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      Democrats decry Biden executive order turning away some asylum seekers

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      Progressive Democrats and immigration advocates have shared their outrage after Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that would turn away some asylum seekers.Biden’s order will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to enter the country legally when authorities have determined that the border is “overwhelmed”.The president said the order comes after Republicans rejected a bipartisan immigration deal that would have changed several areas of US immigration policy.“Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border,” Biden said during remarks on the order on Tuesday.“Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken fixed – to hire more border patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges.”US representative Nanette Barragán of California, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic caucus, said Tuesday morning that she was “disappointed” in Biden’s direction with immigration policy, the New Republic reported.View image in fullscreenCalifornia representative Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, said she was “disappointed at the enforcement-only strategies” announced by Biden.“Rather than address humanitarian issues at the border effectively and with the nuance they deserve, today’s actions will gut protections for countless migrants exercising their legal right to claim asylum,” she said.US representative Raúl Grijalva, whose Arizona district borders Mexico, said that the order is a “significant departure from President Biden’s promise of a more humane and just approach to immigration”.He added: “It tramples on the universal right to claim asylum and prevents migrants from attempting to legally access safety and security in the United States. It is ripe for legal challenges and antithetical to our values.”The American Civil Liberties Union denounced Biden’s executive order and said they will be challenging it in court.“The Biden administration just announced an executive order that will severely restrict people’s legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk,” the organization said in a post on X.Meanwhile, other Democrats have welcomed Biden’s actions as a necessary step to address the humanitarian crisis at the border.Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio told the Washington Post that he believes it is the “right direction”, adding: “I want to see more.” More

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      ‘The necessary steps to secure our border’: Biden defends decision to impose limits on asylum seekers – as it happened

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      Donald Trump and his allies have for years called for the closure of the southern border. Now, Joe Biden is doing that, albeit only occasionally, and specifically when arrivals of new asylum seekers exceed 2,500 a day.How did we get here? The answer can be found earlier this year, when a bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise to tighten access for migrants and approve a new infusion of aid to Ukraine and Israel’s military that the Biden administration said was desperately needed by two of Washington’s top allies.But despite the fact that one of their own lawmakers negotiated the deal, which contained hardline immigration policies Democrats normally would not support, the GOP voted it down, ostensibly so Trump could campaign on his own draconian approach to immigration.Which brings us to today. Congress went on to approve the foreign aid bill separately, and today, Biden used his presidential policies to limit access to asylum seekers on days when the border is “overwhelmed” as the White House put it – while repeatedly training his ire on Trump and his allies.“I’ve come here today to do what the Republican Congress refuses to do – take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said as he began his speech.Trump “told the Republicans … that he didn’t want to fix the issue, he wanted to use it to attack me. That’s what he wanted to do. It was … an extremely cynical political move and a complete disservice to the American people who are looking for us to not to weaponize the border, but to fix it.”Here’s more on Biden’s new border policy:After months of ultimately fruitless haggling over immigration policy in Congress, Joe Biden announced new rules that will see the southern border temporarily shut to most new asylum seekers at periods when it becomes “overwhelmed”. The president blamed Republicans and Donald Trump for blocking legislation he said would be better suited to dealing with the issue, while warning the country’s hospitality was “wearing thin” amid the migration wave. The policy change comes amid signs voters are increasingly concerned about migrants arriving in the United States, but risk alienating some of Biden’s allies, who warn it amounts to a draconian response to what is essentially a humanitarian crisis. Back at the Capitol, the GOP continued its counteroffensive against Biden after Trump’s felony conviction last week. Speaker Mike Johnson blamed Democrats for the guilty verdict, saying it represents “a new low”, while attorney general Merrick Garland faced a tough crowd during a hearing before the judiciary committee.Here’s what else happened today:
      Republicans said Biden’s new policy amounted to an “election-year border charade”, and demanded tougher action on migrants.
      Biden attacked Trump as a “convicted felon” who should not be let back into the White House at a Monday evening fundraiser.
      Wisconsin’s attorney general filed charges against three Trump associates for attempting to disrupt Biden’s election victory in the state four years ago, including notorious attorney Kenneth Chesebro.
      An official with ties to a group promoting lies about the 2020 vote sits on the elections board in Fulton county, the most-populous in swing state Georgia.
      Opening arguments began in Hunter Biden’s trial on gun charges in Delaware, with prosecutors telling the jury that “no one is above the law”.
      In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump responded to Joe Biden’s executive order with a host of insults, and a recitation of his typically hardline rhetoric on immigration.“Crooked Joe Biden has totally surrendered our Southern Border. His weakness and extremism have resulted in a Border Invasion like we have never seen before,” Trump said in the post, which segues into a three-minute video in which he calls Biden “pathetic”.Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center provides legal services to migrants on both sides of the US and Mexican border, and, in a statement, executive director Marisa Limón Garza condemned Joe Biden’s new immigration policy:
      Today’s decision clearly illustrates that this administration is ignoring lessons from the failed deterrence measures put in place by its predecessors.
      Being strong on immigration doesn’t require an assault on asylum seekers or cruelty toward people seeking protection at our southern border. The Biden administration doesn’t need to rely on harsh deterrence tactics like Trump’s failed Muslim travel ban and Latino ban, which were also created to close the doors on refugees and send families back to the violent conditions they fought to escape.
      Together, these policies represent a concerning trend of political manipulation and irresponsible immigration practices. This does nothing to mitigate the violence and family separations, ignores due process, and moves us away from a humane, safe, and orderly system, inevitably forcing migrants into the hands of cartels and traffickers.
      Donald Trump and his allies have for years called for the closure of the southern border. Now, Joe Biden is doing that, albeit only occasionally, and specifically when arrivals of new asylum seekers exceed 2,500 a day.How did we get here? The answer can be found earlier this year, when a bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise to tighten access for migrants and approve a new infusion of aid to Ukraine and Israel’s military that the Biden administration said was desperately needed by two of Washington’s top allies.But despite the fact that one of their own lawmakers negotiated the deal, which contained hardline immigration policies Democrats normally would not support, the GOP voted it down, ostensibly so Trump could campaign on his own draconian approach to immigration.Which brings us to today. Congress went on to approve the foreign aid bill separately, and today, Biden used his presidential policies to limit access to asylum seekers on days when the border is “overwhelmed” as the White House put it – while repeatedly training his ire on Trump and his allies.“I’ve come here today to do what the Republican Congress refuses to do – take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said as he began his speech.Trump “told the Republicans … that he didn’t want to fix the issue, he wanted to use it to attack me. That’s what he wanted to do. It was … an extremely cynical political move and a complete disservice to the American people who are looking for us to not to weaponize the border, but to fix it.”Here’s more on Biden’s new border policy:While Joe Biden has warned that his executive order intended to turn away some asylum seekers is a necessary step in the face of Republican opposition to broader immigration reforms, some Democrats have signaled their wariness – or outright objection.Here’s California congresswoman Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus:
      I am disappointed at the enforcement-only strategies that the President announced today. Rather than address humanitarian issues at the border effectively and with the nuance they deserve, today’s actions will gut protections for countless migrants exercising their legal right to claim asylum. Rather than decimate the ability for those fleeing violence or persecution to seek asylum based on an arbitrary numerical cap, we should be redirecting our efforts to modernize ports of entry, expand legal pathways for migrants, and address the root causes of migration.
      And Raúl Grijalva, whose Arizona district encompasses most of the state’s frontier with Mexico:
      This executive action represents a significant departure from President Biden’s promise of a more humane and just approach to immigration. It tramples on the universal right to claim asylum and prevents migrants from attempting to legally access safety and security in the United States. It is ripe for legal challenges and antithetical to our values.
      Rather than appeasing Republicans who continuously refuse to work on bipartisan legislation and block immigration solutions for political gain, I urge President Biden, instead, to use his authority to take concrete action to help fix our broken immigration system. That starts with sending more resources to border communities, expanding legal pathways, streamlining the asylum seeking process, making it easier for individuals and families to work and live here, and creating a pathway to citizenship to give millions the certainty they deserve.
      Other Democrats welcomed the president’s actions. Here’s California’s Norma Torres, who serves on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s executive board:
      I strongly support the changes to expedite the process of deporting or removing individuals at the border who pose a national security risk or public threat. However, I have significant concerns about implementation, transparency, and the risk of curtailing fair, legal representation for legitimate asylum seekers.
      If rushed and without proper protections, these changes could embolden future anti-immigrant administrations to limit legitimate, eligible asylum seekers from obtaining the protections they seek.
      This executive order is a difficult but necessary measure to address the growing crisis at our border, but deeply underscores the urgent need to resolve the root causes of migration throughout Central America. I look forward to working closely with the administration on the implementation of these changes to ensure we stem the crisis at the border while ensuring asylees are processed expeditiously and fairly.
      The president’s executive order has faced criticism from progressive lawmakers and immigration reformers, who say it undermines protections for migrants fleeing humanitarian crises.Joe Biden addressed those concerns in his just-concluded White House speech, warning that the country was losing patience with the flow of migrants:
      For those who say the steps I’ve taken are too strict, I say to you … be patient. The goodwill of the American people are … wearing thin right now. Doing nothing is not an option – we have to act. We must act consistent with both our law and our values, our values as Americans.
      Joe Biden made a point of mentioning how his views of immigration differ from those of Donald Trump, who presided over a policy of separating migrant children from their parents as president, and has mulled deploying the military to round up undocumented people in the country, if re-elected.“I believe that immigration has always been a lifeblood of America. We’re constantly renewed by an infusion of people and new talent. The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history. It stands for who we are as the United States,” Biden said.He then laid into Trump:
      So, I will never demonize immigrants. I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of the religious beliefs. I will not use the US military to go into neighborhoods all across the country, to pull millions of people out of their homes and away from their families, to put detention camps while we’re waiting deportation, as my predecessor says he will do if he occupies this office again.
      Biden then went on to describe how his executive order would work, while saying new legislation would be more effective.“Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as President to do what I can on my own to address the border,” Biden said. “Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken fixed – to hire more Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges.”Joe Biden did not hold back in blaming Donald Trump for the failure of a bipartisan immigration compromise negotiated in the Senate earlier this year, saying it would have been more effective than the executive order he signed today.“Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiation between my staff and Democrats and Republicans, we came to a clear, clear bipartisan deal with the strongest border security agreement in decades. Then Republicans in Congress … walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to,” the president said.He gestured to the officials flanking his podium, which he said were Democratic and Republican officials from border states.“They know the border is not a political issue to be weaponized – it’s a responsibility we have to share, to do something about it. They don’t have time for the games played in Washington. Neither do the American people.”Joe Biden is now speaking on his new immigration rule from the White House.He is flanked by a group of officials, including Arizona’s Democratic senator Mark Kelly.Joe Biden is scheduled to soon begin delivering remarks from the White House on his just-announced policy to close the southern border to new asylum seekers when authorities determine it is “overwhelmed”.He was supposed to start at 2pm ET, but, as always, is late. Mark Kelly, the Democratic senator representing border state Arizona, earlier appeared before reporters at the White House, and described the new rule as a “good step forward”.He then turned to blaming Republicans for rejecting a legislative compromise in Congress that would have made an array of changes to US immigration laws to stem the flow of migrants.“For three years the president has been calling on Congress to take action on this issue,” Kelly said.After months of ultimately fruitless haggling over immigration policy in Congress, Joe Biden has announced new rules that will see the southern border temporarily shut to most new asylum seekers at periods when it becomes “overwhelmed”. The policy change comes amid signs voters are increasingly concerned about migrants arriving in the United States, but risk alienating some of Biden’s allies, who warn it may amount to a draconian response to what is essentially a humanitarian crisis. Back at the Capitol, the GOP is continuing its counteroffensive against Biden following their standard bearer Donald Trump’s felony conviction last week. Speaker Mike Johnson blamed Democrats for the guilty verdict, saying it represents “a new low”, while attorney general Merrick Garland faced a tough crowd during a hearing before the judiciary committee.Here’s what else has happened so far today:
      Biden attacked Trump as a “convicted felon” who should not be let back into the White House at a Monday evening fundraiser.
      Wisconsin’s attorney general filed charges against three Trump associates for attempting to disrupt Biden’s election victory in the state four years ago, including notorious attorney Kenneth Chesebro.
      Election denialism remains a concern in Georgia’s populous Fulton county, where an official with ties to a group promoting lies about the 2020 votes sits on its election board.
      At Hunter Biden’s trial, US justice department lawyer Derek Hines walked jurors through the events of October 2018, when prosecutors have said the president’s son lied on his background check about his drug use while buying the gun, Reuters reports.
      It was illegal because he was user of crack and a drug addict. No one is above the law,” Hines said.
      Biden has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges accusing him of failing to disclose his use of illegal drugs when he bought a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver and of illegally possessing the weapon for 11 days in October 2018.Defense attorney Abbe Lowell urged jurors to listen carefully to evidence that would be presented. Lowell said the gun purchase form asked Hunter Biden only if he was currently an addict, not whether he had used in the past, adding that his client had no “intent to deceive”.US special counsel David Weiss, a Donald Trump appointee, brought the case against Hunter Biden and was present in the courtroom on Tuesday. Weiss has separately filed federal tax charges against Hunter Biden in California.The trial is expected to offer a tour of Hunter Biden’s years-long struggles with drug and alcohol addiction.First Lady Jill Biden attended court today, as did her and Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.The prosecution laid out its case on Tuesday in the historic criminal trial of Hunter Biden on gun charges, telling jurors that Joe Biden’s son was addicted to drugs and lied on paperwork to obtain a revolver. “No one is above the law,” the jurors were told, according to Reuters.The jury in federal court in Delaware heard opening statements from prosecution and defense lawyers before the first witness, an FBI agent, was called.Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told the jury that evidence presented in the trial will show that Hunter Biden, 54, did not knowingly violate the law.It is the first ever criminal trial of the child of a sitting US president, with US district judge Maryellen Noreika presiding. Donald Trump last week became the first US president (sitting or former) to be convicted of a crime.In a speech on the Senate floor, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer welcomed Joe Biden’s new actions on asylum seekers, but faulted Republicans for blocking legislation he said would better address the problems at the southern border.“As the president makes his announcement, let’s be very clear about one thing: legislation would have been the more effective way to go. President Biden has been clear from the beginning he prefers legislation, but given how obstinate Republicans have become – turning down any real opportunity for strong border legislation – the president is left with little choice but to act on his own,” Schumer said.He continued:
      Shame on our Republican friends. They say they want to protect the border. Donald Trump comes out with a very crass statement, let’s keep it in chaos so I might win the election. And they go along. They do a 180-degree turn. That’s a disgrace, and it’s forced President Biden to act the way he does, which is a lot better than doing nothing, but not as preferable as passing legislation, as the president admits.
      We had an opportunity to pass a strong bipartisan border bill back in February, and just over a few weeks ago.
      Both times, Republicans put politics ahead of bipartisanship, and blundered the best chance we have seen in decades to pass a border security bill America urgently needs. Americans will not easily forget it.
      Republicans have spent years insisting to voters that Joe Biden is not doing enough to address illegal immigration, and are not impressed by his just-announced policy to bar asylum seekers when the southern border becomes “overwhelmed”.“It’s window dressing. Everybody knows it … If he was concerned about the border, he would have done this a long time ago,” House speaker Mike Johnson said at a press conference today. His office dubbed the new policy an “election-year border charade”, while Johnson added he did not believe the policy would do enough to discourage migrants. “From what we’re hearing, it will ignore multiple elements that have to be addressed,” he said.The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, was similarly dismissive:
      With an election just months away, the President hopes that issuing an executive order will demonstrate that he cares about this crisis and is trying to fix it.
      Never mind that his order would still allow more than 900,000 illegal aliens to come in every year at the southern border. This is on top of the half-million illegal parolees President Biden intends to continue waving into the country. Combined, that’s more than the population of 10 states. It’s a new Dallas, Texas, every year.
      This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire. And the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little, too late.
      Joe Biden’s actions to limit migrant arrivals at the southern border come after months of ultimately futile negotiations aimed at passing an immigration policy compromise in Congress. But as the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino and Joan E Greve report, the new policy risks alienating some of the president’s supporters, who view it as a draconian response to a humanitarian crisis:The White House on Tuesday announced an executive order that will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.The order would take effect immediately, senior administration officials said on a press call. Those seeking asylum would be held to a much more rigorous standard for establishing credible fear of returning to their home country, although certain groups – including trafficking victims and unaccompanied children – would be excluded from the ban.“Individuals who do not manifest a fear will be immediately removable, and we anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours,” one official said. “The bottom line is that the standard will be significantly higher. And so we do anticipate that fewer individuals will be screened in as a result.”The move comes amid rising public concern over the number of migrants crossing into the US, with polls showing a majority of Americans dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the border. The White House has been under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the southern border. More

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      Biden calls Trump ‘reckless and dangerous’ over claims trial was rigged

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      Joe Biden has called Donald Trump “reckless and dangerous” over the former president’s claim that the trial leading to last week’s felony conviction in a Manhattan court was rigged.In his sharpest criticism yet of his predecessor’s drive to undermine the legal integrity of the prosecution against him, the president also said a second Trump presidency would be a much greater threat to American democracy than his first. He likened Trump’s rejection of the court verdict against him to his refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election.“[Trump] wants you to believe it’s all rigged. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Biden told a fundraising audience in Greenwich, Connecticut.“It’s reckless and dangerous and downright irresponsible for anyone to say that it’s rigged just because you don’t like the verdict.”Biden’s comments followed a concerted onslaught from Trump following last Thursday’s conviction on 34 counts of document falsification charges relating to hush-money payments made to an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, shortly before the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.They came on the eve of testimony from the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, on Capitol Hill after being summoned by Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee to answer their accusations that the justice department has been weaponised against Trump and his allies.Trump has accused Biden of directing the prosecution brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, that led to last week’s conviction – which has made the first ever former president to become a convicted felon.But Biden pointed out that the trial was based on a New York state, rather than a federal case, and said the jury who convicted Trump was chosen in the same way juries are selected across the US. The guilty verdict followed five weeks of evidence.He also said an independent judicial system was an essential bedrock of US democracy, adding: “We should never allow anyone to tear it down.”Trump is due to be formally adopted as the Republican nominee at the party’s national convention which opens in Milwaukee on 15 July – four days after he is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over his trial and whom he has called “a devil”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking at a fundraiser hosted by Richard Plepler, the former chief executive of HBO, Biden appeared to question Trump’s mental state, suggesting he had been literally driven “crazy” by his 2020 election defeat.“Here’s what is becoming clearer and clearer every day: the threat Trump poses in his second term would be greater than it was in his first,” Biden said. “This isn’t the same Trump that got elected in 2016. He’s worse.”Echoing a theme touched on by the actor Robert De Niro in a recently released pro-Biden campaign, the president suggested that Trump had “snapped” mentally after his election defeat, which prompted an attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by a mob inspired by him trying to overturn the result.“Something snapped in this guy – for real – when he lost in 2020,” Biden said. “He can’t accept the fact that he lost, it’s literally driving him crazy.”He cited some of Trump’s extremist language, including a suggestion that he could “terminate the [US] constitution” and a message to his supporters that “if he loses there will be a bloodbath in America”.“What kind of man is this?” Biden said.He did not mention the trial of his son Hunter for the illegal possession of a firearm, which opened on Monday in a court in Delaware.Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, dismissed Biden remarks, saying: “[Biden] will do anything to distract from Hunter’s trial.” More

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      Republican governors gather to attack Biden’s climate agenda

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      Republican governors gathered in the fossil-fuel rich state of Louisiana on Monday to rail against the Biden administration’s climate agenda and lay out plans to “unleash American energy”, alarming community advocates and climate experts.“President Biden has done nothing but attack American energy,” said the Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, who led the Wednesday press conference.Landry was joined by by Republican governors from Alaska, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Virginia.Hours before the presser, the group sent a joint letter to Biden requesting pro fossil-fuel rules and regulations, including an “end [to] regulatory overreach that unnecessarily restricts domestic energy production”, speeding the approval of federal drilling permits, and ending the pause on new liquefied natural gas export licenses. The letter does not mention that US oil and gas production has soared under President Biden, reaching record levels in 2023.The meeting was held at the Chalmette oil refinery, which a September Environmental Protection Agency report found was out of compliance with federal benzene regulations. In 2020, fires at the facility caused releases of sulphur dioxide, sending foul odors across the region.The event was convened by the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, which, documents show, has accepted funding from the US’s largest fossil-fuel trade organization, the American Petroleum Institute.The group is the policy arm of the corporate-backed Republican Governors Association (RGA), the main campaign arm tasked with electing Republican executives across the country, which has taken funding from Chevron, Exxon, Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies, and also has financial links to Leonard Leo, a key figure behind the conservative effort to move the judiciary to the right.At the press conference, the governors said pro-fossil fuel policies would benefit ordinary Americans. Governor Mike Dunleavy of Alaska said: “What we’re talking about here is … developing an energy policy for the single mom with three kids.”And Louisiana’s Landry said that “if the federal government took its foot off of the neck of American energy, we could absolutely lower the costs of everyday goods” – suggesting boosting oil and gas would lower inflation.But experts say boosting extraction in the US would not depress gas prices because fuel prices are set globally.Fossil fuel expansion would also be a “death sentence” for frontline communities worst affected by toxic industrial pollution, said the environmental justice activist Sharon Lavigne.“He is not for human lives,” Lavigne, who founded the local grassroots organization Rise St James, said of Landry.Since taking office earlier this year, Landry has appointed oil, gas and coal executives to Louisiana’s environmental posts, while targeting the state’s climate taskforce for possible elimination as part of a broader reorganization plan. He has repeatedly claimed to be fighting for “energy independence” – a term he repeated on Monday. Yet the US remains net exporter of oil and gas, meaning the nation already produces more energy than it consumes.Jackson Voss, who works on climate policy for the Louisiana-based environmental group Alliance for Affordable Energy, also noted the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries contribute more to toxic air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions than any other industry in Louisiana. The state also brings in less than 10% of its revenue from oil and gas.“Oil and gas benefits a great deal from Louisiana, through subsidies, through deregulation, through its attorney general challenging national policy,” he said. “But in terms of the benefits of getting back to Louisiana? I’d say they’re fairly minimal.” More

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      Stormy Daniels says Trump should be sentenced to jail – as it happened

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      Stormy Daniels said she believes Donald Trump should be jailed and required to do community service after he was convicted last week on 34 felony charges in a hush-money case aimed at influencing the 2016 election.Daniels, in her first interview since the conviction, told the Daily Mirror:
      I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service — working for the less fortunate or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter.
      She said she didn’t know what the sentencing could be, but compared Trump to a child that needed a punishment “that not just matches the crime”.Daniels also urged Melania Trump to leave her husband “not because of what he did with me or other women but because he is a convicted felon”. She added:
      It’s been proven he is abusive; he was found liable for sexual assault and tax fraud and is now a criminal.
      Dr Anthony Fauci, the face of the US government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, took questions from a Republican-led congressional committee about the origins of the virus and whether US-funded research in China may have played any role in how it started.Meanwhile, jury selection continues in Hunter Biden’s trial in Wilmington, Delaware, on three firearms-related charges brought by special counsel David Weiss, a Trump appointee. Joe Biden released a statement saying that he has “boundless love for my son, confidence in him, and respect for his strength”. Also:
      Stormy Daniels said she believes Donald Trump should be jailed and urged Melania Trump to leave her husband, in her first interview after Trump was convicted last week on 34 felony charges in a hush-money case aimed at influencing the 2016 election.
      Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order allowing him to temporarily close the southern US border to asylum seekers in a sharp political U-turn aimed at winning support on a key voter concern in a presidential election year.
      Kevin McCarthy, former Republican House speaker, said Americans should accept the results of November’s presidential race amid rising political tensions in the aftermath of Trump’s campaign finance violation conviction.
      Trump called on the supreme court to step in and annul his guilty verdict in a hush-money trial that left him with the unwanted distinction of being the first former US president to be a convicted felon.
      Biden has congratulated Claudia Sheinbaum for her historic win after she was elected Mexico’s first female president on Sunday.
      Bob Menendez, the embattled Democratic senator charged with bribery, will reportedly enter the race today to seek re-election in New Jersey as an independent. Andy Kim, the Democratic congressman running to replace Menendez’s Senate seat, said Menendez “isn’t running for the people of New Jersey, he’s doing it for himself.”
      Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee revealed that she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and said her treatment may require her to be “occasionally absent” from Capitol Hill.
      Migration at the southern border surged to record numbers at the end of last year. Joe Biden’s expected executive order comes at a moment when the number of migrants crossing from Mexico is down in the past six months, a trend attributed to stronger enforcement on the part of the Mexican authorities but which is not expected to sustain itself.Biden initially rolled back Donald Trump’s restrictive border policies after taking office in January 2021, issuing orders to freeze his predecessor’s border wall construction and reissuing protections set up under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) scheme originally adopted by the Barack Obama White House.Biden suspended Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy – whereby asylum seekers were forced to wait in Mexico while their US immigration claims were being considered – on the first day of his administration before the homeland security department formally cancelled it months later. The US supreme court subsequently upheld Biden’s approach following a lower court ruling against it.When Trump’s policy was in operation, Biden denounced it, saying:
      This is the first president in the history of the United States of America [under whom] anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country. That’s never happened before.
      A recent Associated Press poll showed about two-thirds of voters, including 40% of Democrats, disapproved of Biden’s handling of the southern border.An attempt by the White House to cobble together legislation tightening US border restrictions by tying it to aid to Ukraine and Israel failed earlier this year after Republican lawmakers withdrew support, apparently at the urging of Donald Trump, who did not want Joe Biden to claim credit for resolving an issue he has attempted to make his own.Biden’s executive order will enable US immigration officials to quickly deport migrants who enter the country illegally without processing their asylum claims, according to CBS.Controversially, it will rely on a presidential authority known as 212 (f) which became infamous during Trump’s presidency because of its use to enforce certain immigration restrictions, including travel bans from Muslim countries.Like Trump’s restrictions, Biden’s order is likely to face legal challenges.Here’s more on the executive order that Joe Biden plans to sign to temporarily close the southern US border to asylum seekers.Biden is expected to sign the order as early as Tuesday to seal the border with Mexico to migrants when numbers of asylum claimants rise above a daily threshold of 2,500. Mayors of several US border cities are expected to be present in the White House for Biden’s announcement.Biden’s move marks a sharp political U-turn aimed at winning support on a key voter concern in a presidential election year. The order echoes a similar approach adopted by Donald Trump in 2018 when he was president and reverses Biden’s one-time philosophical opposition to his predecessor’s hostility to migrants.When he was a presidential candidate, Biden denounced Trump’s policy, saying it upended decades of US asylum law. He has been forced to change course as the number of asylum seekers coming through the US-Mexico border has surged during his presidency, with opinion polls consistently showing immigration to be at or near the top of voters’ concerns, ahead of inflation and the economy.Andy Kim, the Democratic congressman running to replace Bob Menendez’s Senate seat said the embattled New Jersey senator “isn’t running for the people of New Jersey, he’s doing it for himself.”As we reported earlier, Menendez is reportedly entering the race as an independent while he is on trial for allegedly accepting bribes.In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, Kim said:
      Americans are fed up with politicians putting their own personal benefit ahead of what’s right for the country. Everyone knows Bob Menendez isn’t running for the people of New Jersey, he’s doing it for himself. It’s beyond time for change, and I’m stepping up to restore integrity back into the U.S. Senate
      Donald Trump’s brazen pitch to 20 fossil-fuel heads for $1bn to aid his presidential campaign in return for promises of lucrative tax and regulatory favors is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat investigating the issue has said.“It certainly meets the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in an interview about Trump’s audacious $1bn request for big checks to top fossil-fuel executives that took place in April at his Mar-a-Lago club. He added:
      The quid pro quo – so called – is so very evident … I can’t think of anything that matches this either in terms of the size of the bribe requested, or the brazenness of the linkages.
      Whitehouse and his fellow Democrat Ron Wyden have launched a joint inquiry, as chairs of the Senate budget and finance panels respectively, into Trump’s quid-pro-quo-style fundraising, which already seems to have helped spur tens of millions in checks for a Trump Super Pac from oil and gas leaders at a 22 May Houston event.The two senators have written to eight big-oil chief executives and the head of the industry’s lobbying group seeking details about the Mar-a- Lago meeting, as has representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the oversight and accountability committee, who has begun a parallel investigation into the pay-to-play schemes that Trump touted to big oil leaders.Talking of lock him/her/them up, as Stormy Daniels would like the New York judge, Juan Merchan, to do with Donald Trump when he’s sentenced next month…There were chants of “lock him up, lock him up” at the annual convention of Massachusetts Democrats at the weekend, before attendees got down to the official business of nominating Elizabeth Warren to return to Washington as a US Senator for a third six-year term, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.Warren said of Trump’s conviction: “The legal system worked. Donald Trump and his supporters were on attack against the courts, the judges, the juries, the witnesses. But the process worked as it is supposed to. The jurors listened to the evidence and they found him guilty; now he is a convicted felon.”She added that Trump can “cry, whine and lie, but he is a convicted felon.”Warren is also speaking out on X about reproductive rights.Meanwhile, Keith Boykin, film producer, political commentator and former aid in the Bill Clinton White House decided to fact check Trump on his past urging of the US justice system to lock up Hillary Clinton, and a few other things.How Trump’s deny-everything strategy could hurt him at sentencing is how the Associated Press headlines its latest analysis now that we’re in the sentencing phase following Donald Trump’s criminal conviction last Thursday.The news wire has a piece describing how the former US president and now felon has been on a rant and doesn’t seem any closer to taking responsibility for his actions in falsifying business records to cover up a fraud against the US electorate.The AP writes that he has not uttered any variation of the words that might benefit him most come sentencing time next month: “I’m sorry.”
      The fact, I think, that he has no remorse – quite the opposite, he continues to deny is guilt – is going to hurt him at sentencing. It’s one of the things that the judge can really point to that everybody is aware of — that he just denies this — and can use that as a strong basis for his sentence,” said Jeffrey Cohen, an associate professor at Boston College Law School and a former federal prosecutor in Massachusetts.
      Jeremy Saland, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, weighed in.
      If he turns around and blames the court, attacks prosecutors, decries this as a witch hunt, lies — you should have no misgiving: There will be consequences and there should be consequences.”
      Trump’s constant attacks on the prosecutors, judge and court system and his aggressive trial strategy — outright denying both claims of an extramarital affair by porn actor StormyDaniels and involvement in the subsequent scheme to buy her silence — would make any change of tune at his sentencing seem disingenuous.Stormy Daniels is warming up on X in the wake of her post-Trump-conviction interview calling for him to be jailed.Daniels gets a lot of flak from MAGA world and she chooses to engage with some of it, while also flagging her interview in the Daily Mirror.Daniels, proud porn star.Life choices.A fan from the weekend.Dr Anthony Fauci, the face of the US government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, took questions from a Republican-led congressional committee about the origins of the virus and whether US-funded research in China may have played any role in how it started.Meanwhile, jury selection continues in Hunter Biden’s trial in Wilmington, Delaware, on three firearms-related charges brought by special counsel David Weiss, a Trump appointee. Joe Biden released a statement saying that he has “boundless love for my son, confidence in him, and respect for his strength”. Also:
      Stormy Daniels said she believes Donald Trump should be jailed and urged Melania Trump to leave her husband, in her first interview after Trump was convicted last week on 34 felony charges in a hush-money case aimed at influencing the 2016 election.
      Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order as early as Tuesday allowing him to effectively shut down the US border with Mexico to asylum-seekers crossing illegally when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded, according to multiple reports.
      Kevin McCarthy, former Republican House speaker, said Americans should accept the results of November’s presidential race amid rising political tensions in the aftermath of Trump’s campaign finance violation conviction.
      Biden has congratulated Claudia Sheinbaum for her historic win after she was elected Mexico’s first female president on Sunday.
      Bob Menendez, the embattled Democratic senator charged with bribery, will reportedly enter the race today to seek re-election in New Jersey as an independent.
      Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee revealed that she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and said her treatment may require her to be “occasionally absent” from Capitol Hill.
      Stormy Daniels said she believes Donald Trump should be jailed and required to do community service after he was convicted last week on 34 felony charges in a hush-money case aimed at influencing the 2016 election.Daniels, in her first interview since the conviction, told the Daily Mirror:
      I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service — working for the less fortunate or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter.
      She said she didn’t know what the sentencing could be, but compared Trump to a child that needed a punishment “that not just matches the crime”.Daniels also urged Melania Trump to leave her husband “not because of what he did with me or other women but because he is a convicted felon”. She added:
      It’s been proven he is abusive; he was found liable for sexual assault and tax fraud and is now a criminal.
      Democratic congressman Robert Garcia followed up his comments in the House hearing with a social media post criticizing Marjorie Taylor Greene for refusing to refer to Anthony Fauci as Dr Fauci.Greene is “totally insane” and a “national embarrassment”, Garcia posted to X. More

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      US cites AI deepfakes as reason to keep Biden recording with Robert Hur secret

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      The US Department of Justice is making a novel legal argument to keep a recording of an interview with Joe Biden from becoming public. In a filing late last week, the bureau cited the risk of AI-generated deepfakes as one of the reasons it refuses to release audio of the president’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. The conversation about Biden’s handling of classified documents is a source of heated political contention, with Republicans pushing for release of the recordings and the White House moving to block them.The justice department’s filing, which it released late on Friday night, argues that the recording should not be released on a variety of grounds including privacy interests and executive privilege. One section of the filing, however, is specifically dedicated to the threat of deepfakes and disinformation, stating that there is substantial risk people could maliciously manipulate the audio if it were to be made public.“The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files,” the justice department stated. “If the audio recording is released here, it is easy to foresee that it could be improperly altered, and that the altered file could be passed off as an authentic recording and widely distributed.”The filing presents a novel argument about the threat of AI-generated disinformation from the release of government materials, potentially setting up future legal battles over the balance between transparency and preventing the spread of misinformation.“A malicious actor could slow down the speed of the recording or insert words that President Biden did not say or delete words that he did say,” the filing argues. “That problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is now widely available technology that can be used to create entirely different audio ‘deepfakes’ based on a recording.”Biden’s interview with Hur reignited a longstanding conservative campaign of questioning Biden’s mental faculties and drawing attention to his age, which critics claim make him unfit to be president. While Hur’s report into classified documents found at Biden’s private residence did not result in charges against him, the special counsel’s description of him as an “elderly man with poor memory” became ammunition for Republicans and prompted Biden to defend his mental fitness.Although transcripts of Hur’s interview with Biden are public, conservative groups and House Republicans have taken legal action, filed Freedom of Information Act requests and demanded the release of recorded audio from the conversation as he campaigns against Donald Trump. Biden has asserted executive privilege to prevent the release of the audio, while the latest justice department filing pushes back against many of the conservative claims about the recording.The justice department’s filing argues that releasing the recording would create increased public awareness that audio of the interview is circulating, making it more believable when people encounter doctored versions of it.A number of politicians have become the target of deepfakes created in attempts to swing political opinion, including Biden. A robocall earlier this year that mimicked Biden’s voice and told people not to vote in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary was sent to thousands of people. The political consultant allegedly behind the disinformation campaign is now facing criminal charges and a potential $6m fine. More

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      Biden to sign executive order to close southern US border to asylum seekers

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      Joe Biden will this week sign an executive order to temporarily close the southern US border to asylum seekers in a sharp political U-turn aimed at winning support on a key voter concern in a presidential election year.The US president is expected to sign the order as early as Tuesday to seal the border with Mexico to migrants when numbers of asylum claimants rise above a daily threshold of 2,500.Mayors of several US border cities are expected to be present in the White House for Biden’s announcement.Biden’s move echoes a similar approach adopted by Donald Trump in 2018 when he was president and reverses his one-time philosophical opposition to his predecessor’s hostility to migrants. When he was a presidential candidate, Biden denounced Trump’s policy, saying it upended decades of US asylum law.He has been forced to change course as the number of asylum seekers coming through the US-Mexico border has surged during his presidency, with opinion polls consistently showing immigration to be at or near the top of voters’ concerns, ahead of inflation and the economy.An attempt by the White House to cobble together legislation tightening border restrictions by tying it to aid to Ukraine and Israel failed earlier this year after Republican lawmakers withdrew support, apparently at the urging of Trump, who did not want Biden to claim credit for resolving an issue he has attempted to make his own.According to CBS, which broke the story, Biden’s executive order will enable US immigration officials to quickly deport migrants who enter the country illegally without processing their asylum claims.Controversially, it will rely on a presidential authority known as 212 (f) which became infamous during Trump’s presidency because of its use to enforce certain immigration restrictions, including travel bans from Muslim countries.Like Trump’s restrictions, Biden’s order is likely to face legal challenges.Migration at the southern border surged to record numbers at the end of last year. Buthe order comes at a moment when the number of migrants crossing from Mexico is down in the past six months, a trend attributed to stronger enforcement on the part of the Mexican authorities but which is not expected to sustain itself.An estimated 179,000 “border encounters” were recorded in April, according to US Customs and Border Protection figures, compared with a record high of 302,000 last December. More than 3,500 migrants were said to have crossed various points along the 2,000-mile border illegally on Sunday alone.Biden initially rolled back Trump’s restrictive border policies after taking office in January 2021, issuing orders to freeze his predecessor’s border wall construction and reissuing protections set up under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) scheme originally adopted by the Barack Obama White House.Biden suspended Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy – whereby asylum seekers were forced to wait in Mexico while their US immigration claims were being considered – on the first day of his administration before the homeland security department formally cancelled it months later. The US supreme court subsequently upheld Biden’s approach following a lower court ruling against it.When Trump’s policy was in operation, Biden denounced it, saying: “This is the first president in the history of the United States of America [under whom] anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country. That’s never happened before.”A recent Associated Press poll showed about two-thirds of voters, including 40% of Democrats, disapproved of Biden’s handling of the southern border. More

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      Crowing about the Trump verdict will only hurt Biden – populists thrive on claims of persecution | Simon Jenkins

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      “Guilty”, screamed the one-word headline in the New York Times last week, dripping with undisguised glee. Howls of contempt descended on Donald Trump as he slunk from his Manhattan courtroom to cries of “felon”. He now awaits sentence and three more criminal trials, two of them over his response to his 2020 election defeat.Ecstasy is a dangerous substance in politics. Trump’s enemies should be careful what they wish for. Within 24 hours of his leaving court, $39m reportedly poured into his campaign coffers. Though some Republicans seemed hesitant, an Ipsos poll for Reuters showed voting intention tilting in his favour. As with his victory in 2016, the more the political establishment damns him, the more those outside its reach are drawn to him.To many people in the US and around the world, the prospect of Trump’s return is the reduction to absurdity of the populist surge experienced by many western democracies. His still narrow lead in several polls has been enough to scare nervous Republicans to back him. To the House speaker, Mike Johnson, his New York conviction was “a shameful day in American history … a purely political exercise.” The same was true of the rightwing media. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post replied to the Times’s “Guilty” headline with another single word, “Injustice”.To many jurists, the fact that Trump’s prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, was an elected Democrat who reportedly vowed to “get Trump” did indeed give the trial a political spin. This gives the former president a decent chance of victory on appeal next year. If that followed a “stolen” Biden win, there would be grounds for alarm. As Trump said at the weekend of his possible house arrest: “I am not sure the public would stand for it … There’s a breaking point.” The US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021 showed what that meant.As for Trump’s next trials, never was “the law’s delay” so clearly justice denied. The US judicial offices are highly politicised. It was Trump’s packing of the supreme court when in office that has helped stall any progress against him at the federal level. It has left him to dismiss local state prosecutors as political enemies. This in turn has added to his appeal among the “left-behind Americans” of populist folklore, those ignored by what he calls “the swamp”, the liberal elites of the nation’s east and west coasts.This gulf between “insiders and outsiders”, cities and provinces, cannot be ignored. It is evident in all western democracies. It underlay the Brexit referendum in Britain and is seen in support for Trump from Reform’s Nigel Farage and from Boris Johnson, who called his trial a “machine-gun, mob-style hit job”. Populists clearly stick together, however outrageous the cause.This means that for those who view another Trump presidency as a disaster, handling the next six months needs caution rather than cheering. Trump’s appeal to his supporters lies not in his affection for them but in the hatred he expresses for his enemies. It is why his support has been rising among non-graduates, the poor, African Americans and even Latinos. Joe Biden’s strength lies rather with the better educated and the better off. Old divisions between Republican and Democrat are meaningless in the age of populism.The answer cannot be to reason with Trumpism, which is more a stance than a programme. The television debate with Biden will be mere gladiatorial theatre. The strategy can only be to lower the temperature, to minimise publicity for Trump’s vapid accusations and bolster the virtues of Biden’s presidency and his increasingly uncertain leadership. Elections to the White House reflect the constitution’s balance of sovereignty between Washington and the states. They are when the states matter, in particular the dozen or so swing states that regularly change sides, where the contest is won or lost. As for the outside world, it normally cares about who becomes the US president. This time it cares about who does not.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More