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      ‘It’s bullshit’: voters on what Trump’s hush-money case means to them

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      For Josh Ellis, a refrigerator technician from southern Wisconsin, Donald Trump’s trial in New York is a sideshow. He’s not convinced of the prosecution’s narrative, or the former president’s – and the verdict will probably not affect his vote in November anyway.“Biden’s running this country into the ground,” said Ellis, who said the economy was his main concern. At 49, Ellis has long viewed politicians as out of touch on economic issues; he used to vote for Democrats, but switched in 2016 to vote for Trump, who he saw as possibly offering a change.The jurors in Trump’s New York trial are deliberating over the question of whether or not Trump unlawfully falsified business records to hide a sex scandal before the 2016 election – and it’s not clear how much of an impact their verdict will have on voters, despite the historic nature of a possible conviction.Like Ellis, voters across the country seem ambivalent about Trump’s criminal charges.Denise White, who helps manage a social services agency in Atlanta, wears her cynicism about the trial like armor.“Privilege,” she said. “Patriarchy. All of that is on full display right now. And I am not confident that there will be a just outcome.”It doesn’t matter, politically, if he is convicted or not: people have made up their minds, White said. “They’re not going to look at him differently there. I think a lot of people are expecting him to be acquitted. If he’s found guilty, I feel like he’s still gonna have a strong support system. And they are going to stand by his side and they’re not going to believe that he was found guilty.”For Annie, a 60-year-old who lives in Tampa, Florida, who asked her last name not be used for privacy, a guilty verdict would demonstrate Trump’s victimhood and potentially galvanize his base. In contrast, a not guilty verdict could lead to increased scrutiny of the prosecution and the criminal justice system, she said.“It’s bullshit,” she said, laughing.“There is no case. He hasn’t committed a crime. It is legal for him to make an agreement with a consenting adult not to talk about something.”The Trump trial has prosecutors playing saints, she said, adding that the trial was reminiscent of something she might see where she was born in China before emigrating to the US. “I came to this country for a great America. I didn’t come to this country for a losing country.”Any verdict is likely to deepen polarization, she said. With an acquittal, “the ones who hate him, will hate him more,” she said. “The people who support him will support him more. But the people in the middle will see him as a victim.”During the Republican primaries, Trump’s initial indictment in the New York case had little impact on his popularity – even galvanizing Republican voters who saw the charges as unfair. A felony conviction, though, could play out differently during the general election, where Biden and Trump will be vying for a segment of independent and swing voters who could be sufficiently turned off by a guilty verdict to abandon Trump.In a 23 May poll by the Marquette University Law School, respondents across the country who were asked how they would vote in November if Trump is convicted leaned toward Biden by 4%. Given a “not guilty” verdict, Trump enjoyed a six-point advantage among a separate group polled.Charles Franklin, a professor of government and the director of the Marquette poll, cautioned that while its results provide some indication that a guilty verdict could affect Trump’s performance in November, “there are a couple of reasons to be skeptical” about polling on the trial’s overall impact on voters.“We’ve seen pretty substantial stability in opinion for the last 18 months that we’ve been following the presidential race,” said Franklin, who noted that during Trump’s first impeachment, polling revealed very little change in public opinion.“I actually added extra polls during [the impeachment] because I thought we should catch, for history, whatever opinion change took place,” said Franklin, “and – damn, no change at all.” More

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      Bankruptcy trustee should take over Giuliani’s assets, creditors’ attorneys say

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      A bankruptcy judge should appoint a trustee to immediately take control of Rudy Giuliani’s financial affairs after the former mayor repeatedly lied and deceived creditors about his finances, lawyers for the creditors said in a Tuesday court filing.Among other things, the lawyers said Giuliani was funneling money into his businesses to avoid it going to creditors, undervalued his jewellery, and refused to disclose what several Apple and Amazon purchases were for. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in December, shortly after a jury in Washington DC ordered him to pay $148.1m in damages to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss – two Atlanta, Georgia, election workers he spread lies about after the 2020 election.“Over and over again, the Debtor has shown his preference for delay, diversion and theatrics over progress, rehabilitation and maximization of value for his creditors. His creditors do not need to accept this as their plight,” lawyers for creditors wrote. “Accordingly, the time has come for the immediate appointment of a chapter 11 trustee to take control of the Debtor’s assets and financial affairs, including his wholly-owned businesses.”Ted Goodman, a Giuliani spokesperson, did not respond to a text message seeking comment.The lawyers representing creditors said they only became aware of Giuliani’s deal to promote a coffee brand through press reports earlier this month.Giuliani receives 80% of the net proceeds of the sale of each bag, which is paid to Giuliani Communications, an LLC he owns, according to the contract. That arrangement was intentional, they said, to ensure that profits from the deal did not go to creditors.“These facts suggest that Mr Giuliani, a debtor in a chapter 11 case with more than $148 million of claims against him, is working for free to the detriment of his creditors, which in itself is problematic, and/or funneling funds that belong to his creditors to his business and using his business as a personal piggy bank, which is fraudulent,” they wrote.“The former mayor of New York City, a former United States Associate Attorney General and a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, can and should find a paying job that will help fund distributions to his creditors instead of kickbacks to his cronies and a personal slush fund.”Reviewing Giuliani’s credit card statements, they said, it was clear he had personally paid “to cover the travel and lodging expenses of his close associates and employees of his business”. They also said he paid the expenses of Maria Ryan, his girlfriend. In an email disclosed as part of the filing, Giuliani’s lawyers said Giuliani had reimbursed for expenses paid on his behalf. “The debtor will NOT be paying anyone else’s cards,” Heath Berger, a Giuliani attorney, wrote in the email.Among his assets, Giuliani also listed a collection of several luxury watches and three New York Yankees world series rings as having a total value of $30,000. The creditors accused him of deliberately deflating the value of the items, citing a single Yankees world series ring that auctioned for more than $29,000. They also said he refused to sell his Palm Beach home and failed to disclose his ongoing membership at the Palm Beach Yacht Club.“Regardless of whether Mr Giuliani is actually a member of this club (and it appears he is), his behavior is being perceived by the Committee and his creditors as dishonest. Because, while his creditors are told to sit on their hands, Mr Giuliani opts to ignore his obligations as a debtor in possession and instead, kick back at the Palm Beach Yacht Club,” the attorneys wrote.Giuliani has also filed several spending disclosures late with the court and failed to provide information on a “troubling quantity of Amazon and Apple transactions”, lawyers said. His January spending disclosure, for example, included “at least 60 Amazon transactions” and the creditors attorneys said they have no idea what they are for.“The Committee will now need to investigate whether the Debtor is liable for bankruptcy crimes through the use of his businesses to divert resources away from his estate and creditors in connection with his purported income that he allegedly never personally received,” lawyers wrote.Giuliani has pled not guilty in separate criminal cases dealing with his efforts to overturn the election in Arizona and Georgia. More

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      ‘Heads, we win; tails, you lose’: how rightwing hush-money trial coverage boosts Trump

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      Donald Trump has retained much of his political support amid his ongoing hush-money trial in part due to a combination of the courtroom’s ban on cameras and conservative media echoing his claims that both the prosecutor and judge are corrupt, media analysts say.The experts suggest that the former president could retain political support on the right even if the jury determines he is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursements to Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.Conservative media like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network are “running a sort of ‘heads, we win; tails, you lose’ play”, said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group. They are portraying the trial as a “witch-hunt ginned up by Joe Biden, and obviously because of that”, they say “he will be found not guilty, but at the same time, they are arguing that if he is found guilty, it will be because the jury and the judge are partisan and corrupt”.The trial in New York concerns one of four criminal indictments Trump faces, but will probably be the only one that concludes before the November election.As of this month, Trump leads Biden in several recent polls.A camera ban in the Manhattan courtroom is hardly unique to the Trump hush-money case. In the US, only the District of Columbia is more restrictive than New York in terms of allowing audio-visual coverage of court proceedings, among 48 jurisdictions reviewed in a report by the Fund for Modern Courts. And a shortage of in-house visuals means the public has to rely on courtroom sketches and secondhand accounts of what occurred during trial proceedings.“You know the saying, ‘The camera never blinks,’ I think if you just had a fixed camera in the courtroom, it wouldn’t interpret; it would just be what is in front of the camera,” said Howard Polskin, president of The Righting, a newsletter and website that monitors conservative media.Both Polksin and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes Factcheck.org, contrasted coverage of the Trump trial with that of the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. The judge allowed live camera coverage of the courtroom, and the case captivated the nation.“When we are actually observing something, we are making judgments in the moment that are potentially very powerful in shaping perceptions,” said Jamieson. “When someone recounts something to us, the effect is less vivid, less immediate.”Since a retelling makes for less dramatic content than photos and videos of, for example, recent protests on college campuses concerning the war in Gaza, analysts said that cable news networks – particularly Fox News – have devoted less time to it.From 15 April to 17 May, Fox News mentioned the trial about half as much as CNN and MSNBC, according to calculations provided by Roger Macdonald of the Internet Archive TV News in a Politico report.During the first week of the trial, 55% of Americans said that they were not closely following or not watching it at all, according to a poll from the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist.“It’s Christmas in May for Trump,” Polskin said. “It was a gift for Trump that there were no cameras in the courtroom. I think there would have been a lot more coverage on both left, right and mainstream if that were the case.”That void then provided more space for Trump to shape the narrative, Jamieson said.Trump has repeatedly ignored a gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan in March after the former president attacked people including the judge, the judge’s daughter, Cohen, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and members of the jury.On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump has shared posts in which he quoted the Fox News host Jesse Watters describing potential jurors as “undercover liberal activists” and a New York Post story that labeled Cohen a “serial perjurer”.While Trump refrained from violating the order in recent weeks of the trial, high-profile supporters have instead leveled similar charges outside the courtroom. Sean Hannity and other cable news hosts followed suit.“Tonight, as your mentally vacant president shuffles through the halls of the White House in his maximum-stability sneakers, lawyers and bureaucrats in the Democratic Party – they are hard at work,” Hannity said at the start of his Fox News show on 21 May. “You see, they are determined to get Donald Trump by any means necessary and are using America’s system of justice as a political weapon.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHannity also hosted legal analysts such as Gregg Jarrett and Alan Dershowitz, who have described it as a “corrupt case” and called Stormy Daniels a “shakedown artist”.Trump later repeated such assertions when he spoke outside the courtroom.“There is a kind of feedback loop that happens between Fox News and Trump’s public-facing legal commentary in which he is quoting figures like [Jarrett and Dershowitz] and then saying, ‘This is what all the experts are saying,’ just the experts [are] from Fox News,” Gertz said.Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network have also frequently described the criminal charges against Trump as “lawfare” committed by Democrats. (And it’s not just the cable news personalities – Hannity quoted the film-maker Oliver Stone, who described the lawfare as a “new form of warfare”.)The goal, Polskin said, was to convey that the trial is “completely politically motivated”.Still, is it possible that rather than Fox News devoting too little time to the trial, CNN and MSNBC are devoting too much time to it?The Daily Show host Jon Stewart critiqued the media for its coverage of events at the start of trial, such as the former president driving from Trump Tower to the courtroom. During the 2016 presidential election, networks drew big ratings by airing his rallies live and uninterrupted and later faced criticism for giving the candidate free airtime.“Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details. Perhaps that would help,” Stewart said of the early trial coverage.On whether CNN and MSNBC were again spending too much time on Trump, Jamieson said: “The question always is, what else is in the news agenda? And as a result, what aren’t you covering? We are in a relatively quiet period legislatively in the United States, so it’s hard to make the argument that there is some big major story that’s being downplayed.”Gertz, of Media Matters for America, points out that Trump has spent the last nine years engaged in a cycle of saying and doing shocking things, followed by rightwing media hosts and pundits condemning backlash against Trump as unfair, so their handling of the trial is not particularly novel.“They know that every alleged infraction or crime committed by Trump is an opportunity for them to prove that they are onboard with the Maga movement and with Trump specifically,” he explained, “by loudly saying that he did nothing wrong and that his pursuers are in fact the real criminals.” More

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      Only 1% of Americans serving in military is ‘problematic’, Democrat Pat Ryan says

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      The New York Democratic representative Pat Ryan said that having only 1% of Americans serving in the US military is “deeply problematic as a democracy”.In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation ahead of Memorial Day, Ryan, who is a veteran of the US army, said: “When you lose touch between those that are fighting our wars and their families and everyone else, that’s something so essential that we have to figure out how to bring folks together, and get more folks serving.”Ryan, who did two tours in Iraq, said that he is working on recruiting more Americans to serve in the military.Speaking alongside Florida’s Republican representative and army veteran Mike Waltz, Ryan said: “A lot of the work we did … on the defense bill is recruiting. Every service has been challenged on recruiting numbers and we’ve been pushing a bunch of directions to say that is not acceptable to the department of defense. And we’re starting to see the numbers come up.”To Waltz, “service doesn’t just have to be in the military,” as he said that both he and Ryan are advocates of “getting us back to national service as a country”.“That’s not a draft, that doesn’t necessarily have to be in uniform,” he said, adding: “It could be with the national park, inner-city tutoring, elderly care. But how do we get young people out in an environment where they’re learning leadership, discipline, followership, serving a cause bigger than themselves and with fellow Americans who may not look or come from the same backgrounds as them.”The two representatives also spoke of the need for bipartisanship when it comes to supporting veterans. For Ryan, the “most powerful thing” he has done in his time in Congress since he assumed office in 2023 was cleaning the Vietnam Veterans Memorial alongside other veterans.“I mean, there’s so many divisive forces, and so to get together with fellow veterans, all services, all generations, and just actually do something with your hands that improves the world, that honors our veterans,” Ryan said.Waltz echoed Ryan’s sentiments, saying: “I saw the acrimony and the in-fighting and I said, ‘You know, let’s get a group of veterans together’… I think that’s important for the American people to see. To see us honoring our forefathers, to see us where Democrat, Republican, Black, white, brown, none of that matters. It just matters that we’re all Americans, we’re all veterans.”There are currently over 18 million veterans who represent 6% of the country’s adult population. According to the Pew Research Center, veterans who served in the last 30 years comprise the largest number of living veterans in the US.In 1980, approximately 18% of US adults were veterans. In 2022, that number dropped to 6%. The center cites the falling trend to a decrease in active-duty personnel following the end of the military draft in 1973.The center also reports that as the amount of veterans declines over the next 25 years, women, Hispanic and Black adults, and adults below the age of 50 will make up larger shares of the total US veteran population. More

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      State department announces $275m in new aid package for Ukraine – as it happened

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      Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The state department has announced a new aid package for Ukraine worth $275m. It includes ammunition for Himars (high mobility artillery rocket systems), 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, tube-launched wire-guided missiles and javelin anti-armor systems.
      The secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, will undergo a non-surgical procedure on Friday related to his prostate cancer, the Pentagon said. Austin will temporarily be unable to perform his duties due to the “minimally invasive procedure” and the deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks, will assume his duties, the Pentagon said.
      Ahead of the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Joe Biden released a statement in which he called for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The act, which seeks to address racial profiling and the use of force in police encounters, has been stalled in Congress for the last few years. However, it was reintroduced to Congress by Sheila Jackson, a Democratic representative from Texas, on Thursday.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a new ad called Snapped. The ad criticizes Donald Trump, saying that he “snapped” after losing the 2020 election. It’s voiced by one of the former president’s longtime political foes, actor Robert De Niro.
      Speaking after a rally in New York City last night, his first in the city since 2016, Donald Trump predicted that he can win his home state – which happens to also be a historically and fiercely Democratic-voting one.
      Donald Trump hinted at the possibility of Nikki Haley joining his administration after she pledged her support to him following a bitter campaign against him for the Republican nomination for this election. “I think she’s going to be on our team because we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts,” Trump told News 12.
      The New York Democratic congressman and Bronx native Ritchie Torres hit back at Trump for his rally in the south Bronx yesterday, saying: “His presidency was a catastrophe for the Bronx. His mismanagement of Covid resulted in more deaths than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. Donald Trump should apologize to the people of the Bronx rather than hold a rally.”
      Thousands of Trump supporters came out to Crotona Park in New York’s south Bronx on Thursday evening to support the former president as he rallied for nearly 90 minutes. In attempts to woo more Black and Hispanic voters in one of the country’s poorest and most diverse neighborhoods, Trump launched fiery tirades against immigrants and Biden’s immigration policies. He claimed migrants were “building an army” to attack America “from within”.
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Russian jamming technology has reportedly interfered with US-made satellite-guided ammunition in Ukraine.The Washington Post, which reviewed confidential internal Ukrainian assessments, reports:“Russia’s jamming of the guidance systems of modern Western weapons, including Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shells and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which can fire some U.S.-made rockets with a range of up to 50 miles, has eroded Ukraine’s ability to defend its territory and has left officials in Kyiv urgently seeking help from the Pentagon to obtain upgrades from arms manufacturers.Russia’s ability to combat the high-tech munitions has far-reaching implications for Ukraine and its Western supporters – potentially providing a blueprint for adversaries such as China and Iran – and it is a key reason Moscow’s forces have regained the initiative and are advancing on the battlefield.”The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, will undergo a non-surgical procedure on Friday related to his prostate cancer, the Pentagon said.Austin will undergo the procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center later this evening.Austin will temporarily be unable to perform his duties due to the “minimally invasive procedure” and the deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, will assume his duties, the Pentagon said.Ahead of the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, Joe Biden released a statement in which he called for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.Biden said:
      His murder shook the conscience of our nation and reminded us that our country has never fully lived up to its highest ideal of fair and impartial justice for all under the law.
      He went on to add:
      What we witnessed as a result was one of the largest modern civil rights movements in our nation’s history, with people from every background marching together against racism and systemic injustice.
      Two years ago, alongside George Floyd’s family, civil rights leaders and law enforcement officials, I signed an executive order to implement key aspects of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act with respect to federal law enforcement, including: restricting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and establishing a database for police misconduct – all measures to advance effective, transparent and accountable policing.My administration has made significant progress in implementing this executive order, and will continue our work to build public trust and strengthen public safety. But real and lasting change at the state and local level will only come when Congress acts. That’s why I will continue to urge Congress to send the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which ensures law enforcement accountability, to my desk.
      The act, which seeks to address racial profiling and the use of force in police encounters, has been stalled in Congress for the last few years. However, it was reintroduced to Congress by Sheila Jackson, a Democratic representative from Texas, on Thursday.In response to the bill’s reintroduction, the American Civil Liberties Union said:
      The American Civil Liberties Union welcomes the reintroduction of this important legislation; however, the ACLU calls on Congress to strengthen and improve portions of the bill to provide the federal interventions necessary to address police misconduct and brutality.
      The state department has released the following statement on the latest aid package for Ukraine:
      The United States is announcing today a significant new drawdown of weapons and equipment for Ukraine to support the brave Ukrainian people as they defend their country against Russia’s aggression.
      This $275 million package … is part of our efforts to help Ukraine repel Russia’s assault near Kharkiv.”
      In addition to Himars ammunition, artillery rounds, missiles, javelins and anti-armor systems, the aid includes precision aerial munitions; small arms; tactical vehicles; body armor; chemical, biological, radiological anf nuclear protective equipment; and spare parts.With the latest package being the fifth aid package the Joe Biden administration has authorised since signing the national security supplemental, the state department said it plans to “move this new assistance as quickly as possible”.
      As President Biden has made clear, the United States and the international coalition we have assembled will continue to stand with Ukraine in its defense of its freedom.
      The state department has announced a new aid package for Ukraine that is worth $275m, Reuters reports.The aid package includes ammunition for Himars (high mobility artillery rocket systems), 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, tube-launched wire-guided missiles and javelin anti-armor systems, according to the state department.Egypt and the United States agreed on Friday to temporarily send humanitarian aid to the United Nations in Gaza via Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing until legal mechanisms are established to reopen the Rafah border crossing from the Palestinian side, the Egyptian presidency said, Reuters reports.The agreement resulted from:
      The difficult humanitarian situation of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the lack of means of life in the Strip, and the lack of fuel needed for hospitals and bakeries,” said the statement.
      The agreement was reached in a phone call between the US president and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the statement said.Egypt on Monday warned against Israel’s continued military operations in Rafah, which were preventing aid deliveries to the impoverished Strip.Much of the aid delivered into Gaza since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in October has come through Egypt, entering through the southern Gaza city of Rafah or the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing on Israel’s border with the Palestinian territory.Since May 5, just before Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing from the Palestinian side, no trucks have crossed through Rafah and very few through Kerem Shalom, according to UN data. Sisi and Biden also agreed to intensify international efforts to being a ceasefire.The Guardian’s Middle East live blog is here.Hunter Biden is back in court today for the final hearing before he’s expected to stand trial on federal firearms charges in Delaware as his father’s re-election campaign unfolds, the Associated Press reports.Joe Biden’s son didn’t speak to reporters as he followed his lawyers into the Wilmington courthouse. He’s charged with lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days in Delaware. He has acknowledged an addiction to crack cocaine during that period, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law and the case is politically motivated.The two sides have been arguing in court documents about evidence in the case, including contents from a laptop that he allegedly dropped off at a Delaware repair shop. Defense attorneys question the authenticity of the laptop’s data in court documents, but prosecutors say that there’s no evidence the data has been compromised.Prosecutors plan to show jurors portions of Hunter Biden’s 2021 memoir Beautiful Things in which he detailed his struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse following the 2015 death of his older brother, Beau, of brain cancer at age 46. Biden’s lawyers are objecting.US district judge Maryellen Noreika will preside over what’s expected to be the last hearing before the trial, which is expected to begin with jury selection on 3 June.Hunter Biden is also facing federal tax charges in Los Angeles and is set for trial in that case in September.Hello, politics live blog readers, as we approach what is a holiday weekend in the US, ahead of the Trump trial resuming in New York with closing arguments on Tuesday, there is still news coming out of Washington and elsewhere.We’ll bring it to you as it happens. For now, here’s where things stand:
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a new ad called Snapped, which criticizes Donald Trump, saying that he “snapped” after losing the 2020 election. It’s voiced by one of the former president’s longtime political foes, actor Robert De Niro.
      Speaking after a rally in New York City last night, his first in the city since 2016, Donald Trump predicted that he can win his home state – which happens to also be a historically and fiercely Democratic-voting one.
      Donald Trump hinted at the possibility of Nikki Haley joining his administration after she pledged her support to him following a bitter campaign against him for the Republican nomination for this election. “I think she’s going to be on our team because we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts,” Trump told News 12.
      The New York Democratic congressman and Bronx native Ritchie Torres hit back at Trump for his rally in the south Bronx yesterday, saying: “His presidency was a catastrophe for the Bronx. His mismanagement of Covid resulted in more deaths than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. Donald Trump should apologize to the people of the Bronx rather than hold a rally.”
      Thousands of Trump supporters came out to Crotona Park in New York’s south Bronx on Thursday evening to support the former president as he rallied for nearly 90 minutes. In attempts to woo more Black and Hispanic voters in one of the country’s poorest and most diverse neighborhoods, Trump launched fiery tirades against immigrants and Biden’s immigration policies. He claimed migrants were “building an army” to attack America “from within”.
      Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, has called for a special legislative session to include Joe Biden on the election ballot.Robert Tait reports for the Guardian:Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has called an emergency legislative session to put Joe Biden’s name on the presidential ballot after what he called an “absurd” threat from the state’s top election officer to remove the president for missing its deadline.For weeks, Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose, has been at loggerheads with the Democrats over how to put Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, on the ballot given that their official nomination comes after the expiry of the state’s deadline of 90 days before the November election.The Biden-Harris ticket is scheduled to be certified after its official coronation on the final day of the Democratic national convention on 22 August in Chicago, 15 days after Ohio’s 7 August cutoff date.For the full story, click here:Joe Biden’s campaign has released a new ad called Snapped, which criticizes Donald Trump, saying that he “snapped” after losing the 2020 election.Actor and fierce Trump critic Robert De Niro voices the 30-second ad, saying:
      From midnight tweets, to drinking bleach, to tear-gassing citizens and staging a photo op, we knew Trump was out of control when he was president, and then he lost the 2020 election and snapped.
      Desperately trying to hold on to power. Now he’s running again, this time threatening to be a dictator, to terminate the constitution.
      The ad features a clip of Trump saying that there will be a “bloodbath” if he does not win in 2024.“Trump wants revenge and he’ll stop at nothing to get it,” De Niro continues.Describing the ad, Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said:
      This ad lays out the clear contrast voters will see a month from now when Trump stands on the debate stage next to Joe Biden: Trump is running to regain power for himself, Joe Biden is running to serve you, the American people.
      Kamala Harris has released the following statement regarding the second anniversary of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting in which 21 people, including 19 children, were shot and killed:
      Two years ago, 19 beautiful children and two selfless teachers were killed in their classrooms during a senseless mass shooting carried out with a weapon of war …
      In the months and years since these 21 Americans lost their lives and 17 others were injured, the families in Uvalde have powerfully channeled their anguish into advocacy – demanding action to change the unacceptable fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in our nation.
      Congress and state legislators throughout America must have the courage to act by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, passing red flag laws, and making background checks universal.
      Bernie Sanders, who spoke exclusively to the Guardian, has introduced a bill to improve dental care among Americans, particularly amid the prevalence of gum disease in the US and one in five US seniors having lost all their natural teeth.The Guardian’s Jessica Glenza reports:A bill introduced by the US senator Bernie Sanders would dramatically expand access to oral healthcare by adding dental benefits to Medicare and enhance them in Medicaid, public health insurance programs that together cover 115 million older and lower-income Americans.Despite Americans’ reputation for the flashy “Hollywood smile”, millions struggle to access basic dental care. One in five US seniors have lost all their natural teeth, almost half of adults have some kind of gum disease and painful cavities are one of the most common reasons children miss school.“Any objective look at the reality facing the American people recognizes there is a crisis in dental care in America,” Sanders told the Guardian in an exclusive interview. “Imagine that in the richest country in the world.”For the full story, click here:Speaking to Fox News during yesterday’s south Bronx rally, Donald Trump remained confident that he can win his home state, which happens to also be a historically and fiercely Democratic one.
      “I love the people … They’re entrepreneurial and they’re going to save New York … We’re gonna win New York. And if we win New York, the election’s over. We take over the country,.
      The Biden-Harris campaign has released a new statement on campaign priorities and talking points ahead of the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Atlanta, Georgia, on 27 June:
      In the month leading up to that first debate, the Biden-Harris campaign will zero in on Trump’s dangerous campaign promises and unhinged rhetoric. We will make sure that the voters who will decide this election are reminded of the chaos and harm Trump caused as president – and why they booted him out four years ago.
      Trump and his lagging campaign will be left to explain to voters why he embraces political violence, brags about abortion bans, threatens to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Social Security and Medicare, and puts greedy corporations and himself over American workers again and again.
      Team Biden-Harris will drive these key themes across the entire campaign in the lead-up to the debate, including through new paid media efforts, earned media opportunities, and on the ground organizing and battleground events to bring the stakes of this election to every voter who will decide it.
      The campaign also said it plans to organize around key moments including the anniversary of the 2022 Dobbs decision in which the supreme court stripped away federal abortion protections, as well as the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people were shot and killed in 2016.At his rally, Donald Trump hinted at the possibility of Nikki Haley joining his administration after she pledged her support to him following a bitter campaign against him.“I think she’s going to be on our team because we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts,” Trump told News 12.“I appreciated what she said. You know, we had a nasty campaign, it was pretty nasty. But she’s a very capable person, and I’m sure she’s going to be on our team in some form, absolutely,” he added.During her campaign trail, the former South Carolina governor criticized Trump numerous times, accusing him of having “lost any sort of political viability” and showing “moral weakness”.Yet on Wednesday, Haley revealed she would be voting for Trump, saying: “Trump has not been perfect on these policies … But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.”New York Democratic representative and Bronx native Ritchie Torres hit back at Donald Trump for his rally in the south Bronx yesterday.
      His presidency was a catastrophe for the Bronx. His mismanagement of Covid resulted in more deaths than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined.
      Donald Trump should apologize to the people of the Bronx rather than hold a rally.
      Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s south Bronx on Thursday evening drew a significantly more diverse crowd compared to his typical white-majority rallies in other parts of the country.The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:Up to a quarter of the thousands of people who came to hear him (the New York City parks department said Trump’s campaign had a permit for up to 3,500 people) were Hispanic or Black. Some of the supporters wore their Make America Great Again politics proudly on their sleeves.“I’m a Black dyed-in-the-wool Republican,” read one T-shirt. A group of three Hispanic women waiting for the secret service to screen them at the start of the evening chanted “Trumpito!” “Trumpito!” as they danced to the official theme song of Trump Latinos.Theo Diakite, 29, an African American who lives close to the park, said he was drawn to the rally out of curiosity. He has never voted in his life, but this year is feeling tempted to back Trump.He has noticed that other people in his neighborhood share that curiosity. “There are a lot of people who were firm against him in 2020, but are now not so sure.”For the full story, click here:Thousands of Donald Trump supporters came out to Crotona Park in New York’s south Bronx on Thursday evening to support the former president as he rallied for nearly 90 minutes.In attempts to woo Black and Hispanic voters in one of the country’s poorest and most diverse neighborhoods, Trump launched fiery tirades against immigrants and Joe Biden’s immigration policies.“African Americans are getting slaughtered. Hispanic Americans are getting slaughtered,” Trump said, adding that the flow of migrants into New York is hurting “our Black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose”. At one point, Trump even accused migrants of wanting “to get us from within”, saying: “I think they’re building an army.”In response to Trump, the crowd whooped and cheered, with many at one point breaking into chants of “Build the wall!” and “Send them back!”Trump also responded to former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who said earlier this week that she would vote for him in November. “I think she’s going to be on our team,” Trump said, adding: “I appreciated what she said.”Despite Trump’s legal woes and Biden’s handling of the border crisis, it appears that inflation is the biggest concern among voters. “The cost of living defines this election,” writes Amy Walter and David Wasserman in the Cook Political Report. A new poll by the Guardian and Harris released this week found nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the country is in an economic recession, with the majority blaming Biden.Here are other developments in US politics: More

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      Pro-Israel group pours millions into unseating New York progressive Jamaal Bowman

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      A Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has revved up its campaign spending, pouring $2m into a New York congressional primary to oppose the progressive incumbent Jamaal Bowman.Campaign finance disclosures released this weekend showed the Super Pac, called United Democracy Project (UDP), spending about $1m in support of Bowman’s opponent, the moderate Democrat George Latimer and $1m in negative advertisements opposing Bowman. If the group succeeds in defeating Bowman, it will deliver a significant blow to the progressive wing of the House.“They don’t want Israel to be criticized, they don’t want Israel to be held accountable – they don’t want anyone to mention Palestine or speak up for Palestinian rights and lives,” said Bowman during an interview with MSNBC on Saturday.In comparison, progressive groups including Justice Democrats and Working Families Party have spent less than $300,000 in support of Bowman and opposing Latimer. Latimer’s campaign has similarly outpaced Bowman’s in fundraising, with Latimer garnering more than $3.6m and Bowman raising about $2.6m so far.In an email to the Guardian, an Aipac spokesperson previously described Latimer as “a strong advocate for the US-Israel relationship in clear contrast to his opponent who is aligned with the anti-Israel extremist fringe”. Bowman has sharply criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and was among the first of his colleagues to call for a ceasefire.Notably, ads countering Bowman do not mention Israel at all. One ad from UDP accuses Bowman of having “his own agenda”, highlighting policy differences between the congressman and Joe Biden.The heavily Democratic contested district, with large numbers of Black, Jewish and Latino constituents, elected the progressive “Squad” member Bowman in 2020 in an upset primary election in 2020.Aipac’s forays into campaigns represent a new avenue of political activism for the pro-Israel lobbying group, which until the 2022 election cycle did not spend on campaigns. By forming a Super Pac, which can legally contribute unlimited amounts of money on advertisements and communications in races, Aipac has been able to ramp up its influence.Aipac planned to spend $100m on campaigns this year and has so far targeted a wide and at times unexpected range of races – with mixed results.In an Indiana congressional primary, UDP spent $1.6m in a successful bid to stop the former Republican congressman John Hostettler, an isolationist-leaning Republican who in the past made antisemitic remarks, from regaining a seat in the House. In a Maryland race, the Super Pac threw its support behind the Democratic candidate Sarah Elfreth, who beat the former US Capitol police officer Harry Dunn. Neither Dunn, whose book about the January 6 attack propelled him to national prominence, or Elfreth, a Maryland state senator, made comments about Israel-Gaza during the race.But candidates backed by pro-Israel groups have not succeeded in every race so far this year – UDP also dropped $4.6m in a failed bid to stop the Democratic congressional candidate Dave Min from advancing in his primary race against Democratic candidate Joanna Weiss. More

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      Trump trial judge rebuked for donations to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020

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      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money campaign finance trial in New York has been cautioned by a state ethics panel over two small donations made to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020.The caution is likely to be seized on by Trump and his lawyers as evidence of his claims that the New York trial, now entering its fourth week, has been unfairly adjudicated by Judge Juan Merchan along partisan political lines.But the New York state commission on judicial conduct has not revealed who lodged the complaint against Merchan that stems from a $35 donation to the Democratic group ActBlue that included $15 earmarked for Biden for President and $10 each to Progressive Turnout Project and Stop Republicans.“Justice Merchan said the complaint, from more than a year ago, was dismissed in July with a caution,” spokesperson Al Baker of the state office of court administration said in response to an inquiry from Reuters.The commission considers that contributions violate the rules on prohibited political activity. In its 2024 annual report, the body said several dozen judges had apparently made prohibited contributions in the last few years, mostly to candidates for federal office.Judges are prohibited from contributing to any campaigns, including for federal office.“Like so much of the misconduct the commission encounters, making a prohibited political contribution is a self-inflicted mistake,” the commission wrote in the report.The commission has also received a complaint against the Manhattan judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the former president’s civil business fraud trial that resulted in a $454m fine earlier this year. That complaint, brought by Trump lawyers, has yet to be adjudicated.Under commission guidelines, proceedings are confidential unless there is a public censure or the judge makes them public.Trump has been highly critical of the justices in both cases. In the earlier trial he was censured for describing Judge Engoron’s law clerk of being Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend. In the current case, he has drawn attention to Judge Merchan’s daughter, who works as a Democratic political consultant.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to a motion for Merchan to step aside, which the judge denied, a separate advisory committee on judicial ethics said the contributions did not create an impression of bias or favoritism.Reports of the contributions come a day after the New York Times revealed that the wife of conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito had flown an inverted American flag outside the couple’s home in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Alito has said that his wife took that action because a Democratic neighbor had used a highly pejorative insult to describe her to her face. More

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      Rudy Giuliani suspended by New York radio station over 2020 election lies

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      The former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s troubles deepened on Friday when he was suspended by WABC radio, for trying to use his show to discuss the lie that the 2020 presidential election was lost by Donald Trump because of electoral fraud.John Catsimatidis, a New York billionaire, Republican donor and owner of WABC, told the New York Times: “We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election. We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.“So he left me no option. I suspended him.”Giuliani later said he had been fired.A spokesperson for Giuliani issued a lengthy statement, in which the former mayor said: “I’m learning from a leak to the New York Times that I’m being fired by John Catsimatidis and WABC because I refused to comply with their overly broad directive stating, word-for-word, that I’m ‘prohibited from engaging in conversations relating to the 2020 presidential election’.”Claiming “a clear violation of free speech”, Giuliani said he would address the situation further on social media on Friday night.But he went on to say the move by WABC came “at a very suspicious time, just months before the 2024 election, and just as John and WABC continue to be pressured by Dominion Voting Systems and the Biden regime’s lawyers”.Dominion Voting Systems, a manufacturer of elections machines, reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox News over its broadcast of election fraud lies. It also sued Giuliani and Sidney Powell, another lawyer who worked on Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Now 79, Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1993 to 2001, emerging as a national figure after leading the city through the 9/11 terror attacks. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.Long close to Trump, who reportedly helped him through a personal crisis after the failed presidential run, Giuliani emerged as a steadfast supporter when Trump ran for the Republican nomination in 2016 and then won the White House.Giuliani did not win the prize of being made secretary of state, but he worked on Trump’s behalf in matters including the attempt to extract political dirt from Ukraine, which prompted Trump’s first impeachment.In 2020, Giuliani worked to try to overturn Joe Biden’s defeat of Trump at the polls, only to suffer a series of courtroom defeats and mounting public embarrassments.Giuliani denies wrongdoing, but his efforts on Trump’s behalf have produced legal disbarment proceedings; criminal charges in two swing states, Georgia and Arizona; and defeat in a defamation suit that left him owing $148m to two Georgia poll workers he claimed were involved in electoral fraud.Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in New York last December. Filings showed debts of up to $500m.Earlier this week, a legal filing on Giuliani’s behalf said no accountants “seem[ed] interested” in working with him to meet requirements in the bankruptcy case.His spokesperson, Ted Goodman, said then: “While it is true that the permanent Washington political class is leveraging all of its power and influence to bully and scare people from defending Americans who are willing to stand up and push back against the accepted narrative, Mayor Giuliani will be appropriately represented when it comes to his accounting and finances.”The filing on Tuesday said the former mayor, who made millions in consulting work after leaving office in 2001, “currently received social security benefits and broadcasts a radio show and podcast”.“These are his sole sources of income,” it said.Catsimatidis told the Times that at the close of his WABC show on Thursday, Giuliani tried to speak about the 2020 election but was cut off by station employees.“Look, I like the guy as a person, but you can’t do that,” Catsimatidis told the paper. “You can’t cross the line. My view is that nobody really knows [about the 2020 result] but we had made a company policy. It’s over, life goes on.”In his statement, Giuliani accused Catsimatidis of “telling reporters I was informed ahead of time of these restrictions, which is demonstrably untrue.“How can you possibly believe that when I’ve been regularly commenting on the 2020 election for three and a half years, and I’ve talked about the case in Georgia incessantly ever since the verdict in December. Other WABC hosts and newscasters questioned me on these topics.“Obviously I was never informed on such a policy, and even if there was one, it was violated so often that it couldn’t be taken seriously.” More