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      US supreme court grabbing ‘ultimate power’, Biden reform adviser says

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      Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar who has advised Joe Biden as the president prepares to back dramatic reforms to the US supreme court, has criticized the court’s ultraconservative justices for acting as a “center of self-aggrandizement” threatening the checks and balances on which the US has historically depended.In comments to the Guardian a day after news broke of Biden’s plans to endorse major changes to the country’s most powerful court, the Harvard Law School professor said the justices were out of step with basic constitutional premises. The court had “reached the point of assuming ultimate power over our entire legal and political system”.He accused the supermajority of “essentially destroying the framework of checks and balances” that had maintained an uneasy equilibrium “over the course of our history”.On Monday the Washington Post revealed Biden’s intention to support major plans to restrain the supreme court. The ideas reportedly being considered include term limits for justices, an ethics code armed with real teeth, as well as a possible constitutional amendment to overturn the justices’ highly controversial decision to grant Donald Trump broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.The Post reported that in preparation for an announcement, expected within weeks, Biden had turned to Tribe as an authority on constitutional law. They discussed Tribe’s blueprint for supreme court reform set out in a Guardian opinion article earlier this month, the newspaper said.Tribe declined on Tuesday to talk about their conversations. But he shared with the Guardian his personal thoughts about what must be done to correct some of the court’s most flagrant abuses.He gave a withering assessment of the hard-right supermajority that controls the court following Trump’s three appointments. The six conservative justices had discarded the judicial self-constraint that the framers of the constitution had intended for the “least dangerous” branch of government.The court had overturned “decades of precedent for no better reason than that it now has the votes to do so”.Tribe blamed the supreme court for systematically rolling back the past half-century of progress on voting and human rights. He listed advances that had been laid waste in recent years, including: “Reproductive liberty, gender equality, sexual autonomy, racial justice, police abuse and government accountability.”He warned there could be no quick fix for the court’s “outlandish excesses”. But he sketched reforms that, over time, could put the court back on the rails.One of Tribe’s most favored changes appears to fall outside Biden’s plans: enlarging the nine-person court with four extra seats to offset Trump’s “stacking of the court”. Tribe embraced enlarging the court in his role as a member of the commission formed by Biden in 2021 looking into supreme court reform.But he told the Guardian that, speaking only for himself, he would be “loth to urge the president at this point to reverse his deep-rooted opposition to court expansion”.The Harvard professor said that there was growing consensus behind term limits for justices. Presidents should make two appointments to the supreme court in each four-year White House term.New appointments would then serve for 18 years as active justices, followed by lifetime service as a retired judge who could fill in for a recused colleague when required. Such a two-tier system has thrived in lower courts for more than a century.Tribe said the shift to a term-limited system – which would be prospective only, not affecting the current nine justices – could be legislated by Congress.“No other apex court in the world entrusts remotely so much power to so few individuals for so long – essentially for life,” he said.Biden also appears minded to endorse an enforceable ethics code, to replace the voluntary guidelines which the court adopted last November amid mounting criticism of Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Tribe said he believed such a reform was now urgently needed, as a way to save the court “from its own worst tendencies”.The law professor called the present system untenable. With no outside mechanism for enforcing ethical rules, such as disclosure of gifts from rich patrons, the court was in effect “expected to police itself”.That remained the case even when justices appeared “prone to get away with as much exploitation of their prestigious positions as they can”.Like term limits, an enforceable ethics code would require congressional legislation. Both would be a tough proposition given the present partisan divide and the need for 60 Senate votes under the filibuster.Such reforms would look easy compared with the other major reform being considered by Biden relating to presidential immunity. This would require a constitutional amendment that would have to negotiate the convoluted rules for changing the US constitution (two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress, or two-thirds of the states in a convention, followed by ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures).What was now needed, Tribe said, was a “No Person Is Above the Law” amendment which would insert language into the constitution making clear that nobody – including the president – could claim immunity from criminal prosecution by virtue of their office.Tribe said that he also wanted to see an amendment constraining a president’s pardon power so that a lawless incumbent of the Oval Office could not pardon themselves or anyone else whom they encouraged to commit crimes on their behalf.Taken together, these changes would return to the supreme court the public respect it had lost, Tribe said. They would correct the court’s partisan majority which now acts as though it were “all-knowing and essentially infallible, paying virtually no heed to the opinions of its predecessors or of the American people”. More

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      Democratic rift over Biden candidacy deepens even as party says he will be nominee

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      Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.The influential California congressman, Adam Schiff, said publicly that Biden should quit, becoming the most well-known representative so far to do so openly.And later on Wednesday afternoon, David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, increased his persistent pressure campaign on Biden as he warned that the sitting president had not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.“I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now, but it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee.Having already riled Biden with criticism of his re-election bid, Axelrod continued the attack at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention, where Trump is expected to receive the official party nomination on Thursday.Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, asked if he thinks Biden can survive as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, replied: “That’s entirely in his hands.”His and Schiff’s comments followed one “prominent strategist” who was moved to say of the internal rebellion against Biden’s candidacy for re-election: “It’s over,” in a sign of how sharply divided the party stands. The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill.At a press conference in Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.Walz told reporters: “We need to get these things done. We need to get the roll call done. But it won’t happen before 1 August.”The debate over Biden’s age and cognitive fitness is likely to stoke more nasty public splits.On Wednesday morning, as a new ABC-Norc poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats saying Biden should withdraw, the blogger and podcaster Nate Silver linked to video of moments in a speech in Las Vegas the night before, in which the 81-year-old president seemed to struggle.Silver said: “It’s just so weird living through this real-life Emperor Has No Clothes Moment. He obviously shouldn’t be president for four more years. Everyone knows this.”Schiff followed reports that he predicted heavy Democratic losses under Biden by going public on the matter.Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but it was time “to pass the torch”, Schiff, now the Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Los Angeles Times.“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”Biden insists he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee “unless I get hit by a train”.Silver also said it was “incredibly revealing which people are willing to lie” about Biden’s age and the problem facing his party.That was a reference to Silver’s public argument on Tuesday with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, over plans to confirm Biden’s nomination before the convention, officially related to uncertainty over elections law in Ohio and the deadline for ballot inclusion.Harrison wrote: “Love y’all but when it comes to election law and ballot access, I put my trust in our legal team who make a living understanding these laws and processes and not in the pollster who promised us the red wave. #ClassDismissed.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe was referring to predictions that the 2022 midterms would see Republicans retake the Senate and strengthen their hold on the House, which did not transpire.Silver answered: “Jaime, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t promise a red wave. The data is here. Actual experts have weighed in and said you’re spreading misinformation. You should probably stop lying.“You and the White House have run the whole campaign on the premise that you could bullshit your way through things. It’s early enough so as not to be unsalvageable, but you’ve put Democrats in an incredibly difficult position. Enough with the BS.”Silver also accused Harrison and the DNC of “blatantly lying” about a need to confirm Biden before the convention, adding: “The good news is that there very much will be consequences if they force Biden’s nomination [through] and he loses.”Harrison said: “Nate … you can call me a lot of things but a liar is definitely not one of them. I know you THINK you know every thing but class is now truly in session. Pull up a chair.”He then offered an explanation of the plan for an early confirmation, in light of events in Ohio. Silver said he was “trying to gaslight people based on a technicality”.Elsewhere, the Ohio secretary of state said the elections law issue was “resolved”, adding that Democrats “know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party disfunction”.Amid it all, Ron Klain entered the chat.The former White House chief of staff, who remains close to Biden and his campaign, posted a FiveThirtyEight prediction of a Biden electoral college victory and said: “But I thought he had ‘no path’ according to donors and the electeds following the donors?”Klain added: “Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him – that’s my gut view based on experience.”Silver said: “You’d say that whether you really believed it or not. But come on the podcast Ron and we’ll see how many mental gymnastics you’re willing to do to defend this position.”Klain, Silver added, was “the one person on the campaign who might be smart enough to know he’s full of shit and will write a memoir in five years saying Biden’s inner circle was incorrigible and he had to provide the most help he could to Biden under the circumstances”.Also on social media, Simon Rosenberg, a pollster and strategist who correctly said there would be no “red wave” in 2022, made an appeal for sanity, posting on X, in part: “Fellow Dems, every moment you attack other [Democrats] you are helping Trump win. Stop it.”Harrison reposted the message. More

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      Adam Schiff says Biden should ‘pass the torch’ and bow out of 2024 US election

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      Adam Schiff, the high-profile California Democrat and US Senate candidate, on Wednesday called on Joe Biden to end his presidential campaign, stating he had “serious concerns” about the president’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles-area congressman joined almost 20 other congressional Democrats in asking the president to step aside. Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history”, Schiff said, but it was time “to pass the torch”.“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November,” Schiff told the newspaper.The development comes as an increasing number of Democrats express doubts about whether Biden can win in November and concerns over his age and cognitive abilities following his debate performance against Trump.A new survey published this week found that nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw. Only about three in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident that Biden has the mental capability to serve effectively, the AP-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research survey also found.Some of Biden’s top donors have said that he should bow out, and have paused donations until he does so. It was reported on Tuesday that Schiff had told donors he believed Democrats would lose the presidency, and probably the House and Senate as well, if Biden remained on the ticket. “I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” the New York Times reported Schiff told donors in New York.With Democrats in turmoil, the party backtracked on Wednesday on plans to expedite a virtual roll call to officially select Biden as its presidential nominee before August after facing opposition from several House members. The members had planned to send a letter to the DNC calling a proposal to fast-track Biden’s nomination a “terrible idea”.“We’re glad to see that the pressure has worked and the DNC will not rush this virtual process through in July,” said a spokesperson for the congressman Jared Huffman, a California Democrat.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, who heads the DNC’s rules committee, confirmed during a press conference in Milwaukee on Wednesday morning that the roll call vote will not be conducted this month. The governor’s spokesperson later confirmed that the process should wrap up by 7 August.The extended deadline buys Democrats more time for continued internal debate over whether Biden should remain the party’s nominee.For his part, Schiff said on Wednesday he would support whoever is the Democratic nominee, including Biden, and will do anything to help the ticket succeed.“There is only one singular goal: defeating Donald Trump. The stakes are just too high,” he told the LA Times. More

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      Yes, Joe Biden’s mind is a problem. So is his cold heart towards Palestinians | Ahmed Moor

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      Attention has rightly been focused on Biden’s cognitive lapses – the incomplete sentences, the trailing thoughts, the obvious gaps in coherence. The spectacle, which has been obvious to anyone who isn’t a Democratic party surrogate or a diehard party member, has been astonishing to witness. The images of Giorgia Meloni seemingly redirecting Biden at the meeting of the G7, or his frozen visage as Jill Biden sought to drum up enthusiasm for his candidacy, or Barack Obama guiding him off a stage, or his rigid dancing during a Juneteenth celebration have caused many to ask about Joe Biden’s physical fitness and ability to hold the highest office in the land.Yet, in calling for Biden to step back from running a second time, some Democrats have described the president as “decent” and “a good man”. The opposite is true.Biden has enabled a ghastly genocide, the starvation of children in Palestine, and his legacy is defined by it. Unfortunately, his record before Palestine also puts the lie to the “decency” myth. His enthusiasm for the Iraq war and the savage destruction of Lebanon in 1982 illustrate his poor judgment and ethical lapses on foreign policy. His opposition to federally mandated desegregation busing, his lazy plagiarism, and his sexist treatment of Anita Hill, a Black woman who was allegedly sexually harassed by the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, do not comprise a record of decency either.Donald Trump is a dangerous man. In his first term he employed cartoonishly bad people. Steve Bannon, a criminal and an Islamophobe; Jared Kushner, whose primary achievement appears to have been transmuting an inscrutable role in the White House into a $2bn investment from the Saudis in 2021 and John Bolton, who lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to propel this country into war, all “served” him as president. This time around, we should reasonably expect more of the same. Or maybe worse.Democrats are right to fret – and, to use the illustrative if childish metaphor favored by the Biden campaign – to wet their beds at the prospect of another meeting between Trump and Biden. The president’s decline is alarming many Democrats. Trump, by contrast, presents as someone who is a little more alert, but is self-indulgent and undisciplined. He comes across as a peevish, unimaginably rich man, who has been so wealthy for so long, whose money has insulated him from the consequences of his actions for so long, whose primary company is sycophantic, that he chooses to rant incoherently. If there is something wrong with his brain, it may be attributable to the long-term effects of money on cognition.Another Trump-Biden debate is scheduled for 10 September, and, if he remains the Democratic candidate, there is no reason to believe that Biden will fare any better. While cognitive decline is highly mediated by personal characteristics, it does not get better with time; age is age. Today, Biden is unable to meet the challenge posed by Trump – not cognitively, and not ethically.The argument for replacing Biden was strong as soon as his first “bear hug” embrace” of the “insufferably arrogant” war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu caused him to lose voters in Michigan, an indispensable swing state. And it has grown stronger in the wake of the disastrous July debate. It seems reasonable to believe the polls: Americans will not vote for someone who cannot plausibly hold a regular job to the office of the presidency.Before the debate, it seemed likely that enough Americans would not vote for someone who actively abetted a genocide, who openly regarded Palestinian lives with contempt, and who cast an entire generation of college students and young people as antisemites and miscreants, to produce a Trump presidency. But politics is dynamic – and presaged does not mean prescribed.Biden’s poor performance during the debate with Trump may act as an unexpected opportunity for Democrats. Because far from being “a good man” – as Nicholas Kristof, who has spent time documenting aspects of the Israeli genocide, has nonetheless called Biden – Biden’s ethical failures have always been an albatross. He was poised to lose the election even before the debate – an argument that his supporters were able to successfully withstand, primarily by browbeating the realists in the party. But now, with his mental decline so evident, those who seek a different candidate can argue forcefully that he is unfit.The Democrats do not have to lose this election to Donald Trump. The country, and the world, does not have to contend with another four years of incoherence and ineptitude. As the French election – which saw the Palestine-supporting New Popular Front win a shock victory – shows: the best way to beat the far-right is a strong and principled left.This race is salvageable. To win, the Democrats must jettison one bad, ailing man. And find someone decent to take his place.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer, activist and co-editor of After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine More

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      The American republic is crumbling before us – and Democrats must share the blame | Owen Jones

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      Has the US entered its late Soviet phase? The country is a gerontocracy led by ailing leaders and with a crisis of confidence in its dominant ideology; it is a flailing superpower suffering foreign humiliation (not least in Afghanistan); and its economic system struggles to meet the needs of many of its people. The similarities are a little uncanny.There are, of course, clear differences too. The US is a democracy, albeit one severely compromised by wealthy vested interests and concerted rightwing efforts to weaken voting rights, and it is a racially diverse union of states, rather than an unstable federation of nations. But, crucially, if Joe Biden is a Leonid Brezhnev or one of his two short-lived elderly successors, then Donald Trump is no Mikhail Gorbachev: he is more of an American Vladimir Putin.The attempted assassination of Trump marks a further descent into the darkness. Earlier this year, a poll found that more than a third of Americans believe civil war in their lifetime is likely, with another 13% opting for “very likely”. In 2021, a leading Canadian political scientist and scholar of violent conflict warned that the weakening of US democratic institutions over decades could lead to the whole system’s collapse by 2025, leading to extreme violent instability and a rightwing tyranny prevailing by 2030. A decade ago, such prophecies would have seemed outlandish, deranged even. Now only the foolishly complacent would dismiss them as lying outside the realms of plausibility.The liberal order is imploding. But just a quarter of a century ago, under Bill Clinton’s presidency, many considered it bulletproof. The US was drunk on its recent cold war triumph, and the political and economic order it extolled was described as the final stage of human development by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History? The image of an at-ease, amiable US was projected to the world in cultural exports ranging from Friends to The West Wing, or as humanity’s benign protector in Independence Day. Globally, liberal democracies appeared to be becoming the norm, not besieged exceptions. Sure, the arrival of George W Bush, the horror of 9/11 and the killing fields of Iraq were traumatic for progressive Americans, bookended by the most severe crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. But Barack Obama seemed to wash those sins away. He was the first black president, telegenic and with a confident charm: central casting could not have produced a more ideal candidate for the sensibilities of the liberal American.Yet nine decades after the publication of It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel about a fictional fascist dictator seizing power in the US, the scenario it imagines seems less far-fetched than at any other point in the 250-year existence of the American republic. Then, Lewis looked to Nazi Germany as a warning: his wife was the journalist Dorothy Thompson, who had interviewed Adolf Hitler and subsequently been expelled by his regime. Today, the authoritarian model can be observed in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Fidesz was a centre-right party that became radicalised in power, and since then has deployed anti-migrant hysteria to build support, demonised opponents as unpatriotic foreign puppets, rigged the media in its favour and trashed judicial independence, building what Orbán describes as an “illiberal democracy”. It is a trajectory perhaps most strikingly pioneered by Putin: you keep the trappings of democracy, with the substance gradually rotted away. Shortly before the assassination attempt, Trump hosted Orbán – who has endorsed the Republican presidential nominee – at Mar-a-Lago.Democratic culture in the US is stronger and more embedded than in Hungary. But Trump is even more demagogic than Orbán, with a more extreme and motivated grassroots base. Furthermore, he is more vengeful and radicalised than ever – the relative moderates in his entourage have left in horror at his plans for the presidency. The supreme court has a conservative majority, and a Trump presidential victory could easily be accompanied by Republican victory in both houses of Congress, meaning precious few checks and balances. Trump has floated cancelling the US constitution and jailing his political opponents, and his promise only to be a dictator on “day one” (and not after) is hardly reassuring.Trump’s return to the White House is likely to be met with a response on the streets. Any such protests could be used as a pretext to impose authoritarian measures, perhaps even martial law. Trump reportedly told the top US military leader to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020. You can see how it could spiral. We don’t yet know the motive of Trump’s suspected shooter, but the episode will be used by Republicans to shut down scrutiny of Trump and the danger he poses to the republic on the grounds that it is inciting further violence against him. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of extremist violence in the US is perpetrated by rightwing elements.How did it all go wrong? The truth is the US system has long been dysfunctional, with Democratic elites partly to blame. When Trump came to power, the real average wage had about the same purchasing power as it did four decades earlier. Most gains had been accrued by top earners. Such stagnation breeds pessimism, ripe for demagogic exploitation. Democrats failed to transform this broken order.Trump’s surge is also a racist backlash, but it is linked to the failure of Democratic economic policy. Republicans have assiduously exploited and promoted a white backlash ever since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, deploying racist dog whistles which only escalated under Obama. But the Democrats’ approach to social reform did not help. Corporate taxes were slashed from the 1960s onwards, while the tax burden on middle-income Americans nearly doubled between the mid-1950s and 1980. Social programmes targeted at poorer Americans were therefore easily demonised as being paid for by blue-collar workers, breaking down the solidarity of the traditional Democratic coalition. That resentment was easily and crudely racialised as undeserving poor black America being subsidised by hardworking white people.The foreign military ventures of Democratic elites such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – principally in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Libya – were also characterised by bloody turmoil and international humiliation. Today, Biden has infuriated natural Democratic voters and morally disgraced the US globally with complicity in Israel’s genocidal rampage. Republicans are enthusiastic about their nominee: Democrats are not.A superpower in crisis both at home and abroad risks some form of reckoning, as the Soviet leadership discovered. Across the west, the cordon sanitaire between the centre-right and what lies beyond has collapsed: a Trump victory will embolden Europe’s surging far-right movements. The liberal order crumbles before us: we have barely begun to contemplate what lies beyond it.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist More

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      Speeches turn to Bible verses and depiction of Trump as ‘grandpa’ after Haley and DeSantis rouse GOP delegates with endorsements – as it happened

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      Nikki Haley and Donald Trump were rivals during the Republican primaries. But after dropping out of the race, Haley would go on to say she would vote for him, though didn’t quite say she endorsed him.“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” Haley said.Haley was greeted by boos as well as cheers as she took to the stage in Milwaukee.Thanks for reading our coverage of the second evening of the Republican national convention.Delegates will return to Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum at 5.45pm CT tomorrow for the third session of the convention. The four-day event concludes on Thursday.Here’s a look back at what happened this evening:

      Nikki Haley gave Donald Trump her “strong endorsement”, and tried to sway wary Republicans to his cause.

      Ron DeSantis launched a volley of attacks on Joe Biden, in a stark contrast with Haley that underscored the ultimately unsuccessful strategies both deployed as candidates to try to win the GOP’s presidential nomination instead of Trump.

      Trump and his running mate JD Vance both returned to the convention to watch the primetime speakers, though neither gave remarks.

      Biden said in an interview with BET that only a “medical condition” would convince him to abandon his run for re-election, despite ongoing concern over his fitness to continue serving.

      Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for Senate in Arizona, kicked the evening off with an acerbic attack on journalists in the convention hall.

      Elise Stefanik, the House Republican conference chair, boasted of her role in getting the presidents of two top universities to resign.

      House Speaker Mike Johnson described the country as locked in “a struggle between two completely different visions of who we are”.

      Lara Trump closed the evening with a speech all about “the Donald Trump that I know.”
      With a bang of his oversized gavel, Michael Whatley, the chair of the Republican national convention, has concluded its second night.Stay tuned as we present a look back at what happened this evening.The Republican national convention is about finished for the night.Some delegates and guests have already left, though Donald Trump, JD Vance and other VIPs remain in their seats.If there’s a theme to Lara Trump’s speech, it would be “the Donald Trump that I know”.The former president’s daughter-in-law is describing how he is a family man, which is indeed a side that is not often seen by the public.“Donald Trump didn’t need to run for president for fame or money. Trust me, we all know he already had plenty of that. I’ll tell you why he did it and why he continues on, even in the face of the unthinkable – because he loves this country,” Lara Trump said.“He did it for his grandchildren, for your children and grandchildren and for the generations to come.”She described how: “I’ll never forget watching my two children run up to him with their drawings and hugs for grandpa, just moments before he took the elevator down in Trump Tower to address the media the day after his wrongful conviction.”Referring to the assassination attempt, Lara Trump said: “In that split second on Saturday, Donald Trump reminded us all of that very history and who we are at our core as a nation. That is the Donald Trump that I know.”Senator Tim Scott compared Donald Trump to a lion last night, and Lara Trump said the same thing tonight:“Proverbs 28 reads: ‘The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.’ And that truly epitomizes Donald Trump. He is a lion, he is bold, he is strong, he is fearless, and he is exactly what this country needs right now,” she said.In one of the last speeches of the night, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is discussing the emotional toll the assassination attempt took on their family.“Nothing prepares you for a moment like that,” said Trump, who co-chairs the Republican National Committee.“Our family has faced our fair share of death threats, mysterious powders sent to our homes, tasteless and violent comments directed towards us on social media, but none of that prepares you, as a daughter-in-law, to watch in real time someone try to kill a person you love. None of that prepares you, as a mother, to quickly reach for the remote and turn your young children away from the screen, so that they’re not witness to something that scars the memory of their grandpa for the rest of their lives.”As he closed his speech, Rubio directly referenced how Donald Trump had stood up and pumped his fist in the air after being injured in the assassination attempt on Saturday.“Our country has been injured, injured by the bad decisions of weak leaders. But now, though bloodied by our wounds, we stand up and we must fight,” Rubio said.He continued:
      Fight not with violence or destruction, but with our voices and our votes. Fight not against each other, but for the hopes and dreams we share in common and make us one, and fight for an America where we are safe from those who seek to harm us on our streets and from abroad, and we will not be alone in this fight. For leading us in this fight will be a man who, although wounded and facing danger, he stood up and raised his fist and reminded us that our people and our country are always worth fighting for.
      Florida’s Marco Rubio was on the shortlist to be Donald Trump’s running mate, but was passed over in favor of his Senate colleague JD Vance.Rubio is now addressing the convention, but hasn’t mentioned the snub, instead sticking to territory well-trod by previous speakers.“There is absolutely nothing dangerous or anything divisive about putting Americans first,” Rubio said.“Anyone who is offended about putting America first has forgotten what America is and what America means. America isn’t the color of our skin or our ethnicity. Americans are people as diverse as humanity itself. But out of many, we are one, because, as the life story of our next vice-president, JD Vance, reminds us, we are all descendants of ordinary people who achieved extraordinary things.”Ben Carson, the former secretary of housing and urban development who is speaking now, struck a similarly biblical tone when discussing the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.“Like many of you, last week, I watched with horror as the events unfolded in that Pennsylvania field. I saw President Trump, a dear friend, escape death by mere inches, and my thoughts immediately turned to the book of Isaiah that says: ‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper,’” said Carson.“Well, let me tell you the weapons that they use. First, they try to ruin his reputation, and he’s more popular now than ever. And then they tried to bankrupt him, and he’s got more money now than he had before. And then they tried to put him in prison, and he’s freer and has made other people free with him. And then, and then, last weekend, they tried to kill him. And there he is, over there, alive and well,” Carson said, to a round of hearty applause.Donald Trump has been found civilly liable for sexual abuse, and convicted on felony charges related to trying to cover up an affair.But to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, “The left doesn’t care about empowering women. Biden and Harris can’t even tell you what a woman is. They only care about empowering themselves.”“God spared President Trump from that assassin, because God is not finished with him yet, and he most certainly is not finished with America yet, either. With God as our guide and President Trump back in the White House, we will show the world that America is the place where freedom reigns and liberty will never die, Sanders said. More

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      Biden says ‘time to outlaw’ AR-15 rifle used in Trump assassination attempt – live

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      Joe Biden is commenting at length about the toll gun violence takes on American communities, and singled out the impact of assault weapons such as the AR-15.“An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. This was the assault weapon that killed so many others, including children. It’s time to outlaw them,” Biden said.In what was likely a reference to his involvement in passing the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired 10 years later, Biden said: “I did it once, and I will do it again.”As he closed his speech to the NAACP, Joe Biden defended his ability to continue serving as president, despite mounting worries among Democrats over his advanced age.“Hopefully, with age, I’ve demonstrated a little bit of wisdom. Here’s what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job, and I know the good Lord hasn’t brought us this far to leave us now there’s more work to do,” Biden said.His comments came amid reports that the Democratic National Committee is moving to quickly nominate Biden, and quell a rebellion by lawmakers and others concerned about his ability to defeat Donald Trump:Joe Biden is warning the NAACP that a second Donald Trump administration would “undo everything” they stand for.The president said he has been “all about working people in this nation my whole career”, and: “That’s a stark contrast to my predecessor and his Maga visions. They’ll undo everything, undo everything the NAACP stands for. But now they’re trying to deny it. They’re lying about their Project 2025. They want to deny your freedom, the freedom to vote.”The crowd at the NAACP convention has started chanting “four more years!” after Joe Biden vowed to restore the constitutional right to abortion.“And, guess what, come hell or high water, we’re going to restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land,” the president said.In a sign that the detente between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be brief, the president has attacked his predecessor for his comments about “Black jobs”.Biden was referencing a comment Trump made during their first debate, in which he claimed undocumented immigrants are “taking Black jobs now”.“Of course he thinks of Black jobs,” Biden told the crowd at the NAACP convention. “I love his phrase, ‘Black jobs’, tells a lot about the man and about his character. Folks, I know what a Black job is. It’s a vice-president of the United States.”“I know what a Black job is. The first Black president … Barack Obama,” Biden added.It was a reversion to form for the president, who had toned down his rhetoric over the past couple of days following the assassination attempt on Trump. Expect the former president to follow suit.Joe Biden is commenting at length about the toll gun violence takes on American communities, and singled out the impact of assault weapons such as the AR-15.“An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump. This was the assault weapon that killed so many others, including children. It’s time to outlaw them,” Biden said.In what was likely a reference to his involvement in passing the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired 10 years later, Biden said: “I did it once, and I will do it again.”Joe Biden appears to be making light of the efforts by his fellow Democrats to get him to step aside in favor of what they feel would be a more electable candidate.He related the adage, credited to former president Harry Truman, that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”.“After the last couple weeks, I know what he means,” quipped Biden, who had earlier described Truman as someone who “was often counted out”.Joe Biden is now speaking to the NAACP convention.“My name is Joe Biden, and I’m a lifetime member of the NAACP,” the president began, speaking of the longstanding civil rights group.Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, is introducing Joe Biden, who will address the civil rights group’s convention in Las Vegas.He recounted how Black voters were crucial to determining the 2020 election, but noted, “not everyone shares the same investment in a progressive vision”.Johnson is singling out Project 2025, the rightwing plan to remake the US government that several officials tied to Donald Trump are involved in.“This is a 900-page manifesto that seeks to undermine progress, promote violence, inflict harm on our community. They must know that NAACP, we will be here for that fight,” Johnson said.At a lawmaker panel hosted by the rightwing organization Moms for Liberty – a group that has earned a reputation for advancing local book bans – the conversation, which was largely focused on the virtues of private education, shifted to teachers’ unions.“You have the teachers, and then you have the union,” said the Florida congressman Byron Donalds, to jeers from the crowd. “The Democrats can’t win elections without the power of unions.”Proponents of private education rarely speak so candidly about the political motives behind the push to defund public education. Donalds’ acknowledgment of the electoral power of unions offers a more complete picture of the conservative push to expand private schools, where union density is low.Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson has said he has “no doubt” that Donald Trump would continue supporting Ukraine, following a meeting with him.In a post on X, Johnson wrote: “We discussed Ukraine and I have no doubt that he will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy.”The meeting comes amid growing concern that Trump could withdraw support for Ukraine and possibly seek a peace deal directly with the Kremlin that may involve territorial concessions.Boris Johnson met Trump on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. He’s not the only former British prime minister to swing through:Kamala Harris has formally invited JD Vance, the Ohio senator who Donald Trump yesterday named as his running mate, to debate, the Biden-Harris campaign said.“Vice-President Harris reached out to Senator Vance and left a message to congratulate him on his selection, welcome him to the race and express her hope that the two can meet in the vice-presidential debate proposed by CBS News,” a campaign official said.It is unclear when the debate will happen. CBS News proposed 23 July or 13 August, which the Biden campaign has accepted.Joe Biden is expected to soon make his first speech in public since a gunman attempted to kill Donald Trump at a campaign rally over the weekend.In the aftermath of the failed assassination, in which a rallygoer and the gunman were killed, Biden and Trump have dialed back their relentless attacks on each others’ records ahead of the 5 November election.The president is scheduled to address the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People civil rights group in Las Vegas, Nevada, a swing state that could prove crucial to both campaigns.Biden is once again late to begin his speech, but we’ll let you know he says when it starts.Sharon Yancey, 77, said she has been a Republican voter for 10 to 15 years.“He’s a patriot and I’m a patriot. I love America, and he does too. And he wants to make America the best for everyone, all people, that are here, including the minorities,” Yancey, who was wearing a red Make America great again hat, said of Trump.“Other groups of people, they vote their conscience and they’re not vilified for it, they’re not looked down on and told to feel like you’re less of a person if you don’t vote Democrat,” she said.“One of my son-in-laws is white; he votes the way he wants to vote. And I have another son-in-law who’s Asian; he votes the way he wants to vote. So why am I vilified and called you know, less than a human being, and all those other derogatory things they say about Black people who don’t follow the line?”Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who was among the candidates to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, stopped at an outreach event for Black voters in Milwaukee on Tuesday.Speaking at the Wisconsin GOP’s Black coalition headquarters, alongside four local politicians, Scott was more subdued than he had been on Monday night, when he literally roared into a microphone after dubbing Trump an “American lion”.As Scott entered the room there were 16 people seated, 10 of whom were Black, and they sat through a rather dry conversation about “opportunity zones”, a bipartisan 2017 program designed to boost investment in lower-income communities.There was no mention of Trump, and little mention of the Republican party as a whole, aside from Scott saying: “We have not been as good at marketing the success that’s come out of the conservative movement as we should be.”In a room which had portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump mounted along one wall, some people said they would vote for Trump in November.“I’ve just recently made the shift over to being a Republican. My family were Democrat, I think I was just born into it,” said Mario Dickens. A local business owner, he said he became a Republican about a year ago.“We just haven’t seen much benefit at all over last four years. And four years prior things were going great for us,” Dickens said.Donald Trump Jr joked with his father about hair in the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.Don Jr was out fishing with his daughter in Jupiter, Florida, when he received a call from his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, informing him that Donald Trump had been shot.“It was 90 minutes before I even knew he was alive,” Don Jr said at Axios House on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.
      That was a tough moment and then finally, get hit him on the phone and honestly, considering the heaviness of that moment, sort of give me a window for some levity and I asked him, well, most importantly, how’s the hair?
      The audience laughed and Don Jr proceeded to imitate his father’s voice: “The hair’s fine, Don, the hair’s fine. A lot of blood in it but it’s fine.”Reverting to his normal voice, Don Jr added:
      To be shot and to stand up with that kind of resolve, I just felt like: you’re the biggest badass I know. That was my opening salvo and then we started joking hair and I said, can I call you Evander Holyfield because of the little missing chunk of ear?”
      [Heavyweight boxer Holyfield had a part of his ear bitten off by opponent Mike Tyson in 1997.]Don Jr claimed this is why the world was at peace during Trump’s presidency.
      Compare and contrast that honestly to just about any clip of Joe Biden these days.One exudes strength, the other exudes weakness. And when you exude weakness, it’s the nature of predation: predators prey on the weak. Our enemies will prey on us.
      Even so, Don Jr promised that Trump’s Thursday speech will be “toned down” and warned against complacency in the Republican ranks. “People are like, ‘Oh, after Saturday it’s over,’” he told the Axios gathering.
      Nothing is over. There’s no level the other side won’t go. There’s no nonsense they won’t play. This is not in the bag. We have to keep our foot on the gas every second of the day until November.
      Don Jr welcomed the idea of Robert Kennedy Jr serving under Trump in a second term – “Maybe there’s a great place for him somewhere in an administration” – and described his own potential role in a presidential transition.
      All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster. I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are pretending they’re with you … You guys pick the guy that’s right. I want the veto power to cut out each and every one of those people.
      Asked by interviewer Mike Allen for his “least Trumpy” quality, Don Jr replied: “I don’t play golf.”The Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said the president will tout his record during remarks at the UnidosUs conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.Among Joe Biden’s accomplishments, she said, was being the steward of record low unemployment for Latinos. Latinos are also starting businesses at a record pace. Meanwhile, she added, crime is down and wages are up.But polls have shown Donald Trump making inroads with Hispanic voters, particularly men. Escobar said the Biden campaign was pouring resources into reaching Latino voters, but that more was needed before November.Referencing the Heritage Foundation’s radical plan to reshape the federal government, she said:
      We’ve been talking to Latino communities, I’ve traveled the country to meet with Latino groups, to hear them out, to talk to them about the president’s positive vision for America and contrast that with the incredibly dark, terrifying vision that the Trump-Vance campaign has laid out through Project 2025.
      “There’s a lot of work we still have to do to make sure that Latino voters feel heard and that we inspire them to get to the polls,” she continued. “That’s the work that we have been doing and will continue to do on the Biden-Harris campaign.”Immigration advocates are pre-empting what they anticipate will be a “dark and dystopian vision” on display during the second night of the Republican national convention, themed “Make America Safe Again.”The congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, said she wanted to “sound the alarm” on Republicans’ escalating attacks on immigrants.As the Democratic congresswoman from El Paso, Texas, where five years ago a white supremecist targeted Latino shoppers at a Walmart in the city, killing 23 people, Escobar said she knows first hand how dangerous rhetoric can have deadly consequences. She told reporters on a call Tuesday:
      The incredibly dark vision that Donald Trump and his running mate and the Republican GOP have in store for America is a throwback to very, very dark days that we have seen in American history.
      She added that Republicans “want the American public to fear and loathe immigrants”.On the call, advocates warned that Republicans would likely twist the facts and repeat many of their false claims about immigration and crime. “Here’s what they won’t tell you,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, said.
      They will not tell you about the essential role that immigrants play in the Wisconsin economy and across the country. They won’t tell you about the fact that there is no correlation between crime and immigration. And they also won’t tell you that despite their anti-immigration crusade and the millions of political ads being spent this cycle on immigration, the support for citizenship is durable and consistent.
      The quote by Vanessa Cárdenas was amended. More

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      Adam Schiff reportedly tells donors ‘I think we lose’ if Biden is nominee

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      The high-profile California Democrat Adam Schiff told donors Joe Biden remaining on top of the ticket for November would cost the party the presidency and probably the House and Senate too, the New York Times reported.“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Schiff told donors in East Hampton, New York, last Saturday, the paper said, citing “a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event”.“And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”According to the Times, Schiff spoke before Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, was shot in the ear in an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.As the paper noted, Democratic calls for Biden to stand aside, stoked by concerns about his age and cognitive fitness for office, surged after a disastrous debate with Trump in Atlanta last month but have dropped off since the Trump shooting, in which one rallygoer was killed and two injured.Nineteen House Democrats and one senator have publicly called for Biden to quit.Schiff is not among them but he is an influential voice in the party, a former House intelligence chair who led Trump’s first impeachment, sat on the January 6 committee and is now a candidate for US Senate.The Times said the fundraiser was in support of Schiff’s Senate campaign and those of Elissa Slotkin (Michigan) and Angela Alsobrooks (Maryland), who both face competitive races.“At least one donor … left dejected,” the Times reported, “believing that Mr Biden’s chances of winning were now slim and that they should concentrate giving their time and money to down-ballot candidates in the hopes of salvaging something.”Schiff did not comment. Biden’s campaign told the Times he “maintained strong support from members of Congress”.Biden remains defiant, telling NBC on Monday: “Look, 14 million people voted for me to be the nominee in the Democratic party, OK? I listen to them.”He also attacked NBC and other outlets for their coverage of Trump’s debate display, asking, “Why don’t you guys ever talk about the … 28 lies he told?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegardless, Biden’s party remains in turmoil.On Tuesday, Axios reported a move by the Democratic National Committee to conduct a virtual roll call, the process by which the presidential nominee is confirmed, before the party convention in Chicago next month.Politico then reported a draft letter in which dozens of House Democrats opposed the plan.The virtual roll call was “a really bad move by the DNC”, Jared Huffman, a California Democrat who has not called publicly for Biden to quit, told the site.“Somebody thinks it’s a clever way to lock down debate and I guess by dint of sheer force, achieve unity, but it doesn’t work that way.” More