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      What’s behind the US tariffs on Chinese EVs and what do they mean for Biden’s re-election chances?

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      Joe Biden has unveiled US tariffs on an array of Chinese imports, unleashing a potential trade war with Beijing, as the president seeks to woo American voters less than six month out from what’s set to be a close election rematch with Donald Trump.The new measures affect $18bn in imports, including steel, aluminium, computer chips solar cells, cranes and medical products – however its the 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) that has dominated headlines.Why have the tariffs been imposed?Biden’s national economic adviser, Lael Brainard, perhaps best summed up the purpose of the huge new tariffs when she said that they would ensure that government investments in jobs are not undercut by “underpriced exports from China.”The US is concerned by the prospect of cheap, subsidised Chinese goods flooding US markets and undercutting the billions of dollars of government investment that have been poured into key manufacturing sectors via Biden’s Chips and Inflation Reduction acts.In the electric vehicle market, for instance, there are reports that China is producing 30m EVs a year, but can only sell 22m to 23m domestically.The Alliance for American Manufacturing has said the dumping of Chinese EVs to the US market would be an “extinction-level event” for its carmakers.“We’re not going to let China flood our market, making it impossible for American auto manufacturers to compete fairly,” Biden said in his speech announcing the tariffs.What will the tariffs mean for the sale of Chinese electric vehicles in the US?The huge new tariffs on Chinese-made EVs are unlikely to have any immediate impact on US consumers; that’s because China currently sells almost zero EVs in the US.However, experts say that the new tariffs are likely a preventive measure to stop China flooding the US market with its surplus product – and by that measure they’re likely to be effective.View image in fullscreenChinese EVs could still enter the US through other avenues though, as tariffs are applied based on where the final assembly for the vehicle takes place.Some experts are warning that there could be an accelerated shift of Chinese production to Mexico, as carmakers seek to bypass the tariffs, with some signs that this is already occurring.Hours after Biden announced the fresh tariffs, Chinese automaker BYD unveiled the Shark, a hybrid-electric pickup truck that will be exclusive sold in Mexico.The US is mindful of this risk, according to trade representative Katherine Tai, and there will probably be future efforts to head off tariff evasion problems.How will China respond?China’s commerce ministry said it would retaliate and take measures to defend its interests.An editorial in Chinese state media said US consumers would bear the consequences of the moves, adding that the Biden government was “writing a new chapter in undermining fair trade and environmental protection.”Late on Tuesday, Biden looked ahead to a potential response from China, saying Beijing will probably try to raise tariffs as well, possibly on unrelated products.Biden has said in the past that he is not seeking to launch a trade war, nor does he want the new economic measures to undercut efforts in recent months to ease tensions with Chinese president Xi Jinping.What do the new trade measures mean for the US election?Despite the high-profile economic legislation pushed through by his administration, polling shows Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of these policies.Against a background of low unemployment and economic growth above that of most other western nations, the White House will be hoping that the new tariffs don’t worsen inflation levels that have already angered US voters.“Some US industries and manufacturers will experience cost increases and supply-chain disruptions as a result of these tariffs but the Biden administration is clearly taking the view that these will be modest and can be managed,” said Cornell University’s policy experts, Eswar Prasad.Biden has followed the hard line on trade that Trump took as president, but says his measures are more targeted and less likely to harm US consumers than that of his Republican rival.Trump, who has floated the idea of tariffs of 60% or higher on all Chinese imports, said on Tuesday Biden’s new tariffs should be applied to other types of vehicles and products – and has threatened to go even harder on Chinese-made EVs by applying tariffs of 200%, should he be elected in November.With Reuters More

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      Top House Democrat demands answers on Trump dinner with oil executives – as it happened

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      The top Democrat on the House oversight committee is demanding answers after a report emerged that Donald Trump promised oil executives he would repeal regulations intended to lower climate emissions if they each contributed $1bn to his campaign.In a letter to the executives of nine major petroleum companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, Jamie Raskin cited a Washington Post article from last week that said Trump promised to rescind a Biden administration moratorium on permits for liquified natural gas exports and allow more drillings in the Alaskan Arctic and Gulf of Mexico, among other policies.In response, Raskin wrote in letters to nine oil industry executives:
      I write to request any information you may have about quid pro quo financial agreements related to US energy policy that were reportedly proposed at a recent campaign fundraising dinner with ex-president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club that you appear to have attended. Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.
      House speaker Mike Johnson traveled to New York to appear alongside Donald Trump at his ongoing business fraud trial, which Johnson called a “disgrace” in a press conference outside the courthouse. An array of other Republican politicians were also on the scene, all of whom have one thing in common: they are said to be potential running mates for Trump or, as the Democrats have dubbed them, “emotional support”. Back in Washington DC, the Republican-led House oversight committee released a report saying that attorney general Merrick Garland should be held in contempt for not handing over recordings of interviews with Joe Biden and his ghostwriter conducted by a special counsel. The committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin, was also busy, demanding answers from petroleum industry executives over Trump’s reported promise to roll back all sorts of environmental regulations if they each raise $1bn for his campaign.Here’s what else happened today:
      Johnson’s appearance in New York comes as the House GOP plans to shift into “campaign mode” before the 5 November election.
      Federal prosecutors asked a judge to send far-right strategist Steve Bannon to jail after an appeals court rejected overturning his conviction for contempt of Congress. Bannon has until Thursday to respond.
      Biden announced new tariffs against China, and took shots at Trump’s trade policies.
      Maryland is traditionally a Democratic stronghold, but this year’s Senate race is shaping up to be surprisingly competitive. The state’s voters are choosing their candidates in today’s primary.
      Why are Biden’s approval ratings so stubbornly low? Here’s what White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had to say, when asked at her briefing today.
      At her daily briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and why they have not moved much for years.The question from a Fox News reporter came a day after the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College released polling showing the president trailing Donald Trump in five of six key swing states. Here’s what Jean-Pierre had to say:The reporter who posed the question, Peter Doocy, is the conservative network’s main man in the White House, and something of a thorn in its side. Two years ago, Biden appeared to insult Doocy by name, then later reportedly called him to “clear the air”:Earlier today, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson condemned the prosecution of Donald Trump outside the New York courthouse where Trump’s business fraud trial is taking place.That drew a strong rebuke from Democratic representative and Trump foe Jamie Raskin, who aired his grievances in a statement to the Daily Beast:Federal judge Carl J Nichols has given far-right strategist Steve Bannon until Thursday to respond to a request by justice department prosecutors that he report to jail to serve his four-month sentence after being convicted of contempt of Congress.Nichols’ order came after an appeals court rejected Bannon’s appeal of his July 2022 conviction for ignoring a subpoena and an order to appear for a deposition from the January 6 committee. Here’s more on that:The traditionally blue state of Maryland suddenly finds itself in an unfamiliar role: political battleground.Whoever wins the race for its open Senate seat, vacated by retiring Democrat Ben Cardin, could decide control of the chamber. On the Democratic side, representative David Trone is locked in a competitive primary with Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks. Whoever wins the primary will almost certainly face Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor whose high-profile clashes with Donald Trump made him a household name.The Democratic primary contest to succeed Trone features as many as a dozen candidates. The field is led by former Biden official April McClain Delaney and state delegate Joe Vogel.The Guardian caught up with Vogel shortly after he cast his ballot in Gaithersburg on Tuesday morning. At 27, Vogel is among a handful of gen Z candidates running for federal office this year.Vogel said he is appealing to voters of all ages by channeling his generation’s urgency to address the most pressing problems of our time.“The experience that I have is not only the experience as a legislator, but the lived experience of sitting in a classroom with the doors locked and the windows down in the dark in a school-shooting drill. I have the experience of fearing what the climate crisis is going to hold for our generation,” he said.“What we need are people with the lived experiences to bring urgency to all of these issues.”The sixth district, a seat that spans the diverse suburbs of Montgomery county to conservative western Maryland, is expected to remain in Democratic hands but is still the most competitive open House seat in the state.If elected, Vogel, born in Uruguay, would be the first Latino and first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress from Maryland.An election to watch is taking place today in Maryland, where Democratic voters will select a candidate to face off against Republican former governor Larry Hogan for its open Senate seat. The Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports on how the race in the heavily Democratic state has become surprisingly competitive:Republicans have a rare opportunity to flip a Senate seat in Maryland in November, and the outcome of that race could determine control of the upper chamber. The high stakes of the Maryland Senate election have put intense scrutiny on the state’s primaries this Tuesday.Maryland primary voters will cast ballots in the presidential race as well as congressional elections, and leaders of both parties will be closely watching the results of the Senate contests. The retirement of Senator Ben Cardin has created an opening for Republicans to potentially capture a seat in a reliably Democratic state, thanks to former governor Larry Hogan’s late entry into the race. A Hogan victory would mark the first time that a Republican has won a Maryland Senate election since 1980, and it could erase Democrats’ narrow majority in the chamber.Ten Democrats will compete for the party’s Senate nomination, but two candidates have become the clear frontrunners: Congressman Dave Trone and the Prince George’s county executive Angela Alsobrooks. The race has historic implications, as Alsobrooks would become the first Black person elected to represent Maryland in the Senate and just the third Black woman to ever serve in the chamber.The battery of tariff increases on China Joe Biden announced is a symbolic move intended to head off the possibility that Beijing one day steps up its exports of vehicles and other technologies to stimulate its economy. The policy is also not quite as different from that of the Trump administration as the White House would have you think, the Guardian’s Larry Elliott reports:The US president, Joe Biden, has announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of a package of measures designed to protect US manufacturers from cheap imports.In a move that is likely to inflame trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, the White House said it was imposing more stringent curbs on Chinese goods worth $18bn.Sources said the move followed a four-year review and was a preventive measure designed to stop cheap, subsidised Chinese goods flooding the US market and stifling the growth of the American green-technology sector.As well as a tariff increase from 25% to 100% on EVs, levies will rise from 7.5% to 25% on lithium batteries, from zero to 25% on critical minerals, from 25% to 50% on solar cells, and from 25% to 50% on semiconductors.Tariffs on steel, aluminium and personal protective equipment – which range from zero to 7.5% – will rise to 25%.Despite the risks of retaliation from Beijing, Biden said the increased levies were a proportionate response to China’s overcapacity in the EV sector. Sources said China was producing 30m EVs a year but could sell only 22m-23m domestically.Biden’s car tariffs are largely symbolic because Chinese EVs were virtually locked out of the US by tariffs imposed by Donald Trump during his presidency. However, lobby groups have suggested there is a future threat as Beijing seeks to use exports to compensate for the weakness of its domestic economy.Top Republicans traveled to New York to appear alongside Donald Trump at his ongoing business fraud trial, which House speaker Mike Johnson called a “disgrace”. Also on the scene were an array of politicians who share one thing in common: they are all said to be potential running mates for Trump, or, as the Democrats dubbed them “emotional support”. Back in Washington DC, the Republican-led House oversight committee released a report saying that attorney general Merrick Garland should be held in contempt for not handing over recordings of interviews conducted by a special counsel and Joe Biden. The committee’s top Democrat Jamie Raskin was also busy, demanding answers from petroleum industry executives over Trump’s reported promise to roll back all sorts of environmental regulations if they each raise $1bn for his campaign.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Johnson’s appearance in New York comes as the House GOP plans to shift into “campaign mode” as the 5 November election draws ever nearer.
      Federal prosecutors asked a judge to send far-right strategist Steve Bannon to jail after an appeals court rejected the appeal of his conviction for contempt of Congress.
      Biden announced new tariffs against China, and took shots at Trump’s own trade policies.
      The top Democrat on the House oversight committee is demanding answers after a report emerged that Donald Trump promised oil executives he would repeal regulations intended to lower climate emissions if they each contributed $1bn to his campaign.In a letter to the executives of nine major petroleum companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, Jamie Raskin cited a Washington Post article from last week that said Trump promised to rescind a Biden administration moratorium on permits for liquified natural gas exports and allow more drillings in the Alaskan Arctic and Gulf of Mexico, among other policies.In response, Raskin wrote in letters to nine oil industry executives:
      I write to request any information you may have about quid pro quo financial agreements related to US energy policy that were reportedly proposed at a recent campaign fundraising dinner with ex-president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club that you appear to have attended. Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.
      In a White House address where he announced his administration’s moves to counter Chinese industries, including by imposing a 100% tariff on electric car imports, Joe Biden took a number of shots at Donald Trump and his policies.“My administration is combining investments in America with tariffs that are strategic and targeted,” Biden said. “Compare that to what the prior administration did. My predecessor promised to increase American exports and boost manufacturing. But he did neither, he failed. He signed a trade deal with China. They’re supposed to buy $200bn more in American goods. Instead, China imports from America barely budged.”He also said that Trump has proposed “across-the-board tariffs on all imports from all countries if re-elected”, and accused the former president of wanting to drive up prices. “He simply doesn’t get it,” Biden said.Asked later by a reporter about Trump’s comments that China has been eating America’s lunch, Biden responded, “He’s been feeding them a long time.” More

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      Democratic pollster: too much ‘inconsistency’ to draw conclusions about Biden-Trump rematch – as it happened

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      Good morning, US politics blog readers. The Biden campaign woke up to some disquieting news this morning, when a major poll was released showing that Donald Trump still leads Joe Biden in five of the six swing states that will be crucial to deciding the November election. Perhaps the most concerning part about the poll from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer was that while it was news, it was not exactly new – surveys have for months found the president trailing his predecessor in states he carried four years ago. What’s notable about this one is that the presidential campaign is now well underway, with Biden campaigning across the country in recent weeks, and his allies spending millions on advertisements intended to rebuild the coalition that elected him to the White House in 2020. Yet despite all that effort, the poll does not show much of an increase in his support.Perhaps more worrying for Biden’s prospects is what the survey says about the voting groups that are turning against him. While Black voters have been a reliable Democratic voting bloc, Trump’s support among them is 20%, the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in decades. The two men are also tied in support among Hispanic voters and 18-29-year-olds, groups that Biden won majorities of in 2020. We’ll tell you more about what else this poll has to say – and how Biden’s supporters are taking it – later on.Here’s what else is going on:
      Trump’s trial on business fraud charges continues in Manhattan, with the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen expected to take the stand. Follow our live coverage here.
      Bob Menendez, New Jersey’s Democratic senator, goes on trial today on a raft of corruption charges connected to allegedly using his position to aid the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
      Despite Biden’s worrying poll numbers, the same survey finds Democratic candidates leading in races that will decide control of the Senate.
      Democrats have been rattled by new polling that shows Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of six crucial swing states, with less than six months to go until election day. It was the latest disquieting opinion survey for the president, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout most of his term. However, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that polling is often unreliable this far out from an election, and the data also showed that Democratic Senate candidates were ahead of their Republican challengers in key races – though Biden will probably have to win re-election for his allies to keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Kamala Harris unexpectedly swore during an appearance at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.
      It’s infrastructure week at the White House once again.
      Simon Rosenberg, a perennial Democratic optimist, is not too worried about the latest polling on Biden’s re-election chances.
      The poll, which was conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer and Siena College, found voters were not paying particularly close attention to Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City. The prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen took the stand today, and you can follow the latest developments here.
      Republican lawmakers turned up outside Trump’s trial in New York to show their solidarity. Among the group was Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, who lamented that the former president was not getting enough respect, and Ohio senator JD Vance, who is viewed as a potential running mate.
      At her daily press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave no indication that the president was rattled by the poll released this morning showing him trailing Donald Trump in five crucial swing states.Instead, she endeavored to direct the press’s attention to the $1.2tn infrastructure bill Biden oversaw passage of three years ago that will overhaul the nation’s roads, bridges, rail and broadband:The legislation was indeed a major accomplishment for Joe Biden and Congress’s then-Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and one that had eluded Trump and Barack Obama. Whether voters will care is an open question. Biden’s approval ratings plunged into negative territory a few months before the bill’s November 2021 signing, and have not returned to positive territory since.Lately, Biden has been campaigning on using the funds to undo damage done to minority communities when the nation’s interstates highways were built. Here’s more on that:Perhaps the name Michael Cohen sounds familiar. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was once his trusted fixer, but then publicly turned against him, and is now testifying against his one-time boss in court. Here’s more on the disaffected Trumpworld lieutenant, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore:Michael Cohen is Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who was for more than a decade his Mr Fix-It, but is now the prosecution’s star witness as it builds its case that the former US president sought to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film star.It is a classic story of two men who once worked hand-in-glove together, when Trump was a world-famous billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star, but now face each other across a Manhattan courtroom with the world’s attention fixed on them.Cohen served as Trump’s trusted adviser, personal attorney and self-described “attack dog with a law license”. But the relationship soured after Trump won the US presidential election in 2016 and did not offer Cohen a role in his administration.Cohen’s testimony could place Trump at the center of a scheme to meet Stormy Daniels’s demand for $130,000 in exchange for her silence. The payment, made from an account Cohen had set up, was allegedly repaid while Trump was president but disguised as “legal services”.The prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, is on the witness stand in Donald Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election. Here’s the Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis with a rundown of what we have learned from his testimony so far today:Donald Trump told his one-time fixer Michael Cohen to bury Stormy Daniels’s account of an alleged sexual liaison weeks before the election, demanding that he “just take care of it”, according to trial testimony in Manhattan court on Monday.“This was a disaster, a fucking disaster,” Cohen, after he took the stand, recalled Trump saying. “Women will hate me.”Cohen described Trump as angry at the possibility that Daniels, an adult film star, might come forward surfaced shortly after the Washington Post published a hot-mic recording from an Access Hollywood taping in which Trump bragged about groping women “by the pussy” without their consent.Cohen is core to the case against Trump, because he is accused of shuttling $130,000 to Daniels days before the 2016 election – in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump 10 years earlier. Cohen told jurors that he had kept Daniels’s account under wraps in 2011, working with her then lawyer to remove a story about it that had been on a gossip site.“He was really angry with me,” Cohen recalled of Trump’s reaction after he informed him about Daniels. Trump, he said, remarked: “I thought you had this under control? I thought you took care of this.”A group of Republican lawmakers appeared outside the New York City courthouse where Donald Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records is taking place today.The group, which included Ohio senator JD Vance, who is thought to be a potential running mate for the former president, denounced the prosecution spearheaded by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. Here’s Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville:Beyond just winning the GOP’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump has moved to consolidate control over various parts of the Republican party, including its national committee. But as the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports, Trump has asserted himself in no other state like Florida:In practical terms, Barron Trump’s truncated stint on the political stage as a Florida delegate to the Republican party’s national convention was little more than symbolic. His father Donald Trump’s third successive presidential campaign as the Republican nominee was all but certain anyway, and the names of those who will confirm it are essentially inconsequential.It did affirm to many analysts, however, how the former president has maneuvered to seize almost total control of the party’s state apparatus nationwide. Nowhere is that more apparent than Florida, where the capitulation was completed by the choice of delegates for July’s convention in Milwaukee.Even though 18-year-old Barron Trump now stepped down, ostensibly after his mother, former first lady Melania Trump, discovered a pressing prior engagement, there will be plenty of other family members as representatives. Barron’s step-siblings Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany are named, along with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr’s fiancée.Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, and an assorted slew of other notable Trump acolytes and loyalists, are also on the list.The parallels in Trump’s subjugation of the national Republican party, and the installation of Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, as its co-chair, are hard to miss – especially as it was Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who was once seen as a potential “Trump killer” in the party’s nomination race until, of course, Trump quickly vanquished him.Polls routinely show immigration as one of the biggest issues on American voters’ minds ahead of the November elections – no matter how far from the Mexican border they may live. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reported that the issue has become the talk of a town in a northern Wisconsin city, after its police chief appealed to the Biden administration for help with new arrivals:Rhinelander is closer to the Arctic Circle than to Mexico, so it is no great surprise that few people in the small Wisconsin city have laid eyes on the foreign migrants Donald Trump claims are “invading” the country from across the US border 1,500 miles to the south.But Jim Schuh, the manager of a local bakery, is nonetheless sure they are a major problem and he’s voting accordingly.“We don’t see immigrants here but I have relatives all over the country and they see them,” he said. “That’s Biden. He’s responsible.”Large numbers of voters in key swing states agree with Schuh, even in places where migrants are hard to find as they eye cities such as Chicago and New York struggling to cope with tens of thousands of refugees and other arrivals transported there by the governors of Texas and Florida.Trump has been pushing fears over record levels of migration hard in Wisconsin where the past two presidential elections have been decided by a margin of less than 1% of the vote. A Marquette law school poll last month found that two-thirds of Wisconsin voters agree that “the Biden administration’s border policies have created a crisis of uncontrolled illegal migration into the country”.Democrats have been rattled by new polling that shows Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of six crucial swing states, with less than six months to go until election day. It was the latest disquieting poll for the president, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout most of his term. However, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that polling is often unreliable this far out from an election, and the data also showed that Democratic Senate candidates were ahead of their Republican challengers in key races – though Biden will probably have to win re-election for his allies to keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Kamala Harris unexpectedly swore during an appearance at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.
      Simon Rosenberg, a perennial Democratic optimist, is not too worried about the latest polling on Biden’s re-election chances.
      The poll, which was conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer and Siena College, found voters were not paying particularly close attention to Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City. The prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen took the stand today, and you can follow the latest developments here.
      In recent months, Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Barack Obama, has become an influential voice for Democrats trying to gauge Joe Biden’s chances in his looming rematch with Donald Trump.From his newsletter, here’s what he had to say about this morning’s authoritative, and disquieting, polling for the president:
      My advice with this and all polls is to take it seriously, but not literally. No poll is flawless; even the most accurate one can’t predict the future. Instead, think of polls as snapshots of how voters feel right now. Focus on the overall trends and significant insights rather than getting caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations. Use the poll data strategically to understand what resonates with voters and how to communicate our message effectively.
      As the first woman and first person of African-American and South Asian heritage to serve as vice-president, Kamala Harris is a barrier breaker. During an appearance today at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, Harris shared some advice for others looking to do the same, in notably strong language (well, she said fuck). See the moment here: More

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      Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five key battleground states, new polls show

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      Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states less than six months out from election day, new polls showed.The surveys from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College put the former president up in Pennsylvania (three points), Arizona (seven), Michigan (seven), Georgia (10) and Nevada (12). Biden led by two points in Wisconsin.All leads bar Trump’s in Georgia and Nevada were within the margin of error.As the poll resonated throughout the political scene, the Biden campaign issued a statement from Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.“The only consistency in recent public polls is inconsistency,” Garin said.“These results need to be weighed against the 30-plus polls that show Biden up and gaining – which is exactly why drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake.”Trump is currently on trial in New York City, on 34 criminal charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.That is effectively an election interference trial. The former president also faces four federal charges and 10 state charges, in Georgia, for attempted election subversion and 40 federal charges concerning his retention of classified information.Trump’s attempt to overturn Biden’s conclusive win in 2020 culminated in the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, by a mob he told to “fight like hell” in his cause.Nine deaths have been linked to the riot including law enforcement suicides and more than 1,200 people have been arrested, hundreds convicted and jailed, some for seditious conspiracy.And yet, amid much electorate concern that at 81 Biden is too old for a second term – though Trump is just four years younger – the Times said “a yearning for change and discontent over the economy and the war in Gaza among young, Black and Hispanic voters threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition”.The polls showed 20% support for Trump among Black voters, which if it held in the election would be the highest level of such support for a Republican candidate since the civil rights era.There was better news for Biden in results culled from people who described themselves as likely to vote, with the current president leading in Michigan and narrowly behind in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Victories in those three states in November would probably be enough to keep Biden in the White House.Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party candidate seeking ballot access in all 50 states even while having said he once had a worm in his brain linked to cognitive problems, scored about 10% in the polls, drawing equally from both Trump and Biden.“The findings are mostly unchanged since the last series of Times/Siena polls in battleground states in November,” the Times said, listing factors that might be seen likely to aid Biden: the stock market gaining 25%, Trump’s criminal trials beginning and Biden’s campaign spending heavily in battleground states.But voters who spoke to the paper cited cost-of-living concerns and dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo as reasons to abandon Biden for Trump.Remarkably, the paper reported that “nearly 70% of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes – or even to be torn down entirely”.Abortion rights also looms as a key campaign issue.Trump has boasted of his role in appointing three rightwingers to the US supreme court, resulting in the removal of federal abortion rights in 2022 with the overturning of Roe v Wade, the ruling that guaranteed them.Democrats have focused on the issue, taking a string of wins when abortion rights have been on the ballot, even in Republican-run states.In the new polls, a familiar majority (64%) said abortion should be always or mostly legal (a stance shared by 44% of Trump voters). The polls also showed voters prefer Biden to handle abortion rights issues by 11 points.But nearly 20% of respondents blamed Biden more than Trump for the fall of Roe.Garin said: “The reality is that many voters are not paying close attention to the election and have not started making up their minds – a dynamic also reflected in today’s poll. These voters will decide this election and only the Biden campaign is doing the work to win them over.” More

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      How the right is weaponizing pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US

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      Republicans have identified recent college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the core of an election campaign narrative of chaos that they hope can be used to sink Joe Biden’s presidency.The approach was bluntly crystallised by Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, in a recent television interview when he mocked the encampments that have sprung up in recent weeks as “little Gazas” and lambasted the president for a perceived failure to unequivocally denounce instances of antisemitism.“The Democrats have deep philosophical divisions on Israel,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week programme. “That’s why you see all those little Gazas out there on campuses where you see people chanting vile antisemitic slogans … For two weeks, Joe Biden refused to come out and denounce it. That is the 2024 election.”In fact, Biden did condemn antisemitism in a White House statement criticising the protests on 1 May, but also spoke out against Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice.Cotton’s comments followed weeks of turbulence on university campuses across the US that have seen riot police forcibly dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments in widely televised scenes reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s.His labelling of the encampments as “little Gazas” was denounced as dehumanising by some who lauded the protesters for drawing attention to the death toll of Israel’s continuing military offensive in Gaza. While relatively few Americans identify the war in Gaza as a vote-influencer, Republicans are seeking to capitalise on the vocal minority who are expressing discontent over it.The conservative activist Christopher Rufo spelt out the approach in a recent article on Substack.“This encampment escalation divides the Left, alienates influential supporters, and creates a sense of chaos that will move people against it,” he wrote. “The correct response … is to create the conditions for these protests to flourish in blue [Democratic-run] cities and campuses, while preventing them in red [Republican] cities and campuses.”GOP intent was signalled by the visits of delegations, including Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, to Columbia University – centre of the recent protests – and to George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC, where protesters spray-painted graffiti and draped a Palestinian flag on a statue of the US’s eponymous founding father.“It’s what the protests say about American political society and culture that the Republicans are trying to pick up on,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University.“Biden has tried to make this election a referendum on what happened during the Trump administration, with his focus being ‘we don’t want to go back to the chaos of the Trump years.’ That argument can be undercut if people are seeing chaos from college campuses on their TV screens – Republicans are trying to say it’s no more stable and calm under Biden than it was under Trump.”Republicans are also expanding congressional investigations into antisemitism allegations in the protests, an approach that has already reaped political dividends after the presidents of two elite colleges, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, were forced to resign following criticism of their testimony in previous hearings.Besides the House’s education and workforce committee – whose hearings led to the resignations, and which has now invited three more university heads to testify – three other GOP-led committees have announced proceedings to scrutinise the protests.The House energy and commerce committee is set to investigate universities for possible breaches of the Civil Rights Act, a supposed protection against discrimination, while the oversight committee has called hearings on Democratic-run Washington’s response to the GWU protests.Meanwhile, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House judiciary committee, has asked Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, if the visas of any foreign students have been revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.The message is clear: even as the imminent college summer recess ushers in a likely period of campus calm, Republicans will strive to keep the issue in the public eye.The historical template is 1968, when mass protests against the Vietnam war fed bitter Democratic divisions, fuelled violent clashes with police at the party’s convention in Chicago (coincidentally the venue of this year’s convention) and ultimately led to the GOP candidate Richard Nixon winning that year’s presidential election.“I think the Republicans can make an issue of this and I don’t think they need to do very much to be successful,” said Alvin Felzenberg, a veteran former Republican operative and historian who served in both Bush administrations.“Just like in 1968, there’s not a Republican in this play. The Democratic coalition seems under threat and possibly out of control. I see a lot of parallels, and I think the Trump campaign is paying a lot of attention to what Nixon did then.”The deciding factor of whether history repeats may be Biden, who Felzenberg says has given the impression of “being blown about by events” as he has sought a balance between supporting Israel and pacifying progressive, pro-Democratic voters alienated by the soaring Palestinian casualties in Gaza.With nearly six months until election day, Biden has time to assert control.Working in his favour is that the current unrest is so far less violent than in 1968, a year scarred by political assassinations and race riots. While police action to dismantle the recent protests produced negative headlines and more than 2,000 arrests, it resulted in no serious casualties – an outcome Felzenberg said Biden should have publicly celebrated.“Biden gave a speech last week that was the perfect opportunity for him to say the police did a great job – and he didn’t do it, which made it look like he wasn’t in charge and is scared of all the people on his own side yelling at him,” Felzenberg said. “If I were one of the people around Joe Biden, I would spend the next few months showing that he can lead.” More

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      Trump praises fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter during rally speech

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      Donald Trump on Saturday praised fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter “as a wonderful man” before segueing into comments disparaging people who have immigrated into the US without permission.The former president’s remarks to political rally-goers in Wildwood, New Jersey, as he challenges Joe Biden’s re-election in November were a not-so-subtle rhetorical bridge exalting Anthony Hopkins’ cannibalistic Lecter in Silence of the Lambs as “late [and] great” while simultaneously condemning “people who are being released into our country that we don’t want”.Trump delivered his address to a crowd of about 80,000 supporters – according to one estimate from a Wildwood city spokesperson – under the shadow of the Great White roller coaster in the 1950s-kitsch seaside resort 90 miles (145km) south of Philadelphia. The crowd began thinning considerably as Trump spoke, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on X in a post that contained video of people leaving the site of the rally.The occasion served for Trump to renew his stated admiration for Lecter, as he’s done before, after the actor Mads Mikkelsen – who previously portrayed Lecter in a television series – once described Trump as “a fresh wind for some people”.Among other comments, Trump on Sunday also repeated exaggerations about having “been indicted more than the great Alphonse Capone”, the violent Prohibition-era Chicago mob boss.Trump since the spring of 2023 has grappled with four indictments attributing more than 80 criminal charges to him for attempts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election he lost to Biden, retaining classified materials after his presidency and hush-money payments to an adult film actor which prosecutors maintain were illicitly covered up.The trial over the hush money is set to enter its fourth week Monday.Yet Capone was indicted at least six times before his famous 1931 tax evasion conviction.Trump nonetheless used the occasion to call the charges against him “bullshit”, with spectators then chanting the word back at him.The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that the former president’s supporters had poured into Wildwood in “pickup trucks decked out in Trump flags” from up and down the east coast.According to the outlet, hundreds of people set up camp overnight on the boardwalk to get into the event.“The country is headed in the wrong direction,” Kelly Carter-Currier, a 62-year-old retired teacher from New Hampshire, told the Inquirer. “So, hopefully, people will get their shit together and vote the right person in. And if they don’t, I don’t know. World War III?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn the other hand, New Jersey Democrats dismissed the significance of the event.Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill said many of the Trump supporters expected would be from out of state. “Jersey is not going to be a welcoming place for Trump,” Sherrill said.Sherrill’s fellow New Jersey Democrat Andy Kim, a congressman running for the US Senate, said that generalized apathy toward government helped Trump’s support.“I hope people recognize that he is not somebody that has an agenda that’s going to lead to a better type of politics,” Kim said. More

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      ‘Strategic and moral mistakes’: US politicians step up condemnation of Israel

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      Politicians in the US on Sunday stepped up their denunciation of Israel over its conduct in Gaza, with a leading Democratic senator accusing the key American ally of “strategic and moral mistakes” – and secretary of state, Antony Blinken, saying it was testing the boundaries of international law.In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, the Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that Hamas was likely to become stronger if Israel waged an all-out assault in Rafah.“I want Hamas gone,” Murphy said. “I don’t want them to ever have the ability to hit Israel again. [But] I worry that the number of civilians that are dying are ultimately going to provide permanent recruiting material to Hamas, and it will be a threat for years to come.“We cannot have an invasion of Rafah that ends up in tens of thousands of additional civilians dying. That will be bad for Israel from a moral and strategic standpoint.”He continued: “So I am certainly willing to call out Israel when I think that they have made strategic and moral mistakes in this war. We should [also] be calling out Hamas for the attacks that began this war, the way in which they have violated the rules of engagement, and the fact that the quickest route to end this war is for Hamas to surrender and protect the people of Gaza.”Murphy’s comments amounted to some of the strongest criticism yet by a centrist US politician against Israel, which the Gaza health ministry said on Sunday had now killed more than 35,000 people in strikes since the 7 October attacks by Hamas.Stronger condemnation came from Vermont Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, a member of the party’s progressive wing.“Any objective observer knows Israel has broken international law … has broken American law – and in my view, Israel should not be receiving another nickel in US military aid,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press, adding that Hamas was “a terrible, disgusting terrorist organization that began this war”.Meanwhile, Blinken’s commentary was considerably more measured. In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, the Joe Biden White House’s top diplomat said it is “reasonable to assess that in certain instances Israel acted in ways that are not consistent” with international humanitarian laws.Blinken’s comments on Sunday came after Biden threatened to stop supplying Israel with weapons if it invaded Rafah. That came as the White House said the US had stopped the transfer of 3,500 high payload “dumb” bombs over concerns of the growing number of civilian casualties in Gaza.Blinken stopped short of explicitly accusing Israel of violating international law as it pursued its offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He said it was “critical” to note that Israel itself has accountability processes – and there were hundreds of active inquiries as well as criminal investigations into different incidents, showing Israel had “the ability, means and the actions to self-correct.“It had been very difficult to determine, particularly in the midst of war, exactly what happened and to draw final conclusions from any one incident,” he said, adding that the US was avoiding any firm assessment over a potential breach because Hamas “hides behind as well as underneath civilian populations, in schools and hospitals”.Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas later dismissed Blinken’s “reasonable to assess” rhetoric as “some magic talisman” to help Democrats walk a political line within the party. He criticized the Biden administration as having imposed a “de facto arms embargo” on Israel.The administration’s national security policy, Cotton continued, “sounds like a bunch of weaselly, mealy-mouthed politics”.The US last week released a 46-page unclassified report concluding that – despite American concerns – Israel had offered credible assurances that it was not violating US or intentional law.That report’s findings were starkly at odds with assessments by the UN and major international aid groups. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs last week placed the Gaza strikes’ casualty toll at 34,844, with 7,797 (32%) being children and 4,959 (20%) being women.Israel attacked Gaza in response to the 7 October attack that killed 1,100 mostly civilians while also taking hostages.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted defiantly, saying his country’s military would press on with its plan to go into Rafah.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Blinken reiterated that the US had made clear to the Israeli government that it would not support a major operation in Rafah, where 1.4 million people are sheltering, in the absence of a credible plan to protect civilians.The secretary of state said that the US was not pausing the transfer of US weapons to Israel beyond the 3,500 bombs that had already been withheld.“We’ve been clear that if Israel launches this major military operation into Rafah, there are certain systems we’re not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation,” Blinken said.But Blinken said the Biden administration had not ruled out supplying the high-payload munitions, including 1,800 bombs each weighing 2,000 pounds and 1,700 bombs each weighing 500lbs. “We’re in an active conversation with Israel about that,” he said. “We have real concerns about the way they are used.”Murphy insisted Biden was “being a good leader” by withholding the earlier weapons.“The broad middle of the country wants to support Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas but is very concerned about the fact that there are so many kids dying – that for the last week there’s been no humanitarian assistance getting into the country,” he said.He said Israel would be better served embracing Palestinian Authority leadership to build a “transitional government structure” inside Gaza, given the conclusion of intelligence agencies that it would be all but impossible to totally eradicate Hamas.“There’s going to continue to be a resistance movement to the state of Israel, and the question is, is it going to be weaker or stronger after 13,000 to 15,000 kids are killed inside Gaza?” he said.“My argument is that right now the prospects are that they are just going to be stronger.”Blinken appeared to share those concerns, saying: “There has to be a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen. And we have to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over, and we still haven’t seen that.” More

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      The Never Trump Republicans who can’t bring themselves to back Biden

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      They have broken with Donald Trump. They have gone public with their concerns about the threat that he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But vote for Joe Biden? That is a bridge too far.A split has emerged in the “Never Trump” movement in the Republican party. There are some who denounce the former US president and contend that, in what is essentially a two-party system, there is a moral imperative to vote for his Democratic opponent in November.Then there are the Republicans who forcefully disparage Trump but stop short of endorsing Biden, suggesting that both choices are unpalatable, forcing them to consider another option such as writing in a different name on the ballot.This category includes Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who said in March he would not be backing his former boss but also made clear: “I would never vote for Joe Biden. I’m a Republican.”There is also Chris Christie, an ex-governor of New Jersey who ran against Trump in the Republican primary elections. He told a recent event at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics that he would never support Trump but nor could he bring himself to vote for the current president. “President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date,” Christie said.He was joined this week by Paul Ryan, a former speaker of the House of Representatives. He told Yahoo Finance: “Character is too important to me and it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he [Trump] just doesn’t have. Having said that, I really disagree with [Biden] on policy. I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.”While such dissent from Trump and his authoritarian ambitions is welcome, critics say, refusing to support his opponent because of policy differences draws a false equivalence between them. If a significant number of Republican voters do likewise, not voting or writing in a name such as “Ronald Reagan”, it could prove costly to Biden in a close election.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and Tea Party activist turned Trump foe, said: “I have zero respect for guys like Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan who come out and say. ‘I’m not gonna vote for Trump but I won’t vote for the only guy who can beat the guy who’s unfit.’ To me, that’s cowardly. What they’re doing is staying relevant as Republicans. They want to run again as Republicans.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Here’s the deal. If, as a Republican, you say I’m voting for Joe Biden because Trump is unfit, you end your career as a Republican. I did that five years ago. [Former congressman] Adam Kinzinger did that this past year. Then you end your relevance as a Republican. Guys like Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence don’t want to give that up. It’s purely a political decision.”Kinzinger broke from his party after the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and was later one of two Republicans, along with Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who joined the House committee to investigate the attack. He did not seek re-election in the 2022 midterms.Kinzinger said this week: “While I don’t agree with all of Joe Biden’s policies, he’s not out to get democracy so I intend to vote for him. Even if he was like Elizabeth Warren, a little further left, he would not be a threat to democracy, but he’s probably fairly moderate in Democratic terms lately. I certainly don’t think he’s as big of a threat as Trump is.”Despite 88 criminal charges against him, Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination in March. But his support remains soft around the edges. This week, two months after exiting the race, Nikki Haley secured more than 21% of the vote in Indiana’s primary election, held on a day when TV news was dominated by the Trump trial and adult film performer Stormy Daniels.Last month, in another sign of persistent discontent with Trump among the party faithful, Haley received nearly 17% of the primary vote in Pennsylvania. Biden has launched an advertising campaign to target Haley voters in predominantly suburban areas in swing states. A number of anti-Trump Republicans have been willing to aid the effort despite the risk of blowback from their own party.This week Geoff Duncan, a former lieutenant governor of Georgia who has spoken out against Trump’s election lies, endorsed the president and urged fellow Republicans do likewise. He wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper: “I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”The former Reagan administration official Bill Kristol has also made peace with casting his vote for Biden, describing him as a “conventional Democrat” and “better than I expected on some things, especially foreign policy”.But Kristol said he respects Pence, Ryan and Christie’s unwillingness to take the extra step by voting Democratic. “It’s not a crazy decision. It’s fair enough. They can’t abide Trump, they’re not going to vote for him, but it’s in a way not their responsibility that the other party hasn’t provided them with an acceptable alternative.”Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation, hopes that line of thinking will appeal to Republicans who backed Trump twice and might resent being told to defect to the Democrats. “As a practical matter, it’s worth it to get some of those voters just to not vote for Trump,” he said.Kinzinger, the ex-congressman, agreed: “For some people I do think there has to be permission to write-in somebody or vote against the two just because, if they’re never going to vote for Joe Biden, I’d much rather them just skip the ballot line. But those that can stomach it should certainly consider voting for Joe Biden.”View image in fullscreenThere are prominent figures still sitting on the fence. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, has not yet made clear whether he will back Biden. He told NBC’s Meet the Press last December: “If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that.”Cheney, who lost her seat in Congress to a Trump-backed rival, told the Washington Post newspaper in March that she was still undecided about whether to formally endorse Biden. She does intend to “educate” Americans about how dangerous Trump is in the lead-up to election day.But another group of Trump sceptics in the Republican party have gone in a different direction, portraying Biden as a “woke” radical outside the political mainstream and Trump as therefore the lesser or two evils.Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, eviscerated Trump after the January 6 insurrection; Trump routinely bashed McConnell as an “Old Crow” and hurled racist insults at his wife, Elaine Chao. Yet once Trump secured the Republican nomination in March, McConnell endorsed him for president.Bill Barr, a former attorney general who said last year that Trump “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”, has now declared that he wants to see Trump back inside it. He told CNN: “I think Trump would do less damage than Biden, and I think all this stuff about a threat to democracy – I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, backed Haley during the Republican primaries but now supports Trump in the general election. He explained in an interview with the Guardian: “Look, I worked hard for Trump not to be the nominee but he is the nominee of the party and, while I don’t care for Trump, I’ll take a Republican administration over this progressive, leftwing socialist administration any day of the week.”The governor said of Biden: “He’s created a culture here that America doesn’t want to see. A culture of not dealing with the border. A culture of lying about inflation – inflation is crushing families. Depending on how families feel their financial pressures in November will determine who wins the election.”To seasoned observers of the Republican party’s surrender to Trump, such sentiments come as little surprise. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “You cannot make the case credibly that you are concerned for the health of democracy and then lend your support and, more importantly, your vote to the architect of the undoing of democracy. You own that. You’re not just a bystander at this point; you are an accomplice.”Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, was also scathing in his verdict on those who announce they will not vote for Trump only to present Biden as equally intolerable.“Talk about a lack of intestinal fortitude. Anyone who wants to try to put Joe Biden on the same plane as Donald Trump should have their mental health checked because that is just an absurd false equivalency. This is a very black and white issue here. You’re either pro-democracy or you’re not. All the other issues that we disagree about – and there are many – don’t matter if we don’t have a functioning democracy.” More