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      Biden tells campaign staff: ‘No one is pushing me out … I’m not leaving’; second House Democrat urges him to quit race – live

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      Joe Biden vowed to stay in the presidential race and continue his re-election bid, telling his staffers: “No one is pushing me out,” according to multiple reports.In a call on Wednesday following his lackluster performance during last week’s presidential debate and amid growing panic from Democratic donors and lawmakers, Biden said:
      Let me say this as clearly as possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running.
      Biden went on to add:
      No one is pushing me out … I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.
      In the same call, vice-president Kamala Harris – whose name has been increasingly floated around as Biden’s replacement – continued to voice her support for Biden, with reports of her saying:
      We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win. Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.
      Amid the political crisis surrounding the Democratic party, Joe Biden hosted a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House today during which he posthumously honoured two Union soldiers.The soldiers, private George Wilson and private Philip Shadrach fought in a “military operation 200 miles deep into Confederate territory in April 1862”, Biden said, recognising them for their “gallantry and intrepidity”.The next platform of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is going to be closed off from the public, Semafor reports.Unlike previous years, next week’s party platform proceedings will not be aired via C-Span. Instead, it will be held privately and away from the public and members of the media.According to RNC emails reviewed by Semafor, committee meetings “are only open to members of that particular committee”.Speaking to Semafor, Oscar Brock, an RNC committee member from Tennessee, said:
      The lack of transparency is unwelcome … When people operate behind closed doors, you always have to wonder what the outcome is going to be.”
      Donald Trump’s campaign has released a statement on what it called the “total collapse of the Democrat party”.On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign said:
      Every Democrat who is calling on Crooked Joe Biden to quit was once a supporter of Biden and his failed policies that lead to extreme inflation, an open border, and chaos at home and abroad.
      Make no mistake that Democrats, the main stream media, and the swamp colluded to hide the truth from the American public – Joe Biden is weak, failed, dishonest, and not fit for the White House.
      Every one of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years, especially Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris.
      The statement comes after last week’s presidential debate which saw an energized Trump with starkly more coherent delivery – despite being packed with lies and misinformation – compared with Biden who struggled to articulate his policies throughout the 90 minutes.House Democrat Raúl Grijalva of Arizona has joined his fellow House Democrat Lloyd Doggett of Texas in calls for Joe Biden to withdraw his re-election bid.In an interview with the New York Times, Grijalva said:
      If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere … What he really needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat – and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.
      As Joe Biden’s campaign team rushes to soothe concerns among Democrats amid the fallout following the president’s poor performance during last week’s presidential debate, the team posted a new job listing: Kamala Harris’s social media platforms strategist.In its listing, the team described the position as:
      The VP Social Media Platforms Strategist will report to the VP Digital Director and be expected to write within an established organizational identity for multiple social media platforms and channels, while strategizing how to further develop and expand the vice-president’s and Biden-Harris campaign’s voice online.
      Its duties include:
      Write daily content and manage scheduling for Twitter/X, Threads, Facebook and Instagram accounts, including drafting, conceptualizing graphics, videos, brainstorming calls to action, and copywriting
      Strategize and execute innovative social media projects to help grow and engage our audience
      Project manage publishing assets across multiple social media platforms
      Ensure materials are sufficiently accessible for users, including captioning and alternative text
      Help the VP digital director report on audience growth, content performance and engagement that can adapt to and meet the needs of stakeholders across the DNC and manage daily outbound report
      Michelle Obama is the only Democrat who ranks higher than Biden in a new poll on who is most likely to beat Trump.According to a new poll on Tuesday conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, the former first lady is the only Democrat that is able to attain victory over Trump in November in a hypothetical match, leading with 50% support compared to his 39%.In its findings, Ipsos wrote:
      All other hypothetical Democratic candidates either perform similarly to or worse than Biden against Trump.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris hypothetically wins 42% of registered voters to Trump’s 43%. California Governor Gavin Newsom hypothetically wins 39% of registered voters to Trump’s 42%.
      All other hypothetical Democratic candidates earn between 34% to 39% of potential votes among registered voters.
      Despite Michelle Obama’s popularity and calls for her to run for president, her office in March said that “she will not be running for president.”“Mrs Obama supports president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris’s re-election campaign,” her office added.The editorial board of the Boston Globe has called on Joe Biden to end his re-election bid, following in the footsteps of the New York Times which called on Biden last week to drop out of the race.In an op-ed published on Wednesday, the editorial board wrote:
      … while the party is demoralized, panicked, and angry, there is a ray of hope. A bevy of potential candidates – from vice-president Kamala Harris to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California, to name only a partial list – are waiting in the wings to take on Trump.
      All that they need is for Biden to graciously bow out of the race and free his delegates to cast their votes for someone else at the Democratic National Convention.
      For the good of the country, his party, and his legacy, Biden must do this. And soon.
      It went on to add:
      The real obstacle to any of this happening is Biden himself. He must walk away from the race on his own, something he seems disinclined to do. His wife and children are said to oppose the idea as well. But with the nation’s future at stake, this is not a decision that should be made by one family alone.
      This is a moment when the Democratic party itself, never particularly good at behaving like a party, must step into the fray.
      Joe Biden vowed to stay in the presidential race and continue his re-election bid, telling his staffers: “No one is pushing me out,” according to multiple reports.In a call on Wednesday following his lackluster performance during last week’s presidential debate and amid growing panic from Democratic donors and lawmakers, Biden said:
      Let me say this as clearly as possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running.
      Biden went on to add:
      No one is pushing me out … I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.
      In the same call, vice-president Kamala Harris – whose name has been increasingly floated around as Biden’s replacement – continued to voice her support for Biden, with reports of her saying:
      We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win. Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.
      Joe Biden is cleared-eyed and “staying in the race” for re-election, the White House insists.“The president is not dropping out,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just said at the media briefing in Washington DC.She is finding different ways, in response to reporters’ questions, to reiterate the insistence of the Biden team that he is not about to succumb to pressure to drop out after his terribly halting performance when he debated Donald Trump last week.“There was the travel. And the travel led to a cold. We have all been there, it’s not unusual. And you push through,” she said.Jean-Pierre added later that such things affect people, whether they are 20 or 80. She said he spoke about how his age had affected his performance and was being upfront.The White House is working painfully hard to extricate the president from his position between a rock and a hard place.Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that Joe Biden “powered through” having a cold when he debated poorly against Donald Trump last week, as is normal for busy professionals.It was not reassuring, as the White House continues on the defensive amid the crisis over Biden insisting he continue as the Democratic presumptive nominee for re-election, despite performing increasingly unreliably as an 81-year-old president of the United States.And Jean-Pierre said that the president was jet-lagged and pushing through that, too, last Thursday, even though he had around 12 days back in the US between a spate of grueling overseas trips and the debate.She said that people “push through” jet lag, trying to convince reporters decades younger than Biden that it would be unsurprising that a cold and jet lag would affect his debate performance.Some reporters in the West Wing briefing room scoffed openly, mentioning that, yes, they have had colds and, even now, according to one, have jet lag – and yet they continue to perform their jobs much more vigorously than Biden did at the debate.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just been asked point blank if Joe Biden is considering stepping away from being the presumptive nominee for re-election to the White House in this November’s election.“Absolutely not,” she said. Asked if there was anything that would change his mind, she said she can’t speak to that but says he has been “very clear” that he’s busy doing his job and will continue doing that.“I’m not going to speak to [about] unnamed sources out there,” she said.The White House press briefing has begun in the West Wing, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the podium.Questions are already beginning about Biden’s performance.He has owned that he had a bad night at the debate, the press secretary said.“He also had a cold during the debate,” she said.That, and the foreign travel that Biden blamed last night, are why he didn’t do well and wishes he could have done better, Jean-Pierre said.“We certainly don’t want to explain this away,” she added.She explained that he has “made outreach” to the leading Democrats in Congress, including the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, made a surprise appearance earlier today on a Democratic National Committee call, reiterating to staffers that they are in this fight for re-election together, according to three people familiar with the matter who were given anonymity to discuss the private conversation.The people said it was a pep talk, stressing the stakes of the election and returning to Biden’s previous post-debates comments that when he gets knocked down he gets back up and still plans to win the election, the Associated Press reports.Democrats have raised increasingly urgent questions about the US president’s ability to remain in the race, much less win in November, after his shaky debate performance last week.Here’s a look at where the day stands:
      The White House pushed back against a new New York Times report that Joe Biden allegedly told a key ally that he is weighing whether to stay in the presidential race. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported an anonymous source saying of Biden, “He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place,” referring to last week’s presidential debate in which Biden did poorly. In response, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates took to X, posting publicly: “That claim is absolutely false.”
      House Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington said that Joe Biden “is going to lose to Trump” following the president’s poor debate performance last week. In a new interview with KATU News, Gluesenkamp Perez said: “About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes. We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
      Dozens of House Democrats are considering signing a letter to call for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, Bloomberg reports, citing a “senior party official”. According to the source, Democrats currently running for re-election in “traditionally safe Democratic districts are circulating the letter”.
      Joe Biden has privately acknowledged how critical the next few days are to his presidential re-election bid, CNN reports. According to the outlet citing an anonymous source, Biden “sees the moment, he’s clear-eyed”. “The polls are plummeting, the fundraising is drying up, and the interviews are going badly. He’s not oblivious,” the source said, adding that Biden allegedly said in a private conversation on Tuesday: “I have done way too much foreign policy.”
      The majority of people surveyed in a new poll said that they did not think Biden was fit to be president for another term following his debate performance last week. The latest survey by YahooNews/YouGov found that 60% of people surveyed felt Biden was “not fit” to serve another term as president, the Hill reported. Only 24% of respondents felt that Biden was fit, while 16% said they were unsure.
      Another Democratic legislator has suggested that Kamala Harris could replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee amid growing discontent following Biden’s poor debate performance. House Democrat Summer Lee of Pennsylvania said Harris was the “obvious choice” in a scenario where Biden decides not to run, CBS News reported.
      Uncommitted voters across the US have taken on increased influence as debates surrounding Joe Biden’s future swirl.The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:After Joe Biden’s poor debate performance and calls by some prominent Democrats to replace him, the hundreds of thousands of anti-war voters and the delegates who represent them have taken on new significance in the US presidential race.More than 700,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic primaries for “uncommitted” options after a movement started in Michigan to pressure Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and stop US funding and arms to the Israeli government.These voters won 29 uncommitted delegates to the Democratic national convention, a small but vocal group that will use their position at the nominating convention to call for an end to the war. The uncommitted vote consists of likely Democratic voters who have consistently said they are anti-Trump and who used the primary process to send a message to Biden.Their message has not changed, though uncommitted delegates said they have been hearing from more people about the role they could play in the convention since last week’s debate. Their sole platform remains a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo, and their focus is still on Biden – who is still the president.For the full story, click here: More

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      Kamala Harris may be our only hope. Biden should step aside and endorse her | Mehdi Hasan

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      I have never been a fan of Kamala Harris.I was an outspoken critic of her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, earning the ire both of her then spokesperson and also the notorious “KHive” of terminally online Harris fans.Nor did I shed any tears when her campaign turned out to be a disaster and she ended up withdrawing from the race before a single vote had been cast in the primaries.So it is with some surprise, reluctance and even trepidation that I am now writing these words: Joe Biden should stand aside and endorse Kamala Harris as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.Yes, it is time for those of us who have been loud critics of Harris to make an even louder case for the vice-president. To lock arms with the dreaded KHive and put aside our longstanding doubts about the vice-president’s political skills.Because the future of our republic may depend upon us doing so.First, some facts about Joe Biden. The president was trailing Donald Trump in the polls before last week’s debate – and he is still trailing Donald Trump after the debate. The president was old before the debate – and he is even older after the debate. He, of course, continues to get older with every passing day.On Sunday, a CBS News poll found a whopping 72% of voters say Biden does not have the “mental and cognitive health” to serve as president. Almost half of Democrats say they want the Democratic presidential nominee to step aside.So I won’t waste time making the case for why Biden shouldn’t be running for re-election. Those of us 51 million people who tuned into the CNN debate last week “can’t unsee what we saw”, to quote a recent Slate headline.Nor will I bother to make the case for a Gretchen Whitmer or a Gavin Newsom. Would they be preferable to Harris? Yes. Do I believe the Democratic party establishment is willing to take a punt on an “open convention” in Chicago next month? Nope. Therefore, the only viable alternative to Biden right now is Harris – especially as she was elected alongside him by 81 million Americans and is also the only potential nominee who can access the $91m in his campaign bank account right now.So, with apologies to my 2020 self, let me make a (reluctant) case for why the vice-president should take over from her boss.First, her numbers. For as long as I can remember, the argument from Team Biden has been that if Joe steps aside, then only Kamala becomes the candidate, and she has even less chance of beating Donald than Joe does. The vice-president polls worse than the president, they constantly whisper to reporters (off the record).Now, that may have once been true. But it simply isn’t the case any more. Even before last week’s debate, a Politico poll showed Harris outperforming Biden in Black and Hispanic communities, where Trump has been making inroads, while a Bloomberg News poll revealed a vice-president “increasingly endearing herself to swing-state voters”.On Friday, the day after the debate, Data for Progress published a poll showing Harris performing “the same as Biden in a head-to-head matchup against Trump”. By Tuesday, a CNN poll was showing Harris, unlike Biden, “within striking distance” of Trump, thanks in part to “broader support from women (50% of female voters back Harris over Trump v 44% for Biden against Trump) and independents (43% Harris v 34% Biden)”.You might not want to believe it, and lazy pundits may say otherwise, but the polling is pretty clear these days: Harris actually has a better chance than Biden of beating Trump. And, unlike the president, the veep’s numbers have – and you’ll be hearing this phrase a great deal in the coming days – room to grow.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSecond, there’s her record. With the exception of Biden himself, Harris has served in elected office – as a district attorney, state attorney general, senator and vice-president – longer than any Democrat elected to the White House in my lifetime. As a former prosecutor, she is ideally positioned to make the case against Trump, a convicted felon.Who do you want standing on stage at the second debate in September, rebutting Trump’s lies, bigotry and nonsense? The woman who went viral when she grilled Bill Barr and Brett Kavanaugh at the Senate judiciary committee, or the man who went viral for saying he’d “beat Medicare”? Who is more likely to highlight Trump’s deeply unpopular stance on abortion? A female candidate who has spent months hammering Trump on abortion and made a historic visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic, or a male candidate who couldn’t answer a simple question on abortion rights without going off on a weird and incoherent tangent about a migrant murderer? Who is going to bring more energy to the Democratic presidential campaign – a vice-president who recently urged an audience of young voters to “kick that fucking door down”, or a president who is only “dependably engaged” between 10am and 4pm?Third, there’s the Gaza-shaped elephant in the room. Prior to last week’s debate, it wasn’t Biden’s age that I considered to be his biggest electoral liability. It was his horrific stance on Gaza, from his non-stop supply of arms to Israel to his nonexistent “red line” on Rafah. Support for Biden among not just Muslim-American and Arab-American voters, but young and Black voters, has been plummeting since 7 October 2023. More than half a million “uncommitted” Democratic voters, who could affect the results in multiple swing states, have urged the president to end his unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.Given Biden refuses to budge on this issue, a Harris candidacy might offer a fresh start for Democrats on Gaza. Remember the headline in Politico from December? “Kamala Harris pushes White House to be more sympathetic toward Palestinians.” Or the NBC News reporting from March on how Biden’s national security council “toned down parts of her speech” calling for a ceasefire, because the original draft “was harsher on Israel”?“She is definitely better on Gaza than he is,” a well-connected member of the administration told me a few weeks ago.To be clear: I’m not saying Joe Biden can’t win or that Kamala Harris won’t lose. I’m simply saying that there is a younger, more popular, more effective campaigner ready and willing to go, who could turn the page on Gaza while giving Trump the rhetorical drubbing he so deserves.I’m reminding Democrats that they still have time to choose between trying to elect the oldest president in American history, whose age has become a weight around his neck, or trying to elect the first female president, the first Asian American president and the second Black president, which could energize their demoralized base.American democracy, as Democrats themselves repeatedly tell us, is on the line. And if we all have to join the KHive in order to try to save that democracy … then so be it.
      Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of Zeteo More

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      in US Politics

      Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?

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      Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.” More

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      ‘A healthcare crisis’: Harris takes aim at Trump on anniversary of Roe’s fall

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris marked the second anniversary of the US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade with forceful campaign statements that laid the blame squarely on Donald Trump for ending the national right to abortion.In a video released on Monday, Biden pledged to restore the right to an abortion and “protect American freedom” if he is re-elected.The video, along with a campaign event headlined by the vice-president, came two years to the day since the court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed nearly half a century of guaranteed federal abortion rights, and reflect the centrality of abortion in Biden’s presidential campaign.In College Park, Maryland, Harris took the stage to chants of “four more years”. In her remarks, Harris laid out what she said were the stakes for abortion access if Trump is re-elected.“Understand as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term would be even worse,” she said. “His friends in the United States Congress are trying to pass a national ban that would outlaw abortion in every single state – in states like New York and California, and even right here in Maryland.”Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, Harris called Trump’s attack on women’s reproductive rights “premeditated” and said he has “not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions”.“In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty,” she said.Harris called Republicans who have passed state-level bans Trump’s “accomplices” and warned that he would go even further by curtailing access to contraception and IVF.Pointing to the statistic that one in three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Kate Cox, the Texas woman who was denied an abortion under the state’s near-total ban last year despite a fatal fetal anomaly, introduced Harris in Maryland.“My state chose to drive me out of my home, my community, away from my children and my doctors, rather than to let me access care,” she said. “I will never again miss an opportunity to vote. I will cast my ballot in every election like my life depends on it.”Cox ultimately left Texas to receive care. Growing emotional from the stage on Monday, she shared that she is pregnant again, expecting a child in January. The crowd erupted in applause. “I hope that by then, when we welcome our baby into the world, we will have a world led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” she said.“You are a hero of this movement,” Harris told Cox.In Biden’s video, the president, too, placed the responsibility for reversing abortion rights on Trump, quoting him boasting about the decision and taking credit for putting three conservative justices on the court.“Here’s what Donald Trump says about your freedom: ‘After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v Wade,’” Biden says, quoting a Trump statement last year.“Two years ago, the supreme court justices that Trump handpicked helped overturn Roe v Wade,” Biden continues. “Decades of progress shattered just because the last guy got four years in the White House.”“We’re up against extremism. Send me back to the White House and I’ll fight like hell to restore Roe v Wade and protect American freedom.”The offensive comes amid polling evidence that with consistently weak approval ratings for Biden, concerns over reproductive rights represent Democrats’ best hope of retaining the White House in November.Since Roe v Wade was overthrown in 2022, ballot measures in several states – including ones that tend to vote Republican – have upheld or enshrined abortion rights locally, signalling that the issue has popular resonance particularly among female voters.On Friday, a group of Montana abortion rights supporters became the latest to announce that they had secured enough signatures to hold a November ballot measure asking voters to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. Although that measure has not yet been confirmed by state officials, voters in roughly a dozen states are expected to weigh in directly on abortion rights this year, including in battleground states such as Nevada and Arizona.Democrats are hoping that these measures will boost turnout in their favor.Several groups – including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Freedom for All – announced on Monday a $100m Abortion Access Now campaign across several states.Since Roe fell, Biden has frequently promised to “codify” Roe’s protections into law. Although his administration has issued executive orders aimed at boosting access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception, as well as defended abortion access in two supreme court cases this year, Biden cannot re-establish a federal right to abortion without congressional support. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that blocks states from totally banning abortion before fetal viability, or the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb.In a call with reporters on Monday, White House officials declined to reveal any plans for future abortion-related executive actions. Jennifer Klein, assistant to the president and director of the Gender Policy Council, also acknowledged that, if the supreme court rules against the Biden administration in a highly anticipated case over emergency abortions, “our options on emergency medical care are likely to be limited”.Trump has sought to backpedal on his stance in recent months, telling congressional Republicans in a meeting on Capitol Hill this month that the matter should be left to the states and warning them against pursuing a national ban. More

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      Kamala Harris on Trump’s conviction: ‘Cheaters don’t like getting caught’

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      Donald Trump has assailed the validity of his conviction in the criminal case involving hush-money payments to an adult film actor because “cheaters don’t like getting caught,” Kamala Harris said during a speech on Saturday.“Simply put, Donald Trump thinks he is above the law,” the vice-president told an audience at a dinner hosted by the Michigan state Democratic party. “This should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be president of the United States.”Harris’s remarks in Detroit about the presumptive Republican nominee for November’s presidential election came after the former president has repeatedly disparaged the New York state judge who oversaw the trial culminating in Trump’s being found guilty on 30 May.Trump has tried to persuade the electorate into believing that the judge, Juan Merchan, is unfair and somehow conspiring with the Joe Biden White House to which Harris belongs, even though it was state-level prosecutors – not federal ones – who brought the recently concluded case against him.Trump’s rhetoric that his criminal trial in New York was “rigged” echoed his supporters’ justification for their attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, a desperate but failed attempt to keep him in power after his electoral defeat to Biden weeks earlier, Harris suggested on Saturday. She also alluded to how Trump and his allies have openly boasted about exacting retribution against those who are perceived to have crossed the former president and some of his aides.“He suggests the case could be a ‘breaking point’ for his supporters, hinting at violence. He spreads lies that our administration is controlling this case when everyone knows it was a state prosecution. And he says that he will use a second term for revenge,” Harris said.“You know why he complains? Because the reality is cheaters don’t like getting caught.”While there was a generally friendly audience for her comments about Trump on Saturday, she was heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester demonstrating against the Biden administration’s response to Israel’s ongoing military strikes on Gaza. Officials quickly removed the heckler as the vice-president said, “I value and respect your voice – but I’m speaking right now,” the local television station WJBK reported.That encounter wasn’t the only time over the weekend that Biden’s administration was reminded of public dissatisfaction with its handling of the war in Gaza, which the Israeli military launched in response to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the White House on Saturday. Though footage posted to social media showed police using pepper spray on demonstrators, the Republican US senator Tom Cotton – a vocal, far-right critic of the Biden administration – appeared on Sunday on Fox News and argued that the president goes too easy on such protests.“Joe Biden thinks that these pro-Hamas, anti-American lunatics should be guiding American policy towards Israel,” Cotton said.Harris took aim at Trump on Saturday as the former president and Biden are essentially tied nationally as well as in key battleground states, at least according to a new poll by CBS News.That stalemate exists even after Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments delivered to Stormy Daniels, the adult entertainer who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with the Republican before he successfully ran for the Oval Office.He still faces 54 other pending criminal charges accusing him of 2020 election interference as well as improper retention of classified materials after his presidency, allegations contained in two federal prosecutions and one state case in Georgia.In civil court, Trump has been grappling with multimillion-dollar penalties for business practices deemed fraudulent as well as a rape accusation that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Republicans, meanwhile, have sought to embarrass Biden over the fact that his son, Hunter, had spent the previous several days standing trial on federal gun charges in Delaware. More

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      Joe Biden’s exquisite Trump verdict dilemma

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      Hello! Welcome back to our new US elections newsletter.I’m David Smith, Washington bureau chief, filling in for Adam Gabbatt this week.The fall from grace of Donald Trump, from commander-in-chief to convicted criminal, is still reverberating in Washington and beyond.Last week’s trial verdict drove yet another wedge between Republicans and Democrats. The former were fast and furious in denouncing it. The latter are less sure about how to proceed. And no one knows what impact it might have on the presidential election.First, some of the happenings in US politics.Here’s what you need to know …1. Biden’s border crackdownJoe Biden signed an executive order that will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded. The move is a dramatic reversal for a president and a party that spent years embracing the ideal of the US as a nation of immigrants.2. Garland stands his groundThe US attorney general, Merrick Garland, defended his stewardship of the justice department in a combative display on Capitol Hill that saw him accusing Republicans of attacking the rule of law while telling them he “will not be intimidated”. Testifying before the House judiciary committee, Garland accused Republican congressmen of engaging in conspiracy theories and peddling false narratives.3. Biden heads to France for D-day anniversaryJoe Biden is due to land in Paris, France, today ahead of the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings. France rescinded its decision to invite Russian representatives because of the Ukraine war. John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House national security council, said: “Russia led by Vladimir Putin is literally trying to undermine the rules-based order that the Soviet Union actually had a role in world war two in helping create.”Joe Biden’s exquisite dilemmaView image in fullscreenIn the final line of the 1972 film The Candidate, Bill McKay, played by Robert Redford, having just won election to the US Senate, turns to his political consultant and asks: “What do we do now?”That is the question for Joe Biden and Democrats after the euphoria of seeing Donald Trump become the first former US president convicted of a crime.Elections can be won or lost by defining a candidate with a single memorable framing: soft-on-crime Michael Dukakis, wealthy Mitt Romney, elitist Hillary Clinton. Last week’s conviction of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York is a permanent stain and would, in past times, have made such branding easy.But in the Maga “mirror world”, where January 6 rioters are perceived as “hostages” and Biden as the true threat to democracy, Democrats are proceeding with care. Trump has an unrivalled ability to turn his opponent’s own power against them. Think of it like tennis. The harder you whack the ball at Trump, the harder it tends to come back at you over the net.As the trial unfolded in New York, Biden, a devout institutionalist, took the reasonable view that less was more: the head of state ought to remain above the fray. And pragmatically, he was aware any perceived interventions would feed the baseless rightwing media narrative that he had loaded the legal system against his rival.But for his campaign team in Delaware, it became increasingly difficult to watch Biden’s speeches and their carefully crafted emails disappearing into the ether. Just as in the 2016 campaign, Trump was sucking up all political oxygen.On Tuesday of last week, the frustration came to a boil and they started to fight back, holding a press conference outside the court. The Biden campaign communications director, Michael Tyler, told reporters: “We’re not here today because of what’s going on over there. We’re here today because you all are here.”The campaign deployed Robert De Niro, a Hollywood actor famed for playing gangsters, to castigate Trump as the biggest mob boss of all. He also veered off script by becoming embroiled in a verbal brawl with Trump supporters.The episode prompted characteristic Democratic hand-wringing over whether De Niro, 80, was the right messenger with the right message, and Republican cries of hypocrisy. Jason Miller, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, said: “After months of saying politics had nothing to do with this trial, they showed up and made a campaign event out of a lower Manhattan trial day for President Trump.”A day later Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, launched a Black voters initiative at Philadelphia’s Girard College, a majority Black boarding school. Wednesdays had typically been a safe bet to wrestle back the news cycle because it was the trial’s day off. But on that particular Wednesday the jury was deliberating its verdict.TJ Ducklo, a senior adviser for communications for the Biden-Harris campaign, peevishly posted on X: “The President just spoke to approx 1,000 mostly black voters in Philly about the massive stakes in this election. @MSNBC @CNN & others did not show it. Instead, more coverage about a trial that impacts one person: Trump. Then they’ll ask, why isn’t your message getting out?”Such complaints can themselves be counterproductive. Worthy as the Biden event was, would any news organisation worth its salt really not devote full coverage to the first conviction of a former president – and potential future president – in American history?A day after the verdict, the president had a brief, deliberate riff on the trial. “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” he said. “And it’s reckless, it’s dangerous and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”Biden then spoke about a Middle East peace plan. But as he walked away, reporters shouted questions about the Trump verdict. Biden said nothing but turned and beamed.That evening, the Biden-Harris campaign went further with a press release headlined 34 Lowlights from Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s Press Conference Speech, mocking Trump’s chaotic performance at Trump Tower earlier in the day. And at a campaign event on Monday, Biden referred to Trump as a “convicted felon”.But how long and how hard to press this case is a dilemma. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 10% of Republicans and 25% of independents say they are less likely to vote for Trump because of the verdict.Former Alabama senator Doug Jones told the Politico website: “I don’t think Democrats need to be shy about weighing in. I don’t think there’s anything to lose and a lot to gain, because I am convinced there’s a swath of people out there who are going to be very, very troubled by this at this point and haven’t really completely followed it, wondered about it – but now all of a sudden, this is a gamechanger.”Others, however, point to opinion polls suggesting that Trump’s criminal conviction will not shift many voters and could even backfire. The Trump campaign claims it raised $53m online in the 24 hours after the verdict. Republicans are keeping the topic alive at every opportunity, crying “sham” and “show trial” and vowing retribution.The more cautious Democrats also believe time and effort would be better spent promoting Biden’s record and drawing a contrast with Trump on policy: abortion rights, the economy, climate, racial justice, foreign affairs and defending democracy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVoters in crucial battleground states, the theory goes, are more exercised by the price of eggs or gas than the findings of a jury in Manhattan.Democrats have long been accused of pulling their punches, lacking the killer instinct that is part of Republicans’ DNA. In this case, Biden has to thread the needle with exquisite precision, offering a message that reminds independent voters why they should reject his opponent – while not firing up the Trump base or giving moderate Republicans a reason to return to the fold.Lock him up? It’s complicated.Lie of the weekView image in fullscreen“I didn’t say ‘Lock her up,’” the man who repeatedly both said and encouraged a frequent chant of “lock her up” claimed after he was convicted of 34 felonies.Former president Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview after his conviction in the New York hush-money trial that it was just his supporters who said “lock her up,” referring to Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.“The people would all say, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’” Trump claimed. “Then we won. And I say – and I said pretty openly, I said, ‘All right, come on, just relax, let’s go, we’ve got to make our country great.’”He said he “could have done it” – locked her up – but decided it was for the good of the country to move ahead and that locking her up “would have been a terrible thing”.Trump very much said to lock up Clinton, or some version of the idea, at various times on the 2016 campaign trail. His supporters chanted it at rallies for years, with his encouragement. – Rachel Leingang, misinformation reporterWho had the worst week?View image in fullscreenThe Washington Post, the newspaper of Watergate and “Democracy dies in darkness” fame, is in some disarray. Publisher Will Lewis ousted Sally Buzbee, the newspaper’s executive editor, and hastily announced a restructuring plan.At a contentious staff meeting on Monday, Lewis reportedly told staff: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it any more.”Matt Murray, a former Wall Street Journal editor, has been named to temporarily replace Buzbee. After the elections in November, Robert Winnett, a longtime editor at the Telegraph in Britain, will take over the core reporting functions at the Post. Lewis is facing scrutiny over his commitment to gender and racial diversity.Like most media organisations, the Post boomed during Donald Trump’s presidency but has lost readers since. Its website had 101 million unique visitors a month in 2020, and had dropped to 50m at the end of 2023. The Post lost a reported $77m last year. A Politico website headline described the latest shake-up as “the Rupert Murdoch-ization of the Washington Post” – not a great sign five months before an impossibly high stakes election.Elsewhere in US politicsView image in fullscreenThe 2020 election reckoning continuesWisconsin’s attorney general, Josh Kaul, filed felony charges on Tuesday against three men who played a key role in the effort to appoint fake electors in the state as part of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. Kenneth Chesebro, Jim Troupis and Michael Roman were each charged with one felony count of forgery, according to court documents.Further strains on Biden-Bibi relationsJoe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to draw the conclusion that Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza for his own political self-preservation. Biden made the remarks about the Israeli prime minister in an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday morning, drawing a sharp response from the Israeli government, which accused the US president of straying from diplomatic norms.Hunter on trialView image in fullscreenFederal prosecutors painted Joe Biden’s son Hunter as a drug addict whose dark habits ensnared loved ones and who knew what he was doing when he lied on federal forms to buy a gun in 2018 when he said he was not in the throes of addiction. The judge also reportedly declined requests from the defendant to prohibit jurors from being shown messages, videos and photos that show him with drugs or discussing them around the time that he bought the gun in question, including one image depicting him undressed from the chest up. More

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

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