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      Campaign funds used to pay Biden legal bills in classified documents inquiry

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      Campaign donations to Joe Biden were used to help pay legal bills during the special counsel investigation of his retention of classified information when out of office, Axios reported on Friday.Citing a review of campaign finance records and two unnamed sources “familiar with the matter”, the site said filings by the Democratic National Committee showed it paid more than $1.5m to lawyers or firms representing Biden during Robert Hur’s investigation.The news opens the Biden campaign to charges of hypocrisy, given its own attacks on Donald Trump and his campaign for using donations to pay legal bills.But the two candidates’ legal situations – and legal costs – are vastly different.Trump faces 88 criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments) and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil suits over tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.Denying wrongdoing but seeking to delay trials until he can retake power next year and dismiss them, Trump has fought prosecutors at every step, appealing all the way to the US supreme court. Nonetheless, Trump’s first criminal trial – in the hush-money case and the first criminal trial ever to involve a former president – is scheduled to begin in New York on Monday.The New York Times has reported that Trump’s legal bills since leaving office have topped $100m.Biden was investigated for retaining classified information after his 36-year stint as a US senator from Delaware and eight years as vice-president to Barack Obama. Unlike Trump, he cooperated with the special counsel throughout. Unlike in Trump’s case, the special counsel declined to bring charges – though he did deliver a controversial report.Hur’s investigation began in January last year. Axios said DNC filings showed payments of $1.05m to a company run by Bob Bauer, Biden’s lead attorney, between July 2023 and February 2024 and “largely” relating to the special counsel’s investigation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked about those payments and others, the DNC declined to tell Axios exactly how much was spent on matters concerning the special counsel. Bauer did not comment.Axios pointed to recent statements by Biden campaign officials aimed at Trump’s methods of meeting legal costs, including “We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers” and a hit at the Republican for relying on “a handful of billionaires figuring out how to pay his legal bills”.Alex Floyd, a DNC spokesperson, said: “There is no comparison – the DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills – unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on, like a personal piggy bank.” More

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      Trump and Mike Johnson push for redundant ban on non-citizens voting

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      Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.Like the other claims Trump makes about the 2020 election being stolen, the talking point about migrant voting does not have facts to back it up.There is no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting, nor are there even many examples of individual instances of the practice, despite strenuous efforts in some states to find these cases. A large study by the Brennan Center of the 2016 election found that just 0.0001% of votes across 42 jurisdictions, with 23.5m votes, were suspected to be non-citizens voting, 30 incidents in total.One review in Georgia found about 1,600 instances of non-citizens registering to vote from 1997 to 2022. In these instances, safeguards in the process worked: none of these attempts led to someone being allowed to register, because they did not submit proof of citizenship needed to be added to the voter rolls.The Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank, has a database of voter fraud cases across the country, which, according to the Washington Post, includes just 85 cases of non-citizen voting since 2002.Some of the isolated instances of non-citizens voting in the last decade have involved people who were confused about their eligibility and did not do so intentionally.In general, people who are undocumented avoid scenarios that could leave them vulnerable to deportation, such as voting illegally.The lack of prosecutions over migrant voting has not stopped Trump from making claims on the campaign trail that it will somehow steal the election from him, or that it has already happened in other elections in which he was on the ballot.“I think they really are doing it because they want to sign these people up to vote. I really do,” Trump said in Iowa in January. “They can’t speak a word of English for the most part, but they’re signing them up.”Trump is not the only one spreading this falsehood – it’s part of a longstanding Republican line of attack on immigration and Democrats. Now, the myth is also being pushed by Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the prominent Trump-aligned figure Cleta Mitchell, who has been circulating a two-page memo laying out “the threat of non-citizen voting in 2024”, according to reporting by NPR, which obtained the memo.Because this is a concern Republicans consistently bring up, some states have added new laws to try to remove non-citizens from voter rolls or undertaken audits of their voters to assess citizenship status.But, voting rights advocates have warned, these often run the risk of ensnaring naturalized citizens and other people who are eligible to vote and booting them from the voter rolls. One attempt in Texas in 2019 led the then secretary of state to send letters to nearly 100,000 people, including US citizens who were erroneously warned they might not be eligible to vote.Widespread voter fraud, in general, does not exist in the US. There are instances of voter fraud prosecuted across the US every election, but even statewide taskforces have been unable to uncover large numbers of cases, and certainly nothing close to the scale that could swing elections. More

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      Trump campaign calls for more presidential debates ‘much earlier’ in election race – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.The ad buy focuses on Donald Trump’s latest abortion stance, in which he said laws should be left to individual states, many of which have enacted new restrictions since he appointed supreme court justices who were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.“Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Biden narrates in the 30-second ad.
      And now, women’s lives are in danger because of that. The question is, if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next?
      The ad, dubbed “Power Back”, will run this month on targeted television programs and target key young, female and Latino voters both on television and online, according to the campaign.In a statement, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This week, women across the state of Arizona are watching in horror as an abortion ban from 1864 with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of a woman will soon become the law of the land for Arizonans. This nightmare is only possible because of Donald Trump.

      Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.
      The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Biden and Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
      Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman of Georgia who has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson, said the House speaker offered her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers after a meeting at the Capitol.
      Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
      The joint press conference between Mike Johnson and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow will come just two days after the former president called on Republicans to kill legislation the speaker put forward to extend a controversial surveillance law. Trump had urged House GOP members to reject a reauthorization of the law, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), ahead of the key procedural vote on Wednesday.
      Johnson is dashing to Florida to meet with Trump, where the pair are expected to appear tomorrow at an event at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “major announcement on election integrity”. Friday’s appearance will mark their first public event together since Johnson was elected to the speakership last fall.
      FBI director Christopher Wray is currently speaking before the House appropriations committee, where he is expected to warn lawmakers of his concerns over potential bad actors carrying out attacks on US soil.“Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” a transcript of Wray’s opening statement obtained by ABC News reads.
      But now increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago.
      Wray said he was “hard pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once,” according to the transcript.While he was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, the address by Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, today comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with Donald Trump.Kishida warned that the biggest challenge the world faces comes from China:
      China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.
      “Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” he added.Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate during a state visit to Washington.
      The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours.
      Kishida said he understood “the exhaustion of being the country that has upheld the international order almost single-handedly” but added:
      The leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow? Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?
      A majority of voters in Florida say they believe a six-week abortion ban is too strict, but only 42% said they will vote in favor of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution, according to a new poll.The study by Emerson College Polling found that 57% of respondents said the six-week abortion ban that will become state law next month is “too strict”, compared with 15% who said it is not strict enough.Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said:
      Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 44% of independents plan to vote in favor of a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. Republicans are more split: 36% plan to vote no, 30% yes, and 34% are unsure.
      Wisconsin Republicans have hit the state election commission with complaints alleging that officials in the state’s two largest cities illegally rejected Republican applicants for poll worker positions for the primary election.The complaints, filed by the Milwaukee county Republican party and Dane county Republican party, claim officials in Milwaukee and Madison violated state law by not contacting eligible Republicans nominated by their party to work the polls. The move furthers the GOP strategy of questioning election processes in key battleground states.“This is the kind of misconduct that drives down faith in elections,” the Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, Michael Whatley, said in a statement on Wednesday.
      The Republican Party is filing these complaints to compel election officials to follow the law and guarantee bipartisan access to important election administration positions in the Badger state.
      Burt Jones, Georgia’s state senator turned lieutenant governor, will be investigated for his role as a fake elector for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.Pete Skandalakis, director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, said he will look into whether Jones should face criminal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was barred from prosecuting Jones in 2022 as part of her election interference case against Trump and others, after she hosted a campaign fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race.Skandalakis announced on Thursday that he would appoint himself to spearhead a potential case against Jones, after facing criticism for not moving more quickly to find a prosecutor to replace Willis.The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Joe Biden and Donald Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.The letter, endorsed by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News, urged the presumptive presidential nominees “to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election”, according to CNN.In a statement responding to the Trump campaign’s letter asking for more presidential debates, Republican national committee Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump said:
      Election calendars have become longer than ever before – and scheduling debates after millions of Americans have already cast their ballots does a grave disservice to voters who want to hear solutions to the economic, border, and crime crises created by Joe Biden.
      Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.In a letter to the commission, Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote:
      The Commission must move up the timetable of its proposed 2024 debates to ensure more Americans have a full chance to see the candidates before they start voting, and we would argue for adding more debates in addition to those on the currently proposed schedule.
      The first presidential debate is scheduled to take place on 16 September in San Marcos, Texas. There are three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate scheduled.Wiles and LaCivita noted that by the date of the first proposed debate, more than a million Americans are likely to have already voted, and three million may have cast their ballot by 1 October, when the second proposed debate is scheduled. They added:
      We have already indicated President Trump is willing to debate anytime, anyplace, and anywhere – and the time to start these debates is now.
      Trump, who did not participate in any of the Republican primary debates, made similar requests during the 2020 election.The Republican National Committee sent out a scripted robocall on behalf of its new co-chair Lara Trump, falsely claiming Democrats were guilty of “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.“We all know the problems,” the RNC call said, according to CNN, which also said the call was sent 145,000 times in the first week of April.
      No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.
      Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who repeatedly defeated Trump in court after the 2020 election, said the RNC robocall showed the Republican party to be “more committed to the big lie than ever”.Donald Trump, who installed his daughter-in-law at the RNC last month, lost the 2020 election conclusively to Joe Biden and was told by close aides including William Barr, his attorney general, and Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, that there was no widespread fraud.Regardless, Trump pursued his fraud lie through the courts – losing every case – and ultimately by inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. More

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      Lara Trump’s RNC robocall falsely claims ‘massive fraud’ in 2020 election

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      The Republican National Committee sent out a scripted robocall on behalf of its new co-chair Lara Trump, falsely claiming Democrats were guilty of “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.“We all know the problems,” the RNC call said, according to CNN, which also said the call was sent 145,000 times in the first week of April.“No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.”Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who repeatedly defeated Trump in cases over alleged electoral fraud after the 2020 election, said the RNC robocall showed the Republican party to be “more committed to the big lie than ever”.Donald Trump, who installed his daughter-in-law at the RNC last month, lost the 2020 election conclusively to Joe Biden and was told by close aides including William Barr, his attorney general, and Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, that there was no widespread fraud.Regardless, Trump pursued his fraud lie through the courts – losing every case – and ultimately by inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.Impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal, Trump has ridden unprecedented legal jeopardy, including 14 charges related to election subversion, to claim the nomination again.The RNC did not consistently fundraise off Trump’s stolen election lie before its change of leadership, a process the Guardian recently reported has been “buffeted by staffing problems and operational headaches as [Trump allies] attempt to bring the party apparatus under the control of the Trump campaign”.But Trump has never stopped broadcasting his lie.On Friday, he is due to appear at his Florida home with Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, for an event trumpeted as important for Republican party unity but focusing on “election integrity”.USA Today reported that the two men will announce a bill meant to “elevate the issue of non-citizens voting in federal elections”.The Bipartisan Policy Center, a group dedicated to creating solutions across party lines, points to research by groups on the right and left of US politics, which says non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare and does not affect election results.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs reported by CNN, the RNC robocall sent in April told recipients: “I’m sure you agree with co-chair [Lara] Trump that we cannot allow the chaos and questions of the 2020 election to ever happen again.”CNN also detailed Lara Trump’s extensive and recent history of supporting her father-in-law’s electoral fraud lie.In just one recent instance, at a campaign event in South Carolina in February, she said: “Does anyone actually believe that in 2020, 81 million people were so inspired by a guy [Biden] who could only get 10 people [to attended events] … that he had the most massive turnout in the history of elections? No, we don’t believe that.”In late March, Trump told NBC the 2020 election was “in the past” but did not disown allegations of a stolen election.On Wednesday, Trump told Newsmax her father-in-law was the victim of political prosecutions and having “nothing but misinformation and disinformation thrown at him every single day”. More

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      John Bolton says he will write in Dick Cheney instead of voting for Biden

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump who wrote a tell-all book and now campaigns against him, will cast a write-in vote for the former vice-president Dick Cheney instead of Joe Biden this year – despite saying Trump must not be re-elected.Bemoaning Trump’s focus on the 2020 election, which he lost conclusively but falsely insists was won with electoral fraud, Bolton told CNN that four years ago: “I voted for Dick Cheney.“And I’ll vote for Dick Cheney again this November. He was a principled Reaganite conservative and he still is. Age is no longer a factor in American presidential politics, so his age doesn’t disqualify him.”Cheney, 83, has suffered five heart attacks, the first aged just 37. In 2001, at the beginning of his vice-presidency to George W Bush, he prepared a resignation letter lest he become too ill to do the job. He went on to be by most judgments the most powerful vice-president of all but also an architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and sparked chaos across the Middle East.Three years after leaving office, in 2012 and aged 71, Cheney was given a new heart.Bolton said: “I think he’d do an immensely better job than either Trump or Biden.”Biden is 81. Trump is 77. Both are subject to doubts about their mental and physical capacity to be president.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties. Biden does not.Trump was impeached twice, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and for inciting an insurrection in the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. Attempts to impeach Biden, over alleged corruption involving his son, have failed to produce evidence or momentum.On CNN, Bolton was asked if he had considered writing in Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who lost her seat in Congress over her opposition to Trump and who has flirted with a presidential run.Bolton said: “Well, I like Liz a lot. And, you know, maybe someday she’ll get my write-in vote too. But right now I’ll stick with her father.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope it sways the electorate and prevents both Trump and Biden from being the successful candidate and if I could start a nationwide write-in campaign for Dick Cheney, maybe I should do that.”Trump v Biden round two promises to be settled by razor-thin margins in a small number of battleground states. Both candidates fear the impact of third-party candidates or voters deserting the major party picks in any way.Among other anti-Trump conservatives, Bolton’s choice did not land well.“I think this is so wrong,” said Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman who ran for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2020.“Bolton believes Trump is unfit, yet he won’t vote for Joe Biden, the only person on the ballot this year who can keep Trump out of the White House. Instead he does this. This is wrong.” More

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      Joe Biden has gained an inch in the polls – and Democrats are jubilant | Emma Brockes

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      It is a mark of the bleakness of expectations among American Democrats that, this week, President Biden’s slight rise in the polls has been seized on as cause for giddiness. I did it myself. This was it! The beginning of the correction. Finally, the toll of various lawsuits and expensive judgments was coming home to roost in the form of a drag on Donald Trump’s popularity. New York magazine urged cautious optimism. NBC News lost its mind and used the word “behemoth” in a headline to toast Biden’s burgeoning campaign. All this based on national polling that puts Trump 0.7% ahead.Still, it’s better than the numbers were a few months ago. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground that flipped for Trump in 2016, a recent survey put Biden up 10 points, having led by only one in February. In a national poll conducted by NPR, Biden was actually two points ahead. (The same poll found that 40% of respondents reported being “open to changing their minds”. Who are these people and what is wrong with them?) But while older voters, particularly men, seemed to be moving en masse towards Biden, voters under 45 appeared less sure. Many young people still endorse Biden, but Trump, up a net 15 points in that demographic since 2020, is seemingly gaining ground with younger Americans.Of course, it’s possible that none of this means anything. A two-point lead is too narrow to predict an outcome. It does, however, fit with a sense that things look very different now to the way they did in 2020. In February, the Biden campaign raised $53m in donations, and has built a significant fundraising advantage over Trump. The former Republican president has seemed less visible – or more accurately, less audible – than he did at this point in the run up to the election four years ago. Some of this may be down to a sharpened ability on the part of the electorate simply to screen the man out. But there is a sense, also, of Trump’s attention residing elsewhere. While no individual legal judgment against him appears, ever, to discourage his supporters, Trump’s endless legal wrangles do at least seem to be making demands on his time.Next week, Trump will become the first former US president to face criminal proceedings, with the start of the so-called hush-money trial featuring Stormy Daniels. This is among the weaker of the cases against him, turning as it does on esoteric campaign finance rules that are unlikely to move voters. If anything, the burlesque quality of the episode is perfectly suited to Trump’s ability to spin negative coverage into a joke that delights his supporters; expect the word “porn star” to do a lot of heavy lifting.But there is bigger trouble ahead. Hanging over Trump is the recent $454m judgment against him in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, for which, in March, he was scheduled to pay a $175m bond. In the event, James questioned the paperwork provided by Trump’s insurance company, Knight Specialty Insurance, citing insufficient evidence of funds. A judge will hold a hearing on the probity of Trump’s bond payment on 22 April. If the bond is found inadequate, his assets may be seized.To list Biden’s successes against these liabilities of Trump’s as if the comparison falls within a regular framework is an exercise that plunges us back into the realm of the surreal. The US economy is strengthening, Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme has affected millions of lives and job growth has continued for a record 39 months. Meanwhile, last month, Trump predicted a “bloodbath for the country” if he lost the election, a word he repeated in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan last week.The difference this time is that we’ve heard it all before. In the spring of 2020, reporters were going to Trump rallies and sending back dispatches as if from the moon. Trump voters were given thousands of words to describe their predicaments and grudges. The normalisation of Trump has been largely a bad thing. But if the wild novelty of his campaign – the sheer entertainment value, to some, of his disruptive presidency – accounted for a good proportion of his success at the last election, we may hope, without getting too giddy, that this will be much less of a factor in November.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Appeal court judge denies Trump’s third attempt this week to delay hush money trial – live

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      The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.

      An appeals court judge in New York denied Donald Trump’s third attempt in three days to delay his hush-money criminal trial. Trump was denied his attempt to push back the 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
      Donald Trump said he believes the Arizona supreme court went too far with its ruling upholding a near-total abortion ban. Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, Trump said: “No.”
      In response, the Biden campaign said Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now” and warned that he has banned abortion “every chance he gets”.
      Asked what he would say to the people of Arizona, Joe Biden said: “Elect me. I’m in the … 21st century, not back then.” Biden also said he is “considering” a request from Australia to end the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
      Kamala Harris will visit Arizona on Friday as part of her nationwide reproductive freedoms tour. The White House said Harris would highlight “extremists” in the state who are pushing for abortion bans during her visit.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up withoperatives from Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.
      The House voted to block the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo before a 19 April expiration date.
      House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, a Trump campaign official said. Johnson met with Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday, marking the first time the two have spoken since Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership late last month. Greene described the meeting as “passionate”.
      The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.
      Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006, Reuters neatly recaps.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on Trump’s motion for him to recuse himself. The defense has argued that the judge’s daughter’s work for a political consulting firm with Democratic clients poses a conflict of interest.On Monday, a judge at the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.On Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers and family members of the judge and district attorney Alvin Bragg. Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel.The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.
      The hearing is over at the appeals court in New York where lawyers for Donald Trump are making the argument for the third time in three days that his hush-money criminal trial should be delayed.Jury selection will begin on Monday, so time is running out for Trump. We await the court’s decision.As colleague Cameron Joseph wrote earlier today, this follows a longstanding pattern of Trump freaking out as major threats approach, and his team responding with frenetic energy.Trump’s team throws everything it can at the wall, while Trump continues his tirade against presiding judge Juan Merchan – while pushing the bounds of the judge’s gag order.To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, in the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter put together by Cameron, sign up here.And you can read today’s here.Lawyers for Donald Trump have been back in court for almost the last hour trying to stave off the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, which begins on Monday.In a more technical legal take from NBC, the TV network explains the following:
      The court docket for the state Appellate Division shows Trump’s attorneys filed the challenge as a lawsuit invoking a provision of New York law known as Article 78. Article 78 challenges allow litigants, whether in ongoing litigation or otherwise, to seek relief from allegedly unlawful state or local government action.
      The documents were filed under seal. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it involved Judge Juan Merchan’s refusal to step aside from presiding over the case.
      Trump is a defendant in four criminal cases, two federal and two state. The hush-money case in New York is first up. The Georgia election interference case, the federal election interference case and the federal classified documents case do not have trial dates yet. The presidential election is on 5 November and Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, prior to his expected anointment at the Republican National Convention this summer.Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York appeals court judge on Wednesday that the former US president’s 15 April trial should be delayed because the judge has not yet ruled on their motion for him to recuse himself, in his third last-ditch attempt so far this week to delay the case, Reuters reports.The Republican presidential candidate is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.On Monday, a judge at a mid-level state appeals court known as the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.And on Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers, and family members of the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in the trial on Monday.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, told his allies about his plans to help his former rival during a private gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in south Florida, a DeSantis adviser told NBC News.DeSantis is “committed to helping Trump in any and every way”, said Texas businessman Roy Bailey, who attended the retreat. He said:
      I will follow the governor’s lead and I will do anything that he or President Trump ask me to do to help him win this election.
      A Trump campaign adviser said they were not aware that the Florida governor was going to start raising money for them but added that “everyone should be working towards defeating Joe Biden and electing President Trump”, NBC reported.Joe Biden, during a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, at the White House, said Japan’s attempts to set up a leader-to-leader summit with North Korea is “a good thing” as he reiterated his administration’s willingness for its own talks without preconditions.Biden said:
      We welcome the opportunity of our allies to initiate dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As I’ve said many times, we’re open to dialogue ourselves without preconditions with the DPRK.
      The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed openness to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but has never received a response.House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity”, a Trump campaign official said.The press conference is scheduled to take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, AP reported, citing a source as saying that Johnson and Trump will have a “joint announcement” on Friday.When the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Read the full analysis by the Guardian’s reproductive health and justice reporter: Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 electionThe House has voted to block the reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo ahead of a 19 April expiration date.House Republicans have been fiercely divided over how to handle the issue, and Wednesday’s vote comes months after a similar process to reform and reauthorize the program fell apart before it even reached the House floor.The law allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.It is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the National Security Agency to specifically target US citizens.Joe Biden was asked what he would say to the people of Arizona following the state supreme court’s ruling to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect.The president, referring to the 1864 abortion ban which passed when Arizona was still a territory, replied:
      Elect me. I’m in the 20th century … 21st century … not back then. They weren’t even a state.
      From the Washington Post’s JM Rieger:Cornel West’s announcement that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state.West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by three points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”. West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday”:
      I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors. And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.
      Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”. “How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said.
      So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up with operatives from Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.They fired an opening salvo on Tuesday, tearing into Donald Trump’s “boasting” about overturning federal abortion protections a day earlier, and assailing the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott for supporting Florida’s six-week ban that takes effect next month.Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor and former candidate for the party’s presidential nomination who signed the ban into law, also found himself under fire.The Florida supreme court ruled last week that the six-week ban will take effect on 1 May, as well as allowing a ballot measure for November that could see voters enshrine the right to the procedure into law.The moves instantly propelled the state to the forefront of the national abortion debate, and allowed Democrats, all but wiped out in Florida in successive national elections, to seize on the issue as vote-winner.Biden’s campaign has released a statement following Trump’s criticism of the Arizona abortion ban, warning that he has previously “[banned] abortion every chance he gets”.A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said that Trump will enact a national abortion ban given his track record, adding that the former president “proudly overturned Roe”.
      Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘“an incredible thing’” and ‘“pretty amazing’” just today.
      Trump lies constantly – about everything – but has one track record: banning abortion every chance he gets. The guy who wants to be a dictator on day one will use every tool at his disposal to ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress, and running away from reporters to his private jet like a coward doesn’t change that reality.
      Greene added that Johnson asked if she was “interested” in being apart of a group of advisers for him.Green said:
      I said, ‘I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.’ Right now. he does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine.
      Greene added that she told Johnson he “failed” on the latest government spending dealing and received “a lot of excuses” in return.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have concluded their meeting, with varying descriptions on how it went.The meeting, which lasted over an hour, came after Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership.Greene described the meeting as “passionate”, NBC News reported. When asked if the meeting was “productive”, Greene said:
      He’d have to completely change everything he’s done to be productive.
      Meanwhile, Johnson gave a more diplomatic answer, calling Greene a “friend” even as the two Republicans have differed on “strategy”.
      She’s a colleague. I’ve always considered her a friend … Marjorie and I don’t disagree on philosophy. We’re both conservatives. Sometimes we disagree on strategy.
      From Punchbowl News’ Mica Soellner:Trump also said that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, ABC News reported.Trump further clarified his position while speaking with reporters on Wednesday.In response to the question of if he would sign an abortion ban, Trump said “no” and shook his head.The latest remarks from Trump come as Democrats have warned that he would authorize an extreme ban if elected, noting how federal abortion rights were overturned due to supreme court judges secured during Trump’s administration. More

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      David Cameron: the Boy’s Own robot made of ham was nearly out-Foxed

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      How much have you really engaged with David Cameron, since he became foreign secretary in November? I always get a discombobulating strobe effect, all the alternative futures that could have been: the not-Brexit, the not-Boris Johnson, the not-austerity and social fracturing, if it hadn’t been for this rosy-face Duff Cooper in 21st-century fancy dress, and the incomprehensible number of people who didn’t take one look at that face and run a mile. So I find him quite hard to look at.As he does the American media rounds, talking Ukraine and Gaza to wingnuts (Fox News) and sensible centrists (CNN), the look he’s going for is somewhat changed. You know what they say about America, that it went from barbarism to decadence without the intervening period of civilisation (no offence, Fox News!)Cameron went from floppy young man in a hurry to elder statesman without the intervening period of regular, middle-aged statesman; did he ever really govern? Was he ever really real? Well, he must have been. Because all that stuff happened.He was fresh from meeting Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, which he couldn’t say much about because it was a private meeting – the US anchors of every channel nodded delightedly when he said that. I think it sounds saucy yet quaint when a posh person says it, but he said this much to This Morning on CNN: “The point I’m making is …” (ah, memories … Cameron saying, “Let me be clear on this point that I am making,” piping busy words, the catchphrase of a man who’s never once wondered whether he’s interesting) “is that I think profoundly in Britain’s interest, but also to America’s interests, that Trump doesn’t get to win in Ukraine.”We can come to why not if you really think it’s necessary, but what a profoundly weird thing to say. Get to win what? The US election? Because, if he doesn’t win that, it’s hard to see how he wins anything in Ukraine. But if he does win the US election, then he, rather than the British foreign secretary, does sadly “get to” decide what their interests are.Trump, you’ll remember, wants the Ukrainians to cede Crimea and the Donbas border regions to Vladimir Putin in return for no longer getting shot at. Cameron is probably right, it “wouldn’t just be bad for our European security, our adversaries around the world, whether it’s Iran or China or whoever, would draw lessons that we don’t stand by our allies”. And, OK, this next bit is a little flabby, but odds on, there will be “risk of further aggression and further danger in our world”.Yet I worry that Cameron really thinks this is what geopolitics are – a nice, rule-based game where you might get the odd leader who huffs and puffs, but all the other players, nice chaps, will step in and say, as one: “No, you don’t get to do that.”His language is pure Boy’s Own adventure – “the bravery of the Ukrainians”, “Europe and America sticking together and standing up against bullies”. Sure, he’s not swimming in very complicated waters (Trump, for comparison, said that Russia should do “whatever the hell they want to Nato countries who do not spend enough on defence”), but you don’t, from Cameron, get the deep sense of security that settles upon one while listening to a sensible adult, with a full complement of faculties, rooted in reality.He was introduced as “Britain’s top diplomat”, which made him sound kind of cute, like he’d won his title in a Britain’s Got Diplomats quizshow. I’m not sure they take us tremendously seriously, as a nation. Conceivably, because of all that stuff that happened.Fox News went a different way, as they say, with a question you’d call dumb, except that’s what they want you to think, so you’re playing into their hands, except what are you going to do, not call it dumb? It remains dumb. What did Cameron think about London, our London, where “streets are taken over by pro-Hamas folks” and the “Jewish community is describing a country that’s become almost unrecognisable, in terms of the toleration of this”.Cameron’s face is famously hard to read. Caitlin Moran once said he looked like a robot made of ham. But this must surely have ruffled him on the inside: this is what half his party says, round the clock.This is the means by which they threaten the right to protest, and the tactic they use to deflect any serious consideration of the situation in Gaza; that it can’t be a massacre because Hamas and any right-thinking person disputing that slaughter must love Hamas, and that British Jews are terrified of their own country, because the streets are lined with Hamas-lovers. Everyone knows that’s not true but, for as long as it’s useful, that’s what a lot of Conservatives will claim to think.Did it give the foreign secretary, who himself mourns the bloodshed, a second’s pause, to be confronted with this live on air? Did it make him think how far the Tory party had moved, how obliterated the one-nation lot, his lot, were? Did he stop and wonder about his part in all that?Really hard to say – see robots, ham – but he deflected it quite well, stressing all the freedoms, stressing the rule of law, stressing that Benjamin Netanyahu ought to observe laws, too, particularly with regards to civilians.“The Brits and the Americans didn’t provide aid to Germans, in World War Two,” the anchor replied.Britain’s top diplomat didn’t dignify that. More