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      US defense secretary rejects Israel genocide accusations; Blinken and Cameron urge US House to pass Ukraine aid – as it happened

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      The US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said.Austin, addressing a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing today, said:
      We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created.
      He also avoided referring to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October as a genocide, calling it a “horrific terrorist attack” and “certainly … a war crime”.Austin’s testimony was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding the war.
      Arizona’s supreme court ruled to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect. The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday was a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.
      Joe Biden criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling, blaming “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and calling the ban “cruel”.
      Kamala Harris, in response to the ruling by the Arizona supreme court, said the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”, and said Donald Trump was resopnsible for the ruling. Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday.
      Secretary of state Antony Blinken and his UK counterpart, foreign secretary David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington during a joint press conference following talks in Washington on Tuesday.
      Blinken said the supplemental budget request that the president has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the US has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday just days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban.The vice president’s trip to Arizona, her second this year, was already in the works prior to Tuesday’s court decision and will likely take on a heightened focus on abortion rights and access, Politico reported.The White House said Harris will use her visit “to continue her leadership in the fight for reproductive freedoms”.Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the supreme court, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred.
      To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.
      Despite widespread legal and historical opinion that Trump’s immunity claim is groundless, the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three justices, will consider the claim.Oral arguments are scheduled for 25 April. The court recently dismissed attempts, supported by leading historians, to remove Trump from ballots under the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to bar insurrectionists from office.As we reported earlier, defense secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate earlier today that the US government has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.The UK also confirmed in meetings with US counterparts that there would be no changes to arms exports to Israel, although it would be kept under review.Here’s the clip:Louisiana’s Republican-controlled senate advanced a bill on Monday that would empower state and local law enforcement to arrest and jail people in the state who entered the US illegally, similar to embattled legislation in Texas.Amid national fights between Republican states and Joe Biden over how and who should enforce the US-Mexico border, Louisiana joins a growing list of legislatures seeking to expand states’ authority over border enforcement.Proponents of the bill, such as the legislation’s author, GOP state senator Valarie Hodges, say Louisiana has the “right to defend our nation”. Hodges has accused the federal government of neglecting responsibilities to enforce immigration law, an argument heard from GOP leaders across the country.Opponents argue the bill is unconstitutional, will not do anything to make the state safer, and will only fuel negative and false rhetoric directed toward migrants.Across the nation, reliably red legislatures have advanced tougher immigration enforcement measures.The Oklahoma house passed a bill that would prohibit state revenue from being used to provide benefits to those living in the state illegally. A bill in Tennessee, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, would require law enforcement agencies in the state to communicate with federal immigration authorities if they discover people who are in the country illegally. Measures that mirror parts of the Texas law are awaiting the governor’s signature in Iowa, while another is pending in Idaho’s statehouse.Lawmakers and climate advocates called on utilities to “ditch the American Gas Association” at a press conference at the US Capitol on Tuesday.“Americans are already paying the price of climate change,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
      They shouldn’t have to pay the salaries of those who are fueling it.
      A trade association representing more than 200 US utilities, the AGA has a well-documented history of lobbying against climate regulations and policies – activity funded in part by members’ ratepayers’ utility bills. It’s a “dirty game,” said Xavier Boatwright of the Sierra Club.Both the event and a protest outside the AGA’s headquarters earlier Tuesday were led by the anti-gas nonprofit organization the Gas Leaks Project.“There’s nothing natural about natural gas,” said the group’s senior communications director Maria Luisa Cesar.The extraction and use of gas, called natural gas by industry interests, emits planet-heating and toxic pollution. Reports show the AGA has been aware of these dangers for 50 years, but has continued to undercut climate efforts. Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse said:
      The fossil fuel industry depends in roughly equal parts on hydrocarbons and lies.
      In August, the New England utility Eversource cut ties with the American Gas Association. Advocates are calling on other utilities to follow its lead. Four states have also passed legislation to prevent the use of ratepayer dollars to fund political activity.Also in Arizona, Eva Burch, a Democratic state lawmaker who drew national attention after announcing her decision to seek an abortion earlier this month, said today’s court decision to enforce a ban – using a law that was originally drafted in the 19th Century before women could vote and before Arizona was a state – would have devastating consequences for women such as her.“A couple of weeks ago I had an abortion – a safe legal abortion here in Arizona for a pregnancy that I very much wanted,” Burch said.
      Somebody gave me a procedure so that I wouldn’t have to experience another miscarriage – the pain, the mess, the discomfort. And now we’re talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail. This is outrageous.
      Burch predicted the ruling would backfire on conservatives who have fought to allow the ban to be enforced.“The people of Arizona have had enough,” Burch said.
      We are electing pro-choice candidates in November. Watch it happen.
      Kamala Harris has responded to a ruling by the Arizona supreme court to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, saying the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”.In a statement, the vice president said there was “one person responsible” for the ruling, which will allow a law first passed in 1864 to go into effect, “by his own admission … Donald Trump”.Harris said the “extreme and dangerous” ban criminalizes almost all abortion care in the state and “puts women’s lives at risk”, adding:
      It’s a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v. Wade, and made it possible for states to enforce cruel bans.
      She added:
      The alarm is sounding for every woman in America: if he has the opportunity, Donald Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban. He has called for punishing women and doctors. If he wins, he and his allies have plans to ban abortion and restrict access to birth control, with or without Congress.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, called today’s news from the state’s supreme court on an abortion ban a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.Hobbs vowed to do everything in her power to preserve access to reproductive care and contraception in the state, pointing to actions she has already taken. After winning the election in 2022, Hobbs last year issued a sweeping executive order banning county attorneys from prosecuting women who seek abortions and doctors who perform them.Asked about the possibility that her directive could be challenged in court, Hobbs said: “Bring it on.”At the news conference, held moments after the state supreme court released its decision, Hobbs called on the Republican-led state legislature to “immediately” repeal the ban. But the legislature is unlikely to do so. The leaders of both chambers joined anti-abortion activists in favor of allowing the territorial-era ban to take effect.“The legislature has ignored the will of the voters on this issue for decades,” she said.
      The ballot box is the way that voters can have their say and overrule the legislature on this issue that the vast majority of Arizonans support.
      The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just said that US government agencies were still involved in an “informal review” of the Israel Defense Forces’ review of the killing by the Israeli military of seven aid workers with the group World Central Kitchen in Gaza earlier this month.Sullivan said that the CIA director, Bill Burns, was involved in further talks in Cairo in Egypt at the weekend, where states such as the US and Qatar are trying to broker a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages held by Hamas since the massacre it perpetrated in southern Israel last 7 October.Sullivan said the US “has seen Israel take some steps forward” in the talks, while the latest statements from Hamas were regarded as “less than encouraging”.He said more humanitarian aid was reaching Gaza, which he said was “good, but not good enough”, amid Israel’s blockade and siege of the Palestinian territory.And amid Israel pulling troops out of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, in a pause in its offensive actions, Sullivan said the US has still not seen “a credible and executable” plan from Israel about what it would do to move or protect Palestinians in the event that, as it has pledged to do, it invades Rafah.Joe Biden has just arrived back at the White House after a very short trip to Washington’s main Union Station rail hub, to deliver remarks about healthcare.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was originally due to brief the media at 1.30pm in the regular daily session in the west wing, but obviously everything is being pushed back because the president’s schedule shifted later than originally expected, also. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will join the briefing. It’s getting underway now.We’ll bring you highlights from the briefing. There has been a lot of international-facing news today, especially with the latest on high-level talks in the Middle East about Israel’s war in Gaza and US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron meeting in Washington, DC, and urging the US Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine.Joe Biden has criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling from earlier today to let an old law on the books banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect – albeit with a 14-day delay to allow further legal challenges before it does.The US president blamed “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and called the ban “cruel”.In a statement issued from the White House moments ago, Biden said: “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest. This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864 – more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote.”The statement ended with: “Vice-President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose. We will continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v Wade for women in every state.”Kamala Harris has taken a strong lead in recent months on efforts by the Biden administration and the Biden-Harris re-election campaign to win support for protecting reproductive rights.This follows, in particular, the landmark overturning of the federal right to abortion by the conservative-dominated supreme court in 2022 and further attacks on rights ranging from abortion pills to contraception to IVF by the hard right.The Arizona supreme court ruled on Tuesday to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, a decision that could curtail abortion access in the US south-west and could make Arizona one of the biggest battlefields in the 2024 electoral fight over abortion rights.The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban, first passed before Arizona became a state, that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade. However, the justices also ruled to hold off on requiring the state to enforce the ban for 14 days, in order to allow advocates to ask a lower court to pause it again.The ban can only be enforced “prospectively”, according to the 4-2 ruling. Minutes after the ruling Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, vowed not to prosecute any doctors or women under the 1864 ban.You can read the full story here.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington.
      Blinken and Cameron held a joint press conference where the US secretary of state said the stalled Ukraine funding is critical for US, European and world security. The supplemental budget request that Joe Biden has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”, Blinken said. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Donald Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, told a Senate armed services committee hearing that the US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      There’s a key US Senate race in Ohio this year, where the incumbent leftwing Democrat, Sherrod Brown, is expected to face a tough challenge from Bernie Moreno, a car dealer turned Trump-backed populist firebrand.Like many Trump-backed candidates, Moreno is making it his business to blame China for woes affecting blue-collar workers. Earlier this year, he went so far as to tell a conservative radio host: “The Buick Envision was made in China, I told General Motors I wouldn’t sell one of them, don’t even ship it to me.”The problem about the claim, which Moreno has made elsewhere, is that as Spectrum News reports … “Moreno’s dealership did sell the Chinese-made SUVs for several years, and even promoted the vehicles on social media, according to numerous social media posts.”After detailing such posts, Spectrum adds:
      “GM, the parent company of Buick, confirmed to Spectrum News the Envision was only manufactured in China. The SUV became the first Chinese-made vehicle to be imported by a major US automaker when it debuted in Michigan in 2016.
      The imports were called a “slap in the face” by the United Auto Workers union, which felt the vehicles should be made on US soil by American workers.
      A spokesperson for Moreno, Reagan McCarthy, told Spectrum: “In response to the closure of the Lordstown Plant here in Ohio [in March 2019], Bernie made a decision to stop any new inventory of Envision’s [sic] from being sold at his dealership. After he sold off the inventory he already had on the lot, he refused to take orders for more Envisions. There is zero contradiction here.”There are contradictions elsewhere in Moreno’s campaign statements, though, as the Guardian discussed here:A New York appeals court judge has rejected the latest bid by Donald Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.Trump’s lawyers had requested the trial to be postponed indefinitely while he appeals a gag order that bars him from commenting about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case.Trump’s attorneys argue that Justice Juan Merchan’s order restricting his public comments is an unconstitutional prior restraint on his free speech rights while he campaigns for president. Merchan imposed the order last month after finding Trump made statements in various legal cases that the judge called “threatening, inflammatory” and “denigrating”.During the hearing on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove said:
      The First amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable.
      Justice Cynthia Kern issued the order following a Tuesday morning hearing, but a full panel of appeals judges will later consider the former president’s underlying challenge to the gag order.Austin, asked what the consequences of a deadly mass famine in Gaza would be, said:
      It will accelerate violence, and it will have the effect of ensuring that there’s a long-term conflict.
      Addressing the Senate armed services committee, the defense secretary added:
      It doesn’t have to happen … We should continue to do everything we can, and we are doing this, to encourage the Israelis to provide humanitarian assistance. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to sue judge in effort to avert hush-money trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial, which is over allegations that Trump forged financial records in an attempt to cover up a sex scandal, the New York Times first reported.The latest lawsuit from Trump is a last-minute attempt to delay the trial, which is set to begin 15 April in New York City.According to the Times, Trump’s legal team has now filed an action against Judge Juan Merchan, though the lawsuit itself is not public.Two sources with knowledge on the suit told the Times on Monday that Trump’s attorneys are asking an appeals court to delay the trial and also attacking a gag order that Merchan placed on Trump.Merchan previously denied Trump’s request to delay the trial until the US supreme court reviews his claims around presidential immunity involving a separate criminal case.That concludes today’s US politics live blog.Here’s what happened today:
      Biden announced several student loan forgiveness proposals during remarks in Madison, Wisconsin. One of his biggest proposals will cancel debt for those with more than $20,000 in interest or anyone who started paying off student loans more than two decades ago.
      Former vice-president Mike Pence criticized Trump’s stance on abortion, calling it a “slap in the face” to the anti-abortion movement. In a lengthy post to Twitter/X, Pence said that Trump had previously sent Roe v Wade “to the ash heap” by securing supreme court judges who were anti-abortion, but criticized his “retreat” from “pro-life Americans” with his latest decision.
      Jake Sullivan will host a meeting at the White House on Monday for families of US hostages held in Gaza, Punchbowl News reported. The latest meeting comes amid ongoing attempts to bring hostages home.
      Trump indicated that he will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial in New York City, the New York Times first reported. Trump is accused of forging financial records to cover up a sex scandal. The trial is set to begin 15 April.
      Senator Lindsey Graham denounced Trump’s position on abortion and vowed to continue advocating for a 15-week abortion ban. In a statement Monday, Graham said he “respectfully [disagrees]” on Trump’s stance that abortion is an issue of states’ rights.
      Thank you for following along.Vice-president Kamala Harris said that Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban, when asked about Trump’s statement that abortion access should be left up to the states.While talking with reporters before boarding Air Force 2, Harris said:
      Let’s all be very clear – if he were to be put back in a position where he could sign off on a law, he would sign off on a national abortion ban. Let’s be very clear about that.
      From CBS News:Americans – and the rest of the world – are keeping an eye on the state of the US presidential race. Almost every day multiple new polls emerge and they nearly all agree – this race is close. Two more polls came on Monday, one (from I&I/TIPP) had Joe Biden up by three points, while the other (from Emerson) had Trump winning by one.Go back a little further and over the last nine polls Biden has been winning in five of them, three of them had Trump ahead and one was a tie. The overall average still has Trump slightly ahead by just 0.3 points. That seems to represent a pattern of the last few weeks – Biden is ticking very slowly up. Of course, the vagaries of the US election system and its electoral college mean the polls are no straight predictor of a winner. Trump has (recently) been stronger in core battleground states.Pence blasts Trump’s abortion positionFormer vice-president Mike Pence has blasted his old boss’s position on abortion, saying that it is a “a slap in the face” of many anti-abortion campaigners.The Hill reports that Pence tweeted in the wake of Trump saying the issue should be decided by individual states – a blow to those who hoped he might back some form of more national ban.“President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Pence wrote in his post, before praising the steps their administration took to further the anti-abortion effort.Pence tweeted: “By nominating and standing by the confirmation of conservative justices, the Trump-Pence Administration helped send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history where it belongs and gave the pro-life movement the opportunity to compassionately support women and unborn children.”Biden commented on attempts from Republican lawmakers and the US supreme court to end his loan forgiveness program.“But then some of my Republican friends and elected officials [in] special interest sued us. And the supreme court blocked us,” Biden said, as the crowd booed.“But that didn’t stop us,” Biden added.Read about the supreme court’s actions against student loan forgiveness here:Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposals have already gotten a nod of endorsement from top Democrats.Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called the proposals a “big deal”, emphasizing that millions of Americans face “outrageous [levels] of student debt”.Biden announced several major actions with regards to student loans during his speech.Biden said his administration will propose a new rule to cancel up to $20,000 in interest for people who owe more than when they began paying their off loan.Biden will also cancel student debt for those who started paying their student loans more than two decades ago.“This relief can be life-changing,” Biden said.Biden has begun his remarks on student loan forgiveness, discussing the impact that it has on millions of Americans.“A lot can’t repay for even decades after being [out of] school,” Biden said.“Too many people feel the strain and stress … because even if they get by, they still have this crushing, crushing debt,” he addedBiden added that student debt also negatively impacts the local economy, as many people are unable to afford homes.Biden’s remarks on student loan forgiveness are set to begin shortly in Madison, Wisconsin.Stay tuned for updates!More Democrats have warned that Trump will sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024.Elizabeth Warren said Trump bragged he’s “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe.“He’d sign a national abortion ban as president, & his allies plan to get it done even without Congress,” the Massachusetts senator added.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, noted that Trump’s stance on abortion has frequently changed, alluding that it could become more hard line.The White House has not been briefed on the date of Israel’s invasion of Rafah, Reuters reports.State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday that the White House has not received a date for the military operation after Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu said that a day has been chosen.Miller emphasized that the US does not support an invasion of Rafah, where many people in Gaza are currently displaced amid the ongoing genocide in the territory.Jake Sullivan will host a meeting at the White House on Monday for families of US hostages held in Gaza, Punchbowl News reported.The national security adviser will also meet with Israeli opposition Yair Lipid, who is visiting Washington this week.Earlier today, White House spokesperson John Kirby said that Hamas is currently considering a deal that could release more hostages and lead to a six-week ceasefire.Trump’s position on abortion sparked a myriad of reactions from both sides of the political aisle. On Monday, Trump said that abortion is an issue of states’ rights, refusing to back a 15-week abortion ban that is popular amid Republicans.Democrats have warned that Trump will sign a national abortion ban, further limiting reproductive rigts. Meanwhile, anti-abortion advocates and GOP members have publicly criticized Trump for refusing to support an national limit.Biden squarely blamed Trump “for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision”.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Biden is on route to Madison Wisconsin, where he will deliver remarks on his latest student loan forgiveness plan. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden will continue “fighting on behalf of borrowers” despite pushback from “Republican officials”.
      Trump has indicated that he will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial in New York City, the New York Times first reported. Trump is accused of forging financial records to cover up a sex scandal.
      The White House announced that Hamas is reviewing a proposal that could lead to the release of hostages and a six-week ceasefire amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
      Ahead of Biden’s speech on student loans, Jean-Pierre said that Biden will continue to pursue student loan forgiveness despite pushback from “Republican officials”.“While we can’t prevent them from filing lawsuits against this plan, the president will never stop fighting on behalf of borrowers,” Jean-Pierre said.Republican states have previously tried to fight Biden’s attempts to wipe student loan debt, even falsely claiming that they would be financially impacted by the loan forgiveness scheme.Jean-Pierre had choice words for Trump and Senate Republicans about abortion following Trump clarifying his position.Jean-Pierre blamed Republicans for “extreme abortion bans” happening in GOP-led states, during Monday’s gaggle.“The only reason that extreme abortion bans are now in effect all over the country is because of the judges the previous president and Senate republicans put in the court,” Jean-Pierre said.“The only reason that women are being [denied] life saving and even unrelated procedures and turned away from emergency rooms…is because of the judges the previous president and Senate republicans put in the court,” she added.Jean-Pierre added that bans on IVF, a consequence of the Alabama state supreme court ruling, are because of judges selected by Trump.“We need to be clear eyed here,” Jean-Pierre added, regarding the potential impact on reproductive rights if Trump is elected.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is hosting a gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Biden travels to Wisconsin to give remarks on student loan forgiveness.Stay tuned for further updates.Donald Trump will sue the judge overseeing his hush money trial, which is over allegations that Trump forged financial records in an attempt to cover up a sex scandal, the New York Times first reported.The latest lawsuit from Trump is a last-minute attempt to delay the trial, which is set to begin 15 April in New York City.According to the Times, Trump’s legal team has now filed an action against Judge Juan Merchan, though the lawsuit itself is not public.Two sources with knowledge on the suit told the Times on Monday that Trump’s attorneys are asking an appeals court to delay the trial and also attacking a gag order that Merchan placed on Trump.Merchan previously denied Trump’s request to delay the trial until the US supreme court reviews his claims around presidential immunity involving a separate criminal case. More

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      Biden announces new plan to cancel student loans for 30m borrowers

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      Joe Biden announced plans to cancel student loans for 30 million borrowers on Monday, the administration’s latest push on addressing student debt before the presidential election.The plan primarily targets borrowers who have accrued a high level of interest on their debt and those who have been in repayment for at least 20 years. Borrowers who face extreme economic hardship could also see some relief.The White House said that parts of the plan could begin to take effect in the early fall, at the earliest. In addition to a waiting period to receive public comment, the administration is expecting legal challenges from Republicans that could stall the plan from going into effect.Biden touted the new plan in a speech Monday afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, where he said “too many people feel the strain and stress” of student loans.“Today, too many Americans, especially young people, are saddled with unsustainable debts in exchange for a college degree,” Biden said. “It’s a drag on our local economy.“Now, thanks to what we’re doing, that debt is no longer holding you back.The bulk of borrowers impacted by the plan will be those who owe more than their original balance because of accumulated interest. Borrowers who make under $120,000 a year, or married borrowers who make under $240,000, will automatically receive cancellation for the amount their balance has grown because of interest, up to $20,000. This cancellation will be automatic, and the administration estimates it will impact more than 25 million borrowers.The plan also targets borrowers who have held their debt for nearly 20 years. Borrowers who started repayment on their undergraduate debt on or before 1 July 2005 or their graduate school debt on or before 1 July 2000 will see the rest of their loans forgiven. The White House estimates about 2.5 million borrowers would be affected by this.Borrowers who are facing economic hardship and are at high risk of defaulting on their loans because of economic hardship in their daily lives, for example having medical debt or child care costs, may see their debt automatically cancelled under the plan.The administration is also trying to automatically enroll borrowers who are qualified for various forgiveness programs, including the Save plan and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan, but have not signed up for them. The White House estimates 2 million borrowers who could see their loans forgiven have not signed up for the programs.If the plan is executed, it would bring the total number of borrowers who have seen debt relief under Biden to 30 million.Though he had promised to cancel student debt during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden has been fighting an uphill battle to try to address student debt after the supreme court last year blocked his big plan to cancel some debt for at least 43 million borrowers, including $20,000 in cancellation for some borrowers.After the supreme court’s decision, the White House’s student debt strategy has been to specifically target groups of borrowers for relief, especially those who have held debt for multiple decades and students who attended predatory for-profit schools.The White House also launched the Save (Saving on A Valuable Education) plan, a revamped income-driven repayment plan that allows borrowers to be on track for forgiveness if they pay a set portion of their income every month.Biden on Wednesday noted that “tens of millions of people’s debt was literally about to get cancelled”.“Then some of my Republican friends, elected officials and special interests sued us, and the supreme court blocked us. But that didn’t stop us,” he said. “I mean it sincerely, we continue to find alternatives past student debt repayments that are not challengeable.” More

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      Trump to seek federal investigations of Biden if re-elected, report says

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      Donald Trump will seek to mount federal investigations and prosecutions of Joe Biden and his family if Trump wins re-election this year, the news site Axios reported.“Everything you have seen from the Biden Department of Justice you can expect to see from the Trump DoJ,” a source “close to the Trump campaign” was quoted as saying.Another “Trump ally” said current federal charges against Trump were all the precedent Trump would need to prosecute Biden in turn.Trump is virtually certain to be the Republican nominee in November and regularly bests Biden in head-to-head polling. Trump is also performing strongly in key swing states.Trump also faces 44 federal criminal charges: 40 over his retention of classified information and four over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. His other 44 criminal charges are at the state level: 10 over election subversion in Georgia and 34 over hush-money payments in New York.Should Trump be re-elected, he could dismiss the federal charges or pardon himself. He could not rid himself of the state charges.New York, Trump’s home state until he moved to Florida after leaving the White House, is also the source of multimillion-dollar penalties in two civil cases – one over tax fraud and one concerning defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy – which has generated a trial schedule due to begin next Monday, in the New York hush-money case – Trump strolled to the Republican nomination to face Biden again in November.Biden was investigated for retaining classified information from his time as vice-president to Barack Obama. Unlike Trump, he co-operated with authorities. Unlike Trump, Biden was not charged.As president, Trump was impeached twice: first for blackmailing Ukraine for dirt on opponents including Biden and second for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.House Republicans have attempted to impeach Biden over alleged corruption involving his son, Hunter Biden, but have seen such efforts descend into farce in a series of chaotic hearings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNonetheless, Mike Davis, a former legal aide to Chuck Grassley – an Iowa senator among Republicans embarrassed when a key source of allegations against the Bidens was jailed and linked to Russian intelligence – told Axios the Bidens were guilty of “illegal foreign corruption”.“The Biden justice department will not do anything about it, so the Trump 47 justice department should,” Davis said, referring to Trump’s status as the 47th president, as well as the 45th, should he win re-election.Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee who was a manager in Trump’s second impeachment, told Axios: “In saying that they are going to enable Donald Trump’s criminal vengeance campaign, [Republicans] are taking this from a farce to tragedy.” More

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      Trump one week, Biden the next: what do presidential polls teach us?

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      In recent months, polling has generally showed President Joe Biden running behind his Republican challenger, Donald Trump, by a small margin, particularly in swing states like Georgia and Arizona. But election polling began to fluctuate after Biden’s State of the Union speech last month.The question is how much meaning observers should ascribe to polls in April, seven months ahead of the election.“We’re pretty well beyond the point where it starts becoming meaningful,” said Dave Wasserman, editor at the election-analysis newsletter the Cook Political Report. “We’re seeing a lot of variation in polls, which is not new.”Most political partisans have long made up their minds about their preferred candidate. But large numbers of voters aren’t really paying attention to the election campaigns yet.“The polling has a lot of noise because of polarization,” said Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist, campaign strategist and author of Hit ’Em Where It Hurts. “The polling is measuring latent partisanship. … But, you know, at the end of the day, it is going to be a 50-50 race coming into election day. I don’t know why folks are having a hard time accepting that.”The discipline of political polling comes under perennial challenge every election cycle, occasionally metastasizing into cancerous error like “unskewed polls”. Pollsters try to focus on building a demographic model of the electorate that’s accurate, to weight the results of a poll correctly. If a pollster under- or overestimates the proportion of, say, Latino voters or college-educated voters or young voters on election day, a poll will reflect that error.But pollsters also treat their formulae for weighting polls like a trade secret akin to the recipe for Coca-Cola, said Louis Perron, a political strategist and author of Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections. That lack of transparency contributes to polling error, he said.“Polls have been considerably off for many cycles. Now, after every election cycle, pollsters claim to have learned their lesson, just to be wrong again,” Perron said.“Now, in their defense, primary polling seems to be OK. Let’s wait for the general election. I mean, Trump has been seriously underestimated in many polls, as have Trump voters. So, maybe the simple reason why he’s now ahead is because he’s no longer underestimated. Maybe they have adapted the polling, and that’s why he’s now doing better than ever.”Even the most precise polling leaves room for questions. If the margin of error on a poll is 3%, that means the poll has a 95% chance to be within three points of the population surveyed. The margin of error in a poll varies inversely by the square root of the sample size. A poll of 100 voters may vary by as much as 10% from the views of a group. Polls of 1,000 people have an error rate closer to 3%.Several polls in recent months have suggested Trump is winning as much as 20% of Black voters. Most of those estimates are based on samples within larger polls that are too small to be accurate, said BlackPAC executive director Adrianne Shropshire.“It’s not reflected in our own polling,” she said. Her group polls between 600 and 1,000 Black voters at a time. “There’s nothing close to a historic shift in Black voters’ intentions.”Consider news reports about a New York Times/Siena poll last month showing Trump with 23% support among Black voters: only 119 of the respondents were Black. An Economist/YouGov poll suggested about 12% of Black voters support Trump; there, only 168 respondents were Black. A Marquette University poll cited by the Washington Post showing “at least 20 percent” Black support for Trump surveyed only 92 Black voters.A substantial decline in voters’ responsiveness to the phone calls and internet entreaties of pollsters is adding to polling challenges, Wasserman said. Fewer than 1% of pollsters’ attempts to contact voters for a poll are now successful. Those who do pick up a phone might have stronger political views than those who ignore the call.“It’s a fraction of what it used to be because respondents can screen their calls. They are getting far more spam than they used to,” he said. “Response rates are really, really low, and that creates the bigger possibility for a systemic polling error of the kind that we saw in 2016 or 2020.”But despite the gaps, polls historically trend in the right direction. Polling was fairly accurate in 2018 and 2022 – years without presidential contests, Wasserman noted.“The question is: in ’24, is there a similar hidden Trump vote? Or are polls roughly on the mark? Or is there a hidden Biden vote because Democrats are less enthusiastic about Biden than Republicans are about Trump?”Polls especially have a place in understanding where the electorate is at a point in time.“What the polls tell us is that voters aren’t necessarily enamored with Republicans. But they’re very down about Biden’s management of foreign policy, the economy, immigration – and not by small margins, by very large margins. And that’s contributing to his status as an underdog in this race.”For now, many voters are tuned out of presidential politics, particularly the “double haters” – those who dislike both Biden and Trump. And those are the voters likely to decide the election in close states.“In terms of the general public, they’re both deeply flawed general-election candidates,” Perron said. “Double haters will decide the election. Those who actually have a negative opinion about both candidates will ultimately decide the election by choosing what appears to them to be the lesser evil.” More

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      Presidents assemble: Obama can reach parts of Democratic base Biden can’t

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      For once showbusiness royalty – Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, Lea Michele and Mindy Kaling – was not the main attraction. Instead it was a trio of US presidents that enticed people to pay up to half a million dollars for New York’s hottest ticket.Last month Joe Biden was joined onstage by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at a sold-out Radio City Music Hall. At more than $26m, it was the most successful political fundraising event in history. It was also an “Avengers assemble” moment for Democrats seeking to bury their differences ahead of November’s presidential election.“Last night showed our sceptics, as well as our supporters – it showed the press; it showed everyone – that we are united. We’re a united party,” Biden said later, hinting at the contrast with his opponent, former president Donald Trump, who is shunned by his only living Republican predecessor, George W Bush, and even his own vice-president, Mike Pence.But the spectacle of three living Democratic presidents (the fourth, Jimmy Carter, is 99 and in hospice care) joining forces masked some complex personal dynamics in a White House race where 81-year-old Biden is likely to need all the help that he can get.Obama, 62, remains the Democratic party’s biggest star with books, media appearances, civil society work, plans for a presidential library and campaign speeches each electoral cycle. Clinton, 77, by contrast, saw his stock plummet when Democrats moved left on policy and embraced the #MeToo movement’s reckoning over sexual misconduct.But analysts believe that both men could prove powerful surrogates for Biden as he seeks to emulate them by winning a second term. Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “We’re going to see a lot more of President Obama during this election. He’s the best surrogate for President Biden for the constituencies that he needs to shore up: Black voters, young voters, the Democratic coalition.“Bill Clinton still has an appeal in a certain constituency within the Democratic establishment, so they will use him where they think he’s best suited. If they didn’t think he had value, he would not have been on that stage.”It is a team of former rivals. The three men were on a collision course during the Democratic presidential primary election in 2008. Biden and Obama sought the nomination, as did Clinton’s wife, Hillary. Obama came out on top then chose Biden as vice-president and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.View image in fullscreenAs Obama’s two terms were ending and the 2016 election was approaching, he nudged Hillary Clinton to the forefront as his preferred successor and dissuaded Biden from running after Biden’s elder son died of cancer. Clinton lost to Trump, who lost to Biden in 2020. Obama privately helped clear a path for Biden to the Democratic nomination that year.There have been notable splits between the presidents on key issues. Biden was unsuccessful in persuading Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan in 2009. US forces remained in the country until 2021, when Biden withdrew them during his first year in office.But at last month’s fundraiser, moderated by the late-night TV host Stephen Colbert, the pair were in lockstep. After Biden had painted a dire picture of the threat posed by Trump, it was Obama who highlighted the current president’s achievements, from record-breaking job growth to lower healthcare costs, from expanding college access to a historic investment in clean energy.“It’s not just the negative case against the presumptive nominee on the other side,” Obama said. “It’s the positive case for somebody who’s done an outstanding job in the presidency.”Pro-Palestinian protesters heckled the presidents’ conversation, underlining how the war in Gaza has become one of Biden’s biggest electoral vulnerabilities. When Obama was interrupted, he pushed back in a way that might have been awkward for the current president: “Here’s the thing: you can’t just talk and not listen because that’s part of democracy. Part of democracy is not just talking; it’s listening. That’s what the other side does.”Obama’s exalted status among Democrats could give him a central role in get-out-the-vote efforts in the final weeks of the campaign. David Litt, one of his speechwriters at the White House, said: “President Obama has kind of become a cultural figure in a way that most presidents are not and so he has an ability to reach audiences and a credibility with audiences that might be sceptical of Biden right now, especially younger groups of people.”He added: “To be able to have Barack Obama say Joe Biden has done a great job is just inherently more credible than Joe Biden saying Joe Biden’s done a great job. In the same way that if I tell you that I’m really good-looking, that’s not very convincing.”Obama’s presence on the campaign trail will be a useful reminder of his signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare, which Trump narrowly failed to repeal and has vowed to attack again. His charisma and eloquence could have a downside, however, if he consistently overshadows Biden and throws his age into sharp relief.View image in fullscreenHenry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I don’t think they should share a stage. You want to have Obama as a surrogate; as a former president, he can draw attention on his own. You do not want to have the contrast of a young, fluidly moving, fluidly speaking Obama with the rather rigid-in-all-respects president of the United States.”Like Carter before him, Clinton has spent years in a political wilderness of sorts. A crime bill he signed as president is widely blamed for fuelling a mass incarceration crisis, while his “third way” economic centrism and welfare reform are out of step with today’s progressive movement. A New York Times newspaper report on the 2018 midterm elections was headlined: “No One Wants to Campaign With Bill Clinton Anymore.”His 1998 affair with Monica Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old White House intern, and other allegations of sexual misconduct have come under renewed scrutiny. Comments last month by Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville – blaming “too many preachy females” in the Democratic party – reinforced the view that the Clinton era belongs firmly in the 20th century.But the 42nd president, who once styled himself as “the comeback kid”, has no intention of leaving the arena. On Sunday Clinton will lead the US presidential delegation to Rwanda to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the genocide. In November, just after the election, Clinton will publish a memoir about his post-presidential life.And at last month’s fundraiser in New York, he relished the opportunity to praise Biden – “That’s the kind of president I want. Stay with what works” – and take a swipe at Trump’s economic record. “President Trump – let’s be honest – had a pretty good couple of years because he stole them from Barack Obama.”Joshua Kendall, a presidential historian, was surprised by Clinton’s presence there. “The MeToo allegations are pretty serious because it’s not just Monica Lewinsky but Juanita Broaddrick,” he said, referring to a woman who accused of Clinton of rape (Clinton has consistently denied all accusations of harassment and assault).“There are also a couple of other allegations that are serious but it seems that people are a little bit sick of #MeToo and so Clinton has been recycled. The Democrats are just so focused on Trump that they feel like they can’t afford any sort of internal squabbles. That’s why Clinton is there. They just feel like they have to do everything they can to work together because polls are frightening.”Biden, Clinton and Obama closed out the New York fundraiser by donning Biden’s trademark sunglasses as the president quipped, “Dark Brandon is real,” a nod to a meme featuring Biden with lasers for eyes. They are likely to mount another show of unity at the Democratic national convention in Chicago this summer.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “Obama can fire up a crowd and Clinton does have a charisma factor, so it’s not bad having him on your team – as long as Hillary is not there and as long as Bill Clinton is the third man as opposed to the lead.” More

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      ‘He can help Trump win’: US groups take on RFK Jr after No Labels stands down

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      Celebrating the demise of No Labels as a third-party presidential election threat, two advocacy groups who mobilised against it have said they would now turn their sights on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent run for the White House.Though it is hard to make solid predictions, a high-profile third-party run in 2024 unnerves both Republicans and Democrats who fear it might siphon off their votes. But the nervousness is especially pronounced among supporters of Joe Biden, who worry such a campaign could split the center and left and allow Donald Trump and his highly motivated rightwing base to win a return to the Oval Office.“Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr,” Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told reporters a day after No Labels said it would not field a candidate against Biden and Trump in November.Kennedy – an environmental attorney, conspiracy theorist and member of a famous political family – is running as an independent, gaining ballot access and polling in double figures.“We’re going to let folks know he can’t win,” Epting said, “but he can help Trump win” by taking votes from Biden.“We’re going to let folks know that he said he supported abortion bans. We’re going to let folks know that his vice-presidential pick [Nicole Shanahan, an attorney] calls IVF ‘one of the biggest lies’ and we’re going to let folks know that his dark money Super Pac is being funded by Trump donors.“There’s a lot we’re gonna let folks know. This victory against No Labels is just the start. There is a lot of work that we have to do.”No Labels said on Thursday it had not been able to find a candidate to run against Biden and Trump.On Friday Matthew Bennett, of Third Way, said No Labels was helped on its way out by a coalition put together by his centre-left group and MoveOn, an effort “from the left all the way to the centre-right and the Never Trump movement”.But, Bennett said, “The challenges ahead of us are in some ways even tougher.“Kennedy cannot be talked out of this race. He is going to have a lot of money and he’s not subject to reason. So we’re going to have to make clear that voters understand who this guy is, and that is not his father.”Kennedy is the son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and the nephew of the 35th president, John F Kennedy.But, Bennett said, the current Kennedy “is not a safe place to park your vote if you’re dissatisfied with something that [Biden] is doing. This guy’s dangerous and voting for him is tantamount to voting for Trump. It’s also true of the other third-party candidates, Jill Stein [the Green nominee] and anybody else who runs.”Bennett said No Labels had posed a danger by planning to attack Biden from the political centre, even though Biden, as a Washington dealmaker of 50 years standing, was “kind of the platonic ideal of a No Labels candidate”.Kennedy, Bennett said, “is coming from some kind of weirdo fringe … and so it is harder to understand who his coalition is. However, our view is that anyone who divides the anti-Trump coalition is dangerous.”The Biden campaign has set up a team to combat Kennedy. But, Epting said, “It is incredibly important that we get to work in campaigning against Robert Kennedy … and ensure that the choices in November are clear to voters. It is that whether we like it or not … we live in a two-party system and there’s only two candidates that can win this presidential election. Donald Trump or Joe Biden.“Our job is to make that very clear to voters and in terms of resources … to ensure that we re-elect President Biden and an usher in a Democratic House and Senate. We have a $32m program to do that and we will be driving … We’ve got a great team that we assigned to this No Labels work. We’re going to reassign them to our Robert Kennedy work.”Epting and Bennett were asked what they would do to woo “the Kennedy curious”, voters who might be won back, perhaps by less brusque tactics than those employed by Hillary Clinton, who said this week anyone dissatisfied with a Biden-Trump rematch should “get over yourself”.“We’re not going to shame people into voting for Joe Biden,” Epting said. “That is not the pathway to get us out of this quagmire.“Really, it’s making a strategic case to voters, [saying], ‘We understand your grievances, we hear them and yet we live in a two-party presidential system.’ So the impact of your vote … will result in one of two possible worlds. A world in which Donald Trump is president, and he is dismantling our democracy even further. He is instituting a national abortion ban. He is setting up migrant camps, etc.“Or a world in which Joe Biden continues to be in the Oval Office and we’re able to continue to campaign, to push him to enact all the policies that we have dreamed up to strengthen our democracy: to go further around gun violence prevention reform, to protect abortion rights, to continue to create green new jobs and invest in our economy, to continue to tax the rich.”Epting promised to ask “tough questions” of Kennedy on subjects such as abortion, on which he supported a 15-week ban before quickly reversing.“We need to get [his responses] on camera and we need to share what we get … with all the voters that we can, especially in battleground states and districts,” Epting said.Asked about previous Democratic defeats involving third-party candidates, Bennett said that as “a veteran of the [Al] Gore campaign” of 2000, “losing two elections in my professional life to third-party candidates is incredibly galling, and I have made it my mission that we won’t lose three.”That was also a reference to 2016, when Jill Stein took votes from Clinton as Trump won.Bennett said: “I think everybody in Democratic politics … ignored Jill Stein in 2016 because we did not think that she posed a threat, just as the Gore campaign didn’t think Ralph Nader posed a threat in 2000.“We’re simply not going to make that mistake again.” More

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      Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed

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      Donald Trump’s speeches on the 2024 campaign trail so far have been focused on a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly menacing tone.He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:
      Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.
      Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”
      Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.
      Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.
      Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.
      Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.
      This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.But it’s also often the shortest part.Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of injecting bleach during the pandemic.But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).View image in fullscreenHe made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home, we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting, he said.“Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad thing,” he said.These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”Or another Hollywood-related bop, inspired by a rant about Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s romantic relationship:“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”He still claims to have “done more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln” and also now says he’s being persecuted more than Lincoln and Andrew Jackson:“All my life you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, he was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else, second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it.”You not only see the truly bizarre nature of his speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.View image in fullscreen“Democrats said please don’t call them ‘animals’. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals,” he said during a speech in Michigan this week.“In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said during his March appearance in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it,” he said.And he has turned more authoritarian in his language, saying he would be a “dictator on day one” but then later said it would only be for a day. He’s called his political enemies “vermin”: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said in New Hampshire in late 2023.At a speech in March in Ohio about the US auto industry he claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, which some interpreted as him claiming there would be violence if he loses the election.Trump’s campaign said later that he meant the comment to be specific to the auto industry, but now the former president has started saying Biden created a “border bloodbath” and the Republican National Committee created a website to that effect as well.It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”But if you ask Trump himself, these are just examples that Trump is smart, he says.“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.” More