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      Biden says US needs fair tax code to ‘make this country great’ in speech on $7.3tn budget plan – as it happened

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      Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      Joe Biden revealed a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal, offering tax breaks for families, lower healthcare costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Here’s what is in Biden’s budget proposal.
      Biden travelled to the swing state of New Hampshire, as he tried to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week. “Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2tn tax breaks, because that’s what he (Trump) wants to do,” Biden said of Donald Trump. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make it fair.”
      House Republican leadership called Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline”, a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, speaker Mike Johnson, majority whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      Marcia Fudge, the housing and urban development (HUD) secretary, resigned. Fudge, 71, announced she will step down from her post later this month “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, as she called for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start 25 March.
      Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, the former Trump adviser, must report to prison on 19 March to begin a four-month sentence for defying the House January 6 committee, his lawyers said.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose story of being sex trafficked as a child was used in Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal speech said her horrific ordeal was misused by the Republican senator.
      Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.
      The White House unveiled a new $7.3tn federal budget proposal on Monday, offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.The proposal is unlikely to pass the House and the Senate, but it represents Joe Biden’s policy vision for a potential second four-year term if he and enough of his fellow Democrats win in November.Here’s what is in it:
      Raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%
      Making billionaires pay at least 25% of their income in taxes
      A 39.6% marginal rate applied to households making over $1m
      Raising tax rate on US multinationals’ foreign earnings from 10.5% to 21%
      Bringing back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners
      Fund childcare programs for parents making under $200,000 annually
      Funnel $258bn to building or preserving two million homes
      Creating a new tax credit for first-time homebuyers of up to $10,000 over two years and providing a $5,000 annual mortgage relief credit for two years.
      Provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for workers
      Eliminating origination fees on government student loans
      Providing about $900bn for defense
      Funding to expand personnel and resources at the US southern border, including
      In addition, the president said in his State of the Union address that Medicare should have the ability to negotiate prices on 500 prescription drugs, which could save $200bn over 10 years. Aides said his budget does not specify how many drug prices would be subject to negotiations.Biden’s proposed budget would raise tax revenues by $4.9tn over 10 years, including more than $2.7tn in tax hikes on businesses and nearly $2tn on wealthy individuals and estates, according to the US treasury.A coalition of youth voters on Monday gave Joe Biden’s re-election campaign a welcome shot in the arm amid swirling concerns over the president’s age and mental acuity.The endorsement from 15 groups of mostly gen Z and young millennial voters was announced to mark the launch of Students for Biden-Harris, an initiative from the campaign designed to recapture the support of younger voters who helped propel Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who at 27 is the youngest member of the House, will serve on its national advisory board and host its first meeting in Washington DC on Thursday. The organization will hold regular virtual and in-person meetings around the country as it seeks to build a network of chapters, many on university and college campuses. Frost said in a press release announcing the coalition:
      Young voters were crucial in delivering the election for President Biden and Vice-President Harris in 2020, and they will be just as consequential in 2024.
      It is part of a wider White House outreach to younger voters, whose support for Biden, 81, and Harris has become more lukewarm as their first term has progressed, research suggests.Joe Biden is making a speech about taxes, healthcare and costs, on a visit to the swing state of New Hampshire this afternoon.The US president is sifting out some points that he hammered during his state of the union address last week and is expanding on them in public addresses and election campaign events, as he ramps up his reelection efforts with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump marching towards the nomination to run against him.“I’m a capitalist. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes,” Biden told the crowd in Goffstown, on the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire.Biden wants to raise income taxes for those making over $400,000 a year, as well as raising corporation tax.“A fair tax code is how we invest in things that make this country great,” he said.He slammed “my predecessor” – Trump – for “making $2tr in tax cuts” during his single term and “expanding the federal deficit”.He aspires, he said, with a cooperative congress, to raise hundreds of billions of dollars by raising taxes on the very wealthiest Americans.He’s departing the stage now.Joe Biden has just taken the stage in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where he is about to speak about the economy, health care and prescription drug prices.The address comes after he sent his aspirational 2025 budget to Congress, following his return on Monday morning to Washington from Delaware, and then flew to the New England swing state.Biden is on a push to hit the campaign trail, trying to build on the energetic reboot of his presidency with his fiery state of the union speech last week, in the face of criticisms that he is too old and doddery to run for reelection.Out of the gate he is hailing his plan, under the Inflation Reduction Act, to cap the total that seniors on Medicare pay for prescription drugs at $2,000 a head per year.“We beat Big Pharma,” he said of the US pharmaceutical industry.Hello, US politics blog readers, Joe Biden has arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, shortly after presenting his desired budget to Congress. He’s due to make remarks at 2.30pm ET on, according to the White House, on “lowering costs for American families”. Later he has an election campaign event, as he continues with his plans to hit the campaign trail hard in the wake of his State of the Union speech last Thursday, as he tries to sell votes on his reection.Here’s where things stand:
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge, 71, has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and retire after fighting for more affordable housing and reduced homelessness in the US.
      Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election, and jury selection is due to start March 25.
      House Republican leadership called Joe Biden’s budget, just presented to Congress, “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”. It’s “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik said.
      The US president unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal offering tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Biden’s 2025 fiscal year budget includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000 and effoprts to bring more drug costs down.
      Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he once again repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.
      Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, has been ordered to report to a Miami prison on 19 March to begin serving a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September 2023 of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation.
      Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose experience as a victim of human sex trafficking that Alabama Senator Katie Britt appeared to have shared in the GOP response to the State of the Union, slammed the lawmaker and accused her of inaccurately using her story to highlight the Biden administration’s border control policies, even though her plight was experienced during a previous, Republican administration.
      Housing and urban development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge has announced that later this month she will step down from her post “with mixed emotions” and intends to retire after decades of public service, accompanying her news with a call for more focus on homelessness and more affordable housing.She also appeared to time her announcement so that she could step away before the 2024 presidential election reaches its most intense phases this summer and fall, calling the election season, in an exclusive interview with USA Today “crazy, silly”.Fudge, 71, intends to return to her home state of Ohio after 22 March and continue life as a private citizen, rather than running for any other public office, she told USA Today in an exclusive interview.
      “It’s time to go home. I do believe strongly that I have done just about everything I could do at HUD for this administration as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election,” she told the outlet.
      Fudge said affordable housing should be a nonpartisan focus.
      It is not a red or blue issue. Everybody knows that it is an issue…an American issue.’’
      She told USA Today that under her tenure at the agency, since the start of the Biden administration, she worked to improve its role in supporting families with housing needs, helping people experiencing homelessness and boosting economic development in communities.Joe Biden issued a statement praising Fudge.
      Over the past three years she has been a strong voice for expanding efforts to build generational wealth through homeownership and lowering costs and promoting fairness for America’s renters. Thanks to Secretary Fudge, we’ve helped first-time homebuyers, and we are working to cut the cost of renting. And there are more housing units under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years.”
      Joe Biden’s budget proposal for 2025 includes a $4.7bn emergency fund for border security to enable the department of homeland security to ramp up operations in the event of a migrant surge, NBC reported.The contingency fund would allow the department to tap into funds as an as-needed basis when the number of undocumented migrants crossing the southern border tops a certain threshold, according to the report. That threshold is unspecified in the document.The request is likely to fall on deaf ears among congressional Republicans, who have already refused to fund $13.6bn the Biden administration asked for in an emergency supplemental request aimed at responding to a record high number of migrants crossing the border.Biden’s budget also asks for $405m to hire 1,300 more border patrol agents, $1bn for aid to Central America to address the root causes of migration, and nearly $1bn to address the backlog of over 2.4m pending cases in US immigration courts.Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge overseeing his impending criminal trial in New York to delay the trial until the supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity.Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records tied to a hush money payment to the adult film star, Stormy Daniels, before the 2016 election.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.The trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers said the claim of a pressure campaign was “fictitious” and argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.The supreme court last month agreed to take up the claim that Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. It is scheduled to hear arguments in that case during the week of 22 April.The House Republican leadership have issued a statement calling Joe Biden’s budget “yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility”.The president’s budget is “a roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” a statement by House majority leader Steve Scalise, Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik reads.
      While hardworking Americans struggle with crushing inflation and mounting national debt, the President would increase their pain to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars to advance his left-wing agenda.
      Biden aides said their budget was realistic and detailed while rival measures from Republicans were not financially viable.“Congressional Republicans don’t tell you what they cut, who they harm,” AP reported White House budget director Shalanda Young as saying.
      The president is transparent, details every way he shows he values the America people.
      House Republicans voted on Thursday on their own budget resolution for the next fiscal year out of committee, saying it would trim deficits by $14tn over 10 years. But their measure would depend on rosy economic forecasts and sharp spending cuts. The White House called the plan unworkable.Joe Biden unveiled a $7.3tn budget proposal aimed as election-year pitch to voters that would offer tax breaks for families, lower health care costs and higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.Biden’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year that starts in October includes raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 from 21%, hiking rates on people making over $400,000, forcing those with wealth of $100m to pay at least 25% of their income in taxes, and letting the government negotiate to bring more drug costs down, Reuters reported.Meanwhile, the government would bring back a child tax credit for low- and middle-income earners, fund childcare programs, funnel $258bn to building homes, provide paid family leave for workers, and spends billions on violent crime prevention and law enforcement.The document promises to cut annual deficit spending by $3tn over 10 years, slowing but not halting the growth of the $34.5tn national debt. Biden also renewed his demand for funding on border security, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other national security issues that has been stalled by Republican congressional leadership for months.White House budgets are always something of a presidential wishlist, and Biden’s proposal is unlikely to pass the House and Senate to become law. Biden and his aides previewed parts of his budget going into last week’s State of the Union address, and they provided the fine print on Monday, AP reported.Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask.Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon”, a rightwing meme mean to disparage Biden.Dinah Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state Senate, told the Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news site:
      Political violence of any kind is vile and wrong, and we cannot afford to brush it under the rug when others encourage it.
      Sykes called for state Republican leaders to take action against those responsible. Mike Brown, the Kansas Republican party chair, told the Kansas City Star he was not at the event, which was not organised by the state party, though he sent emails to promote it. Mike Kuckelman, a former state Republican chair, condemned the event.Donald Trump risks another defamation lawsuit by E Jean Carroll after he repeatedly attacked her and denied her rape and defamation claims against him, despite facing nearly $90m in civil penalties over similar denials.Trump, in an interview with CNBC, described the numerous judgments against him in New York as “the most ridiculous decisions … including the Ms Bergdorf Goodman, a person I’d never met.” He added:
      I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued. From that point on I said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy, what this is.
      Trump was referring to Carroll, who in 2019 first publicly accused the former president of raping her in the changing room of Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury Manhattan department store.On Saturday during a campaign rally in Georgia, Trump said Carroll “is not a believable person” and blamed the lawsuit on “Democratic operatives”. He said:
      Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her.
      Carroll’s lawyer has raised the prospect of a new lawsuit, the New York Times reported. In a statement this morning, Roberta A Kaplan, said:
      The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years. As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client.
      Donald Trump “will not give a penny” to Ukraine if he is re-elected US president, the far-right Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said after a controversial meeting with Trump in Florida.“He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Orbán told state media in Hungary on Sunday.
      Therefore, the war will end, because it is obvious that Ukraine can not stand on its own feet.
      According to Orbán, Trump has a “detailed plan” to end the Ukraine war, which began two years ago when Russia invaded. Calling Trump “a man of peace”, Orbán said:
      If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war is over. And if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone can’t finance this war. And then the war is over.
      This would likely mean Ukraine losing the war to Russia. Long seen to demonstrate deference towards and enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Trump recently suggested that if re-elected he would encourage Russia to attack US allies he deemed not to contribute enough to the Nato alliance.Orbán and Trump met at Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump asks to delay hush-money trial until supreme court weighs immunity claim

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      Donald Trump on Monday asked the New York judge overseeing his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a separate case.The hush money trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.Prosecutors say he directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses.Trump denies the encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers called prosecutors’ claim of a pressure campaign “fictitious”. They said prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.“Without immunity from criminal prosecution based on official acts, the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via de facto extortion,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges, declined to comment.The case is one of four federal and state criminal indictments the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces. Firm trial dates have not yet been set in the other three cases, which stem from his efforts to reverse his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden, and his handling of government documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court on 28 February agreed to decide Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution in his federal case in Washington DC, over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, delaying a potential trial. The supreme court set the case for oral arguments during the week of 22 April.Trump has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases, which he has termed “election interference”. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden says he regrets using term ‘illegal’ to describe Laken Riley murder suspect

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      Joe Biden said Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.Meanwhile, the Democratic president’s all-but-certain 2024 Republican rival, Donald Trump, blasted Biden’s immigration policies and blamed them for Riley’s death while at a rally attended by her family and friends.Biden expressed remorse after facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the US illegally.“I shouldn’t have used illegal – it’s undocumented,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart taped in Atlanta, where he was meeting with small business owners and holding a campaign rally.Trump, campaigning in Rome, Georgia, at the same time, assailed Biden for the comments.“Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to loud jeers and boos. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s murder has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who have seized on frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border during a record surge of migrants entering the country. A person from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.The former president was joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, her sister and friends and met with them before he took the stage.In a speech that lasted nearly two hours, Trump hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week.Trump alleged that Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country”.Trump, who had made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, has repeatedly vowed to mount the largest deportation in the nation’s history if he wins.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe contrasted his rhetoric with Biden’s, remarking: “I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant.”He also accused Biden of having “no intention of stopping the deadly invasion that stole precious Laken’s beautiful American life”.Yet Biden earlier this year bucked activists within his party by agreeing to make changes to US immigration law that would have limited some migration. The deal that emerged would have overhauled the asylum system to provide faster and tougher enforcement, as well as given presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed. It also would have added $20bn in funding, a huge influx of cash.The changes became part of a short-lived bipartisan compromise that Republican lawmakers quickly killed after Trump made his opposition known.After the deal’s collapse, Biden has been considering taking executive action to try to curtail migration. But he’s expressed frustration that his lawyers have yet to devise options that they believe can pass muster with federal courts. Biden, instead, has insisted that Congress take up the measure again, trying to flip the script on Republicans and arguing they are more interested in being able to talk about the issue in an election year than taking action to fix it. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden hits out at Trump in Georgia rally: ‘He’s been sucking up to dictators all over the world’

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      The question isn’t whether Democrats in Georgia will vote for President Joe Biden, either on Tuesday or in November. It’s how many.Biden swung through Georgia on Saturday to collect the endorsements of political action committees representing Asian, Black and Latino voters, another stop on the march to the Democratic nomination.Biden opened with a swing at Donald Trump, using Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene as the bat, noting how he had kicked off his campaign here in her company, along with that of dictatorial Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán.“He called him a fantastic leader. Seriously,” Biden said. “He’s been sucking up to dictators all over the world.”Biden’s only meaningful competition in Georgia for the nomination is ennui and “no preference”. But Biden is likely to clinch the nomination not in Georgia, which holds its primary on Tuesday, but in states voting on 19 March. Nonetheless, the pivot to the general election has already begun.“He’s building on the momentum from the Thursday speech, which was a grand slam home run,” said David Brand, a Democratic operative and Atlanta political figure. “Republicans are in a pure panic. They can’t attack him on issues. So, they’re now making up lunacy about him being, you know, on Red Bull or something. That’s their best attack line: because he drinks a Red Bull. That puts him in line with every law school student in the country.”Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill and both of Georgia’s Democratic senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, held the rally at the trendy Pullman Yards facility on Atlanta’s east side before a crowd of about 500 people. The assembly was composed mostly of party insiders and Democratic elected officials. The location of the rally was closely held before the event, ostensibly to avoid disruptions by protesters. One man was escorted from the room as he shouted pro-Palestinian slogans.The president’s address continued themes raised in the State of the Union address, calling for reinstating Roe v Wade as the law of the land on abortion, increasing taxes on billionaires and a call for civic values.“We see a future where we define democracy and defend it, not diminish it,” Biden said. “We must remain the beacon of the world.”Biden said nothing about the war in Gaza, nor did he raise the question about funding for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia.His supporters and endorsers regularly juxtaposed the consequences of a Trump win in 2024, trying to evoke the political intensity that led to surprise wins in Georgia in 2020 and 2022.Ossoff regularly name-checked DeKalb County, the location of Pullman Yards and the locus for the political changes that swept him, Warnock and Biden into power. “The stakes could not be higher,” Ossoff said. “The future of voting rights, and civil rights and women’s rights is on the line.”Three political action committees offered their endorsement to Biden on Saturday: Collective PAC, which backs Black candidates; the Latino Victory Fund; and the AAPI Victory Fund, a political action committee for empowering Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.“They must be re-elected. Failure is not an option,” said Shekar Narasimhan, chairman and founder of the AAPI Victory Fund. “We will do everything in our power to make this happen.” More

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      Democrats are angry over media coverage of Biden. Is it a distraction?

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      When an opinion poll in the New York Times found that a majority of Joe Biden’s voters believe he is too old to be an effective US president, the call to action was swift. But it was not aimed at Joe Biden.“Amplifying flawed presidential polls, refusing to report on [Donald] Trump’s cognitive issues, the NYT is biased for Trump,” was a sample response on social media. “If you have a subscription to NYT, cancel it.”The irate chorus aimed at one of America’s most storied media institutions followed finger-pointing at the legal system for failing to stop Trump in his tracks. Despite much wishful thinking, primary election results this week made clear that the nation is hurtling towards a Biden v Trump rematch in November.That polling and media coverage are imperfect, and the wheels of justice of turn slowly, is beyond dispute. But whatever the merits of the arguments, critics argue that Democrats are at risk of playing a blame game that distracts them from the central mission: defeating Trump at the ballot box.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Commiseration is not a strategy and Democrats need to stop throwing political temper tantrums and do the work to unify and get Joe Biden re-elected. The courts, the media, late-night comedians are not going to save us. So this whining and complaining about these aspects being unfair is not a strategy for victory.”View image in fullscreenAmong some Democrats, there has long been a yearning for a saviour who will stop Trump in his tracks. Hopes were pinned on the special counsel Robert Mueller, but his Russia investigation lacked teeth and failed to bring the president down. Two impeachments came and went and the Senate missed a historic opportunity to bar from Trump running again.Now resentment is focused on the supreme court and the attorney general, Merrick Garland, for dragging their feet on holding Trump accountable for his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The court issued a unanimous decision that Colorado and other states do not have the power to remove Trump from the ballot for engaging in an insurrection.A justice department case alleging that he sought to overturn the 2020 election, which had been due to begin this week, was postponed until the supreme court rules on whether he is immune from prosecution. And an election interference case in Georgia is also on hold because the prosecutor Fani Willis is dealing with allegations of a conflict of interest over a romantic relationship.In Florida, where Trump is charged over his mishandling of classified government documents, he managed to draw a friendly judge who has indicated the trial will not start soon. That means the case likely to start first is one in New York relating to Trump paying hush money to an adult film star during the 2016 election campaign, widely portrayed in the media as the weakest of the four.Yet such a case would have been devastating to any other candidate at any other moment in history. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “He’s going to be on trial for 34 felony counts in less than three weeks and the mainstream media has barely indicated the importance of this.“‘Oh, it’s just a hush money trial.’ No it’s not. He’s not on trial for hush money. He’s on trial for election fraud, not just paying the hush money but deceiving the American people by concealing it as a business expense.”Lichtman added: “If this was anybody but Trump, any other presidential candidate on trial, it would be the trial of the century and the mainstream media would be screaming that, if the candidate got convicted, he should be bounced from from the campaign. Instead they’ve misrepresented and trivialised this case.”Trump has long challenged media orthodoxies. During the 2016 campaign, the New York Times used the word “lie” in a headline – a move that would have been seen as judgmental and editorialising in the pre-Trump era. In 2019, the paper changed a headline, “Trump urges unity vs racism”, after an outcry from readers and progressive politicians.Television has also struggled to find the right approach. There was much introspection over how saturation coverage of Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies and tweets gave him $5bn in free advertising, according to the media tracking firm mediaQuant. Cable news networks have drastically reduced their live coverage of Trump’s speeches, although some commentators warn that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction, contending that voters need to see his unhinged antics, verbal gaffes and extremist agenda.With Super Tuesday’s primary elections clearing the way for another Biden v Trump clash, some accuse the media of focusing too much on polls and not enough on the stakes, treating Trump as just another political candidate rather than an existential threat. They say the intense focus on Biden’s age – he is 81 – is wildly disproportionate when set against Trump’s authoritarianism and 91 criminal charges.Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “The media has clearly not learned its lesson from 2016 or 2020 on how to cover Donald Trump. This is not a conventional horse race election. There’s nothing normal about any of this so, by covering Biden and Trump equally, it minimises Trump’s considerably disturbing behaviour, comments and plans for the future.“The Democrats do have a legitimate complaint with the way the media is bothsides-ing this. The media should not be under any obligation to tell both sides of a lie or conspiracy theory or leading presidential candidate’s desire to tear up the constitution and become a dictator on day one. All things Donald Trump has said he would do.”The New York Times/Siena College poll was made up of 980 registered voters across the country and conducted on mobile and landline phones. It found that 61% of people who supported Biden in 2020 thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. An accompanying article in the Times was headlined: “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective.”Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, thinks it was a fair question. “The media’s not in this to help any candidate and Joe Biden is the incumbent and there are legitimate questions about an 81-year-old repeatedly struggling in public. To do a poll that asks questions about that is entirely fair.”View image in fullscreenOthers take a very different view. Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the CUNY Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, said: “The choice to ask the question and the way the question is asked and who the question is asked of and then how the result is played are agenda-filled. Polls become a self-fulfilling prophecy of: we’re going to set an agenda and say it all and then we’re going to do a poll and act as if that’s news when it’s just a reaction to what we’ve already done. This is the case with the age.”Jarvis added: “The New York Times – which has been our best and which I criticise because I want it to be better – is horribly frustrating because it does not know how to cover the rise of fascism, and that’s what this story really is. Neither does it know how to cover the essence of why this is happening, which is race.”Defenders of the New York Times point out that it has done extensive reporting on Trump’s plans for a second term and what it would mean for America and the world. Some commentators warn that Democrats’ attacks on the media are likely to backfire and lead to accusations that they are shooting the messenger.Not even comedians are immune. When Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and skewered Biden and Trump as the two oldest presidential candidates in history, Mary Trump, a niece and fierce critic of the former president, wrote on X: “Not only is Stewart’s ‘both sides are the same’ rhetoric not funny, it’s a potential disaster for democracy.”Stewart responded on his next show: “I guess as the famous saying goes, ‘Democracy dies in discussion’ … It was never my intention to say out loud what I saw with my eyes and then brain. I can do better.”If history is any guide, there is no knight in shining armour coming to Democrats’ rescue. They have to win on the merits on 5 November. Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, observed: “The Democrats have wanted to use every trick in the book to defeat or unseat or stop Trump since 2016 and nothing has changed in that respect.“The fact is he is a leading candidate. He is supported by almost half the country. The idea that he poses a threat to democracy is not unfounded but is also wildly overblown. If the media did what many Democrats want, they would effectively be acting like media in Orbán’s Hungary, so the irony might be telling.” More

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      ‘Like choosing between a hedgehog and a porcupine’: US braces for presidential election no one wants

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      In past years, the first phase of the general election has involved at least one of the presidential nominees introducing themselves to the broader public and presenting their case for taking the country in a new direction. But that has been rendered unnecessary this year: former president Donald Trump and president Joe Biden are very familiar to the American electorate – and they are broadly unpopular.“I think this is the worst election in my lifetime,” said George Argodale, a Nikki Haley supporter from Gainesville, Virginia. “It’s just terrible that we don’t have better candidates.”“That’s a sad state of affairs for our country that those are the two best candidates that we can come up with,” agreed Peggy Hudson, a primary voter in Charleston, South Carolina.Judith Smith, from Moncks Corner, South Carolina, said of Biden and Trump: “That’s like choosing between a hedgehog and a porcupine.”As the primary season sputters to an expected ending, following Haley’s withdrawal from the Republican primary on Wednesday, voters’ frustration with their general election options is palpable.According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, Biden’s approval rating now stands at 38.1%, and Trump’s rating rests at a nominally stronger 42.6%, meaning both men are disliked by a majority of Americans.Those low opinions have carried into voters’ views on the general election. A YouGov-University of Massachusetts Amherst poll conducted in January found that 45% of Americans believe a Biden-Trump rematch is bad for the country. Another 26% say the rematch is neither good nor bad, while just 29% view it as good for the nation.It’s not all for the same reason; the many voters lamenting their general election options represent a diverse array of ideological perspectives, ranging from anti-Trump Republicans to progressives outraged over Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.“On the whole, there’s a lot of ambivalence and disappointment about the prospects of a rematch,” said Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “There’s a widespread perception among those individuals that the candidates are too old and that they tend to focus on issues that are issues of yesterday.”Conversations on the campaign trail reflect those commonly held beliefs, as a number of primary voters across multiple states said that they wished they had another option for November. Among anti-Trump Republicans, many of whom voted for Haley in their primaries, the potential re-election of the former president represents a return to the chaos that defined his first term. Echoing concerns shared by most Democrats, they predict that Trump would undermine the foundation of the US government if elected.Vincent DiMaro, an 80-year-old voter in Charleston who voted for Haley in the primary last month, cited Trump’s temperament and Biden’s age of 81 as significant liabilities for the nation’s future (Trump is 77).“I want to see the country survive, and I don’t think it will under Trump,” he said. But, he added: “I don’t think Biden is a particularly good president right now. I can’t be president. I know what my limitations are, and I’m in better shape than Biden.”Argodale voted early in the Virginia primary to cast a ballot for Haley, but he said he would have to support Biden in the general election if Trump won the Republican nomination.“I am on the conservative side of things, and [Haley] is the only viable candidate in my opinion,” he said. “[Trump] is just a terrible human being and doesn’t deserve any votes.”Although Democrats broadly agree with that assessment, some carry concerns about Biden, particularly regarding his age. Hudson acknowledged her politics lean to the left, as she previously worked for the late Democratic senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, but she cast a primary ballot for Haley in Charleston because she is “disgusted” by Trump. Hudson indicated she would support Biden in November, but she lamented the options available to voters in the general election.“Not that Joe Biden has not done a good job. He has done some very good things for this country,” Hudson said. “But I do think it is time for a new generation of leaders.”View image in fullscreenAn enthusiasm problemThe war in Gaza has presented a significant electoral vulnerability for Biden, as the president has faced intense criticism from progressives within his own party over his response to Israel’s airstrike campaign that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.Progressive leaders in multiple states have organized campaigns to urge supporters to vote “uncommitted” or “leave it blank” instead of casting a ballot for Biden as a means of protesting his handling of the war. In Michigan, uncommitted won 13% of the vote in last month’s primary, and uncommitted captured 19% of votes in the Minnesota Democratic primary on Tuesday.Hassan Jama, an imam in Minneapolis, Minnesota, campaigned for Biden in 2020 but has joined the uncommitted campaign. When asked about his options for November, he suggested he may vote for a candidate other than Biden or Trump. Voters can cast ballots for the independent presidential candidate, Cornel West, or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, both of whom have condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, or they could leave the top of the ticket blank.“We’re not voting for Trump, definitely no,” Jama said. “We have more than two choices.”Ruth Schultz, a Minnesota primary voter who has organized with MN Families for Palestine, similarly ruled out voting for Trump, but she would not yet commit to supporting Biden in the general election.“I know that I will never vote for Trump. That is a given,” Schultz said. “I want to see President Biden take a stronger stance for peace and how to get a ceasefire and to use all the tools at his disposal in order to do that. I am watching that as a voter in the general election.”The uproar among many left-leaning voters has created an enthusiasm gap between the two political parties that could pose a problem for Biden. Although many people who backed Biden in 2020 express concern about his re-election, Trump’s most loyal supporters remain as fervent as ever. According to the YouGov-UMass poll, 45% of Republicans believe the Biden-Trump rematch is good for the country, but only 21% of Democrats say the same.When speaking to Trump voters on the campaign trail, many are quick to praise him as the best president of their lifetimes, and they display no hesitation about supporting him again this fall.“I’ve been supporting him since he ran [in 2016], came down the escalator [at Trump Tower], ever since that,” said Chris Pennington, a voter from Johns Island, South Carolina. “I think he’s the best one to take on all the problems that we have.”Argodale does not support Trump, but he has seen firsthand how much devotion he can inspire. “In my social circle, there are Trumpers, so they’re diehard,” he said. “If he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, they’d still vote for him.”If Biden wants to win in November, he will have to work to narrow that enthusiasm gap or bring enough reluctant independents into his camp – or, most likely, do both.View image in fullscreenDire predictionsThe widespread disappointment among voters regarding the Biden-Trump rematch will have sweeping political consequences this fall, but their opinions on the election also offer startling revelations about Americans’ fears for the country’s future.The YouGov-UMass survey included open-ended questions that asked respondents what they believed would happen if the opposing party won the White House. The answers were both dire and specific, Rhodes said, with respondents predicting the end of democracy and a sharp rise in political persecution if their party were to lose.“The perception that victory by the other candidate would be dangerous and threatening has been rising pretty consistently for some time,” Rhodes said. “I think what’s distinctive in this election cycle is just how intense those feelings are and how personal they are.”Biden and Trump have both spoken in severe terms about what would happen if their opponent were to win, and those arguments appear to be sinking in for many voters.Nathan Richter, who voted for Biden in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday, was concise when asked about the possibility of Trump’s return to the White House. “Please, God, no,” he said. “I question our country’s ability to withstand another four years of Trump.”John Schuster said he plans to vote for Biden in November, but he cast a primary ballot for Haley because of his overwhelming concern about a Trump victory.“There’s no greater imperative in the world than stopping Donald Trump,” Schuster said. “It’ll be the end of democracy and the world order if he becomes president.”Biden supporters tend to frame the stakes of the election in terms of democracy and political violence, Rhodes noted, while Trump supporters’ concerns are more often shaped around a perceived threat that Democrats pose to American values. Douglas Benton, a Trump supporter from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, warned that the US would become a “third-world country” if Biden were to win reelection.“Our business is broken,” Benton said. “That’s how we became the most profitable country on the planet, is through capitalism and democracy and laws. Right now all three of those are gone.”Past elections have proven just how motivating negative emotions can be in turning out voters, which is why Rhodes believes that participation will still be high in November despite the nominees’ unpopularity.“It’s not an election that is going to inspire people on the basis of positive sentiments,” Rhodes said. “But it is an election that I strongly suspect is going to ultimately mobilize a lot of people because they believe that their vote is important for protecting themselves.”The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino contributed reporting from Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis, Minnesota More

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      Harris is reaching Democrats where Biden isn’t – on abortion and Gaza

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      Standing on the arch of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Kamala Harris said she felt compelled to begin her remarks by addressing the deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” the vice-president said, then stated: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.” Loud, sustained applause followed, before she added, after a pause: “For at least six weeks.”The remarks, the White House was quick to note, echoed Joe Biden’s comments to a reporter days earlier and they reflected the administration’s current efforts to broker a temporary break in Israel’s offensive, to allow for the release of hostages and for desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter the besieged territory. Yet many Americans furious with Biden for his alliance with Israel heard from Harris what they felt has been lacking from the president.There was an urgency to her speech – delivered in the footsteps of civil rights marchers who were trampled, tear-gassed and beaten with whips and billy clubs as they attempted to cross the bridge – that resonated. The setting seemed to acknowledge the youth movement furious with the president that views Palestinian rights as an extension of the racial justice movement. She pointedly criticized Israel for restricting the flow of aid into Gaza and expressed compassion for the Palestinian civilians living amid the rubble on the brink of famine.As the 2024 general election contest begins, Harris has emerged as an emissary to the Democratic voters who have soured on Biden since propelling him to the White House in 2020. Over the last several months, she has embarked on a full-scale national tour to highlight the threats to reproductive rights posed by a second Donald Trump administration – an issue that Biden has been criticized for shying away from. Now, as Harris adopts a more forceful tone on Gaza, she is also becoming a leading voice on Middle East diplomacy.Both issues are poised to play a significant, if not decisive, role in the November general election. Polling shows an erosion of support among core Democratic constituencies amid widespread disillusionment with the economy, concern over Biden’s age and fury on the left at the administration’s handling of the war in Gaza.For Democrats, reminding voters about the threat Republicans still pose to abortion rights may be the best way to energize young people while winning over independents and suburban women. Outrage over Roe was credited with halting the promised “red wave” of Republican victories in the 2022 midterms; abortion-related ballot referendums have also repeatedly triumphed even in traditionally red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.But Harris has her work cut out for her. Like Biden, Harris has been viewed unfavorably throughout much of her tenure.Antonio Arellano, a spokesperson for NextGen, a national youth-focused nonpartisan voter registration and education program, called the 59-year-old Harris a “liaison” between the administration and the parts of the Democratic base that were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory but hold reservations about him now. With her college campus tour and her reproductive rights tour, he said, Harris has helped elevate issues that are top of mind for young progressives and multiracial voters.“She brings an energy of vigor and excitement to the election that I think young people can really gravitate to when perhaps enthusiasm lacks elsewhere,” Arellano said.Harris leapt into the US abortion wars within a day of the leak of the US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade.At a May 2022 speech at a conference for Emilys List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, Harris gave a fiery speech where she repeatedly asked: “How dare they?”“How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?” Harris asked. “How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?”Harris had spent the first several months of her vice-presidency frustrated by headlines about her apparent lack of direction, staff departures and unforced errors. Allies and experts have long seen sexism and racism in the public scrutiny of Harris, who is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold nationally elected office. The criticism seemed particularly unfair, they said, given that vice-presidents are historically overlooked.“I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any attention paid to management, especially when you see high-profile kinds of departures and hires,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory College. “But I think that there’s still also the question of whether or not people have paid more attention to her, and also whether or not the public has had a more visceral reaction to her because of her race and gender.”But when it came to the fight over reproductive rights, Harris’s gender, race and age and experience as a prosecutor combined to give her the edge of authenticity that Biden lacks on an issue that is increasingly critical to voters. Many of the 16 states that have enacted near-total post-Roe abortion bans do not have exceptions for rape or incest, a state of affairs that Harris has called “immoral”.“As a woman on the ticket and the first woman VP and a woman of color, and then secondly, as an AG, she is strongest when her profile is fighting and prosecuting the case. People really like her in that mode,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic Party strategist and a lead pollster on the 2020 Biden campaign. “She’s so comfortable saying the word ‘abortion’. She’s so comfortable leaning in and speaking to the repercussions.”Emilys List, which first endorsed Harris 20 years ago when she was elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, has previously committed to spending more than $10m on bolstering Harris in the 2024 elections, according to reporting from Politico; Jessica Mackler, the new president of Emilys List, said that nothing about their plan to support Harris has changed. “Supporting the vice-president is a huge part of our electoral priorities,” Mackler said.Compared to his running mate, Biden’s recent record on abortion is far more spotty. A devout Catholic, Biden has said that he is “not big” on abortion and, in Thursday’s State of the Union address, spoke at length about the procedure without ever referring to it by name. Instead, he talked of the importance of “reproductive freedom” and promised to “restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land”.When it comes to the Israel-Gaza war, Harris has begun to take a more visible role, and it appears that here, too, she may be pushing just beyond Biden’s comfort zone. NBC News reported that the National Security Council toned down parts of Harris’s Selma speech that were “harsher” on Israel. The vice-president’s office denied that her speech had been watered down.On the Monday after her remarks, Harris met with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet who had traveled to Washington against the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As she walked into the meeting, Harris denied that there was any daylight between her and the president on the conflict.“The president and I have been aligned and consistent from the very beginning,” she said.Many anti-war activists said Harris’s remarks on Gaza were too little, too late. Yet others saw it as a sign of progress – that their pressure campaign was having an impact. Nearly 100,000 Democrats in Michigan voted uncommitted in the primary, which was held just days before her remarks.“They’re feeling the pressure, and we want them to feel that pressure,” said Khalid Omar, who organized on behalf of the “uncommitted” campaign in Minnesota. “We want them to know that this is unacceptable.”Biden and Harris’s first joint campaign event of 2024, a rally in Virginia, was meant to focus on reproductive rights – but it was instead derailed by anger over the conflict in Gaza. After Harris and a Texas woman who had been denied an abortion spoke about the importance of defending the procedure, Biden took the stage. He was almost immediately interrupted by a protester who yelled: “Genocide Joe, how many kids have you killed in Gaza? … Palestine is a feminist issue!”That protester was removed from the auditorium. Another soon cried out: “Israel kills two mothers every hour!”Observers of Harris’s vice-presidency say the recent attention is recognition of the work she has been doing for months – both on domestic and foreign policy issues.“To the extent that she has found her voice, it’s because people are finally listening,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally and veteran Democratic strategist who teaches women’s and gender studies at Georgetown University.Last month, Biden dispatched Harris again, this time to the Munich Security Conference, where her mission was to reassure American allies rattled by Trump’s attacks on Nato. There she met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and with Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hours after news broke of her husband’s death in an arctic penal camp.Less than a week later, she was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a stop on her reproductive rights tour. While there, she made a surprise stop at the city’s first Black woman-owned vinyl record shop and purchased a Miles Davis album from the owner, who was thrilled by the visit.When the Tennessee legislature expelled two Black lawmakers, the White House sent Harris to Nashville, where she joined them in delivering an impassioned plea for gun control. In December, she traveled to Dubai for a UN climate summit, where she juggled wartime diplomacy – delivering at the time the sharpest commentary of any administration official on Israel’s war in Gaza – with climate policy.“Her vice-presidency has been significant both in terms of her spokesperson role and in terms of a number of significant and highly visible diplomatic assignments that President Biden has given her,” said Joel Goldstein, a historian of the US vice-presidency.There is, however, another reason why scrutiny of Harris may be intensifying: her running mate’s age.If he wins a second term, Biden would turn 86 before leaving office. A New York Times and Siena College survey found that 73% of registered voters believe Biden is “just too old” to be an effective president. The poll was conducted more than two weeks after a special counsel described him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties in advancing age.”“The age of both Biden and Trump will focus more attention on the vice-presidential candidates,” Goldstein said.Republicans have sought to leverage concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health against Harris, casting her as an unsteady lieutenant ill-prepared to assume the presidency. In the weeks before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley argued that if Trump were to win the party’s nomination, he would lose to Biden, who would be unable to finish a second term, leading to a Harris presidency. The prospect, Haley said, “should send a chill up everyone’s spine”.But Harris is leaning in to her leading role. After the State of the Union, she headed west to Arizona, the next stop on her reproductive rights tour. On Saturday she was scheduled to campaign with Latino organizers in battleground state Nevada.To those who doubt whether the vice-president could step into the presidency, she is blunt.“I’m ready, if necessary,” Harris told NBC News on Friday. “But it’s not going to be necessary.”Rachel Leingang contributed to this report from Minneapolis More

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      RNC: Trump coup complete with loyalist as chair and daughter-in-law as co-chair

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      The Republican National Committee voted on Friday to install Donald Trump’s handpicked leadership team, completing his takeover of the national party as the former president closes in on a third straight presidential nomination.Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, was elected as the party’s national chair in a vote Friday morning in Houston.Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.Trump’s team is promising not to use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills. But Trump and his lieutenants will have firm control of the party’s political and fundraising machinery with limited, if any, internal pushback.“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J Trump, as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected.Whatley will carry the top title, replacing the longtime chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s Make America Great Again movement. But he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.Lara Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances, which she emphasized shortly after being voted in, taking time in her inaugural speech to hold up a check for $100,000 that she said had been contributed that day to the party. When asked by a reporter later, she declined to say who wrote the check.The functional head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will assume the committee’s chief of staff role while maintaining his job as one of the Trump campaign’s top two advisers.McDaniel had been handpicked by Trump to lead the committee seven years ago but was forced out after Trump’s Maga movement increasingly blamed her for losses over the last few years.While she got a standing ovation after her goodbye, the new leadership appeared to eagerly embrace the change. Lara Trump, accompanied by her husband, Eric Trump, was greeted like a celebrity, with members lining up to take photos with her.With Trump’s blessing, LaCivita is promising to enact sweeping changes and staffing moves at every level of the RNC to ensure it runs seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.In an interview on Thursday, LaCivita sought to tamp down concerns from some RNC members that the already cash-strapped committee would help pay Trump’s legal bills. Trump faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 counts as well as a $355m civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His affiliated Save America political action committee has spent $76m over the last two years on lawyers.People speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills, LaCivita said, do so “purely on the basis of trying to hurt donors”. Trump’s legal bills are being covered largely by Save America, which is a separate political entity.The new leadership team is expected to more fully embrace Trump’s focus on voter fraud and his debunked claims about the election he lost to Joe Biden. Multiple court cases and Trump’s own justice department failed to reveal any evidence of significant voting irregularities.Whatley, an attorney, has largely avoided using Trump’s characterization of Biden’s victory and said in one 2021 interview that Biden “absolutely” had been legitimately elected and had won the majority of the electoral college votes. But he said in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there had been “massive fraud”. He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since. More