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      Supreme court chief justice declines to meet US senators about Alito upside-down flag furor – as it happened

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      In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
      No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
      The Biden campaign launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else happened today:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
      John Roberts, the supreme court’s chief justice, declined a request for a meeting from two Democratic senators concerned over Alito’s flag flap.
      Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
      Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could reach a variety of conclusions.
      Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for potentially violating the terms of a settlement over his father’s estate, a New York state appeals court ruled.
      Should Donald Trump win the November election, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports that his ally, speaker of the House Mike Johnson, is prepared to move quickly to pass his agenda through Congress. Here’s what Johnson told Semafor he is looking at:Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.In an interview with Semafor, Johnson said he had already spoken to Trump about introducing an omnibus package immediately after he retakes office.“I told him that I believe he can be the most consequential president of the modern era, if we are focused on a policy and agenda-driven administration and Congress – and that’s our intention,” Johnson said.“We don’t want to make the mistake that we made in the past. Back in the 2017 timeframe and in previous years, we Republicans kind of took a single-subject approach. We did one round of healthcare reform, one round of tax reform. But for [fiscal year 2025], we want to have a much larger scope, multiple issues to address in addition to the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”For the second time in as many days, Donald Trump has defended supreme court justice Samuel Alito amid criticism from Democrats over his display of flags associated with rightwing causes.Alito, an appointee of Republican president George W Bush, is a reliably conservative vote on the court, and Trump has loudly denounced the Democratic lawmakers who have called for him to recuse himself from cases dealing with January. Here’s what the ex-president wrote, on Truth Social:
      ‘Playing the Ref’ with Justice Alito doesn’t work. It works with many others, but not with him!
      Here’s more from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington about the firestorm around conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito, and the rightwing flags found flying at his residences:Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election-interference charges.Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.In his letter to the Democratic leaders of the Senate judiciary committee, supreme court chief justice John Roberts argued it would be inappropriate to meet with them.“I must respectfully decline your request for a meeting,” wrote Roberts, who was appointed by Republican president George W Bush, and is considered among the more moderate of the court’s conservative justices.He continued in the letter addressed to the committee’s chair Dick Durbin and senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the subcommittee on federal courts:
      As noted in my letter to Chairman Durbin last April, apart from ceremonial events, only on rare occasions in our Nation’s history has a sitting Chief Justice met with legislators, even in a public setting (such as a Committee hearing) with members of both major political parties present. Separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence counsel against such appearances. Moreover, the format proposed – a meeting with leaders of only one party who have expressed an interest in matters currently pending before the Court – simply underscores that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable.
      Last week, the two Democrats had requested a meeting with Roberts, after reports emerged that conservative justice Samuel Alito had flown flags associated with rightwing causes at two of his properties.“We therefore call for Justice Alito to recuse himself from certain proceedings as outlined above, renew our call for the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, and request a meeting with you as soon as possible. Until the Court and the Judicial Conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote to Roberts.John Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, has rebuffed a request from senior Democratic US senators to meet as the lawmakers push for supreme court justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases before the court that relate to Donald Trump and will ripple into the 2024 presidential election.Roberts declined an invitation to talk about supreme court ethics and the controversy over flags that flew outside homes owned by Alito, the Associated Press further reports.Roberts’ response came in a letter to Democratic senators Dick Durbin a day after Alito separately wrote to them and House of Representatives members to reject their demands that he recuse himself from major cases involving Trump and the January 6 rioters because of the flags, which are like those carried by some rioters at the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin of Illinois and senator and committee member Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had written Roberts a week ago to ask for the meeting and ask that Roberts take steps to ensure that Alito recuses himself from any cases before the court concerning the January 6 attack or former president Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.Trump, the Guardian adds, is being prosecuted in a federal criminal case on charges relating to election interference and obstructing an official proceeding. The supreme court will rule next month on two cases before it that have grave implications in that case, and for the election.A recap that a year ago a judge in New York threw out Donald Trump’s 2021 lawsuit accusing New York Times reporters of an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records.Trump was ordered to pay all attorneys’ fees and legal expenses that the Times and its reporters had incurred. The lawsuit alleged that the newspaper sought out Trump’s niece Mary Trump and persuaded her “to smuggle the records out of her attorney’s office”.At the time, Trump’s claim against his niece had not been ruled on. Today, we learned that Donald is permitted to proceed with suing Mary.The Times’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories relied on information from Mary Trump to cast doubt on the ex-president’s claims that he was a self-made millionaire, showing that he had inherited hundreds of millions through “dubious tax schemes”. The series also revealed a history of tax avoidance.Robert Reed, the New York supreme court justice, said at the time of his ruling, in May 2023, that Trump’s claims “fail as a matter of constitutional law”, which allows for reporters to engage in legal, ordinary news-gathering. “These actions are at the very core of protected first amendment activity,” Reed wrote.Alina Habba, a lawyer for Donald Trump, said the former president looked forward to holding his niece, Mary Trump, “fully accountable for her blatant and egregious breach of contract” in her exchanges with New York Times journalists for a story about her uncle’s finances and evasive tax habits.Thursday’s decision upheld a June 2023 ruling by Justice Robert Reed of the New York state supreme court.Also, Reed had dismissed Donald Trump’s claims against the New York Times and three reporters, and in January ordered him to pay $392,639 of their legal fees, Reuters reports.In November 2022, Reed dismissed Mary Trump’s separate lawsuit accusing her uncle and two of his siblings of defrauding her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance.The New York Times’ reporting challenged Donald Trump’s claim that he was a self-made billionaire. It said he received the equivalent of $413m from his father, largely the result of “dubious” tax schemes in the 1990s, including undervaluing his family’s real estate holdings. Donald Trump has denied wrongdoing.Mary Trump previously identified herself as a Times source in her 2020 tell-all bestseller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.Here’s more on the news that a court has said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump.The court in New York ruled that the former president can sue Mary Trump, 59, a psychologist and writer, for supplying information to the New York Times as part of its coverage into the then president’s finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes. The coverage won the Pulitzer prize.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.A five-judge panel said it was unclear whether Mary Trump’s disclosures were subject to confidentiality, or how long both sides intended the provisions to remain in effect. It also signaled that Donald Trump might deserve only minimal damages, not the $100m he sought.The court said:
      At a minimum, nominal damages may still be available on the breach of contract claim even in the absence of actual damages.
      Lawyers for Mary Trump said the lawsuit violated a state law barring frivolous cases designed to silence critics and “chill and retaliate against” their free speech. These cases are called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps.Anne Champion, Mary Trump’s lawyer, said in a statement:
      Mary has made valuable contributions to the public’s knowledge of the former president with her unique perspective as a family member. We are confident she will be vindicated as the case proceeds.
      Champion also said Donald Trump “can claim no injury for the publication of truthful information.”A New York state appeals court said Donald Trump can sue his niece Mary Trump for giving the New York Times information for its Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 probe into his finances and his alleged effort to avoid taxes.The appellate division in Manhattan found a “substantial” legal basis for Donald Trump to claim that his niece violated confidentiality provisions of a 2001 settlement over the estate of his father, Fred Trump Sr, Reuters reports.More to come on this. Adding from the Guardian, Trump originally sued his estranged niece and the New York Times in 2021 over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices that was partly based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper’s reporters, and there has been a whole legal odyssey ever since.The Biden campaign has launched a new attack against Donald Trump, accusing him of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice said he used an anti-Black racial slur on the set. Meanwhile, jury deliberations are ongoing in Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City, and a verdict could be delivered at anytime. Earlier in the day, the supreme court released a batch of new opinions, covering topics from banking regulation to free speech rights. But the conservative-dominated court did not yet weigh in on Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over the 2020 election, or two abortion-related cases, all of which remain pending before the justices. Another batch of opinions is expected next Thursday.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman and Trump antagonist, proposed a way to force conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from January 6 cases.
      Do swing state voters care if Trump is convicted in his New York business fraud trial? Our reporters searched for the answer.
      Most evidence in the New York case seems to point to Trump’s guilt, but the jury could rule in any direction.
      In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:
      No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man. Anyone notice a pattern? Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be: a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president. It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020, and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November.
      In addition to handing the National Rifle Association a lifeline in its lawsuit against New York state, the supreme court also denied resentencing to an Arizona man on death row, the Guardian’s Joanna Walters reports:The US supreme court issued opinions on Thursday relating to free speech and the death penalty, in one case clearing the way for a National Rifle Association (NRA) lawsuit against a former New York state official.The court gave a boost to the influential gun rights group that has accused the official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with it and, in the process, violating the NRA’s free speech rights.The justices, in a unanimous decision from the nine-member bench, threw out a lower court’s ruling that dismissed the NRA’s 2018 lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York’s department of financial services.The NRA, in the case NRA v Vullo, claimed that Vullo unlawfully retaliated against it following a mass shooting in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida.The NRA was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Biden administration argued some of its claims should go forward, an unusual alliance between often opposing parties considering the NRA is a strongly Republican-aligned organization.Meanwhile, the supreme court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down an appeals court ruling giving Danny Lee Jones a new sentencing hearing in a death penalty case in Arizona. The conservative supermajority decided that errors in Jones’s legal defense, in the case Thornell v Jones, did not justify him having a chance at resentencing.The supreme court just scheduled its next opinion release day.The court is expected to issue more decisions on Thursday, 6 June. Among the pending cases is Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution over trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two lawsuits related to abortion access. More

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      Where is Joe Biden’s fury about decapitated Palestinian babies? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Earlier this week, I sat down to write a piece about a campus safety officer at a public college in New York who told pro-Palestinian protesters that he supported genocide. “Yes I do, I support genocide,” the officer said, after a protester accused him of this at a graduation event at the College of Staten Island, part of the public City University of New York (Cuny) system, last Thursday. “I support killing all you guys, how about that?”It’s possible that you didn’t hear about this incident: while it was covered by a few outlets, including the Associated Press, it didn’t get a huge amount of press. It certainly wasn’t splashed all over the front page of the New York Post the way it would have been if that guard had made the same comment about Israelis. The New York Times, which has written a lot about safety on college campuses – and published a piece on anti-Israel speeches at Cuny just a couple of days before this incident – didn’t seem to deem it newsworthy. And the White House didn’t chime in with a horrified statement about anti-Palestinian bias on campuses. After all, this wasn’t a big deal, right? It was just a security guard saying he supports genocide. Which, it should be clear now, is essentially the same position as the US government.So, yes, that was what I was going to write about. But a couple of paragraphs in, I stopped writing. I’d had a quick look at Twitter/X, you see, and it was full of the horrors of the tent massacre in Rafah, where an Israeli airstrike killed at least 45 people in an area where displaced Palestinians were sheltering. That, of course, is already old news: more killing has followed the slaughter on Sunday night – and Israel has said it plans many more months of this.The images out of Gaza have been unrelentingly traumatic, but the slaughter in Rafah was just unbearably upsetting. Reports of decapitated babies. Charred children. People burned alive. All just days after the International court of justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. All while the US government makes excuse after excuse for Israel’s flagrant breaches of international law, which Israel said was just a “tragic mistake”.After those images, I couldn’t function anymore. I certainly couldn’t sit down and try and write. The hopelessness and the horror and my rage felt too overwhelming. My complicity felt too overwhelming – the knowledge that this mass slaughter is being facilitated and funded by the US taxpayer, the knowledge that a little portion of my writing income goes towards this suffering. All while the public school around the corner from me in Philadelphia is failing because there’s never enough money for education and the library near me shuts on Sundays because there’s never enough money for public services and there are people going bankrupt in the US from medical bills because there’s never enough money to invest in public health. But there’s always money for bombs.What’s the point? I keep asking myself. What’s the point in writing when it’s now very clear that there are no red lines, that absolutely nothing is going to stop the carnage? Not the United Nations human rights council terming this a genocide, not international courts telling Israel to stop, and certainly not my little opinion pieces.The point, I have to keep reminding myself, is that all genocides begin with dehumanization, and we all have to do what we can to push back on this. This genocide was built on decades of Palestinians being demonized and dehumanized – and public consent for this assault on Gaza was manufactured with the help of dehumanizing narratives designed to ensure nobody could think of a single Palestinian as an innocent civilian or even a human being.One of the most inflammatory examples was the false rumour that 40 decapitated babies were found in the Kfar Aza kibbutz after the Hamas attack. Hamas, of course, committed atrocities on 7 October, including murdering 38 Israeli children. But the fake news about 40 beheaded babies – which the Israeli government press office has confirmed to Le Monde was not true – was potent and emotive and spread absolutely everywhere, including to and from the White House.Joe Biden repeated these unverified reports, even when his staff urged him not to. He even lied about seeing pictures of these babies. It was Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction all over again. It was the Kuwait incubator hoax all over again. It laid the basis for genocide; for politicians to look at pictures of Palestinian children, decapitated by US-manufactured missiles, and just shrug.We see this same dehumanization come into play when it comes to US campus politics. Pro-Palestinian protesters are painted as hateful and dangerous, while violence by pro-Israel voices is minimized. When a pro-Israel mob attacked pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA, for example, the police (normally keen to crack down on protesters) allowed the attack to happen. The US press used the passive voice and characterized the violence – which was, by most accounts, extremely one-sided – as “clashes”.As for that Cuny officer who supports genocide? His words were also diminished by the mainstream media. The Hill, for example, which is centrist, chose the following headline: New York college suspends officer after perceived threats to campus protesters. Notice the use of perceived: the language minimizes the incident. There is also a clear choice not to put the words “kill you all” in the headline. And, while there is a video of the officer saying the remarks, the Hill made sure to say in the piece that it “appears” like he was making the remarks.Now compare this to a similar incident where a pro-Palestinian protester said something violent. In April the Hill published a piece with the headline: Columbia has banned student protest leader who said ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live,’ University says. In that instance, they put the inflammatory quote inside the headline. There also weren’t any qualifying words about the video; because it was a pro-Palestinian protester saying something violent, it was accepted at face value. All these little choices in reporting add up to a bigger narrative about who is violent and who isn’t. They help manufacture consent.So while it feels pointless writing this, the point is to make it clear that a lot of us don’t consent to what is being done with our taxpayer money and with the encouragement of our elected officials. The point is to make sure that this is all on record. Because decades into the future, when Israeli condos line the ethnically-cleansed beaches of Gaza and people look back on this genocide, there will be a lot of people who say they didn’t know. There will be people who will try and rewrite history to make it seem like the genocide unfolding right now was too complicated to parse. The point is to remind everyone too cowardly to speak up that your silence is complicity.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘I need you’: Biden-Harris campaign launches initiative to court Black voters

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      Gearing up for the 2024 election, the Biden-Harris campaign launched its Black voters initiative on Wednesday at Philadelphia’s Girard College, a majority Black boarding school.Around 2pm in an auditorium filled with hundreds of Black Philly residents, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris approached the podium to applause and an audience shouting “four more years”.As the president listed off his accomplishments that affected Black voters during his presidency, Biden repeated the refrain “a promise made and a promise kept”. He said that he’s relieved student debt for nearly 5 million Americans, banned police chokeholds, created databases for police misconduct, and appointed the first Black woman on the supreme court.Those accomplishments, Biden said, were made possible through the “enormous trust” that Black voters placed in him in 2020.Harris told the crowd that as a candidate, Biden gave his word of fighting some of the biggest issues facing the Black community, such as capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors, and removing medical debt as a factor on a credit score.View image in fullscreen“Thank you!” an audience member shouted. Turning to the election, Biden said: “We’re going to make Donald Trump a loser again. I’m still optimistic, but I need you.” His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?” The crowd stood up as they shouted back “yes”.A few blocks outside of the event, a small group of protesters who wore keffiyehs served as a reminder of many younger voters’ disgruntlement with Biden’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza.But back in the auditorium, gospel singers dressed in black sang Oh Happy Day as they stood underneath a large blue poster that read “Black Voters for Biden-Harris”. Girard College students dressed in maroon shirts clapped from the bleachers. The audience skewed older, with some attendees holding signs that read “Historically Black”.Verna Hutchinson-Toler, a 75-year-old voter from Bucks county, Pennsylvania, said that she came out in support of Biden because she’s “passionate about voter registration as a social determinant of health”. She referenced research that showed that communities with a high amount of registered voters get the most attention to their environmental and healthcare needs.As a chaplain at the Children’s hospital of Philadelphia, Hutchinson-Toler has seen patients who are the victims of gun violence, which has fueled her advocacy for gun control. “Personally I feel his track record has been amazing,” she said about Biden’s crack down on ghost guns.Zelma Carroll, a 57-year-old certified nursing assistant from Philadelphia, was grateful that Biden wiped away some of her daughter’s student loans from Penn State University. Carroll had canvassed for the Biden-Harris campaign four years ago and plans to do so again soon. “I just hope that they get in our neighborhoods and let people know where we’re going, where we need to be and we can’t go back,” Carroll said. “We can’t let Trump in.”View image in fullscreenWinston Cameron, a registered independent, said that he came to the event to “hear from the horse’s mouth”. Cameron voted for Biden in 2020 and was uncertain if he would vote for him again. For Cameron, a 35-year-old student originally from Jamaica, immigration and the economy are the issues he’s most concerned about. “It could be better,” Cameron said about Biden’s accomplishments in those arenas. “I can see the positive changes that he’s trying to implement, but I think it’s still a weak stance.” Nevertheless, Cameron said, he was satisfied with Biden’s attention to Dreamers, immigrants who arrived to the US as children. Earlier this month, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give healthcare coverage to Dreamers.Overall, the audience at Wednesday’s event was energized by the administration’s Black voters’ initiative. But perhaps most of all, they wanted to ensure that Trump didn’t win the election again. “My only issue that I’m concerned about is that other guy coming back,” said 77-year-old Philadelphia resident Rick Harper, a delegate for the Democratic national convention in August. “I’m very happy with President Biden and Vice-President Harris.” More

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      Joe Biden tells Black voters ‘I need you’ to beat Trump in campaign rally in Philadelphia – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has wrapped up his speech in Philadelphia aimed at mobilizing Black voters, where he made plain that without their support, it was unlikely that he would return to the White House after November’s election.“I’m still optimistic, but I need you,” Biden said in his address, which was delivered at private preparatory school Girard College.His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?”The crowd stood up as they shouted back: “Yes.”As he has done in many of his speeches since the start of the year, the president singled out Donald Trump for attack, accusing him of not believing in “honesty, decency and treating people with respect”. See the moment here:Winston Cameron, a registered independent, said that he came to the event to “hear from the horse’s mouth.”Cameron voted for Biden in 2020 and was uncertain if he would vote for him again. For Cameron, a 35-year-old student originally from Jamaica, immigration and the economy are the issues he’s most concerned about.“It could be better,” Cameron said about Biden’s accomplishments in those arenas. “I can see the positive changes that he’s trying to implement, but I think it’s still a weak stance.”Nevertheless, Cameron said, he was satisfied with Biden’s attention to Dreamers, immigrants who arrived to the US as children. Earlier this month, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give healthcare coverage to Dreamers.Melissa Hellman was at the rally in Philadelphia and spoke to voters who were there:Zelma Carroll, a 57-year-old certified nursing assistant from Philadelphia, was grateful that Biden wiped away some of her daughter’s student loans from Penn State University. Carroll had canvassed for the Biden-Harris campaign four years ago and plans to do so again soon. “I just hope that they get in our neighborhoods and let people know where we’re going, where we need to be and we can’t go back,” Carroll said. “We can’t let Trump in.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris held a joint rally in Philadelphia to mobilize Black voters behind their re-election campaign. The president laid in to Donald Trump, and told the audience “I need you”, in a sign of how important African-American support is to his chances of winning another four years in office. Speaking of Trump, the former president may soon be a convicted felon – or not. The New York city jury that has spent weeks hearing arguments from both sides over whether he is guilty of committing business fraud has begun their deliberations, and a verdict could come at any time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Samuel Alito, a conservative supreme court justice, refused to recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election, despite demands from Democrats incensed at his display of flags associated with rightwing causes.
      The House ethics committee has opened an investigation of Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar, who was federally indicted on charges of accepting bribes.
      Trump praised Alito for refusing to step back from cases dealing with the 2020 election. The court is expected to in the coming weeks rule on his petition for immunity from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.
      Jill Biden predicted her husband’s poll numbers would improve as the election draws nearer.
      Abandon Biden, which is encouraging voters to deny the president a second term over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza, planned to protest his rally in Philadelphia.
      Biden and Harris got an enthusiastic reception in Philadelphia earlier today. Here’s a video of the crowd chanting “four more years” when Biden took to the podium:Here are some of the pictures from the Biden-Harris rally that have dropped on the newswires:The House ethics committee announced it has opened an investigation into Henry Cuellar, a Democratic congressman who was indicted earlier this month on charges related to receiving $600,000 in bribes.In a terse statement, Republican chair Michael Guest and Democratic ranking member Susan Wild said the committee had voted unanimously to establish a subcommittee to investigate Cuellar, in accordance with House rules. The committee “shall have jurisdiction to determine whether Representative Cuellar solicited or accepted bribes, gratuities, or improper gifts; acted as a foreign agent; violated federal money laundering laws; misused his official position for private gain; and/or made false statements or omissions on public disclosure statements filed with the House,” the statement said.Guest and Wild noted that they intended to avoid interfering with the justice department’s investigation of Cuellar:
      The Committee is aware of the risks associated with dual investigations and is in communication with the Department of Justice to mitigate the potential risks while still meeting the Committee’s obligations to safeguard the integrity of the House. No other public comment will be made on this matter except in accordance with Committee rules.
      Here’s more on the charges against Cuellar:In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump praised conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito, who announced this afternoon that he would not heed Democratic lawmakers’ demands to recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election.Top Democrats, including House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin, had called on Alito to step back from cases, such as Trump’s petition for immunity from prosecution over attempting to overturn the 2020 election, after rightwing flags were found to have flown at two of his properties.Here’s what Trump had to say about Alito:
      Congratulations to United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and “GUTS” to refuse stepping aside from making a decision on anything January 6th related. All U.S. Judges, Justices, and Leaders should have such GRIT – Our Country would be far more advanced than its current status as A BADLY FAILING NATION, headed by the Worst President in American History, Crooked Joe Biden!
      Verna Hutchinson-Toler, a 75-year-old voter from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said that she came out in support of Biden because she’s passionate about “voter registration as a social determinant of health.”As a chaplain at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Hutchinson-Toler has seen patients who are the victims of gun violence, which has fueled her advocacy for gun control.“Personally I feel his track record has been amazing,” she said about Biden’s crack down on unserialized firearms known as ghost guns.Joe Biden has wrapped up his speech in Philadelphia aimed at mobilizing Black voters, where he made plain that without their support, it was unlikely that he would return to the White House after November’s election.“I’m still optimistic, but I need you,” Biden said in his address, which was delivered at private preparatory school Girard College.His one question for Black voters: “Are you with me?”The crowd stood up as they shouted back: “Yes.”As he has done in many of his speeches since the start of the year, the president singled out Donald Trump for attack, accusing him of not believing in “honesty, decency and treating people with respect”. See the moment here:Biden vows to put racial equality at the center of everything and have an administration “that looks like America”.He lists the things he’s done to achieve this, including:
      appointing the first Black supreme court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson
      appointing more Black women to the federal circuit courts than all other presidents combined
      keeping unemployment and the racial wealth gap at a record-low
      Cutting the gap of home appraisals between communities of color and white communities
      removing lead pipes and the legacy of pollution in communities adjacent to industrial facilities, which are disproportionately inhabited by people of color
      increasing access to affordable high-speed internet
      protecting and expanding Obamacare
      ‘Do you remember when the pandemic hit?’Biden calls on the crowd to recount the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic when “20 million people were out of work, when businesses and schools shut down, and emergency rooms were overwhelmed. Black folks were hit harder than anyone else.”Biden took a jab at former president Trump, who he said absolved himself of responsibility for the pandemic and how it was handled.“When I came to office, I promised we’d do everything we can to get us through that pandemic. And that’s what we did. That folks, was a promise made and a promise kept.”Biden has taken the stage.“It’s good to be almost home,” the president told the crowd. “I used to live down the road a little bit,” referencing his former home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he grew up.“Because Black Americans voted in 2020, Kamala and I are president and vice-president of the United States. Because you voted, Donald Trump is the defeated former president,” Biden said.His next line was met with cheers from the crowd: “With your vote in 2024, we’re going to make Donald Trump a loser again.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr files election complaint over CNN debate rules

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      The independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr filed an election complaint on Wednesday alleging CNN is colluding with Joe Biden and the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to exclude him from a debate the network is hosting next month.Kennedy alleges the requirements to participate in the 27 June debate were designed to ensure only Biden and Trump would qualify and Kennedy claims he is being held to a higher standard.“CNN is making prohibited corporate contributions to both campaigns and the Biden committee and the Trump committee have accepted these prohibited corporate contributions,” a lawyer for Kennedy, Lorenzo Holloway, wrote in a letter to the Federal Election Commission.CNN said the complaint was without merit.Biden and Trump agreed this month to the CNN debate and a second on 10 September hosted by ABC, bypassing the non-partisan commission that has organized debates for nearly four decades. The first debate will come before Biden and Trump have been formally nominated by their parties this summer.Kennedy has looked to the debates as a singular opportunity to stand alongside Biden and Trump, lending legitimacy to his long-shot bid, and to convince people inclined to support him that he has a shot at winning. Both the Biden and Trump campaigns fear he could play spoiler.Kennedy still has time to meet the requirements, though the window is narrowing.CNN has said candidates will be invited if they have secured a place on the ballot in states totaling at least 270 votes in the electoral college, the minimum needed to win the presidency, and have reached 15% in four reliable polls by 20 June.Kennedy’s campaign says he has submitted signatures or other paperwork to appear on the ballot in nine states – California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah – with a combined 171 electoral votes, though not all have affirmed his name will be listed. California, the largest prize on the electoral map with 54 votes, will not certify any candidates until 29 August.“The law in virtually every state provides that the nominee of a state-recognized political party will be allowed ballot access without petitioning,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday. “As the presumptive nominees of their parties both Biden and Trump will satisfy this requirement. As an independent candidate, under applicable laws RFK Jr does not. The mere application for ballot access does not guarantee that he will appear on the ballot in any state.”Kennedy also has not met the polling criteria, the statement said.Biden and Trump have easily cleared the polling threshold but will not be certified for the ballot until their parties formally nominate them. Both have secured enough delegates to lock in their nominations. More

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      ‘A coward’s violence’: Robert De Niro trolls Trump outside hush-money trial

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      It was a scenario that Donald Trump, in his pre-presidential celebrity days, might have relished; as he sat inside a Manhattan courtroom, Robert De Niro was waiting outside.But this was politics and De Niro, the pugnacious star of myriad Hollywood gangster films, was there not to pay homage to the former president as a fellow VIP, but to diss him in terms that might have been in place in Goodfellas or Mean Streets.The 80-year-old Oscar winner was present outside the New York courthouse where Trump’s hush-money trial was reaching its closing stages on Tuesday as an operative of Joe Biden’s re-election bid, deployed as a proxy while the president’s campaign made its first clear foray into his opponent’s complex legal woes.Introduced by the Biden campaign communications director, Michael Tyler, De Niro – a vitriolic critic of Trump, who has provided the voiceover for a new 30-second advertisement warning of the perils of his return – adapted to the role with professional aplomb.“This is my neighbourhood, downtown New York City. I grew up here and feel at home in these streets,” he said, before remarking on the strangeness of Trump being in a courtroom across the street, “because he doesn’t belong in my city”.The former president and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee had been tolerated in the Big Apple, said the actor, when he was “just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot”.But now the stakes had been raised and Trump, De Niro explained, had a vision of dictatorial power that had prompted him to step into the political arena, citing the mob violence from Trump’s supporters that accompanied the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.“That’s why I needed to be involved … in the new Biden-Harris ad, because it shows the violence of Trump,” he said.De Niro invoked the lessons of Monday’s Memorial Day holiday, held to celebrate the US’s fallen military heroes, and quoted Abraham Lincoln in saying they had died so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”.Stepping back into Hollywood gangland rhetoric, De Niro warned: “Under Trump, this kind of government will perish from the earth. I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait – maybe I do mean to scare you. If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections? Forget about it.”But arguably the most belittling reference concerned Trump’s taste for political violence, which De Niro dismissed as “a coward’s violence”.“You think Trump ever threw a punch himself or took one?” he asked. “No way. He doesn’t get blood on his hands. He directs the mob to do his dirty work for him by making a suggestion, an inference.”The punch reference recalled Raging Bull, the 1980 biopic in which De Niro played Jake LaMotta, the turbulent boxer who was once world middleweight champion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis depiction of LaMotta’s sometimes menacing persona sprung to mind as the actor bristled at being heckled by a Trump supporter as he introduced two police officers, Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who had been present at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 as it was assailed by a mob trying to prevent Congress certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.“They lied under oath,” said the out-of-camera-shot heckler, who was heard to add: “They’re traitors.”De Niro glared, then countered: “Excuse me, they lied under oath. What are you saying? They’re traitors. I don’t even know how to deal with you, my friend.“They stood there and fought for us, for you … they fought for you, buddy, you’re able to stand right here now. They are the true heroes.”Fanone, who served as a Washington DC police officer, recounted how he was violently attacked and beaten by members of the mob, one of whom tried to take his firearm. All had been “inspired by lies” told by Trump, he said.Coming to the microphone after De Niro had left the scene, Trump’s campaign adviser, Jason Miller, ridiculed both Biden and the Hollywood star.“The best that Biden can do is roll out a washed-up actor – and don’t worry, my remarks will be shorter than The Irishman,” he said, invoking one of De Niro’s later films, directed by Martin Scorsese. “I won’t make you suffer for three hours.” More

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      Biden honors troops on Memorial Day as Trump lashes out at his ‘human scum’ enemies

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump marked the Memorial Day national holiday honoring America’s war dead with jarringly divergent messages that promised to foretell the forthcoming US presidential election campaign as a contest of sharply contrasting characters.In a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Biden paid tribute to the fallen as heroes who sacrificed themselves in the service of American democracy and ideals. Meanwhile, Trump, taking to his Truth Social site, took a very different tack – bestowing holiday wishes on those he branded “human scum” and accused them of trying to destroy the country.Biden and Trump are neck and neck in national polling for the 2024 presidential election, with Trump often narrowly ahead. Trump is, however, polling more strongly in the key swing states that will decide the contest.The targets of Trump’s ire on Memorial Day included the judges who presided over his various trials and a writer who won more than $80m in damages after accusing him of rape.While his predecessor and 2024 opponent fulminated on social media, Biden – accompanied by Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, General CQ Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Vice-President Kamala Harris – visited the the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington, final resting place for revered military heroes and US presidents.Identifying his own family with the notion of national sacrifice, Biden highlighted his son Beau, attributing his death from brain cancer nine years ago this week to his exposure to burn pits while serving in the military in Iraq.“The hurt is still real, still raw,” Biden said, after describing the “black hole” that opens up for family members who hear the news of the death of a relative serving in wartime.“I can still hear him saying, ‘it’s my duty dad, it’s my duty. Duty – that was the code my son lived by … the creed the generation of service members have followed into battle on the grounds around us by fallen heroes.”Biden’s words seemed calculated to contrast with previous comments attributed to Trump about fallen members of the military, whom he is said to have derided as “losers” and “suckers” for allowing themselves to be killed in battle.If so, the glaring disparity was further emphasised by Trump’s Memorial Day outburst, which reprised previous holiday volleys of abuse aimed at his enemies and opponents.“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION,’” he wrote.That comment was aimed at Lewis Kaplan, the judge in a civil trial brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleged that Trump raped and then defamed her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the dress that she threatened me with (it proved negative)…” Trump continued in reference to Carroll.He then turned his attention to Judge Arthur Engoron, who ruled in a civil lawsuit last year that the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets – and to Judge Juan Merchan, who is in charge of Trump’s current hush money trial in which he is accused of falsifying documents to cover up an affair with a porn actor.He referred to Engoron as “the [New York] state wacko judge who fined me 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG” before adding: “Now for Merchan!”Prosecutors and lawyers are scheduled to present their closing arguments on Tuesday in the trial, which has been running for four weeks and in which Trump faces 34 counts of paying money to an adult film star before the 2016 presidential election, which he won over Hillary Clinton.The framing of the forthcoming election campaign as a competition about personal character is generally thought to be beneficial to Biden, who is consistently seen to be lagging behind Trump in polls quizzing voters about who has the greatest competence over economic affairs. More

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      Trump tells donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests if re-elected

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      Donald Trump has told a group of wealthy donors that he will crush pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses if he is returned to the White House.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee called the demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza part of a “radical revolution” and promised the predominantly Jewish donors that he would set the movement back 25 or 30 years if they helped him beat Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.“If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” Trump replied, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the event.Trump also said his administration would expel any foreign students found to be taking part in the protests, which have recently taken the form of tented encampments in colleges across the US.Addressing the meeting in New York on 14 May, Trump heard one donor complain that many of the students and faculty academics taking part in the protests could, in future, hold positions of power in the US.He praised New York police for clearing the encampments at Columbia University and said the approach should be emulated by other cities, adding: “It has to be stopped now.”Republicans have increasingly sought to make the campus protests an election issue, depicting them as a manifestation of “chaos” rampaging unchecked on Biden’s watch.Congressional Republicans have staged a series of hearings on Capitol Hill to highlight the trend, focusing on reports of antisemitism among protesters and alleging multiple failures of university presidents to combat it.In the latest hearing last week, GOP members of the education and the workforce committee assailed the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers universities for negotiating voluntary dismantlements of the encampments, rather than calling in the police, as advocated by Trump.In further remarks to the donors, Trump performed an apparent U-turn on Israel’s offensive in Gaza after months of equivocating by saying that he supports the country’s right to continue its “war on terror”.He has previously said Israel is “losing the PR war” with its actions in Gaza. More than 36,000 Palestinians have so far been killed in an operation originally launched in retaliation for last October’s murderous assault by Hamas, which resulted in around 1,200 Israelis being murdered and another 253 being taken hostage.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to the mass-circulation Israel Hayom newspaper in March, Trump said: “You have to finish up your war … You gotta get it done.” He has also said Israel should “get back to peace and stop killing people”.In his donor meeting – which he joked was attended by “98% of my Jewish friends” – Trump reportedly failed to mention the name of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who he resents for recognising Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and has not spoken to since.But he boasted of his policies towards Israel, namely the decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the recognition of the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in the 1967 six-day war. More