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      Civil war gaffes and robotic smiles: can anyone beat Trump? – podcast

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      Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson are all still putting on a brave face and trying to convince Republicans they would be a better president than Donald Trump.
      With the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary fast approaching, polling suggests the odds are against them, but does any campaign have a chance? This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Bill Kristol, editor-at-large at the Bulwark

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      Illinois voters file petition to remove Trump from Republican primary ballot

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      Voters in Illinois have filed a petition to remove Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, echoing efforts in other states to bar the former president from returning to the White House over his role in the 6 January capitol attack.The petition, similar to those filed in more than a dozen other states, relies on the 14th amendment to the constitution.Known as the “insurrection clause”, the amendment prohibits anyone from holding office who previously took an oath to defend the constitution and then later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country or gave “aid or comfort” to its enemies.The 87-page document, signed by five people from around the state, lays out a case that Trump fanned the flames of hardcore supporters who attacked the Capitol on the day Congress certified the election results for his rival, Joe Biden.Officials in Colorado and Maine have already banned Trump’s name from primary election ballots.The Illinois state board of elections has yet to set the petition for hearing, spokesperson Matt Dietrich told the Associated Press. The board is set to hear 32 other objections to the proposed ballot later in January.Also on Thursday, a group of voters in Massachusetts launched an effortto remove Trump from that state’s primary ballot.Both efforts are affiliated with the advocacy group Free Speech for People, CNN reported.Trump has appealed the Maine ruling. He also has asked the US supreme court to overturn the Colorado supreme court’s ruling from December that stripped his name from the state’s ballot.In a filing on Wednesday, his lawyers wrote: “In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct.” They also argued that Trump’s conduct did not amount to an insurrection.A supreme court could rule to either pause or allow the Colorado supreme court’s decision in the coming weeks, though the exact timing is unclear. More

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      Trump businesses received millions in foreign payments while he was in office

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      Donald Trump “repeatedly and willfully” violated the US constitution by “allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars from some of the most corrupt nations on Earth”, prominently including China, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee charged on Thursday, unveiling a 156-page report on the matter.Four businesses owned by Trump’s family conglomerate received at least $7.8m in payments in total from 20 countries during his four years in the White House, the report said. It added that the payments probably represented just a fraction of foreign payments to the Republican president and his family during his administration, which ran from 2017 to 2021.The foreign emoluments clause of the US constitution bars the acceptance of gifts from foreign states without congressional consent.Trump broke with precedent – and his own campaign-trail promises – and did not divest from his businesses or put them into a blind trust when he took office, instead leaving his adult sons to manage them.The issue of foreign spending at Trump-owned businesses proceeded to dog Trump throughout his time in power.On Thursday, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, said: “After promising ‘the greatest infomercial in political history’ [regarding his business interests] … Trump repeatedly and willfully violated the constitution by failing to divest from his business empire and allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars in payments from some of the most corrupt nations on earth.”Such countries spent – “often lavishly”, the report said – on apartments and hotel stays at properties owned by Trump’s business empire, thereby “personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States”.Raskin said: “The limited records the committee obtained show that while Donald Trump was in office, he received more than $5.5m from the Chinese government and Chinese state-owned enterprises, as well as millions more from 19 other foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, through just four of the more than 500 entities he owned.”Those four properties – Trump International Hotel in Washington, Trump Tower and Trump World Tower in New York, and Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas – represented less than 1% of the 558 corporate entities Trump owned either directly or indirectly while president, the report said.Raskin said: “The governments making these payments sought specific foreign policy outcomes from President Trump and his administration. Each dollar … accepted violated the constitution’s strict prohibition on payments from foreign governments, which the founders enacted to prevent presidents from selling out US foreign policy to foreign leaders.”Shortly after Trump was elected, Congress began investigating potential conflicts of interest and violations of the emoluments clause. The investigation led to a lengthy court dispute which ended in a settlement in 2022, at which point Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, began producing documents requested.After Republicans took over the House last year, the oversight committee stopped requiring those documents. A US district court ended litigation on the matter. Mazars did not provide documents regarding at least 80% of Trump’s business entities, Democrats said on Thursday.Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year, despite facing 91 criminal indictments, assorted civil threats and moves to bar him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine, under the 14th amendment meant to stop insurrectionists running for office.His campaign did not immediately comment on the Democratic report.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRaskin pointed a finger at a leading Trump ally, James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican oversight chair.“While the figures and constitutional violations in this report are shocking, we still don’t know the extent of the foreign payments that Donald Trump received – or even the total number of countries that paid him and his businesses while he was president – because committee chairman James Comer and House Republicans buried any further evidence of the Trump family’s staggering corruption.”Comer – who is leading Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden over alleged corruption involving foreign money – issued a statement of his own.“It’s beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump,” Comer said. “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses but the Bidens do not. The Bidens and their associates made over $24m by cashing in on the Biden name in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania. No goods or services were provided other than access to Joe Biden and the Biden network.”Most observers say Republicans have not produced compelling evidence of corruption involving Biden, members of his family and foreign interests. The New York Times, for example, judged recently that “many messages cited by Republicans as evidence of corruption by President Biden and his family are being presented out of context”.On social media on Thursday, the California Democrat Eric Swalwell said: “No president ever personally enriched himself more while in office than Donald Trump. And mostly, in his case, from foreign cash. I don’t want to hear another peep about bogus Biden allegations. Game, set, match. Move on.”Raskin said: “By concealing the evidence of Trump’s grift, House Republicans shamefully condone former President Trump’s past conduct and keep the door open for future presidents to exploit higher office.”The family business empire, the Trump Organization, including Donald Trump and his two oldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, is in the closing stages of a civil trial brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Biden’s January 6 speech is bigger than the ‘horserace’. Can the media say that? | Margaret Sullivan

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      When Joe Biden talks on Friday about US democracy on the brink, there’s no doubt that it will be a campaign speech. Maybe the most important one of his life.But the speech will be more than that. It’s intended as a warning and a red alert, delivered on the anniversary of the violent January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.The date was chosen for good reason – to make the point that more mayhem and more flagrant disregard for the rule of law and fair elections, are just around the corner if Donald Trump is re-elected.Can the political media in America get that reality across? Or will their addiction to “horserace” coverage prevail?So far, the signs aren’t particularly promising.A line high up in the New York Times’ advance coverage of what Biden plans to say is typical of the mainstream media’s tone and focus: “The two speeches are part of an effort to redirect attention from Mr. Biden’s low approval numbers and remind Democrats and independent voters of the alternative to his reelection.” (Biden is speaking on Saturday at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Monday at the South Carolina church where a young white supremacist murdered nine black parishioners in late 2016.)CNN offered an advance headline that emphasized the presidential race, not the message: “Biden opens campaign push …”USA Today did better, putting the emphasis where it belongs: “Biden will mark Jan 6 anniversary with speech warning Trump is a threat to democracy.”We all know there’s a campaign happening. And remember, many readers don’t get beyond the headlines or news alerts. Those bulletins have to be short, true, but they also have to get the larger job done.I’m not suggesting that Biden’s speech be covered as something separate from his presidential campaign. It’s obvious that November’s election and the fragility of American democracy are intertwined.Even Biden campaign officials are making that point. “We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends upon it. Because it does,” campaign manager Julia Chavez Rodriguez has said.But there is another element that is more subtle.“The choice for voters,” Rodriguez said, “will not simply be between competing philosophies of government. The choice will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedom.”That’s where the media gets tripped up. In a constant show of performative neutrality, journalists tend to equalize the unequal, taking coverage down the middle even though that’s not where true fairness lies.Biden, of course, is not a great natural speaker, and perhaps the biggest knock on him is that he’s 81 – and not a young 81.Those factors won’t help, no matter what the media focuses on.But journalists do have an obligation to get beyond delivery and appearances, to get beyond poll numbers and approval numbers – all the things that they are most comfortable with.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe mainstream media is not nearly as comfortable with communicating the larger concepts, even when the stakes are this high.Constantly under attack from the right, they fear looking like they are “in the tank” for a particular candidate or party, so they fall back on those traditional building blocks of coverage – numbers, polls, approval ratings.That may have worked in the past, or at least been relatively unobjectionable. Not any more.Speech coverage is only one part of that. Journalists need to get across to voters in day-to-day coverage – between now and November – what a second Trump presidency would mean.In an NPR interview, former Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron laid out the facts clearly:“He’s the only politician I’ve heard actually talk about suspending the constitution. He’s talked about using the military to suppress entirely legitimate protests using the Insurrection Act. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against the then-outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He’s talked about bringing treason charges against Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC. He’s talked explicitly about weaponizing the government against his political enemies. And, of course, he continues to talk about crushing an independent press.”And, as Baron concluded, no editorializing is necessary because “all of those [threats], by nature, by definition, are authoritarian”.That is the message that needs to come across, this weekend and in the months ahead.Reporters and their bosses – both in newsrooms and in glossy corporate offices – should remember that being in favor of democracy isn’t a journalistic crime. In fact, it’s a journalistic obligation.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist
      This article was updated on 4 January 2024 after Joe Biden’s speech was moved from Saturday to Friday due to an impending winter storm. More

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      Trump asks US supreme court to review Colorado ruling removing him from 2024 ballot

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      Donald Trump appealed to the US supreme court on Wednesday to undo the Colorado ruling that removed him from the ballot in the western state under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their Wednesday filing. They also said the Colorado supreme court’s ruling “if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate”.They went on to lay out several reasons why the supreme court should restore him to the ballot. Only Congress, not the courts, had the authority to evaluate a dispute over the eligibility of a presidential candidate, they wrote. As president, his lawyers argued, Trump was not an “officer” of the United States – relevant language in the constitution bars anyone from serving if they have “engaged in insurrection” as an officer of the United States.They also argued that Trump’s conduct did not amount to an insurrection and argued that the Colorado supreme court’s decision ran afoul of a provision of the constitution that empowers state legislatures to decide how to appoint presidential electors.Trump’s appeal came after both the Colorado Republican party and the challengers who brought the case both asked the justices to take the case. They are widely expected to do so.A ruling either pausing or allowing the Colorado supreme court’s decision to stand could come fairly quickly, though the exact timeline is unclear. Colorado must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters for its 5 March primary on 20 January. Clerks must start mailing ballots to all other voters between 12 and 16 February.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, asked the court this week to resolve the issue “as expeditiously as possible in light of the upcoming election calendar”. The Colorado supreme court’s ruling said in its ruling last month that the decision was paused while an appeal in the US supreme court was ongoing.Promising to appeal “swiftly”, a spokesperson for Trump, Steven Cheung, said the former president turned clear Republican presidential frontrunner had “full confidence that the US supreme court will quickly rule in our favour”.After the Colorado ruling, Trump was also removed from the ballot in Maine, by its secretary of state, who also suspended the ruling pending appeals. Trump appealed that ban in state court on Tuesday.Separately, Trump faces 91 criminal charges, 17 for election subversion. In the federal election subversion case, the US supreme court is also due to consider Trump’s claim that he enjoys immunity from prosecution for any acts in office.The supreme court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives, in large part thanks to three appointments made when Trump was in office.The 14th amendment was adopted in 1868, soon after the civil war. Section three provided for barring from federal and state office anyone who fought for the Confederacy in that conflict.Notably, the provision has rarely been used. Many legal observers expect Trump to prevail in the Colorado case, one of numerous such challenges, others having failed in state courts.The supreme court does not have to take the Colorado case but in all likelihood will. Its handling of the case will be closely watched, not least by progressives angered by the court’s rightward shift and contentious rulings, including the removal of the federal right to abortion.In the aftermath of the Colorado ruling, Ty Cobb, once a White House lawyer for Trump, told CNN: “I think this case will be handled quickly. I think it could be 9-0 in the supreme court for Trump … because I think the law is clear.”According to Cobb – and other former Trump lawyers – the law is clear that the presidency and vice-presidency are not covered by section three, specifically its definition of a government office, because those positions are not mentioned.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn full, section three reads: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice-president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”Last week, ABC News examined records of debate over the 14th amendment. In one exchange, Reverdy Johnson, a Maryland senator, asked why the text of section three did not mention the presidency or vice-presidency.Lot Morrill, from Maine, said: “Let me call the senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.’”That, Steven Portnoy of ABC wrote, “end[ed] the discussion on that point”.J Michael Luttig, a conservative former judge who testified in front of the House January 6 committee, has repeatedly stressed that in his view, Trump should be removed from the ballot.Speaking to MSNBC in December, Luttig saluted a “historic [and] unassailable decision that the former president is disqualified from the presidency because he conducted, engaged in or aided or supported an insurrection or rebellion against the United States constitution”.Trump and other Republican presidential contenders have said barring Trump under the 14th amendment would be anti-democratic, and that only voters should choose who is fit for office. So have prominent Democrats.Luttig said: “What I would say to all Americans is that the constitution itself has determined that the disqualification of the former president is not what is anti-democratic.“Rather, the constitution tells us that it is the conduct that can give rise to disqualification under the 14th amendment that is anti-democratic.” More

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      US House majority whip Tom Emmer endorses Trump for president

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      Donald Trump secured the endorsement of Tom Emmer on Wednesday, completing a full House of Republican leaders backing the former US president even though Trump dynamited the majority whip’s own bid for speaker just two months ago.“Democrats have made clear they will use every tool in their arsenal to try and keep Joe Biden and his failed policies in power,” Emmer said.“We cannot let them. It’s time for Republicans to unite behind our party’s clear frontrunner, which is why I am proud to endorse Donald J Trump for president.”Despite facing 91 criminal charges, assorted civil threats and removal from the ballot in Colorado and Maine over his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Trump leads presidential rivals including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley by vast polling margins.In general election polling, he is competitive or enjoys leads over Biden.Emmer, from Minnesota, followed the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and majority leader, Steve Scalise (both from Louisiana) and Elise Stefanik of New York, the conference chair, in endorsing the man who sent supporters to the Capitol to try to stop certification of Biden’s 2020 win.Even after rioters attacked the House chamber, 139 House Republicans and eight senators objected to results in key states. But Emmer was not among them and last October, after the far right ejected Kevin McCarthy as speaker, the Minnesotan followed Scalise and Jim Jordan of Ohio in failing to secure the role.At the time, Trump said Emmer had called him and was his “biggest fan now” but also deemed him “totally out of touch with Republican voters”, lobbied Republicans to reject him and reportedly boasted: “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”Emmer’s endorsement of his tormentor was therefore widely noted.Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “Remember when you were on those anti-Trump calls in 2016, Tom?”Tim Miller, another former Republican strategist turned Trump critic, chose to be more blunt: “Was Tom Emmer – who was viciously savaged by Trump and his allies during the failed speaker attempt – wearing a ball gag or a gimp mask when he sent this statement? Need some behind-scenes colour.”Miller’s invective was matched by Trump’s campaign team, which said of Erin Perrine, a former Trump aide now working for DeSantis, “nothing can ever wash that foul stench of shit off her”. But regardless of such Republican infighting, endorsements for Trump kept coming in.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe three other House Republicans from Minnesota – Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach and Pete Stauber – joined Emmer in backing Trump.From the Senate, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, once seen as a possible Republican candidate, also gave Trump his backing.“When Donald Trump was president,” Cotton said, “America was safe, strong and prosperous.”He did not mention his own, infamous claim that regular troops needed to be used to quash protests for racial justice in 2020, when Trump was in the White House.Overlooking the economic devastation wrought that same year by Covid-19, Cotton continued: “The economy was booming, working-class wages were growing, our border was secure, and our enemies feared us.”“I endorse President Trump and I look forward to working with him to win back the White House and the Senate … it’s time to get our country back on track.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani, once ‘America’s mayor’, had a very bad year | Lloyd Green

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      Chalk up 2023 as Rudy Giuliani’s annus horribilis. On the other hand, 2024 may even be worse. The man once known as “America’s mayor” faces financial ruin and criminal prosecution with no end in sight to his woes. The hair-dye dripping down his face at a 2020 press conference ominously presaged what would eventually follow. It took less than two decades for the former federal prosecutor and contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination to morph into a punchline, full-time defendant and deadbeat.Back in the day, Giuliani garnered a reputation for crime-busting – perp-walking Wall Street bankers and sending mobsters to jail. In summer 2023, a Fulton county, Georgia, grand jury indicted him on state-law racketeering charges along with the 45th president and a host of supporting characters.As the year closed, Donald Trump’s henchman-in-chief lost a $148m defamation verdict in federal court for sliming two Georgia election workers. Days later, he filed for bankruptcy. Yet even before that he was banging a tin cup.Reports repeatedly surfaced of Giuliani personally begging his godfather to pick up his legal tab. Long story short, that didn’t happen. Instead, Trump threw a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser to help pay his legal bills, but apparently little else.Giuliani’s sell-by date had long expired. Then again, Trump had already done plenty for – and to – his sometime sidekick.Depressed and drinking to excess after his failed-presidential run, Giuliani secretly recovered at Trump’s Palm Beach home years earlier. “We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret,” Giuliani’s third wife, Judith Giuliani, said in Andrew Kirtzman’s 2022 book, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor.Even knowing Giuliani’s capacity to go off the rails, Trump had considered him for a cabinet position, then effectively deputized him as his personal emissary to dig for dirt in Ukraine on Hunter Biden and subsequently tapped him as counsel in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.In a word, Giuliani isn’t the only one with seemingly addled judgment. As luck would have it, Rudy’s relationship with alcohol has gained the attention of federal prosecutors. His conduct and possible inebriation on election night 2020, could undermine a Trump defense based upon reliance on counsel.“The mayor was definitely intoxicated,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser and a veteran of Giuliani’s presidential campaign, told the House special committee last year. “But I do not know his level of intoxication when he spoke with the president.” For the record, Giuliani excoriated Miller and denied his contentions.Rudy’s bankruptcy filing lists his assets as between $1m and $10m, his debts between $100m and $500m. Under the category of “Taxes and certain other debts you owe the government”, he is on the hook to the IRS for more than $720,000 and to New York state for over $260,000.Beyond that, he is fighting over legal bills that amount to millions, and lists Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, the plaintiffs in the $148m defamation case, as creditors. Other cameos include Smartmatic USA Corp; US Dominion, Inc; Robert Hunter Biden, the president’s wayward son; and Noelle Dunphy.Freeman and Moss are not alone. Giuliani also allegedly defamed Smartmatic, Dominion and their respective voting machines in connection with the 2020 election. As for Hunter Biden, think of it as a cage match.Dunphy’s claims, however, offer another window into Rudy’s strange universe. In May 2023, Dunphy, a former Giuliani associate, sued him for $10m, alleging “abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and other misconduct” including “alcohol-drenched rants that included sexist, racist and antisemitic remarks”.Her pleadings add, “Many of these comments were recorded.” According to Dunphy, he chugged Viagra non-stop. “Giuliani would look to Ms Dunphy, point to his erect penis, and tell her that he could not do any work until ‘you take care of this’.”Dunphy’s complaint also alleges that Giuliani asked Dunphy “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon” because “he was selling pardons for $2m, which he and President Trump would split”.She also asserts that she was “given access to emails from, to, or concerning President Trump, the Trump family … and other notable figures including … President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey …” With the Middle East on fire, that thread may prove more than simply interesting.In 2017, in the early days of the Trump administration, Giuliani represented Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader charged with helping Iran to dodge US sanctions and launder hundreds of millions.During a “contentious” Oval Office meeting, Giuliani pressed for the release of Zarrab as part of a potential prisoner swap with Turkey. In turn, Trump reportedly urged the US Department of Justice to drop its case. Eventually, Zarrab accepted a plea deal and emerged as a cooperating witness.Recently, Erdoğan has defended Hamas and compared Hitler favorably to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Meanwhile, Iran is now trying to take credit for the horrors of 7 October.Giuliani is “used to willing people to do his bidding, the same way Trump is”, Ken Frydman, a former Giuliani campaign press secretary, told CNN earlier in December. “And it’s not working any more. So he’s just flailing around … desperately trying to stay out of jail.”There’s family history there. Rudy’s father, Harold Giuliani, was a stick-up man and leg-breaker for the mob. He also did prison time at Sing Sing, a correctional facility in upstate New York.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Biden to jump-start 2024 campaign by highlighting sharp contrast with Trump

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      Ailing in opinion polls, Joe Biden will aim to jump-start his re-election campaign in the coming week with events designed to symbolise the fight for democracy and racial justice against Donald Trump.The Biden-Harris campaign announced the plans in a conference call with reporters that mentioned Trump by name 28 times in just 24 minutes, a sign of its determination to draw a sharp contrast between the US president and his likely Republican challenger.On Saturday Biden will deliver a major address laying out the stakes of the election at Valley Forge, near Philadelphia, the site of a 1777-1778 winter encampment of the Continental Army led by George Washington during the American revolutionary war.It was at Valley Forge that a disorganised alliance of colonial militias was transformed into a cohesive coalition united in the battle for democracy, the Biden-Harris campaign told reporters, noting that Washington became president but then relinquished power.“There the president will make the case directly that democracy and freedom – two powerful ideas that united the 13 colonies and that generations throughout our nation’s history have fought and died for a stone’s throw from where he’ll be Saturday – remain central to the fight we’re in today,” said the principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks.Then, on Monday, Biden will speak at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 nine African American worshippers were killed by a white supremacist while they were praying at the end of Bible study.Fulks described it as “a historic venue that embodies the stakes of our nation at this moment because whether it is white supremacists descending on the historic American city or Charlottesville, the assault on our nation’s capital on January 6 or white supremacists murdering churchgoers at Mother Emanuel nearly nine years ago, America is worried about the rise in political violence and determined to stand against it”.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, will also travel to South Carolina on Saturday to address the 7th Episcopal District AME church Women’s Missionary Society annual retreat and, later this month, launch a “reproductive freedoms tour” in Wisconsin, highlighting the “chaos and cruelty” unleashed by the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.Speaking from the campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, Fulks told reporters: “You can expect the entirety of our campaign to be out in full force later this month on the anniversary of Roe v Wade, making crystal clear to every American to that the freedom for women to make their own healthcare decisions is on the ballot this November.”But the conference call made no mention of Biden’s leadership during the war in Ukraine, where Congress now threatens to cut off funding, nor the war in Gaza, which has been the most divisive foreign policy issue of his presidency. The campaign team also avoided the subject of Biden’s age – at 81 he is the oldest president in American history.The call did dwell on the January 6 insurrection, however, underlining how the Biden campaign is intent on making the election less a referendum on his presidency than a choice between the incumbent and Trump, who has been twice impeached and indicted in four separate cases and is facing 91 criminal counts.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign manager, said: “When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said, ‘We are in the battle for the soul of America’ and as we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Biden enters the new year with the lowest approval rating of any modern-day president seeking re-election. Voters have expressed concerns over crime, immigration and inflation, which hit 40-year highs in 2022. Branding exercises such as “Bidenomics” appear to have fallen flat.Polls show the president losing support among voters of colour in particular. On Monday a USA Today and Suffolk University survey showed Trump on 39% support among Latino voters, ahead of Biden on 34%, a dramatic reversal from 2020 when Biden enjoyed 65% support from Latino voters.Fulks said voters of color have most at stake in the election and denied that there is cause for panic. “Our campaign has been putting in the work to do everything we need to do to communicate with communities of color next fall to make sure that they turn out,” he said, noting that the campaign has made the “biggest and earliest ever investment for a re-election campaign into constituency media”.He added: “We started by doing early organizing efforts targeting the voters that make up the Biden-Harris coalition and that sends a clear signal that we’re not going to wait and parachute into these communities at the last minute and ask them for their vote. We’re going to earn their vote.“We know that we have to communicate to these constituencies about what this administration has done; we have to communicate with these constituencies about the dangers that the other side poses; and we’re going to do both.” More