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      Unsuccessful Biden challenger is first Democrat to call for Henry Cuellar’s resignation

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      The Minnesota congressman who unsuccessfully challenged Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary became the first member of their party to call on fellow US House representative Henry Cuellar to resign after federal bribery charges were unveiled against the Texas politician on Friday.In a post on X, Dean Phillips urged Cuellar to step down, along with other politicians faced with pending criminal cases – including Biden’s presidential predecessor and Republican rival Donald Trump as well as Democratic US senator Bob Menendez.“While the bar for federal indictment is high, trust in our government is low,” Phillips’ post on X said. “That’s why office holders and candidates under indictment should resign or end their campaigns, including [senator] Bob Menendez, Donald Trump & [congressman] Henry Cuellar.”The remarks from Phillips came after federal prosecutors alleged on Friday that Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, accepted about $600,000 in bribes in exchange for influencing policy in favor of Azerbaijan as well as a Mexican bank between December 2014 and November 2021.Imelda Cuellar used “sham consulting contracts”, front companies and intermediaries to launder the money, prosecutors contended. And in return for the bribes, Henry Cuellar – who has represented a swath of Texas’s border with Mexico in Congress since 2005 – steered US foreign policy to Azerbaijan’s advantage while pressuring unnamed “high-ranking” federal government executives to implement measures benefiting the bank.In a statement, Henry Cuellar maintained his and his wife’s innocence. “I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations,” the congressman’s statement said. “Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of south Texas.”Friday’s announcement from prosecutors prompted the House Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, to say that Cuellar would step down as the ranking member of a homeland security subcommittee while the case against him proceeded. Jeffries cited the party’s rules in the House.However, Jeffries made it a point to describe Cuellar as “a valued member of the House Democratic caucus” who was “entitled to his day in court and the presumption of innocence throughout the legal process”.Phillips did not concur, in his estimation lumping in Cuellar with Menendez and Trump as politicians who did not deserve to hold elected office as they grappled with criminal charges.Menendez has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges – he has said he doesn’t plan to run for re-election as a Democrat but hasn’t ruled out an independent candidacy.Trump has pleaded not guilty to nearly 90 felonies for trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden, improper retention of classified materials after his presidency and hush-money payments to an adult film actor that prosecutors allege were improperly covered up.The former president’s trial centering on the hush money concluded its third week on Friday. He is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential race.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne indicted politician who recently did not leave his position on his own terms was George Santos, who was expelled from the US House amid fraud-related charges.Phillips mounted a long-shot bid to deny Biden from winning a second consecutive Democratic nomination seemingly against the advice of most of his party colleagues.Biden dominated the contest, and Phillips dropped out after losing his home state.His cause was not helped when a political operative working for the Phillips campaign – without permission from the candidate or his advisers – admitted being behind a artificial intelligence-created robocall that spoofed Biden’s voice on the eve of the primary’s start and urged Democrats in New Hampshire to avoid voting.Phillips was first elected to Congress to represent a wealthier suburban area outside Minneapolis in 2019 but gave up seeking re-election to his seat in November to pursue his challenge to Biden. More

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      Wilmington: how a once-red district is a window on North Carolina politics

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      The area around Wilmington, North Carolina, was once rock-ribbed Republican red. No longer. It’s contested territory in what may be the most contested state in the country this year.Donald Trump had planned a rally in Wilmington earlier this month but was rained out at the last moment. Trump promised to return with a bigger and better rally later. Joe Biden visited Wilmington on Thursday, after a detour to Charlotte to meet with the families of four law enforcement officers killed on Monday while serving an arrest warrant. It was his second visit to North Carolina this year and is unlikely to be his last.“I want to get Joe Biden to Wilmington,” the state senator Natalie Murdock of Durham said last week, before Biden announced the trip. Murdock is helping coordinate the Biden-Harris campaign in North Carolina. She noted that Biden won New Hanover county in 2020 after Hillary Clinton lost it four years earlier. “We’re going to have a field office out there,” she added, explaining plans for “boots on the ground” to get out the vote.The outsized political attention on Wilmington reflects a granular effort to win voters in the persuadable places, the swing districts in swing states. Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by a margin of 1.3%, his narrowest state victory. The most recent Emerson College poll shows Biden running behind Trump by five points, with 10% undecided.But North Carolina’s political map is a pointillist portrait of post-pandemic population change, with cities such as Charlotte, Durham and Wilmington booming from domestic migration while other communities bleed residents to places with economic vibrancy. Two-thirds of North Carolina’s population growth between 2010 and 2020 was non-white. About 400,000 people have moved to North Carolina since 2020. Trump’s margin in 2020 was less than 75,000 votes.Growth is the story of Wilmington. The beach town vacation spot has expanded beyond Saturday farmers’ markets and upscale restaurants on the river for tourists, attracting pharmaceutical research, banking and logistics today.“I moved to Wilmington 22 years ago. And when I moved here, I didn’t even realize you were allowed to live here all year,” said David Hill, a pediatrician and the Democratic nominee for the North Carolina state senate. “I can say that if you drive down the street, you will see acres and acres of what was forest when we moved here just five years ago, that is now in part sand and in part foundations and newly built homes.”Many census tracts around Wilmington in Pender, Brunswick and New Hanover counties doubled in population between 2010 and 2020. During the pandemic, growth accelerated, with both Pender and Brunswick county’s population increasing by 15% since 2020.The seventh district is held by Michael Lee, a real estate attorney and a relative moderate in the Republican-led senate. The district, covering most of New Hanover county, has been targeted by national campaigners as one of North Carolina’s few legislative seats that can be flipped, despite a ruthless redistricting that moved much of downtown Wilmington into a neighboring district last year.“One of those precincts was the highest-turnout precinct for Black voters, and it has now been put into deep-red Brunswick county,” Murdock said. “It is one of those races that was still going to be competitive, but they did not do us any favors with that map. I mean, it is one of the most gerrymandered of this cycle.”Republicans have a 30 to 20 advantage over Democrats in the state senate and a 72 to 48 advantage in the state house; precisely the 60% margin needed in each chamber to override a veto by North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Cooper has blocked legislation restricting abortion access and expanding gun rights, but Republican lawmakers have overridden dozens of vetoes, from bills banning transgender hormone therapy for minors to changes in election laws.Cooper is term-limited and will be out of office in January. Republicans cannot afford to lose one seat in either chamber if they also lose the governor’s race, and the fate of the gubernatorial race is an open question given North Carolina’s history of ticket splitting and the nomination of the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who has a record of extreme, racist and homophobic comments and faces unpleasant revelations about his financial and business history.National Democratic campaigners are hoping that a backlash against restrictive abortion laws will fuel turnout statewide. But local contenders in closely divided districts have largely avoided the culture war rancor and are focusing on community concerns.Lee, for example, published a column this week taking issue with the New Hanover school system’s $20m shortfall, describing it as evidence of poor financial decisions made with short-term pandemic funding. Though the population around Wilmington has been exploding, public school enrollment has not: the local system has fewer students now than before the pandemic.Lee chairs the senate’s education committee, and has been leading the state senate’s efforts to expand North Carolina’s private school voucher program. The committee approved a bill on Wednesday to add $248m to the program next school year, on top of the $191m the program received this year. Applications for the vouchers, worth up to $7,468, outstripped funding after a surge of interest. (Lee did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)Newcomers chasing Wilmington’s burgeoning film industry or simply looking for a better climate while working from home are wrestling with crowded roads, rising housing costs, access to healthcare and the other downsides of rapid growth, Hill said. Their interests do not easily map on to a highly partisan political framework.“Characterizing North Carolina in the same sentence as some of the more extremist states in the south fails to give the population of the state credit for really being quite centrist,” Hill said. “I think when you look at what our rightwing extremist supermajority has done, it would be easy to lump our state and with some states that are more extremist, but I don’t feel – and I think we have good evidence to tell us – that they don’t really represent the state as a whole.” More

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      Star Wars’ Mark Hamill hails ‘Joe-B-Wan Kenobi’ after White House meeting

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      “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But enough about Washington. The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who once saw off gangsters at a fictional spaceport, came to the US capital on Friday for a meeting with Joe Biden.Quite why he was in the Oval Office, and what was talked about, remained something of a mystery. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Biden was riding high in the opinion polls but now, perhaps, he is in need of added star power.The surprise appearance by the man who played Luke Skywalker thrilled Star Wars geeks among the White House press corps while leaving non-fans somewhat bemused or baffled.“How many of you had ‘Mark Hamill will lead the press briefing’ on your bingo card – hands?” the actor, wearing dark suit, blue tie and sunglasses, asked reporters at the start of a media briefing. “Yeah, me neither. I just got to meet the president and he gave me these aviator glasses.”Hamill, 72, then put the glasses in his pocket, quipping: “I love the merch.”Hamill, who has more than 5 million followers on X, where he is a trenchant critic of Biden’s election rival Donald Trump, said he was “honoured” to be invited to meet “the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime”, and reeled off a list of Biden’s accomplishments.The actor told reporters that “it just shows you that just one person can be so influential and so positive in our lives” and said he would take questions, “although no Star Wars questions, please”.Asked about the Oval Office meeting, Hamill said: “I only expected to be there for five minutes. He showed us all his photographs.“It was really amazing to me because I was invited to the Carter White House and I came. And then I came to the Obama White House but I never was invited into the Oval Office, and it was a large gathering. So this one was really extra special.”In the original blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), Hamill played farm boy Luke learning Jedi mind tricks from Obi-Wan Kenobi, an elderly Jedi master who has seen better days. On Friday, it seems, he again took the role of young apprentice to the 81-year-old Biden.“I called him ‘Mr President’. He said, ‘You can call me Joe.’ I said, ‘Can I call you Joe-B-Wan Kenobi?’ He liked that.”Hamill left the podium to whoops and applause from a few starstruck reporters. The first question to the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, began: “May the Force be with you.” She replied: “May the Force be with you or, tomorrow, the 4th be with you, however you want to look at it.”A journalist said: “Let’s hope we’ve killed off the Star Wars jokes for the rest of the briefing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJean-Pierre: “I doubt it. I feel like there’s more coming.”And later she was challenged as to why Hamill, who has never held elected office, was in the Oval Office at all. Weijia Jiang of CBS News asked pointedly: “What was Mark Hamill doing here today?”Laughing, Jean-Pierre replied: “Did you not like having him here? … Mark Hamill was in town. They met. I think it was important as someone – you all know Mark Hamill. He is someone who is very much invested in our country, very much invested in the direction of this country.”As Jiang confessed a lack of familiarity with the films, Jean-Pierre wondered: “Do you not like Star Wars? You’ve not seen Star Wars?”Jiang promised “I will now!” as some in the room groaned.Hamill is one of numerous Hollywood stars that the Biden campaign may seek to deploy ahead of a presidential election now six months away. On Thursday, the actor and director Robert De Niro spoke out against Trump, urging Biden to “keep up the fight” against him and “go at him hard”.Interviewed by Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, De Niro warned: “The guy’s a monster. He is beyond wrong. It’s almost like he wants to do the most horrible things that he can think of in order to get a rise out of us. I don’t know what it is but he’s been doing it and doing it, and it’s fucking scary.” More

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      Mass deportations, detention camps, troops on the street: Trump spells out migrant plan

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      Donald Trump is planning to unleash the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history should he win re-election in November, involving legally questionable deployments of military and police units and the creation of vast detention camps along the southern border.Trump has laid out his vision for a “record-setting deportation operation” in a series of rally speeches, newspaper articles and social media posts. He intends to move swiftly after inauguration day next January to stage mass roundups of immigrants across the country, conducting raids inside big cities where he would face certain Democratic opposition.“On day one, we will begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Freeland, Michigan, on Wednesday. He told his adoring supporters that immigrants were coming in by the millions from foreign prisons and “insane asylums” leading to the “plunder, rape, slaughter and destruction of the American suburbs, cities and towns”.Immigration experts say that the deportation plans for a Trump White House 2.0 dwarf anything previously seen – both in scale and in the intensity of the former president’s determination to run roughshod over legal guardrails. He attempted workplace raids during his 2016 presidential term, but they were largely stymied in the courts.“This time we need to take Trump at his word,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “When he talks about mass deportation – in boxcars, or bus loads, or planes, or whatever – that’s what he’s going to do.”Stephen Miller, Trump’s former senior White House policy adviser and hardline immigration guru who is likely to be central in a second term, told the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk in a podcast interview that the plans were going to be pushed through. “I want everybody to understand this is going to happen. If President Trump is back in the Oval Office in January, this is going to commence immediately.”In an interview with Time magazine this week, Trump emphasized that speed was critical to his strategy for removing many of the at least 11 million people without legal status living in the US today.“We’re going to be moving them out as soon as we get to it,” he said.To skirt around due process laws protecting asylum seekers,Trump has said he will invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act which allows for summary deportation of any non-citizen from a foreign enemy country. He says he will apply the provision in the first instance against “known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members”.Immigration experts fear that such summary removals could ensnare US citizens in the dragnet.“Trump will have his agents remove people, then ask questions later. If somebody looks like they’re undocumented, meaning they have brown or black skin, or speak with an accent, they could be included irrespective of their citizenship,” Leopold warned.Mass deportation would form the centerpiece of a Trump second term. It aligns with other aspects of his vision for the 47th presidency, which promises to be more ruthless, radical and revenge-laden than any administration in modern times.The former president will be counting on the rightward shift in the federal judiciary, which he effected when he was last in the White House. Over the four years of his presidential term, he placed more than 200 judges on the bench, and succeeded in transforming the US supreme court into a rightwing bastion.View image in fullscreenWith Trump and his team setting their sights on deporting more than a million people each year, the operation would inevitably require major infrastructure including new detention camps. Miller said that “large-scale staging grounds” would be constructed near the border, probably in Texas.“You create this efficiency by having these standing facilities where planes are moving off the runway constantly, probably military aircraft,” Miller told Kirk.Flesh has been placed on the bones of Trump’s immigration plans by Project 2025, a presidential transition operation spearheaded by the rightwing Heritage Foundation that has compiled a 920-page policy review aiming to “institutionalize Trumpism”. By its calculations, the daily number of beds in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centers would need to rise from the current 34,000 to more than 100,000.Ice itself should be given free rein to carry out “civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrant where appropriate”, Project 2025 says (emphasis in the original). The Trump campaign has stressed that outside groups like Heritage do not speak for the former president, but the policies contained in the review hew closely to his intentions and are likely to provide foundations for administration policy.Even with its 21,000 employees, Ice would be overwhelmed by the task of rounding up millions of people without the involvement of other entities. Trump told Time magazine that he would turn initially to the national guard, and then to the US military.“If I thought things were getting out of control, I would have no problem using the military,” he said.When Time pointed out that under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited in most circumstances from acting domestically against civilians, Trump replied: “Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren’t legally in our country.”In fact, undocumented immigrants are civilians (though not citizens). As such, they enjoy equal protection rights under the US constitution.Trump likens his immigration plans to the mass deportation of some 300,000 Mexicans by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955. Though Trump is contemplating massively greater numbers, the two plans bear striking similarities.Both schemes were justified using racist stereotypes of immigrants. Eisenhower’s was called “Operation Wetback” and portrayed Mexicans as dirty and dangerous.Trump repeatedly talks about “migrant crime” at his rallies, telling Wednesday’s crowd in Michigan that prisons and mental institutions all around the world were being “emptied into the United States like we are a dumping ground”. Notably, criminologists report that immigrants – whether they have legal status or not – are more law-abiding than US-born citizens.Mass roundups are likely to threaten the “Dreamers”, the more than half a million immigrants who came to the US as undocumented children and who have been granted partial rights to remain under the deferred action program known as Daca. Trump has indicated he intends to tear up the Daca scheme, which he tried and failed to do in his first term.View image in fullscreenTrump also plans to use state and local police forces to assist Ice in roundups. That would be embraced with alacrity by Republican-controlled states like Texas where the governor, Greg Abbott, is already striving to give state police the power to arrest undocumented migrants.But it would be fiercely opposed in Democratic states which have tended to place a firewall between their law enforcement officers and federal immigration activities. Undocumented people are concentrated in big cities under Democratic control, such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, raising the specter under Trump’s plans of open confrontation between law enforcement agencies receiving conflicting orders from authorities led by the two main parties.Miller said that Republican governors would be encouraged to deploy their national guard over the border into Democratic-controlled states where undocumented migrants enjoy so-called “sanctuary city” protections. Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, could send troops into Maryland which has a Democratic governor, Wes Moore.“If you’re going to go into an unfriendly state like Maryland, well, there would just be Virginia doing the arrest in Maryland, right, very close,” he told Kirk’s podcast.Leopold predicted that pitching one state against another would quickly deteriorate into a “police state mentality”.“Are we going to see a complete breakdown of the unity of the American state?” he said. “It’s possible.” More

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      ‘We must not stop’: potential Trump VP Ben Carson touts national abortion ban

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      In a new book, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary and potential Trump vice-presidential pick Ben Carson calls for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself.Hailing the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson US supreme court ruling that removed the federal right to abortion, Carson writes: “We must not stop there … the battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. Many states have made abortion illegal because of the Dobbs decision, yet the practice continues in many more states.“What is needed is legislation that guarantees the right to life for all American citizens, including those still in the womb. Therefore, we must be boldly vocal about saving our fellow human beings through the legislative process. They are counting on us!”Carson’s book, The Perilous Fight: Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family, will be published later this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.With the book, Carson follows other potential Trump running mates in seeking to sell himself to the reading and voting public as well as the former president, among them the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; the former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard; and the South Dakota governor and self-confessed dog- and goat-killer Kristi Noem.No 2 to Trump may be a dubious prize – his vice-president, Mike Pence, ended up running for his life from Trump supporters who wanted to hang him on January 6 – but contenders continue to jostle.Recent reporting suggests Carson has slipped from the front rank. On Thursday, Bloomberg said Trump was closely considering Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, and three senators: Marco Rubio of Florida, JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina.But Carson, 72, remains close to Trump, having challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2016 – briefly leading the race – before becoming one of the only members of Trump’s cabinet to stay throughout his term, even after Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Carson’s hardline views on abortion are well known: during his 2016 run he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which safeguarded the federal right.His new book comes nearly two years after Roe was brought down by a supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwing justices.Carson writes: “I’m grateful that in my lifetime I was able to hear these incredible words established by the supreme court of the United States: “Held, the constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 1992 case that upheld Roe. Thirty years later, tilted 6-3 to the right by Trump, the court brought both rulings down.Carson continues: “The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson was a crucial correction to the error of Roe v Wade, and I am certainly grateful for that correction. However, we must not stop there.”Many observers suggest Republicans should have stopped their attacks on abortion rights before achieving their goal with the fall of Roe.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPublic opinion remains in favour of legal abortion: according to Gallup, just 13% of Americans agree with Carson that it should be banned entirely.Since Dobbs, fueled by such voter sentiment, Democrats have enjoyed electoral victories, even in Republican-run states, when campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights. The issue has been placed front and centre of the presidential election to come by the Biden campaign.Extreme developments among the states have included the introduction of a six-week abortion ban in Florida and in Arizona the triggering (and repeal) of a brutal ban passed in 1864, before statehood and when the age of consent there was just 10.Trump has struggled to reconcile boasts about bringing down Roe with avoiding talk of a national ban.Last month, the former president said: “States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative than others. At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or faith.“Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” More

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      Dark Brandon popping off: is Joe Biden’s ‘cringe’ TikTok helping or hurting him?

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      In Joe Biden’s TikTok debut, timed to the Super Bowl in February, the president answered rapid-fire questions like “Chiefs or Niners?” (neither, he picked the Eagles because his wife’s a “Philly girl”) and flashed the Dark Brandon meme. He got more than 10m views, so by pure metrics, the video was no flop. But to use one of TikTok’s favorite disses, for many gen Z viewers it felt “cringe” – even pandering. Worse still, the TikTok, captioned “lol hey guys”, made the rounds after Israel struck Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza strip. Biden’s jokes infuriated users who flooded the post with the comment “WHAT ABOUT RAFAH?”“I don’t want my president to be a TikTok influencer,” read the headline of one USA Today editorial. One (actual) influencer told CNN the president’s attempt at meme-ing felt “performative”. A warm welcome to the app, it was not. But Biden’s team kept posting.Biden’s TikTok account, Biden-Harris HQ, has put out more than 150 videos since February, notching over 3.9m likes and 313,000 followers. That’s more than Maxwell Frost (570,000 likes, 96,000 followers), who became the first gen Z member of Congress in 2023, but a fraction of Bernie Sanders’ 11.4m likes or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 987,000 followers on the app. Congressman Jeff Jackson, a Republican from North Carolina with 2.2 million TikTok followers, is one of the most visible politicians on the app. His posts almost always hit more than a million views – only 11 of Biden’s videos have hit more than a million views.View image in fullscreenIf the idea of a president trying to go viral on TikTok seems frivolous, consider what’s at stake for Biden, who’s running a tight election race against Donald Trump. Gen Z was crucial in staving off a predicted “red wave” during the 2022 midterms, and Biden hasn’t exactly locked down the demographic for 2024: a Harvard poll from April found that Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points among 18- to 28-year olds, down from the 23-point lead Biden had at the same point in the 2020 election. The president’s continued support for Israel in the war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 people, is eroding youth support – especially as pro-Palestinian protests spread across US college campuses.TikTok is the most downloaded app among 18- to 24-year olds, and many young people count it as their main source of news. Is Biden winning over young voters by meeting them where they are?Dunking on TrumpHardly any Biden-Harris HQ TikToks show Biden awkwardly interacting with pop culture – not after what happened with his Super Bowl post. Instead, the account has hit its stride focusing on policy issues and dunking on conservatives.More than half of Biden’s TikTok content reminds viewers of Trump’s worst gaffes, such as the times Trump suggested that Americans inject bleach to ward off the coronavirus, or when he stared directly at the 2017 eclipse. The fight to protect abortion rights also features prominently. One post pulls a quote from a recent press conference, during which the former president bragged about ending Roe v Wade. Another reminds viewers that a Trump-endorsed candidate for Michigan state senate seat, Jacky Eubanks, called for banning birth control and gay marriage.“It’s very clear to me that Biden’s primary goals on TikTok are in line with his digital goals overall: to highlight and remind folks how dangerous Trump is, and to highlight the accomplishments that Biden has made that no one knows about,” said Josh Klemons, a Democratic digital strategist.View image in fullscreenNoting that many of TikTok’s younger users “didn’t live through Trump’s first presidency as an adult”, Klemons stressed that it was important Biden use his TikTok to zero in on the former president’s catastrophic track record. TikTok is a largely progressive platform, where anti-Trump content does well, and anti-Trump posts are among Biden’s most-watched TikToks. (They’re also an invitation to trolls: top comments on the bleach post, including “Biden sucks” and “Ban Joe Biden”, are all from pro-Trump accounts.)Many Biden TikToks have hundreds of thousands of views, with videos going moderately viral by TikTok standards. That’s not bad reach, but it could be better.A genuinely moving Biden TikTok, seemingly pulled from a campaign ad, shows a man named Bob approaching the president in a restaurant and shaking his hand in thanks for lowering the cost of insulin. It showcases Biden’s well-honed ability to connect one-on-one with voters … but it has only 224k views. Compare that with someone like Jackson, whose most recent TikTok on the war in Ukraine earned more than 1m views.One of Biden-Harris HQ’s highest-performing videos of late pulls a clip from an interview the president did with Howard Stern, in which he described Trump’s response to the January 6 riot. “When they were storming the Capitol … he was sitting in that dining area off the Oval Office for three hours… He said nothing … It was almost criminal.” The clip has 233,000 views – not a flop, but not a rousing success either.In another TikTok, the Biden campaign reposted a video of Steve Bannon talking about Project 2025, an extensive collection of proposals intended to reshape the federal government in support of a Republican agenda if Trump wins the election. Bannon says a second Trump administration would put his opponents in prison “on the evening after we’ve won”. The Biden campaign captioned the clip: “Project 2025 deserves more attention.”It’s a good caption – and Project 2025 does get attention on TikTok, usually in posts that do better than Biden’s. A recent TikTok from the voting advocacy group NowThis Impact, which has 3.3 million followers, also shared information about Project 2025. That video got more than 3.6m views. Biden’s received 43,000, while another Project 2025-themed TikTok from Biden, featuring Lara Trump, received just under half a million viewers.Bringing in backupThough Biden appears in some of his account’s TikToks – usually dragging Trump – the account isn’t all about him. (Perhaps a lesson learned from Hillary Clinton, who used social media during the 2016 race as if she were typing the tweets herself.) Instead, it often taps surrogates to help make Biden’s case. In one TikTok, Sanders speaks about supporting Biden despite not agreeing with him on every issue – a line the campaign no doubt hopes will land with gen Z voters who are against the war in Gaza. AOC touts Biden’s recent record on the climate crisis, and members of the Kennedy family filmed a video saying they support Biden, a swipe against the third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.View image in fullscreenBiden also posted a clip of Frost, the token gen Z politician, reminding his peers in Congress that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had spoken at an event held by white supremacists in 2022. “Someone like Maxwell Frost is going to hit differently [to that audience],” Klemons said. He also pulls in young viewers who might not realize they’re watching what is effectively a Biden campaign ad.Other Biden TikToks smartly mimic influencer content, with what appear to be younger campaign staffers speaking directly to camera about a abortion, immigration or, again, Trump gaffes. “You’ll never believe what Trump is doing in the courtroom,” one such host says in an intro that cuts to a screenshot of a New York Times report on the former president “struggling to stay awake” during his New York trial.“I like how they use younger people from their campaign to be some of the messengers,” said Ashley Aylward, a research manager at the gen Z-focused, DC-based consulting group Hit Strategies. “I think they should lean into that more, and just kind of let [the young people] take it all over. They could make ‘a day in the life working for the Biden campaign’, or a video that humanizes these people and shows that voting for this administration isn’t just voting for Biden, but it’s a group of diverse voices.”Aylward also recommended the account post fewer videos of Biden stumping – recent TikToks that feature Biden himself were filmed during campaign appearances.“If someone isn’t interested in politics, that’s not going to end up on their For You page, and if it does, they’ll scroll by it as soon as they see a podium,” she said. “But if they see a younger person doing a day in the life, or talking through a current event, it’s a smart way to reel people in without them even knowing they’re watching a campaign video.”And though it’s not quite a proxy, Biden’s TikTok has leaned into his so-called Dark Brandon persona, a laser-eyed character that riffs upon a pro-Trump meme. When Biden makes a joke at Trump’s expense during a speech, that’s supposedly Dark Brandon “popping off” or “dragging Trump”, as recent TikToks put it.“I actually do love the humor and using Dark Brandon to show that he can make jokes about himself,” Aylward said. “The account uses young people language in the TikTok caption, like ‘Biden cooks Trump,’ but they aren’t having Biden use the language himself. They’re showing this all from a young person’s point of view, engaging in the language they use.”Whether the effect is cringey or not, it seems, depends on one’s taste.Silence on Gaza and a possible TikTok banBiden’s TikTok account has faced more serious criticisms than cringey-ness. One of young people’s biggest concerns is the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza. In the comment section of his videos, users frequently ask Biden to engage with the topic or to order a ceasefire, but the account has remained silent on the issue.“Biden’s TikTok is clearly a one-way form of communication,” said Yini Zhang, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who studies social media and politics. “They’re sticking to some clearly thought-out talking points. They have issues they want to avoid, like Gaza, and the TikTok page is not as interactive as we often think it might be.”Another issue is the irony of Biden’s team putting resources toward TikTok when just last week, Biden signed a measure that could see the app banned in the US. (TikTok remains blocked on most government devices, per a 2022 law.)“It’s a funny position for him to be in,” Klemons said. “I can’t think of a situation that’s similar, where somebody is actively using a platform that they’re actively trying to get rid of. But they need to be where the people are.”It would take at least nine months for the app to disappear if it does at all, so Biden can milk the platform for the entire election cycle. Trump, who does not have a TikTok account, is currently opposed to a TikTok ban. (He’s posting furiously on Truth Social, where, funnily enough, Biden-Harris HQ also runs an account.) In fact, many politicians don’t even touch TikTok due to security concerns.TikTok’s allure has always been its supposed authenticity, with the most popular personas on the app appearing real, raw, unfiltered – even if many of their videos are highly scripted. “They want to project this persona of being authentic in a way that maximizes their appeal, but they also have to be careful in what they say,” Zhang said.Biden is no different. His TikTok follows the trends of the platform. His memes aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re not totally embarrassing either. His stats are middling, and he avoids engaging directly with young people on tough issues. Viewers are constantly reminded of his greatest hits, a persona he’s cultivated through decades in the public eye, but ultimately, the account is just another campaign mouthpiece. A TikTok alone will not clinch an election. More

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      Trump trial update, terrifying Time interview and a Republican dog killer – podcast

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      This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to Time magazine confirming the fears many have about what he would do were he to win back the White House in November. He found time to lay out his vision of a Trump presidency 2.0 despite having to appear in a New York court for a case that this week cost the former president even more money.
      On top of that, a potential Trump vice-president admitted she killed her puppy, Republicans attempted to remove the party’s House speaker – again – and a wave of Gaza protests took place on US university campuses.
      Jonathan Freedland and Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone magazine discuss what it all means for the 2024 election

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

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      Biden campaign condemns Trump’s refusal to commit to honoring November election results – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has come out swinging against Donald Trump’s refusal in an interview yesterday to commit to accepting the results of the presidential election in November.From spokesman James Singer:
      President Biden has said, ‘You can’t love your country only when you win.’ But for Donald Trump, his campaign for revenge and retribution reigns supreme.
      In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’, use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf and put his own quest for power ahead of what is best for America.
      Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the constitution and a threat to our democracy. The American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence and his thirst for revenge.
      In a surprise address from the White House, Joe Biden condemned violence on university campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations are taking place, while saying the unrest would not spur him to change his policies in the Middle East. Meanwhile, his campaign hit out at Donald Trump, who yesterday held a rally in swing state Wisconsin and refused to commit to accepting the results of the November presidential election. Trump also repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.Here’s what else happened today:
      Biden met with the families of four law enforcement officers killed while serving a warrant in North Carolina last week, as well as those wounded in the shooting.
      Trump stayed away from the issue of abortion in his Wisconsin appearance, which Democrats have used to direct voter anger against Republicans in recent elections there and in other states.
      In addition to Wisconsin, Trump also visited fellow Great Lakes swing state Michigan, where his fans offered a reprieve from the dreary New York courthouse in which he has lately been spending a lot of time.
      The campus protests are the latest complication to Biden’s re-election chances, after he sparked the ire of key Democratic voting groups by backing Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      Napping in court? Not me, Trump said, despite reports to the contrary.
      Perhaps you have heard that South Dakota’s Republican governor Kristi Noem killed a dog (the Guardian broke the story, after all!). Noem now says she had no choice, but blamed “fake news” (must be referring to us) for pushing the story that may have sunk her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat, claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”The Guardian first reported Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog and an unnamed, un-castrated male goat. The story is contained in Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.In the book, Noem says her description of killing a dog and a goat illustrates her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as well as on her South Dakota farm – a defence she repeated before her Fox News interview.Noem says Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt and then killed a neighbour’s chickens, all the while presenting “the picture of pure joy”.Legal proceedings can be dull, sometimes so dull they put you to sleep – even if you happen to be a former president.On the first day of his trial in New York, Donald Trump appeared to shut his eyes for an extended period of time. That was a couple of weeks ago now, but he just got around to denying doing so, in a post on Truth Social:
      Contrary to the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, I don’t fall asleep during the Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt, especially not today. I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, listen intensely, and take it ALL in!!!
      Here’s more on the alleged nap:Yesterday, Donald Trump was appearing before crowds in Michigan and Wisconsin – two swing states that will put him well on his way to the White House, if he wins them in November.Today, he’s back at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom, where his lawyers are cross-examining Keith Davidson, a former attorney for Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor at the center of the case against him for allegedly falsifying business records.Follow our live blog for the latest from the trial:Fun fact about Joe Biden: the 2020 election was the first one in which he faced a sustained campaign of negative television advertising, the New York Times reports.And it goes without saying that 2024 will be his second. In a look back at his lengthy political career, the Times recounts what it was like for the Republicans who attempted to oust Biden from his Senate seat in Delaware, over the 36 years he represented the state.Biden was something of juggernaut, his ex-opponents recount, both personally, and in the campaign infrastructure he wielded:
      In Delaware, Mr. Biden was so well known and, in his early years in office, had such a wellspring of sympathy from voters after the tragic crash that killed his first wife and daughter, that no rival ever mounted a sustained case that he should not be re-elected. For years, bumper stickers promoting his re-election just said ‘Joe,’ while opponents lost with an array of long-forgotten slogans.
      ‘I don’t think he ever broke a sweat once he was an incumbent,’ said Jane Brady, a Republican who lost to Mr. Biden by 27 points in 1990.
      The only negative ad run against Mr. Biden between 1978 and 2008, according to the University of Oklahoma’s archive, is one that his campaign would most likely embrace today. That 30-second spot reminded viewers that President Ronald Reagan endorsed John Burris, Mr. Biden’s Republican challenger in 1984, while Mr. Biden backed the unpopular Democratic presidential nominee, Walter Mondale.
      The Biden of today often makes gaffes, to the chagrin of his supporters, and the delight of his enemies. Here’s an example of a recent one, which was seized on by the conservative media:
      Just last week, Mr. Biden prompted the crowd at an endorsement event to chant, ‘Four more years!’ and then added ‘pause’ as it appeared to have been written into his teleprompter, an episode that drew much mocking in conservative news media and quiet forehead-slapping among Democrats.
      Back in the day, the Times reports such things did not happen:
      Mr. Biden’s opponent in 1996 and 2002 was Ray Clatworthy, an entrepreneur who owned restaurants and local Christian radio stations. During a 1996 televised debate, Mr. Clatworthy accused Mr. Biden of raising taxes while voting to increase his own salary and accused him of ‘attempting to portray himself as a conservative’ in an election year.
      Mr. Biden spoke quickly and precisely, without entering the verbal cul-de-sacs endemic to many of his presidential speeches 28 years later.
      Mr. Biden sought to pin down Mr. Clatworthy on his anti-abortion stance and then delivered a clear statement of his own views on the issue after Mr. Clatworthy accused him of flip-flopping to endorse abortion rights in his 1988 presidential campaign.
      ‘My position has been consistent from the very beginning,’ Mr. Biden said of his abortion stance. ‘I believe government should stay out – no constitutional amendment, no public funding.’
      Joe Biden is now in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is meeting with the families of four law enforcement officers killed and four others who were wounded while serving a warrant last week.The shooting was the deadliest attack against police in the United States since 2016. Here’s more about what happened:As Donald Trump rallied elsewhere in Wisconsin, demonstrators convened outside the venue that will host the Republican National Convention this summer to decry his vow to bring back hardline immigration policies if elected, the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports:Led by a mariachi band, hundreds of demonstrators on Wednesday morning marched across Milwaukee to the Fiserv Forum – the home of the Milwaukee Bucks and, in July, the venue of the Republican National Convention.The rally, organized by the immigrant and workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, is an annual event, but in 2024 it holds particular weight. The focus of the rally extended beyond immigration, to fear of authoritarianism under Republican candidate Donald Trump and critique of Joe Biden’s handling of the US role in Israel and Gaza.This year, May Day also fell on the same day as a Trump campaign event in Waukesha, which organizers seized on to denounce Trump’s immigration policy and call on Biden to use his executive authority to adopt protections for undocumented workers.“We reject [Trump’s] political platform, which promises dictatorship, deportations and separation of families,” Voces de la Frontera executive director Christine Neumann-Ortiz told the crowd on Wednesday, to applause.While Donald Trump kept mum about abortion in a visit to to the swing state of Wisconsin, he was far more open in a pair of interviews with Time in which he described in depth what he would like to do if returned to the White House. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington has more:Donald Trump has warned that Joe Biden and his family could face multiple criminal prosecutions once he leaves office unless the US supreme court awards Trump immunity in his own legal battles with the criminal justice system.In a sweeping interview with Time magazine, Trump painted a startling picture of his second term, from how he would wield the justice department to hinting he may let states monitor pregnant women to enforce abortion laws.Trump made the threat against the Biden family in an interview with Eric Cortellessa of Time, in which he shared the outlines of what the magazine called “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world”.Trump made a direct connection between his threat to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bidens should he win re-election in November with the case currently before the supreme court over his own presidential immunity.Asked whether he intends to “go after” the Bidens should he gain a second term in the White House, Trump replied: “It depends what happens with the supreme court.”A potentially landmark lawsuit by youth activists against the federal government over its role in fueling the climate crisis was struck down by an appeals court, on the request of the Biden administration, the Guardian’s Dharna Noor reports:A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint.The decision affirmed an emergency petition filed by the justice department in February arguing that “the government will be irreparably harmed” if it is forced to spend time and resources litigating the Juliana case. It’s a measure the justice department should never have taken, said Olson.“The Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court,” she said in a statement. “The real emergency is the climate emergency.”In a surprise address from the White House, Joe Biden condemned violence on university campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations are taking place, while saying the unrest would not spur him to change his policies in the Middle East. Meanwhile, his campaign hit out at Donald Trump, who yesterday held a rally in swing state Wisconsin and refused to commit to accepting the results of the November presidential election. He also repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump stayed away from the issue of abortion in his Wisconsin appearance, which Democrats have used to direct voter anger against Republicans in recent elections there and in other states.
      In addition to Wisconsin, Trump also visited fellow Great Lakes swing state Michigan, where his fans offered a reprieve from the dreary New York courthouse in which he has lately been spending a lot of time.
      The campus protests are the latest complication to Biden’s re-election chances, after he sparked the ire of key Democratic voting groups by backing Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has come out swinging against Donald Trump’s refusal in an interview yesterday to commit to accepting the results of the presidential election in November.From spokesman James Singer:
      President Biden has said, ‘You can’t love your country only when you win.’ But for Donald Trump, his campaign for revenge and retribution reigns supreme.
      In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’, use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf and put his own quest for power ahead of what is best for America.
      Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the constitution and a threat to our democracy. The American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence and his thirst for revenge.
      Joe Biden is already facing heat from some Democratic voters for his support of Israel as it invades Gaza following the 7 October attack. As the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reported earlier this week, the unrest on college campuses targeted at America’s closest Middle East ally could present the latest complication to his campaign for another four years in the White House:The policies of Joe Biden and Democrats towards Israel, which have prompted thousands of students across the country to protest, could affect the youth vote for Biden and hurt his re-election chances, experts have warned, in what is already expected to be a tight election.Thousands of students at universities across the US have joined with pro-Palestine rallies and, most recently, encampments, as Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people.Some of the protests began as a call to encourage universities to ditch investments in companies that provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military. But as the Biden administration has continued to largely support Israel, the president has increasingly become a focus of criticism from young people. Polling shows that young Americans’ support for Biden has been chipped away since 2020.With Biden narrowly trailing Trump in several key swing states, it’s a voting bloc the president can ill afford to lose.“The real threat to Biden is that younger voters, especially college-educated voters, won’t turn out for him in the election,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.“I wouldn’t expect that the protesters on campuses today are going to vote for Trump, almost none of them will. That’s not the danger here. The danger is much simpler: that they simply won’t vote.”Joe Biden spoke about the nationwide protests against Israel at college campuses after police arrested more than 100 people at the University of California, Los Angeles.Follow our live blog for more on the ongoing demonstration wave:In his brief speech on the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Joe Biden cast himself as a defender of free speech rights, but said the demonstrations should not disrupt students’ learning.“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, right to get a degree, right to walk across campus safely without fear of being attacked,” the president said.He later added:
      There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism, or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s not American.
      Biden concluded with:
      As president, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong in standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you, the American people, my obligation to the constitution. More