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      Hunter Biden conviction could boost father against Trump, experts suggest

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      Hunter Biden’s conviction on gun-ownership charges may have handed his father, Joe, a boost in the forthcoming presidential election, analysts say, because it undermines the image of a president weaponising the US justice system to pursue Donald Trump.Trump, the former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has pushed that line relentlessly to explain his conviction last month on charges related to the concealment of hush-money payments to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election.He has made the claim even though his prosecution was brought in a New York state court that is independent of the Department of Justice, which is overseeing 54 other criminal charges against him that have so far not come to trial.Hunter Biden, by contrast, was prosecuted and convicted under the authority of the justice department, which is part of his father’s administration – an inconvenient fact that weakens Republican claims that it has been turned into a political weapon in the president’s hands.The result, some observers say, is that Hunter’s conviction may help the president in a close race, even though the personal cost of his son’s troubles is heavy.That suspicion was further fuelled by a low-key reaction from Republicans that attempted to switch the focus to other supposed crimes they say, but have never proved, that father and son have committed.“It’s a marginal political gain, that’s what I’m feeling,” said John Zogby, a veteran pollster. “I don’t see it hurting him in any way, and especially when he neutralised the issue when he said he was not going to extend the pardon, which is very painful for him.“It pulls the rug out from under that Republican argument that the justice system is rigged against Republicans to get Trump … a Biden did not get a pass.”Zogby said the verdict – and Biden’s acceptance of it – could revive an image that was electorally helpful in 2020 of “Uncle Joe”, a man of empathy who had known suffering and personal tragedy, through the deaths of his eldest son, Beau, from cancer in 2015, and his first wife and baby daughter in a car accident in 1972.“It could put some folks who have been wavering … on the track towards seeing that more sympathetic fellow, a father who is experiencing pain again,” he said. “You know, enough to give them another point or two. I don’t think it moves mountains, but it may not have to [in a close race].”Larry Jacobs, a professor of politics at the University of Minnesota, said the verdict, while a “personal disaster” for Biden, could boomerang on the Republicans and translate into Democratic gain.“The tragic case of Hunter Biden is painful for Joe and Jill Biden [the first lady], but it is a win for the Democratic party and the Biden campaign,” he said. “It puts a lie to the Republican claims that the justice system is being manipulated by [and for] the benefit of Democrats.“It’s harder for the Republicans to say with a straight face and to audiences not already in their capture that the legal system is captured by the Democratic party.”View image in fullscreenBiden is known to be deeply concerned by the troubles of Hunter, who was found guilty by a jury in Delaware on Tuesday of lying about his drug use and addiction when buying a gun in 2018. Close aides have voiced worries about the emotional strain the matter is putting on the 81-year-old president in the midst of a close election race.“I don’t think voters are going to hold Biden accountable for his son’s addiction or his son’s misbehaviour. But I think the real question is the toll it takes on him and his family,” David Axelrod, a senior Democratic operative and former adviser to President Barack Obama told the Washington Post.“To a guy who’s already experienced great loss and tragedy, this is another heavy brick on the load. And it’s going to take enormous strength to carry that load, given all the other bricks that are on there of the presidency and being a candidate.”Despite the fact that his son now faces a possible jail sentence – and will stand trial again on unrelated tax-evasion charges in September – Biden has said he will not use his presidential powers to pardon him. That message was somewhat clouded on Wednesday when the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, on board Air Force One en route to the G7 summit in Italy, was reported as refusing to rule out a commutation of whatever sentence Hunter receives.Hunter’s conviction followed legal manoeuvring in which some observers said he had received harsher treatment because he is the president’s son. A plea bargain worked out last year that would have seen him plead guilty to the tax charges while avoiding prosecution on the gun charge was dropped following criticism from the judge in the latter case, Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed to the bench by Trump.Republicans, who have pursued Hunter Biden for years in an unsuccessful effort to prove his father profited financially from his business dealings in Ukraine, had denounced it as a sweetheart deal.The president, who travelled on Wednesday to Italy for the G7 summit, said that he would respect whatever outcome the legal process reached – a jarring contrast to Trump’s repeated assaults on the judicial system as “rigged”.“So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery,” Biden said.“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.” More

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      Trump was hoping for a slam dunk. But Hunter Biden’s trial has only highlighted his father Joe’s dignity | Emma Brockes

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      If you didn’t know better, you might think the jury that found Hunter Biden guilty this week knew precisely what they were doing. The evidence against the president’s son – that he lied about his drug use on a firearms form six years ago – was overwhelming, but so too was the impression of a trivial, overegged charge. But, by finding him guilty, the jury in this area of solid Democratic support have potentially done more injury to his father’s political rival than if they had found him not guilty on all counts.For those of us watching, the entire spectacle has at times been an uncomfortable exercise in flushing out biases. Like the Trump children, Hunter Biden has the demoralised air of a scion struggling to escape his father’s shadow, albeit in a different style. If the Trump boys are chinless dimwits, Hunter has about him the seedy air of a second- or third-tier Hollywood actor, clamped behind aviators and accompanied seemingly everywhere by his much younger wife.In September, the 54-year-old will face nine federal tax charges, and the business of the recovered laptop rumbles on (Biden’s laptop, which he accidentally left at a repair shop and the contents of which ended up in the hands of the New York Post, is still the subject of dispute; the Post’s claim that the machine contained evidence of incriminating emails was dismissed by liberals at the time as part of a Russian disinformation campaign – a claim that has never been substantiated). And yet, when he was found guilty this week, I found myself thinking: poor Hunter, what a ridiculous verdict.As an exercise then, I went back over the coverage and tried to read it as if he were one of Trump’s sons. The charges against Hunter Biden were widely regarded as trivial. Still, a lie is a lie and as Biden confessed in his memoir, while addicted to crack cocaine he was an inveterate liar.After the verdict, the president wrote that he was proud to see his son “so strong and resilient in recovery” – a pathetic diversion, surely, from the trouble at hand. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, remarked that “recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time” – a clear appeal not only to give him a free pass, but to find him inspiring because he’s an addict. This is a man, remember, who while dating his own late brother’s widow, got her on crack cocaine, too. There’s addiction, and then there’s being an arsehole.The odd thing about the business of trashing Hunter Biden this week is that Republicans have largely avoided it. In a plan they must have arrived at through strategic consensus, several leading Republicans spoke after the guilty verdict with degrees of sympathy for the president’s son. Senator Lindsey Graham, of all people – a man who fought for Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed to the supreme court and has sucked up to Trump relentlessly – said: “I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing. I don’t see any good coming from that.”Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, tweeted: “The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.” And other Republicans twisted themselves inside out to applaud the verdict while maintaining their insistence that the justice system under President Biden is rigged.This is the problem they face in the wake of a verdict that, after only three hours of deliberation, came in even quicker than Trump’s 34 guilty counts last month: exactly how to sustain the narrative that US justice is untrustworthy. If Trump’s efforts to get the phrase “Biden crime family” off the ground haven’t flown the way “crooked Hillary” or “lyin’ Ted” did, it is partly because it doesn’t scan, partly because Hunter seems so slight and pathetic a figure, and partly because “Biden” doesn’t have the ring of a dynastic mafia name about it.My own efforts to see past my own biases, meanwhile, foundered when the president, who had earlier stated that if his son were found guilty he wouldn’t pardon him, doubled down on Tuesday with the statement that he would “continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal”.Gets me every time, Joe Biden’s loving but strong-boundaried support of his son. Hunter Biden has, in some ways, had a very hard life, losing his mother and infant sister in a horrific car accident in childhood, and his brother to a brain tumour in 2015. But when the president stands firmly behind him, urging him on, one understands he is the beneficiary of something Trump’s kids have never had, and that should perhaps increase our sympathy for them: a decent, loving parent.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Joe Biden delivers gun safety speech hours after son’s firearms conviction

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      Joe Biden, facing a backlash from young voters over the war in Gaza, has sought to rally support around the issue of gun safety just hours after his son Hunter was convicted of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a firearm.Contrasted his record with election rival Donald Trump, the US president brought an audience that included many students to its feet at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference in Washington on Tuesday.But in a reminder of the issues jostling for priority in voters’ minds, Biden’s remarks were briefly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. One shouted: “You’re complicit in genocide!” As the crowd booed, Biden said: “No, no, no, no … It’s OK. Look, they care. Innocent children have been lost. They make a point.”He went on to give an otherwise uneventful speech that made no mention of Hunter Biden’s conviction in Delaware earlier in the day on three felony counts relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.The conference, which brings together Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers and survivors of gun violence from all 50 states, served as a show of strength for Biden at a time when his position looks fragile in opinion polls.Speakers praised his commitment, compassion and willingness to listen. Julvonnia McDowell, whose 14-year-old son JaJuan was shot and killed by another teenager playing with an unsecured firearm in Savannah, Georgia, told the gathering: “I can say today, standing here right now, he’s been true to his word on the urgency of creating a safer future for families like mine and yours.”She added: “I am proud to stand with him.”Biden was greeted by chants of “Four more years” and “Let’s go, Joe!” He received loud acclaim when he reminded the audience that in June 2022 he signed the most significant federal bipartisan gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. On Wednesday the justice department announced it has charged more than 500 defendants under the new law.There was another big cheer when Biden noted his creation last September of the first White House office of gun violence to coordinate a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence, “overseen by my incredible vice-president”.But perhaps the most enthusiastic response came to the president’s renewed call for a ban on assault weapons, sparking prolonged cheering, whooping and chants of “Four more years!” Biden asked: “Who in God’s name needs a magazine which can hold 200 children?” Someone shouted: “Nobody!” Biden replied: “Nobody. That’s right.”He added: “They’re weapons of war and, by the way, it’s time we establish universal background checks.”Biden asserted that the country’s murder rate saw the highest increase on record in the year before he came to the presidency. But last year saw the largest drop in murder rates in history, he added.He condemned congressional Republicans for seeking to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a law enforcement agency responsible for fighting gun crime. “You can’t be pro-law enforcement and say you are pro-law enforcement and be pro-abolishing the ATF. It’s outrageous.”He went on to take a swipe at Trump, reminding voters of the stakes in November. “After a school shooting in Iowa killed a student and a teacher, my predecessor was asked about it. You remember what he said. He said, have to get over it. Hell no, know enough to get over it!“More children are killed in America by guns and cancer and car accidents combined. My predecessor told the NRA [National Rifle Association] convention recently he’s proud that ‘I did nothing on guns when I was president’ and by doing nothing, he made the situation considerably worse.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s why Everytown, why all of you here today are so damned important. We need you. We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, so many politicians when they oppose commonsense gun legislation.”In the 2024 election cycle the NRA has contributed a total of $191,900 to 166 House Republicans, according to the non-profit group OpenSecrets. It gave nearly $75,000 to Senate Republican candidates and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. The NRA has spent more than $100m to help elect Republicans over the past decade.Trump has said there is “no bigger fan” of the NRA and is vowing to roll back the measures and implement national concealed carry reciprocity legislation which, critics say, will weaken states’ gun safety laws and harm law enforcement.A 2022 poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.Believing this to be an arena where the electoral choice is clear cut, the Biden campaign is seeking to make a major push on gun safety. Last week the vice-president Kamala Harris held a gun violence prevention campaign event in Maryland with Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks and hosted a Students for Biden-Harris organising call.Voters cited addressing gun violence as their third most important issue during the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Politico-Harvard survey. But in this cycle it is competing with the cost of living, immigration, abortion rights, the defence of democracy and the war in Gaza.Drew Spiegel, 19, a gun violence survivor and student from Deerfield, Illinois, said: “Joe Biden has done the most any administration in my life has done for gun violence prevention. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was the first comprehensive gun reform we got in 30 years, which is remarkable and I am super proud of his administration for that.“I believe that Biden is certainly on the right track, which is why it’s critical to keep him in office. We saw what Donald Trump has in store and he has no intentions of making our communities safer, of keeping guns off the hands of dangerous people. He will cosy up to the NRA, as he has already done, and not only will they stop reform from happening but they will actively take us in the opposite direction.” More

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      Biden generally favored abroad aside from Israel-Gaza war handling, poll finds

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      A new Pew Research survey has found that Joe Biden’s global perception is generally favorable – but most abroad disapprove of how the US president has handled Israel’s war in Gaza.According to survey results released on Tuesday, a median of 43% across 34 countries have confidence in Biden to “do the right thing” regarding world affairs. However, a median of 57% across 34 countries disapprove of Biden’s approach to the war in the Middle East, where, according to estimates, Israeli forces have killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis and took hostages.Majorities in 10 countries have confidence in Biden. The countries with his largest shares of popularity are in the Philippines, where 77% of the population has indicated confidence towards him; Kenya, at 75%; and Poland, at 70%.Biden is least favorable in Tunisia, where 89% have indicated zero confidence towards him, as well as in Turkey – where that figure is 87%.Across 10 European countries surveyed, the majorities in six of those nations do not have confidence in Biden, including 56% in France and 72% in Hungary.By contrast, most in Canada and across Europe do not have confidence in Donald Trump, Biden’s presidential predecessor and the presumptive nominee to challenge him in November’s election.According to the survey, more than eight in 10 hold this view in France, Germany and Sweden. Trump – who was convicted of 34 felonies in late May in connection with a plot to cover up hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels – also scored poorly in Latin America, where at least six in 10 in every country surveyed have no confidence in him to do the right thing in global affairs, including 86% in Mexico.Speaking about the findings on Tuesday, Pew’s director of global attitudes research, Richard Wike, said: “As the US presidential election approaches, what we see in our international surveys is that there is significantly more confidence in president Biden than in former president Trump … In part, it’s due to personal characteristics – for example, in our polls, people have been much more likely to say Biden is well-qualified to be president than to say this about Trump. In contrast, they have been more likely to describe Trump as dangerous.”Wike added: “Biden also gets higher ratings than Trump because people tend to like his policies better. In particular, they have generally seen him as being more of a multilateralist and as working more closely with other countries to solve international challenges.”Despite Biden’s higher popularity compared with Trump, the president’s global ratings have declined since last year in 14 of 21 countries where trends are available, the survey revealed.Those countries include Australia, Israel, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the UK.Opinions in 34 countries polled surrounding Biden’s handling of major international issues are divided, with the exception of the Israel-Gaza war. Climate change and global economic problems are two areas of Biden’s international policies in which his approval and disapproval ratings are nearly evenly divided. For each area, 44% indicated their disapproval while 43% indicated their approval.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Israel-Gaza war is where those surveyed were most divided with respect to Biden. In addition to a median of 57% indicating their disapproval of the Gaza war, six in 10 Israelis disapproved of how Biden had handled the conflict, including 54% of Jewish Israelis and 86% of Arab Israelis.Among the Muslim countries surveyed, large majorities in Tunisia, Turkey and Malaysia have significant disapproval towards Biden’s handling of the war. In Tunisia, 93% indicated disapproval. Meanwhile, in Turkey and Malaysia, 85% and 84% indicated disapproval, respectively.The survey also found that adults under 35 years old in Australia, Canada and some European countries are less likely than those ages 50 and older to approve of Biden’s handling of the war.In France and the UK, 18% and 19% of younger adults, respectively, are roughly half as likely as older adults – at 40% and 41%, respectively – to rate Biden positively on his response to the Gaza war.Moreover, in Japan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Thailand, younger adults are more likely than older ones to approve of Biden’s handling of the war. More

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      Antony Blinken tells Netanyahu US and allies back Biden ceasefire proposal – as it happened

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      The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today, where he reiterated that the US “and other world leaders will stand behind the comprehensive proposal outlined by President Biden” for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of hostages.Blinken told Israel’s prime minister that “the proposal on the table would unlock the possibility of calm along Israel’s northern border and further integration with countries in the region,” according to a US state department readout of the meeting.
      The Secretary updated the prime minister on ongoing diplomatic efforts to plan for the post-conflict period, emphasizing the importance of those efforts to providing long-term peace, security and stability to Israelis and Palestinians alike. Secretary Blinken also emphasized the importance of preventing the conflict from spreading.
      Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, arrived in Israel on Monday as part of his eighth visit to the Middle East since the Hamas attacks on 7 October as Washington tries to shore up support for its proposed Gaza ceasefire deal.
      The UN security council approved its first resolution endorsing a Gaza ceasefire plan. The vote on the US-sponsored resolution was 14-0, with Russia abstaining.
      Blinken told Benjamin Netanyahu that the proposal would “unlock the possibility of calm along Israel’s northern border and further integration with countries in the region”, the US state department said.
      Jurors in Hunter Biden’s gun trial began deliberations. The president’s only surviving son faces three federal charges relating to the illegal purchase and ownership of a gun while in the grip of longstanding drug addiction.
      The picture of criminal behavior and a dissolute lifestyle was painted in sometimes painfully frank testimony in a Delaware court room last week and would have been difficult to hear for the family of any defendant.But Hunter Biden, the man in the dock in Wilmington, is no ordinary plaintiff; he is the son of the president of the United States.All week long, the proceedings put the personal conduct of the eldest surviving presidential scion under a microscope.A jury in his hometown heard details of his previous addiction to crack cocaine and how, in 2018 – with his father preparing for a run for the presidency – he bought a handgun by allegedly lying to a registered firearms dealer about his drug use. He then desperately tried to retrieve it from a garbage bin where his then lover, the widow of Joe Biden’s other son, Beau, who died in 2015, had dumped it in panic.Jury deliberations have begun and yet already, the details of a president’s son gone astray should be manna in an election year for Republicans, who focused for years on Hunter Biden’s business interests and alleged wrongdoing in an effort to politically discredit his father.Instead, the trial has presented Republicans with an awkward dilemma.The jury have begun deliberations in Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial in Wilmington, Delaware.Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges stemming from the October 2018 purchase of a gun. He is accused of making false statements on a gun-purchase form when he said he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs, and then unlawfully possessing the gun for 11 days.If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison, though such a sentence would be highly unusual given that he would be a first-time offender. It is unclear whether the presiding judge, Maryellen Noreika, would give him time behind bars.Hunter Biden also faces a separate federal trial in California on charges of failing to pay $1.4m in taxes.The UN security council has voted to pass a US-drafted Gaza ceasefire deal that would lead to the release of all the remaining hostages in return for Israel accepting steps towards a permanent ceasefire and the eventual withdrawal of its forces from Gaza.The resolution passed in the 15-strong council, as China did not block it and Russia abstained. In March, China and Russia vetoed a US resolution urging a ceasefire in Gaza linked to a hostage deal.Washington is struggling to gain the unequivocal backing of Israel or Hamas for a three-stage deal proposed by Joe Biden that would lead to the release of all the remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is visiting the Middle East this week, his eighth trip to the region since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, to make a further push to nail down support for the deal.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem today, where he reiterated that the US “and other world leaders will stand behind the comprehensive proposal outlined by President Biden” for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of hostages.Blinken told Israel’s prime minister that “the proposal on the table would unlock the possibility of calm along Israel’s northern border and further integration with countries in the region,” according to a US state department readout of the meeting.
      The Secretary updated the prime minister on ongoing diplomatic efforts to plan for the post-conflict period, emphasizing the importance of those efforts to providing long-term peace, security and stability to Israelis and Palestinians alike. Secretary Blinken also emphasized the importance of preventing the conflict from spreading.
      Closing arguments have begun in Hunter Biden’s gun trial, beginning with the prosecutors.Prosecutor Leo Wise said “no one is above the law” and added the testimonies from Biden’s high-profile family members don’t matter.Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said “it’s time to end this case,” arguing the burden of proof against her client has not been met.The judge in this trial has instructed jurors to only consider whether or not the president’s son was using drugs at the time he filled out the federal forms to purchase his firearm.Jury deliberation will begin after both sides have rested their cases.Biden’s criticism of Trump, who recently became the first former US president to be convicted of felony crimes, has become increasingly sharper.Today the Biden campaign dropped a new campaign ad featuring a Trump gaffe, in which his opponent in the upcoming 2024 presidential election says:“We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”In a subsequent post to X, Brown thanked Trump for the endorsement and for his “leadership”.“I look forward to working with you to bring a better future to every Nevadan and American when we both win in November!!,” Brown said.Read the full post below:Donald Trump endorsed retired Army captain Sam Brown in the Nevada Senate race in a Truth Social post late Sunday, giving Brown a crucial boost two days before the state primary.Trump, who described Brown as a “FEARLESS AMERICAN PATRIOT”, posted after he spent the day in Las Vegan holding a rally, where several of the GOP Senate candidates were in attendance, AP reported. Trump chose Brown over several other candidates with close ties to the former president, including Jeff Gunter, his former ambassador to Iceland.The winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary will face off with Democratic senator Jacky Rosen in what is likely to be one of the closest Senate races in the country.The Kennedy name looms large over American politics. John F Kennedy, despite serving only two and a half years as president before his assassination, is frequently ranked among the top 10 US leaders; his brother, Robert F Kennedy, seemed set for his own spell in the White House until he too was killed in 1968.Enter: Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of the former, son of the latter and increasingly, persona non grata of the surviving Kennedy clan.Part-time environmental lawyer, full-time conspiracy theorist, an animal enthusiast who owned a pet lion at his elite boarding school and who, in his telling, had part of his brain eaten by a worm, Kennedy entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat running against Biden, before switching to an independent in October last year. The 70-year-old, who also has a history of associating with white supremacists, is an unknown quantity in the 2024 election race, with both parties worried about the havoc he could wreak.Five months out from perhaps the most consequential election in recent US history, Biden and Trump continue to be unpopular with the American public. Kennedy’s ability to be neither of those men, and his willingness to lean into his family name, have positioned him as a spanner in the works of American democracy.Read the full story hereAs we reported earlier, Donald Trump was scheduled today to make a virtual address to an event by the Danbury Institute, a Christian group that calls for abortion to be “eradicated entirely”.Hours before Trump’s expected address, the former president’s campaign said he will deliver a pre-recorded message in which he does not say the word “abortion” at all, according to a Politico, which has obtained a script of his two-minute speech.According to the script, Trump is expected to say:
      We have to defend religious liberty, free speech, innocent life and the heritage and traditions that built America into the greatest nation in the history of the world. I know that each of you is protecting those values every day – and I hope we’ll be defending them side by side for the next four years.
      Dozens of Donald Trump’s supporters have been requiring medical help at his rallies in the scorching US south-west but it seems lost on him that his plans to reverse climate policies and “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels will only worsen extreme weather, campaigners say.A total of 24 people at a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Sunday required medical attention due to the heat, according to the Clark county fire department, with six taken to hospital for treatment. The hospitalizations come after a further 11 people needed to be admitted to hospital for heat exhaustion as they waited for Trump to speak at a rally in Phoenix on Thursday.Trump himself noted the severe heat during his speech on Sunday, with the Las Vegas rally starting around noon when the temperature was about 90F (32C) and climbed to around 102F (38C). The rally was held in a park with little shade, although organizers provided water and cooling tents, and allowed attendees to hold shading umbrellas.“It’s 110, but it doesn’t feel it to me,” said Trump, who wore a suit jacket and signature red baseball cap.
      I’m up here sweating like a dog. They don’t think about me. This is hard work.
      Trump then said:
      I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.
      He later said he was joking about not caring about his own voters and complained the media would criticize him for this.Record-breaking heat enveloped much of the US south-west last week, with temperatures soaring beyond 110F (43C) in areas stretching from California to Arizona. Roughly half of Arizona and Nevada were under an excessive heat alert, even though the official start of summer is still a week away, with Las Vegas hitting 110F on Friday and Phoenix reaching 113F (45C).Antony Blinken’s meetings with Israeli officials on Monday and the US push for a Gaza ceasefire deal comes after Israel’s former army chief of staff, Benny Gantz, resigned from the war cabinet.The resignation by Gantz, leader of the centre-right National Unity party and a major rival to Benjamin Netanyahu, followed through on a threat to resign after he gave Israel’s prime minister an ultimatum of 8 June to present concrete “day after” plans for the Gaza Strip.The withdrawal of his party also means Gadi Eisenkot, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general and war cabinet observer, and the minister without portfolio, Chili Tropper, are also stepping down.The departure of Gantz leaves Netanyahu with enough seats in his coalition but has made him even more reliant on the support of far-right allies including Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have repeatedly threatened to walk away over any deal for a ceasefire in exchange for hostages.Donald Trump has been compared to Jesus Christ by the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene at a campaign rally for the former president in Las Vegas, a city more renowned for evoking images of gambling than biblical scenes.Greene, who makes frequent references to her Christian faith, cited Trump’s supposed Christ-like qualities to challenge the Democrats’ efforts to capitalise on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s status as a convicted felon following his recent conviction in a case involving hush money paid to an adult film actor and falsified business records in a New York court.“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘President Trump is a convicted felon’,” she told a crowd that waited in soaring early-summer temperatures.
      Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon. And he was murdered on a Roman cross.
      It is not the first time Greene has drawn parallels between Trump and Christ – whom Christians consider to be the messiah and son of God – as well as other historical martyr figures.When he was arrested in New York on corruption charges in April last year, she likened Trump to Jesus and Nelson Mandela, who became South Africa’s first post-apartheid president after being jailed for 27 years by the racist regime.A Georgia congressional candidate convicted for participating in the January 6th insurrection walked out of a televised Republican debate on Sunday.Chuck Hand is one of at least four people convicted of January 6 crimes running for Congress this year, according to AP. All are running as Republicans. Hand was sentenced to 20 days in federal prison and six months of probation.Hand is running against Wayne Johnson ahead of a 18 June primary runoff for southwest Georgia’s 2nd congressional district.During the debate, Hand said he was refusing to debate Johnson after Michael Nixon, who finished third in an earlier primary, endorsed Johnson. Nixon brought up a 2005 criminal trespass charge and a 2010 DUI charge against Hand, both of which were dismissed, and also cited federal court documents to argue Hand’s participation in the January 6 riot was more serious than Hand had claimed.Hand, walking out of the studio, said:
      This is where I get back in my truck and go back to southwest Georgia because I’ve got two races to win.
      “You’re not staying?” asked anchor Donna Lowry. “You’re leaving, sir? OK.”The Biden administration is considering entering into a deal with Hamas that does not include Israel, according to a NBC report.Citing two current and two former US officials, the American broadcaster said a deal to free five US hostages would be hammered out through Qatari mediation if current ceasefire talks involving Israel fail.The officials did not know what the US could offer Hamas in return, but argued there was an incentive for Hamas to drive a deeper wedge between Joe Biden and the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.Parts of the Biden administration would like to see the Netanyahu coalition government collapse, leading to fresh elections and the formation of an Israeli government more willing to seek an understanding with the Palestinians. They believe the complete obliteration of Hamas militarily is a mirage and say Netanyahu has no realistic plan for Gaza’s future governance.Mitch Landrieu, Joe Biden’s campaign chair, has told MSNBC that it is “astounding” that Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, “first has to go sit down with his probation officer”. More

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      Biden supporters mostly back him in 2024 election because they oppose Trump, poll finds

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      More than half of Joe Biden’s supporters are primarily motivated to cast their vote for the president in order to prevent a return of Donald Trump to the White House, according to a new poll.Opposing Trump is the main reason to back Biden for 54% of the Democratic incumbent’s voters, the new CBS/YouGov poll found, up from 47% in a similar survey conducted in March, which was prior to the presumptive Republican nominee being found guilty of business fraud by a New York jury.A further 27% of Biden voters are supporting the president because they like him – down from 31% in March – while 19% say that they are backing him because he is the Democratic nominee for president.The poll comes as the Biden campaign has ramped up its rhetoric in attacking Trump directly in recent weeks, pointing to the former president’s felony conviction and string of past controversies. Last week, Biden said his predecessor is “reckless and dangerous” for complaining that his New York trial was rigged and claimed that he had been driven “crazy” by his 2020 election loss.The outcome of this year’s presidential election remains in the balance, with the new CBS poll finding Biden and Trump are essentially tied nationally and in key swing states. Trump is on 50% of support among likely voters, and Biden is on 49%, with these figures switched for likely voters in battleground states.Trump has enjoyed an edge over Biden in most polls taken in recent months, although there is some evidence of a slight shift towards the president in the wake of his predecessor’s felony conviction. Trump, who faces three other felony trials for hoarding classified documents and for trying to subvert the 2020 election, is tentatively scheduled to be sentenced in the New York case on 11 July.However, the CBS poll found that 55% of likely voters say that Trump’s conviction is not a factor in their choice for president, with 28% saying it will be a major factor. While Trump has enjoyed a fundraising surge from supporters following the trial, the poll found that just 14% of his voters are backing him because of his conviction, with the vast majority saying it isn’t a factor for them.Eight in 10 Trump voters believe, wrongly, that the former president was charged due to the actions of the Biden administration rather than local prosecutors, the poll found.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOverall, the main motivating issues for voters are the state of the US economy, inflation, the health of democracy and crime, according to the poll. More

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      in US Politics

      Mayorkas insists immigration order not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, defended both the timing and substance of Joe Biden’s new executive order to restrict immigration at the southern border, as the president faces criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the measure.The order, issued on Tuesday, tells officials to shut down asylum requests once the average number of encounters between legal ports of entry reaches 2,500 or more. If the number of encounters falls to 1,500 or fewer for seven consecutive days, the border would reopen two weeks later.During an interview on ABC News’s This Week, host Martha Raddatz noted that crossings had never reached the threshold of falling to 1,500 or fewer during Biden’s presidency – and Mayorkas declined to say whether he expected it to happen before election day.Mayorkas declined to give a concrete timeline on when to expect border crossings to meet the targeted threshold. Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans earlier this year over his handling of the border, but the charges were quickly dismissed by the Senate.“We are at a very early stage. Implementation, as you noted, has just begun,” Mayorkas told Raddatz on Sunday. “It’s early, the signs are positive. Our personnel have done an extraordinary job in implementing a very big shift in how we operate on the southern border.”Some Democrats have assailed the order as essentially a revival of the Trump administration’s asylum ban, which was struck down by federal courts. Biden also criticized the measure when he was a candidate for president.Mayorkas insisted on Sunday that the executive order was not at odds with Biden’s campaign promise.“What the president said then is what we are living today,” he said. “We are allowing individuals to access asylum through the ports of entry, pursuant to a program that we developed. We are allowing people to access asylum if they come from the countries of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.”Republicans have dismissed the policy as insufficient and an election-year stunt. “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,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, said last week. But the Republican criticism comes after Republican senators twice blocked a sweeping bipartisan border security bill. Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee in November’s presidential election, had lobbied against the measure.Mayorkas defended the timing of the executive order, which came four months after the border bill first failed. He said the administration would have preferred for Congress to act.“The bipartisan deal was rejected once. We pressed forward again. It was rejected a second time. And then we developed this and have implemented it and we are at an early stage,” he said. “And let’s not minimize the significance of this move and the significance of operationalizing it. And it requires the cooperation of other countries which we have secured.” More

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      in US Politics

      Could RFK swing enough votes from Trump and Biden to decide the election?

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      View image in fullscreenThe Kennedy name looms large over American politics. John F Kennedy, despite serving only twoand a half years as president before his assassination, is frequently ranked among the top 10 US leaders; his brother, Robert F Kennedy, seemed set for his own spell in the White House until he too was killed in 1968.Enter: Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of the former, son of the latter and increasingly, persona non grata of the surviving Kennedy clan.Part-time environmental lawyer, full-time conspiracy theorist, an animal enthusiast who owned a pet lion at his elite boarding school and who, in his telling, had part of his brain eaten by a worm, Kennedy entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat running against Biden, before switching to an independent in October last year. The 70-year-old, who also has a history of associating with white supremacists, is an unknown quantity in the 2024 election race, with both parties worried about the havoc he could wreak.Five months out from perhaps the most consequential election in recent US history, Biden and Trump continue to be unpopular with the American public. Kennedy’s ability to be neither of those men, and his willingness to lean into his family name, have positioned him as a spanner in the works of American democracy.Both Democrats and Republicans fear that Kennedy, who is polling at about 10% nationally, could pull votes away from their men. Even a few Biden or Trump voters hopping on to the Kennedy train could be enough to influence what is expected to be a tight race. In an indication of the threat he poses, Trump has gone from praising Kennedy as a “very smart person” a year ago to recently posting a four-minute video attacking him on Truth Social.Plenty of people try to be president. In 2020 alone, 1,212 people filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission saying they were running for the White House. Yet it is Kennedy who is drawing all the coverage.Would he be getting as much attention – and pulling in millions of dollars in donations, some of it from former Trump supporters – if he had a different last name? Probably not.The world was introduced to RFK Jr early. His father, a supporter of Israel, was killed by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man, as Kennedy Sr campaigned for president in Los Angeles. A 14-year-old Kennedy Jr was a pallbearer at his funeral: black and white photos from the funeral show a shaggy-haired Kennedy at the head of the coffin, looking numb and out of place among a crowd of grown men.Kennedy was the third of 11 children (the Kennedys were prodigious breeders), born to his father and Ethel Kennedy – a Chicago-born daughter of a coal magnate who remained a public presence way into the 1990s. Ethel made an appearance on the sitcom Cheers and was even named a tough tennis opponent in a Seinfeld episode.If Kennedy benefited from the family name, he benefited from the family wealth, too. Kennedy was raised in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at the Kennedy compound – where his mother lives to this day.He studied at Millbrook school, a private boarding school in New York. At Millbrook, Kennedy was not universally liked, Jerry Oppenheimer wrote in a biography of the future presidential candidate.“[Kennedy] was viewed by some fellow students as egotistical and irresponsible for strutting around the campus and on the sidelines at home football games with a potentially dangerous young lion on a leash,” Oppenheimer wrote.Millbrook’s headmaster eventually banished the lion, who was called Toto, from campus, and the then 130lb big cat went to live at a safari park in Florida.Other interests, Oppenheimer reported, included “getting stoned” and, oddly, falconry. Kennedy was in a gang too: the Hyannis Port Terrors, who apparently “ran around and stole alcohol” during the summer months.(Kennedy’s parading around with a lion had apparently been forgiven by 1998: that year, he was the commencement speaker at the school.)His teenage years were difficult. In an interview in 2023, Kennedy said he started taking heroin when he was 15 years old, saying he “had a big empty hole inside”, and in 1983, when he was 29, Kennedy was charged with heroin possession after he “became ill”, the New York Times reported, “in the washroom of an airliner” which stopped in Rapid City, South Dakota.“All of a sudden everybody knew I was a drug addict and it gave me the freedom to get help,” Kennedy told an interviewer. “I could just be who I was and be honest.”Kennedy had hidden his addiction while graduating from Harvard University and earning a law degree from Pace University in New York, and after he had completed two years’ probation as a result of the heroin charge, he embarked on a career in environmental law.He worked for Riverkeeper, an organization which protects New York’s Hudson River, and sued polluters in an effort to protect waterways; his work earned him a place on the front cover of New York Magazine in 1995, which described him as “The Kennedy who matters”.But Kennedy – who during his campaign has criticized Biden for overspending on environmental issues – would become better known in the US as a conspiracy theorist.Kennedy spent years claiming, loudly and wrongly, that vaccines cause autism, while in 2023 alone Kennedy stated that wifi causes “leaky brain”, linked antidepressants to school shootings and said that chemicals in water were making children transgender.His history of embracing conspiracy theories meant Covid-19 was a perfect storm for Kennedy. His already-existing anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense became “an influential force that spreads false and misleading information”, Associated Press reported, with the group publishing books that falsely claim the Covid-19 vaccine caused a spike in deaths. A report in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2022 named Kennedy’s Twitter account as “the top superspreader” of misinformation about Covid-19.Kennedy was particularly criticized for a speech he gave at a rally against mandatory Covid vaccines in Washington in January 2022. Standing at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Kennedy told an animated crowd that unnamed figures were trying to control the American population in a way never seen before.“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy said.“Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide.”The remarks caused uproar, not least from the Auschwitz museum, which tweeted: “Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany – including children like Anne Frank – in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay.”Kennedy later apologized for saying that people who wished to remain unvaccinated had fewer freedoms than Anne Frank. But he continued to dabble in Covid-19 misinformation, writing in a 2021 book that Anthony Fauci, the top US public health expert during the pandemic, had conspired with Bill Gates to suppress alternative medicine treatments for Covid-19.View image in fullscreenGiven his history, Kennedy’s declaration, as he announced his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in April 2023, that he was “not an ideal presidential candidate for normal times”, could seem like an understatement. But people barely had a chance to get to grips with his candidacy before, in October, he scrapped the idea of running as a Democrat, and announced an independent campaign, this time claiming that the “two-party establishment” was “leading us all over a cliff”.As an independent choice, Kennedy represents a still quite old, but not as old as Biden or Trump, candidate. He would be 71 by the time he took office, but Kennedy presents as younger than his two rivals: less jowly, more robust and with a more convincing head of hair. At a campaign stop in June 2023, he stripped to the waist to lift some weights at a gym in Los Angeles, revealing a fairly impressive physique.On the campaign trial, Kennedy looks the part: that thick silver hair, those big white teeth, that perma-tan. His voice, then, comes as a surprise. Kennedy has a strained, halting tone, owing to spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition which affects his voice.That condition is far from Kennedy’s only brush with ill health. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on a deposition Kennedy had given during his divorce from his second wife, Mary Kathleen Richardson Kennedy. In the deposition, given in 2012, Kennedy said he had experienced memory loss, which “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” Kennedy said. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”After the Times article was published, Kennedy tweeted that he was willing “​​to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate”.Richardson Kennedy died by suicide in 2012, leaving behind her four children with Kennedy. Before Richardson Kennedy, Kennedy had two children with his first wife, Emily Black, one of whom is called Robert F Kennedy III. In 2014, Kennedy married Cheryl Hines, an actor best known for playing Larry David’s wife in Curb Your Enthusiasm. The pair live in Los Angeles.Hines, 58, has sought to distance herself from her husband’s campaign. She said in an interview with Fox News earlier this year that she did not always agree with Kennedy’s politics: “We’ve learned to talk through it. Talk it out. Listen to each other. Sometimes, agree to disagree or say: ‘Oh, I’m going to think about that and I hear what you’re saying,’ or: ‘I don’t like the way you’re saying it. I wish you’d say it in a different way.’”The fear for Biden and Trump is that Kennedy could be a Ralph Nader figure. Nader ran as the Green party candidate in the 2000 presidential election, and some Democrats still believe that it was his performance in Florida that swung the election away from Al Gore and towards George W Bush.Early predictions suggested Kennedy – as a scion of the most famous Democratic family in history – would draw support from Biden. Trump and other Republicans certainly seemed to think so, and spent months extolling his virtues – there was even suggestions among rightwing media that Kennedy could be a good vice-president to Trump.But conservatives might come to regret pumping him up. Polls have shown that Trump supporters are more drawn to Kennedy – with his vaccine skepticism and hardline policies on the border particularly popular – than Biden.Republican donors have flocked to Kennedy, too. Timothy Mellon, a Wyoming-based billionaire who has previously donated to groups supporting Trump, has given $25m to the Kennedy campaign, while Rolling Stone reported that other donors include regular Republican donors like John Schnatter, the disgraced former CEO of Papa John’s Pizza, and a financier who briefly supported Ron DeSantis’s bid for the Republican nomination.The support is enough for Kennedy to potentially make a nuisance of himself in terms of pulling votes away from Biden or Trump. But that doesn’t mean Kennedy is popular.Like Biden and Trump, more people dislike Kennedy than like him. According to FiveThirtyEight, 42% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Kennedy, with just 35% seeing him favorably: a favorability rating of -7%. (Trump has a favorability of -12%, Biden -16%.)He’s a bit less unpopular than his two main opponents, then, which can only be a good thing. But Kennedy has already shown himself to be a problematic figure on the campaign trail.Last July, he caused controversy when a video recording showed him falsely claiming that the Covid-19 virus had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity.Members of the Kennedy family roundly criticized the candidate after his remarks were made public: Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President Kennedy, called his cousin’s campaign “an embarrassment” in a video.Other family members have made it clear that they oppose their namesake’s candidacy. In April, more than a dozen members of the Kennedy family, including six of Kennedy’s siblings, endorsed Biden for president.That should be galling for Kennedy, who on the campaign trail repeatedly mentions his family history. His Kennedy 2024 website frequently references his uncle, who despite his short term ranked as the ninth best president in a 2022 Siena College poll of historians, and 10th in a similar survey of 154 historians and presidential experts this year. (Biden was placed 14th, Trump came last.)Kennedy’s uncle president may even have influenced his decision to run as an independent. In a speech in Maryland in 1958, when he was still a senator and was two years away from becoming the 35th president of the US, John F Kennedy said:“Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past: let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”Kennedy is hoping that Americans will agree with that quote – or at least the bit about not seeking Republican or Democratic answers – come November. More