting Republicans who supported Nikki Haley in her losing primary against Donald Trump.“If you voted for Nikki Haley, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote,” the president’s campaign ad says. “Save America. Join us.”The ad shows clips of Trump disparaging Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president but fought on the longest of his opponents for the Republican nomination this year.Insults quoted include “birdbrain”, “Rino” (Republican in name only), “she’s gone crazy”, “a very angry person”, “not presidential timber” and “she’s gone haywire”.“I don’t need votes” from Haley’s supporters, Trump is shown to say, adding: “I have all the votes we need.”Michael Tyler, communications director for Biden’s campaign, said: “Donald Trump has made it crystal clear he doesn’t want support from voters who cast their ballot for Nikki Haley so let us be equally clear: there is a home for everyone on this campaign who knows Donald Trump cannot be back in the White House.“Joe Biden is building a broad and diverse coalition of voters who want more freedoms not less, who want to protect our democracy, and who want to live in a country that is safe from the chaos, division, and violence that another Donald Trump presidency would bring.”The Biden campaign said it planned to spend more than $1m to air the ad on digital platforms in battleground states, “targeting Nikki Haley voters in predominantly suburban zip codes where she performed well against Trump”.The Biden campaign this week saw encouraging results in many states likely to decide the election, gains that led Simon Rosenberg, an influential Democratic operative, to say the “Biden bump is real”.Biden has also vastly out-raised Trump, including through a high-profile fundraiser in New York City on Thursday, at which the president appeared with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, his most recent Democratic predecessors in the Oval Office.Unnamed Biden officials told the Washington Post senior figures including Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul and campaign co-chair, had spoken to “people in Haley’s orbit”.The question of outreach to anti-Trump Republicans is a perennial one. The new Biden ad landed on the same day as a Politico column in which the influential Washington reporter Jonathan Martin chastised as “political malpractice” a failure to reach out to influential anti-Trump Republicans.Figures cited as ripe for wooing included Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who has ended his flirtation with a third-party run; the former president George W Bush; the former House speaker and vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan; and Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president whose run for the nomination failed but who sensationally said he would not endorse Trump this year.Another anti-Trump Republican, the Utah senator and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, told Martin: “Biden has not asked for my support. I’m pretty critical of his mess at the border – that should have cooled his jets!”Haley dropped out of the Republican primary after Super Tuesday, 5 March, having won only the minor prizes of Washington DC and Vermont.In her concession speech, she said: “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him and I hope he does that.”Haley’s brother, Mitti Randhawa, recently said Trump had not answered his sister’s “plea”, adding: “Shame on you. You will need them.”Haley has not endorsed Trump and has said she no longer feels bound by a pledge to support the Republican nominee. Her supporters remain a prized commodity. Polling shows them roughly equally split when it comes to choosing Trump or Biden.Haley has won a little more than 21% of votes in the Republican primary so far, with a high point in losing contests of more than 43% in New Hampshire. She fared less well where Democrats and independents could not vote but still highlighted Trump’s vulnerability in his own party.Legally, the former president faces unprecedented jeopardy, including 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil suits. Political donations have been funneled into paying legal bills now topping $100m.Politically, Trump must repel Democratic efforts to attract independents and moderates, particularly women opposed to Republican attacks on reproductive rights.After Haley dropped out, Biden said: “Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign.”That campaign now hopes enough of Haley’s supporters will follow Michael Burgess, a South Carolina teacher who recently told the Associated Press: “I will reluctantly vote Biden.“We can survive bad policy, but we cannot survive the destruction of the constitution at the hands of a morally bankrupt dictator lover in Trump who, supported by his congressional Maga minions, would do just that.” More

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      Biden and Trump shift to new phase of urgent fundraising in 2024 US election

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump are entering a new phase of a heavyweight election fundraising smackdown after the US president raised a record $26m at a glitzy event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, while Trump’s Republican campaign tried to steal Biden’s thunder by claiming it would outdo him next week with a $33m event.Biden and his Democratic predecessor headlined a star-studded fundraiser with Clinton at the Radio City Music Hall event in New York, hosted by Mindy Kaling and featuring Lizzo and Queen Latifah, while the TV satirist Stephen Colbert interviewed the three men on stage in front of an audience that paid up to $500,000 for a ticket.Obama and Biden flew from Washington to New York on Air Force One together on Thursday in a show of unity and Democratic campaign heft as the 2024 election enters an important phase between the main primary season and the summer nominating conventions, which are expected to anoint Biden and Trump as their parties’ candidates for the November vote.The glittering Democratic fundraiser was punctuated by protests inside the sold-out auditorium, as attendees rose at several different moments to shout over the discussion, referencing Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.“Shame on you, Joe Biden,” one yelled, according to Reuters.Obama said Biden had “moral clarity” on the Israel issue and was willing to listen to all sides in this debate and find common ground.When a protester inside the theater interrupted Obama, the former president said: “You can’t just talk and not listen … That’s what the other side does.”The protests drew a pledge from Biden to keep working to stop civilian deaths, particularly of children. But he added, “Israel’s existence is at stake.” Hundreds more protested outside in the drizzling rain, many demanding a ceasefire and waving Palestinian flags.On the money raised during the event, which had been estimated at $25m and then came in at a record-breaking $26m for a single campaign event, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul turned Biden campaign co-chair, said: “This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built.”But on Friday, it was reported that Trump believes he can out raise the Biden event with a billionaires’ power party at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort club in Palm Beach, south Florida, on 6 April, where tickets will run from $250,000 to more than $800,000, the Financial Times first reported and Politico later detailed.The Trump campaign’s goal is at least $33m, with featured super-rich American business leaders such as the casino and hotel developer Steve Wynn, the hedge funder John Paulson and Robert Bigelow, a property and aerospace billionaire with an offbeat obsession with the paranormal and UFOs.Trump has been struggling for money and owes hundreds of millions in fines in civil cases he has lost, on top of sky-high legal bills, for which he is paying with funds from donors. Biden’s campaign had $71m in available cash at the end of last month, more than twice as much as Trump, with the Democratic National Committee also swilling with more than double what is in the Republican National Committee’s coffers, the Hill reported.On Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser said the candidate would not be able to match Biden’s totals, blaming the disparity on the Democrat’s “billionaire” supporters and painting a picture of a Trump campaign as being fueled by grassroots, working-class supporters. However, the Trump campaign is suffering from both large and small donor fatigue, CNBC has reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a wake on Thursday for a police officer shot dead on duty in New York, Trump called for a focus on “law and order” even though he stands to be the first former US president to be a defendant in a criminal trial and is facing a total of 88 charges across four cases, relating to campaign finance impropriety, election interference and hiding classified documents after leaving office.At the Democratic fundraiser, the presidents toggled between humor and campaign talk. Biden lit into Trump, recalling how he pleaded with the then occupant of the White House on 6 January 2021, to “call these people off” when his supporters invaded the US Capitol in an insurrection to try, in vain, to stop the certification of Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 election.“He sat there in the dining room off the Oval Office for several hours and watched [the attack on TV], didn’t do a damn thing,” Biden said.He pointed out how Trump was proud to have tilted the supreme court so that it ruled to take away the national right to abortion, with the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, while Democrats defend reproductive choice, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, taking a lead on the issue on the campaign trail.Biden also challenged Trump to golf, but only if his rival carried his own bag.Biden, Obama and Clinton ended the night donning Biden’s trademark aviator-style sunglasses.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Can Bibles, sneakers and social media save Trump from financial ruin? – podcast

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      Donald Trump is embroiled in a balancing act between several criminal and civil trials, which could cost him millions of dollars and potentially even put him behind bars. On top of that, there’s the small issue of a presidential campaign. So the question is: can he afford to do it all?
      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Erica Orden, of Politico, to discuss the highs and lows Trump experienced this week, and whether or not he can raise the money to save himself from bankruptcy

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

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      Trump cases: lawyer argues to dismiss Georgia election subversion case; progressive groups call for ‘fair’ hush money trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump’s legal team was in Atlanta to argue that the charges brought by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis against the former president should be dismissed on first amendment grounds. Other defendants have tried unsuccessfully to make that argument, but Judge Scott McAfee wrapped up the hearing without giving any indication of how he may rule – or, perhaps more importantly, when Trump’s trial will actually start. Speaking of trials, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson sent the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer a letter demanding he get started on homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s impeachment trial as soon as the GOP transmits the charges on 10 April. Schumer’s office said the Senate leader plans to do so, but reports indicate that Democrats are considering voting to dismiss the impeachment articles.Here’s what else happened:
      James Comer, one of the House Republican leaders of the attempt to impeach Joe Biden, invited the president to testify before his committee. Don’t expect him to show up.
      Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he spoke with Johnson about Ukraine aid, though no breakthrough on authorizing more funds was announced.
      Progressive groups have written an open letter asking that Trump receive “a prompt and fair trial” in the New York hush-money case.
      Biden called New York City mayor Eric Adams to offer condolences on the death of police officer Jonathan Diller. Trump attended his wake.
      The Republican National Committee wants to know whether new hires think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
      James Comer, the Republican House oversight committee chair and one of the leaders of the campaign to impeach Joe Biden, has invited the president to testify at a hearing about his family’s business dealings.Don’t expect the president to take him up on the offer. When Comer announced last week that he planned to send the invitation, a White House spokesman kept their response succinct: “LOL”.Indeed, the Republican attempt to bring charges against Biden for alleged corruption appears to be in trouble, in part because they haven’t actually proven their allegations, and also because some in their party don’t support the effort. Comer has reportedly signaled to potential donors that he may settle for making a criminal referral to the justice department, rather than continuing to push for the president’s impeachment.In a lengthy letter to Biden, Comer proposed that he appear on 16 April:
      As the foregoing demonstrates, the Committee has compiled evidence -bank records, contemporaneous electronic communications, and witness testimony – showing your awareness, acquiescence, and participation in self-enrichment schemes of your family members.
      As Chairman of the Committee, in addition to requesting that you answer the questions posed in this letter, I invite you to participate in a public hearing at which you will be afforded the opportunity to explain, under oath, your involvement with your family’s sources of income and the means it has used to generate it. As you are aware, presidents before you have provided testimony to congressional committees, including President Ford’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
      Then there’s the matter of the Senate. Democrats control it by a margin of just one seat, and their best path to maintaining their majority after next year is by getting Joe Biden and two of their senators representing red states re-elected. One of those two is Jon Tester of Montana, where the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports the state’s highest court today struck down voting restrictions passed by its Republican government:In a significant win for voting rights, the Montana supreme court on Wednesday struck down four voting restrictions passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2021.In a 125-page opinion, the state’s highest court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the four laws, passed in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, violate the state constitution. The laws had ended same-day voter registration, removed student ID cards as a permissible form of voter ID, prohibited third parties from returning ballots and barred the distribution of mail-in ballots to voters who would turn 18 by election day.After a nine-day trial, the lower court found that the laws would make it harder for some state residents to register to vote and cast a ballot.A spokesperson for the Republican secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen, who appealed the lower court decision in an attempt to get the laws reinstated, said that she was “devastated” by the supreme court decision.“Her commitment to election integrity will not waver by this narrow adoption of judicial activism that is certain to fall on the wrong side of history,” the spokesperson, Richie Melby, wrote in a statement. “State and county election officials have been punched in the gut.”Mike Johnson’s time as House speaker may not last long – the Republican majority is small, and Democrats have the opportunity to flip the chamber back to their control in November. But there are lots of variables that will affect whether they are able to do that, including which congressional maps are used in which states. Today in South Carolina, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports that Republicans scored a win in an important redistricting case:A federal court will allow South Carolina Republicans to use their congressional map for the 2024 election, it said on Thursday, despite an earlier finding that the same plan discriminates against Black voters. The decision is a big win for Republicans, who were aided by the US supreme court’s slow action on the case.In January 2023, a three-judge panel struck down the state’s first congressional district, which is currently represented by Nancy Mace, a Republican. The judges said legislative Republicans had impermissibly used race when they redrew it after the 2020 census. As part of an effort to make it more solidly Republican, lawmakers removed 30,000 Black voters from the district into a neighboring one. Republicans argued that they moved the voters to achieve partisan ends, which is legal. The district was extremely competitive in 2020, but Mace easily won the redrawn version in 2022.The ruling is a significant boon to House Republicans, who are trying to keep a razor-thin majority in Congress’s lower chamber this year.In a post on X, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he spoke with Republican House speaker Mike Johnson, who has refused to say whether he will allow a vote on another round of military aid for the country.Zelenskiy said he updated Johnson about the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, and continued: “In this situation, quick passage of US aid to Ukraine by Congress is vital. We recognize that there are differing views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed, but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor.”Here’s more:Democrats around the US have enjoyed startling electoral successes through campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights, just this week even taking a state seat in deep red Alabama.Marilyn Lands won that race after, in the words of our report, making “Alabama’s abortion ban and access to contraception and in vitro fertilization (IVF) central to her campaign, speaking openly about her own previous abortion experience in a TV ad that featured her saying that it was ‘shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago’”.Today, Lucas Kunce, a Missouri Democrat hoping for an upset win over Josh Hawley, a prominent far-right presence in the US Senate, follows suit with a new campaign ad.In the short ad, headlines (including one from the Guardian) about Hawley’s refusal to back legislation protecting IVF and support for an anti-IVF judge appear on screen as Jessica, described as “a Missouri mother”, says:
      After years of trying and disappointment and struggle and health scares, I just had this beautiful baby and I held her and I just like knew I was meant to be her mom. Now there are efforts to ban IVF and Josh Hawley got them started. Josh Hawley has proven that he won’t protect ATF and he would let politicians make me a criminal. I want Josh Hawley to look me in the eye and tell me that I can’t have the child that I deserve.
      Kunce said: “Jessica and her family matter. Josh Hawley has built his career on a control-obsessed crusade to outlaw reproductive healthcare. It’s now a threat to IVF and to women in Missouri. We can’t risk giving Hawley’s crusade another six years in the US Senate.“This race is going to be about freedom. In Missouri, we’re tired of Big Brother elites like Josh Hawley telling us how to live and criminalising our freedoms.”Hawley’s wife, Erin Hawley, is a prominent lawyer in reproductive rights cases who this week argued before the supreme court that mifepristone, an abortion pill, should be banned.Here’s more on that case, from Melissa Segura and well worth a lunchtime read:Officials at the US Department of Defense are having preliminary “conversations” about how to stabilize Gaza with a peacekeeping force when, at some point, the current conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Palestinian territory, comes to an end, Politico reports.The US news outlet is reporting that Pentagon chiefs are talking about options, including the possibility that the Pentagon would help fund either “a multinational force or a Palestinian peacekeeping team”.The report points out that no options include US troops serving on the ground in the Gaza area, citing two Pentagon and other Biden administration officials, who won’t be named by Politico because of the highly-sensitive nature of the discussions.The outlets suggests any US funding “would go toward the needs of the security force and complement assistance from other countries”.Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza, where significant sections of the population are facing imminent starvation, in a significant legal rebuke to Israel’s claim it is not blocking aid deliveries.Illinois Democrat Sean Casten’s not holding back about the right-wing majority House impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and impatiently expecting a trial in the Senate.“Reminder that MTG [Marjorie Taylor Green], Clay Higgins and Andy Biggs are all named impeachment managers. If you want to make the @HouseGOP look like the clown show it is on national television, this is how you do it,” the congressman posted on X/Twitter.Arizona Republican Andy Biggs had also posted, saying Mayorkas was “derelict in his duty” to secure the US-Mexico border.The House and Senate are on a two week recess at the moment.Reuters adds that: Federal officials including presidents, who are impeached by the House are subject to a trial in the Senate to determine whether they should be removed from office.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s office issued a statement saying that senators will be sworn in as trial jurors the day after the articles are delivered. However, the Democratic-led chamber is highly unlikely to vote to remove Mayorkas from office.Some more details and reactions coming through on Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s demand that the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, schedule the trial of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “expeditiously” after his impeachment last month. The speaker will transmit the articles of impeachment on April 10.Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins getting very “we the people”…And, from the White House:Donald Trump’s legal team was in Atlanta to argue that the charges brought by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis against the former president should be dismissed on first amendment grounds. Other defendants have tried unsuccessfully to make that argument, but Judge Scott McAfee wrapped up the hearing without giving any indication of how he may rule – or, perhaps more importantly, when Trump’s trial will actually start. Speaking of trials, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson sent the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer a letter demanding he get started on homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s impeachment trial as soon as the GOP transmits the charges on 10 April. Schumer’s office said the Senate leader plans to do so, but reports indicate that Democrats are considering voting to dismiss the impeachment articles.Here’s what else is going on:
      Progressive groups have written an open letter asking that Trump receive “a prompt and fair trial” in the New York hush money case.
      Joe Biden called New York City mayor Eric Adams to offer condolences on the death of police officer Jonathan Diller. Trump plans to attend his wake.
      The Republican National Committee wants to know if new hires think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
      Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer responded to Mike Johnson’s letter by saying they’d get the ball rolling on the impeachment trial as soon as House Republicans send the charges over.“As we have said previously, after the House impeachment managers present the articles of impeachment to the Senate, senators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day. Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray will preside,” Schumer’s office said in a statement.There’s plenty they are not saying, including whether they’ll actually go through with holding the trial, or quickly vote on a motion to dismiss the charges, as Democrats are reportedly considering doing.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has demanded the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer schedule the trial of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “expeditiously” after his impeachment last month.“As Speaker and impeachment managers of the US House of Representatives, we write to inform you that we will present to you upon the Senate’s return, on April 10, 2024, the duly passed articles of impeachment regarding Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. We urge you to schedule a trial of the matter expeditiously,” Johnson and the 11 Republican impeachment managers wrote in a letter sent today to Schumer.They continued:
      We call upon you to fulfill your constitutional obligation to hold this trial. The American people demand a secure border, an end to this crisis, and accountability for those responsible. To table articles of impeachment without ever hearing a single argument or reviewing a piece of evidence would be a violation of our constitutional order and an affront to the American people whom we all serve.
      House Republicans alleged Mayorkas has mismanaged security on the border with Mexico, but Senate Democrats have shown no interest in removing him from office. They are reportedly considering dismissing the charges without holding a trial, and Schumer has said the allegations were ginned up at the behest of Donald Trump:
      This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans. The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.
      House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime.
      House Republicans failed to show he has violated the Constitution.
      House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense.
      This is a new low for House Republicans.
      Congress is currently out of Washington DC, with the Senate and House set to resume on 8 and 9 April, respectively.A coalition of progressive groups has released an open letter calling for Donald Trump to receive “a prompt and fair trial” in New York, where he faces charges related to making hush money payments prior to the 2016 election.Earlier this week, the judge overseeing that case set 15 April as its start date, making it the first of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial. The other three cases remain mired in pre-trial motions and appeals, and it is unclear if verdicts will be reached in any prior to the November presidential election.“The facts alleged in the indictment recount much more than a sordid soap opera and corporate malfeasance; they also describe conduct that should matter to anyone who cares about democracy, voter information, and meaningful voter choice,” reads the letter, which was signed by 17 groups organized into the Not Above the Law coalition, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, MoveOn and Indivisible.In New York, Trump stands accused of channeling funds from his business to adult actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence on extra-martial affairs ahead of the 2016 election. He allegedly described the payments as legal costs, which New York prosecutors say broke the law.The groups say this amounted to an “instance of election interference” that “might also be understood as an early sign of Trump’s antipathy for voters, which surfaced again in behavior culminating in the January 6th violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”They continue:
      If the rule of law is to remain meaningful, no one — not even a former president — should be allowed to be above the law, and all the Trump criminal trials must play out. The first of these trials is important. We, the undersigned organizations, stand united in our desire for a prompt and fair trial that goes wherever the facts and the law lead. The undersigned organizations also express our hopes that as the Manhattan trial unfolds, the full context for the charges is made clear and understandable to the American public. Our nation deserves nothing less. More