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    Biden and Trump sweep four primaries including battleground state Wisconsin

    Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump won primary elections in four states, including the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin.Hundreds of delegates were up for grabs in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin on Tuesday, and Biden and Trump have already amassed enough delegates to win their respective nominations. But the turnout could provide more clues about the general election in November.Voters also had a chance to register their discontent with the nominees. Connecticut and Rhode Island gave voters the opportunity to vote “uncommitted” in the primary, while Wisconsin offered a similar option of “uninstructed delegation”. Wisconsin Democrats will be closely watching the turnout for “uninstructed delegation” after progressive activists launched a campaign encouraging voters to withhold support from the US president to protest his handling of the war in Gaza.The Listen to Wisconsin campaign, based on similar efforts in states like Michigan and Minnesota, has attracted support from some rank-and-file union members as well as an influential group of low-wage and immigrant workers in the state.Those voters represent key constituencies whose support Biden will need to win in November, and even a small erosion in support could spell trouble for him in Wisconsin, where he defeated Trump by just 0.6 points in 2020. In 2016, the former president defeated Hillary Clinton by roughly 0.8 points in Wisconsin, and he hopes to repeat that performance this fall.Polls closed at 8pm ET in Connecticut and Rhode Island and at 9pm ET in New York and Wisconsin, with results coming in shortly afterwards, and Biden will soon have a better sense of his standing in the battleground state.With the presidential nominees already decided, Wisconsin Republicans are more closely focused on two ballot measures related to election management in the state. The first measure raises the question of abolishing the use of private funds in election administration, and the second asks whether “only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums”.Republicans have encouraged supporters to vote “yes” on both measures, after their legislative efforts to change election rules were repeatedly blocked by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Republican leaders have expressed pointed criticism of the grant money that Wisconsin election officials received from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020 to address the challenges of navigating the coronavirus pandemic.Those leaders have derided the grant money as “Zuckerbucks”, a reference to the $350m that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave to the non-profit to help election offices across the country in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans argue that such funding must be abolished to ensure voters’ trust in election results, but Democrats warn that the approval of such a measure could drain resources from government offices already stretched too thin from budget cuts. On the second ballot question, Democrats have criticized its wording as vague and accused Republicans of attempting to intimidate nonpartisan voting rights groups from their usual registration and turnout efforts in the state.“Rather than work to make sure our clerks have the resources they need to run elections, Republicans are pushing a nonsense amendment to satisfy Donald Trump,” Ben Wickler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement last month.“Thanks to long-standing Wisconsin law and the dedicated service of thousands of elections officials in municipalities across the state, our elections are safe and secure. Donald Trump’s lies about his 2020 loss shouldn’t dictate what’s written in our state constitution.” More

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    Wisconsin, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut primaries: follow live results

    View image in fullscreenVoters in Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin cast ballots in the presidential primaries on Tuesday. Much attention will be paid to Wisconsin, where voters will signal strength and weaknesses in the critical swing state for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.There are also options in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Wisconsin for voters to choose “uncommitted” in a show of protest against Biden’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza.Here are the results.Republican delegatesDemocratic delegatesRepublican resultsDemocratic resultsWho’s runningView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpThe former US president’s campaign to retake the White House and once again grab his party’s nomination got off to a slow start that was widely mocked. But after decisive wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign has steadily moved into a position of dominance.Trump declined to attend any of the Republican debates, has used his court appearances and many legal woes as a rallying cry to mobilize his base, and has run a surprisingly well-organized campaign. His extremist rhetoric, especially around his plans for a second term and the targeting of his political enemies, has sparked widespread fears over the threat to American democracy that his candidacy represents.His political style during the campaign has not shifted from his previous runs in 2016 and 2020 and, if anything, has become more extreme. Many see this as a result of his political and legal fates becoming entwined, with a return to the Oval Office seen as Trump’s best chance of nixing his legal problems.View image in fullscreenJoe BidenBiden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for the president remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Trump. Biden has served in politics for more than five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonThe failed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson dropped out of the race in February before then resurrecting her long-shot campaign after the Michigan primary. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her bid with campaign promises to address the climate crisis and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church.View image in fullscreenJason PalmerJason Palmer is a Democratic candidate who was only on the ballot in American Samoa and some other US territories. He won the primary in America Samoa after donating $500,000 to his own campaign. Palmer is a Baltimore resident who has worked for various businesses and non-profits, often on issues involving technology and education. More

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    Prosecutors suggest Trump violated gag order by attacking judge’s daughter

    Manhattan prosecutors asked the judge presiding in Donald Trump’s upcoming criminal trial on charges of covering up hush money to a porn star before the 2016 election to confirm that a recent gag order preventing the former president from making inflammatory comments extends to the judge’s family members.The prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office suggested in a two-page letter on Friday that, as far as they were concerned, Trump had violated the gag order by attacking the judge’s daughter in a recent social media post and should be sanctioned for future violations.“The court should warn defendant that his recent conduct is contumacious and direct him to immediately desist. If defendant continues to disregard such orders, he should face sanctions under judiciary law,” said the letter to New York supreme court justice Juan Merchan, referencing statutes for criminal contempt that include possible jail time.At issue was a post Trump sent on Wednesday assailing the judge’s daughter on his Truth Social platform for supposedly using a photo of Trump behind bars as her profile picture for her X account. The photo “makes it completely impossible for me to get a fair trial”, Trump wrote.The problem for Trump was that the account appears to be bogus. The handle for the X account did belong to the judge’s daughter, Lauren Merchan, but she has since deleted that account, a court spokesperson said. Someone else – it is unclear who – took over the handle and used the photo.But Trump and his supporters have remained undeterred, despite the formal denial. Trump’s surrogates have maintained that the account supposedly is still connected to the judge’s daughter in order to perpetuate claims that the entire family is partisan against the former president.The fixation on the judge’s daughter appears to be spurred in part by the fact that she has worked as an executive at Authentic, a digital marketing agency that works with Democratic political candidates. Trump has previously tried, but failed, to have the judge removed over his daughter’s work.Whether the judge will find that Trump violated the gag order is unclear.The gag order against Trump in the hush-money case was entered on Tuesday, after Merchan rebuked the former president for making statements about the case he deemed “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” ahead of trial, scheduled to start on 15 April.Under the order, Trump cannot make, or direct others to make, public statements about trial witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial, prosecutors other than the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg himself, and members of the court staff or the district attorney’s staff.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe order notably also barred Trump from assailing the family members of any counsel or staff member, if his comments were made with the intention to interfere with their work in the case, or with the knowledge that his comments were likely to interfere with their work.But it was uncertain whether the judge considered himself as court staff, and therefore whether the prohibition on commenting on the family of court staff extended to his daughter. Trump’s lawyers contended in their own filing on Friday that they considered the judge’s family as fair game.Merchan did not specify how he would enforce the order. Typically, judges impose escalating fines as punishment but, in extreme circumstances, can ultimately order a defendant to be jailed pre-trial if they are found to be in criminal contempt of the order. More

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    Biden and Trump shift to new phase of urgent fundraising in 2024 US election

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump are entering a new phase of a heavyweight election fundraising smackdown after the US president raised a record $26m at a glitzy event with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, while Trump’s Republican campaign tried to steal Biden’s thunder by claiming it would outdo him next week with a $33m event.Biden and his Democratic predecessor headlined a star-studded fundraiser with Clinton at the Radio City Music Hall event in New York, hosted by Mindy Kaling and featuring Lizzo and Queen Latifah, while the TV satirist Stephen Colbert interviewed the three men on stage in front of an audience that paid up to $500,000 for a ticket.Obama and Biden flew from Washington to New York on Air Force One together on Thursday in a show of unity and Democratic campaign heft as the 2024 election enters an important phase between the main primary season and the summer nominating conventions, which are expected to anoint Biden and Trump as their parties’ candidates for the November vote.The glittering Democratic fundraiser was punctuated by protests inside the sold-out auditorium, as attendees rose at several different moments to shout over the discussion, referencing Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.“Shame on you, Joe Biden,” one yelled, according to Reuters.Obama said Biden had “moral clarity” on the Israel issue and was willing to listen to all sides in this debate and find common ground.When a protester inside the theater interrupted Obama, the former president said: “You can’t just talk and not listen … That’s what the other side does.”The protests drew a pledge from Biden to keep working to stop civilian deaths, particularly of children. But he added, “Israel’s existence is at stake.” Hundreds more protested outside in the drizzling rain, many demanding a ceasefire and waving Palestinian flags.On the money raised during the event, which had been estimated at $25m and then came in at a record-breaking $26m for a single campaign event, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul turned Biden campaign co-chair, said: “This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice-President [Kamala] Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built.”But on Friday, it was reported that Trump believes he can out raise the Biden event with a billionaires’ power party at his Mar-a-Lago residence and resort club in Palm Beach, south Florida, on 6 April, where tickets will run from $250,000 to more than $800,000, the Financial Times first reported and Politico later detailed.The Trump campaign’s goal is at least $33m, with featured super-rich American business leaders such as the casino and hotel developer Steve Wynn, the hedge funder John Paulson and Robert Bigelow, a property and aerospace billionaire with an offbeat obsession with the paranormal and UFOs.Trump has been struggling for money and owes hundreds of millions in fines in civil cases he has lost, on top of sky-high legal bills, for which he is paying with funds from donors. Biden’s campaign had $71m in available cash at the end of last month, more than twice as much as Trump, with the Democratic National Committee also swilling with more than double what is in the Republican National Committee’s coffers, the Hill reported.On Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser said the candidate would not be able to match Biden’s totals, blaming the disparity on the Democrat’s “billionaire” supporters and painting a picture of a Trump campaign as being fueled by grassroots, working-class supporters. However, the Trump campaign is suffering from both large and small donor fatigue, CNBC has reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a wake on Thursday for a police officer shot dead on duty in New York, Trump called for a focus on “law and order” even though he stands to be the first former US president to be a defendant in a criminal trial and is facing a total of 88 charges across four cases, relating to campaign finance impropriety, election interference and hiding classified documents after leaving office.At the Democratic fundraiser, the presidents toggled between humor and campaign talk. Biden lit into Trump, recalling how he pleaded with the then occupant of the White House on 6 January 2021, to “call these people off” when his supporters invaded the US Capitol in an insurrection to try, in vain, to stop the certification of Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 election.“He sat there in the dining room off the Oval Office for several hours and watched [the attack on TV], didn’t do a damn thing,” Biden said.He pointed out how Trump was proud to have tilted the supreme court so that it ruled to take away the national right to abortion, with the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, while Democrats defend reproductive choice, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, taking a lead on the issue on the campaign trail.Biden also challenged Trump to golf, but only if his rival carried his own bag.Biden, Obama and Clinton ended the night donning Biden’s trademark aviator-style sunglasses.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Trump lawyers say he can’t post bond covering $454m civil fraud judgment

    Lawyers for Donald Trump said on Monday he could not post a bond covering the full amount of the $454m civil fraud judgment against him while he appeals the New York ruling, because to do so was “a practical impossibility” after 30 surety companies turned him down.In a court filing seeking a stay on the payment, which is due on 25 March, lawyers for the former president and this fall’s presumptive Republican presidential nominee quoted Gary Giulietti, an executive with the insurance brokerage Lockton Companies, which Trump hired to help get a bond.The filing said: “Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility’.”In an affidavit, Giulietti said few bonding companies would consider issuing a bond of the size required. The bonding companies that might issue such a huge bond would not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities)”, Giulietti wrote.“A bond of this size is rarely if ever seen. In the unusual circumstance that a bond of this size is issued, it is provided to the largest public companies in the world, not to individuals or privately held businesses.”Trump maintains he is worth several billion dollars and testified last year that he had about $400m in cash, in addition to properties and other investments.In January, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3m – on top of $5m awarded by a jury last year – to the writer E Jean Carroll, for defaming her after she accused him of sexual assault in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, a claim a judge called “substantially true”. Trump posted a bond for that amount as he appeals.The civil fraud case against Trump was brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Trump also faces an unprecedented slate of criminal charges: 14 for subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, 34 over hush-money payments and 40 regarding his retention of classified documents.Nonetheless, the 77-year-old dominated the Republican presidential primary and is poised to face Biden at the polls again in November, even as his legal problems deepen.In the New York civil fraud case, the judge, Arthur Engoron, ruled in February that Trump, his company and top executives – including his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr – schemed for years to deceive banks and insurers by inflating financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.Among other penalties, Engoron put strict limitations on the ability of the Trump Organization to do business.James, a Democrat, has said she will seek to seize assets if Trump is unable to pay the judgment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWith interest, Trump and co-defendants including his company and top executives owe $467.3m. To obtain a bond, Trump lawyers said, they would be required to post collateral worth $557m.“A bond requirement of this enormous magnitude – effectively requiring cash reserves approaching $1bn – is unprecedented for a private company,” the Monday filing said.“Even when it comes to publicly traded companies, courts routinely waive or reduce the bond amount. Enforcing an impossible bond requirement as a condition of appeal would inflict manifest irreparable injury.”In February, a state appeals court judge ruled that Trump must post a bond covering the full amount to pause enforcement of the judgment. Trump is asking a full panel of the state’s intermediate appellate court to stay that judgment while he appeals. His lawyers previously proposed a $100m bond – an offer rejected by an appeals court judge, Anil Singh.Trump first appealed on 26 February, his lawyers asking the court to decide if Engoron “committed errors of law and/or fact” and if he abused his discretion or “acted in excess” of his jurisdiction.Trump was not required to pay his penalty or post a bond in order to appeal. Filing the appeal did not automatically halt enforcement of the judgment. Trump would receive an automatic stay if he were to put up money, assets or an appeal bond covering what he owes.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Trump asks to delay hush-money trial until supreme court weighs immunity claim

    Donald Trump on Monday asked the New York judge overseeing his criminal case on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star to delay the trial until the US supreme court finishes reviewing his claim of presidential immunity in a separate case.The hush money trial is set to begin on 25 March in a New York state court in Manhattan.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records.Prosecutors say he directed his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier, and then falsely recorded his reimbursement to Cohen as legal expenses.Trump denies the encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.Last month, prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence of a “pressure campaign” by Trump in 2018 to ensure Cohen did not cooperate with a federal investigation into the payment to Daniels. Cohen pleaded guilty that year to violating campaign finance law.In their court filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers called prosecutors’ claim of a pressure campaign “fictitious”. They said prosecutors should not be allowed to present evidence about Trump’s public statements about Cohen from that year because he made those statements in his official capacity as president.“Without immunity from criminal prosecution based on official acts, the President’s political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via de facto extortion,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which brought the charges, declined to comment.The case is one of four federal and state criminal indictments the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces. Firm trial dates have not yet been set in the other three cases, which stem from his efforts to reverse his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden, and his handling of government documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court on 28 February agreed to decide Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution in his federal case in Washington DC, over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, delaying a potential trial. The supreme court set the case for oral arguments during the week of 22 April.Trump has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases, which he has termed “election interference”. More

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    New York prosecutors request Trump gag order ahead of hush-money trial

    Manhattan prosecutors on Monday asked the judge presiding in Donald Trump’s criminal case on charges of falsifying business records to impose a gag order on the former president, seeking to bar him from attacking potential witnesses and revealing juror identities.The request, submitted by prosecutors in the office of the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, repeatedly referenced the gag order imposed in Trump’s federal criminal trial in Washington to ask for similar limitations on what he can publicly say about the case.“[The] defendant has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks,” the 30-page filing said. “Those remarks, as well as the inevitable reactions they incite from the defendant’s followers and allies, pose a significant threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding.”The proposed gag order hewed closely to the contours of the order upheld in December by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit that decided Trump’s inflammatory statements in the federal election interference case could not remain unrestricted, despite his objections.Prosecutors asked the New York judge Juan Merchan to limit Trump from assailing people in three categories: known or foreseeable witnesses concerning their trial testimony; court staff and the district attorney’s staff as well as their families; and any prospective jurors.The filing made extensive use of Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform decrying the criminal cases in their filing, notably including a post that Trump published in March last year when he erroneously predicted he would be arrested in connection with the business records case.“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” Trump had written in a post attached as an exhibit. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”The filing also drew direct lines from Trump’s inflammatory statements about the case to actions taken by his followers, arguing that immediately after that post in particular, the district attorney’s office received its first threat – even before Trump was formally charged.Trump’s lawyers are likely to oppose the gag order and could appeal it should Merchan agree with prosecutors. Still, if Merchan were to impose a gag order, he would be the latest in a string of judges in federal and state courts restricting Trump’s most acerbic remarks.The gag order request comes weeks before Trump is scheduled for trial in the Manhattan criminal case on 25 March. Last year, the district attorney’s office charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.Prosecutors have cast the case as an attempt by Trump to manipulate the 2016 election, arguing Trump paid $130,000 to buy Daniels’ silence about the affair because he was supposedly concerned about damaging his presidential campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe charges hinge on how the hush money was recorded on Trump’s business records. Trump falsified the records, prosecutors allege, by recording the reimbursements to his former lawyer Michael Cohen – who made the payment to Daniels – as “legal expenses” from a “retainer agreement”.To make their case, prosecutors asked the judge in a separate filing on Monday to allow them to introduce ancillary evidence at trial related to their 2016 election interference theory, including other hush-money payments Trump made in advance of the 2016 election.They also asked the judge to allow them to use the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump boasted about groping women, which came shortly before Trump made the hush-money payment to Daniels.Trump’s lawyers pushed back at prosecutors in their own filing, asking the judge to exclude evidence about the 2016 election because it was irrelevant to the actual business records allegations. They also asked Cohen to be barred from testifying because he had previously made misstatements. More

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    John Avlon targets New York Republicans in US House campaign: ‘They’re scared’

    To John Avlon’s knowledge, “the National Republican Congressional Committee didn’t feel compelled to weigh in when any of the other candidates in the Democratic primary got in the race. But they did for me. And I think that’s because they’re scared.”The race is in New York’s first congressional district, a US House seat represented by a Republican, Nick LaLota, in an area that trended towards Joe Biden in 2020 and is thus one of many Democratic targets in the state this year. Avlon announced his run on Wednesday.“I think they thought they were going to have a relatively easy race, maybe facing the candidate who had been defeated before. But I think when they saw me getting in the race, they recognised that changes the calculus.”Avlon, 51, is no unknown quantity: he has written four books on politics and history, was for five years editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast and, until this month, was a contributor and anchor at CNN.The primary comes first. Nancy Goroff contested the seat on the eastern end of Long Island in 2020 and is in again. So is James Gaughran, a former state senator. There’s plenty of time for things to get testy but Gaughran welcomed Avlon to the race, telling Politico: “I’ve watched him a lot on CNN, and I’ve actually become a big fan. His advocacy – particularly pointing to the issues we have in this country of trying to save this country from Donald Trump, is spot on.”Avlon laughs. “That was very kind of Jimmy. And by the way … don’t we want to see more of that? Don’t we want to see more, ‘Let’s have a civil conversation, disagree where we disagree, find the areas where we agree, and be civil and constructive and not tear each other down in primaries, because it distracts the focus from the real work to be done, which is winning a general election.’”Republicans have not been quite so welcoming to Avlon. The NRCC said it looked forward “to litigating this smug, liberal hack’s past so voters can see just how left he and the rest of the modern Democrat [sic] party have become”.A LaLota spokesperson piled in, calling Avlon “a Manhattan elitist without any attachments to Long Island other than his summer home in the Hamptons” and claiming NY-1 “has a history of rejecting out-of-state and Manhattan elitists, from both sides of the aisle, who parachute into the district”.Avlon has homes in Sag Harbor and Manhattan. LaLota, a graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, lives in Amityville – outside his district.Avlon says: “I don’t think it’s remotely credible to attack me as radical far left. That’s the kind of cut-and-paste political attack that people realise is just fundamentally false. And I think the reality is that Nick LaLota has been a Donald Trump flunky, doing whatever he says rather than solving problems on behalf of people in Suffolk county. You know, he’s far too far right for this swing district.”Twice, Avlon mentions as a model the centrist Tom Suozzi’s Democratic win this month in NY-3, the seat formerly held by the notorious George Santos, the sixth House member ever expelled. Twice, Avlon cites as motivation farcical scenes in Washington DC in which Senate Republicans sank their own border and immigration deal, Trump having made clear he wants to campaign for president against the backdrop of a “border crisis”, real or confected.House Republicans have since refused to consider a foreign aid package without attendant border reform.Avlon says: “When LaLota attacked Senator James Lankford [of Oklahoma, the Republican negotiator] for trying to solve the border crisis with a bipartisan solution, he just revealed himself as part of the problem, not part of the solution of our politics. I want to be part of the solution.”To some Democrats, “centrist” has become a dirty word. Not to Avlon. He has distanced himself from No Labels, the group he co-founded in 2010, left a decade ago and now accuses of a “reckless gamble with democracy” in its flirtation with a presidential campaign. But the political centre is still where he wants to be, “particularly in swing districts [like NY-01] as a matter of practicality but I think also on principle.“If the larger goal is to win elections, we still need to find a way to reunite America. That’s a lofty goal. I’m not saying that’s why I’m running. But once we break this fever, we need to find a way to come together again. I do believe in the power of unifying leaders in divided times and the best American politics is that which focuses on what unites us, not what divides us.”Avlon’s third book, from 2017, was Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations. The historian Richard Norton Smith called it “a stake through the heart of political extremism”, a subject Avlon knows well, also having written Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America (2010) and presented Reality Check with John Avlon: Extremist Beat for CNN.“There’s a fundamental importance in building broader community and building a big tent,” he says. “The Democratic party is the last big tent party. The Democratic party, unfortunately, is the only functioning political party in America, because the other party is set to re-nominate a guy who tried to destroy our democracy, and is using election lies as a litmus test for loyalty. I don’t think you can underscore that enough.“But in the larger sense, democracy depends upon reasoning together. That requires common facts and identifying common ground and focusing on how you solve common problems. And that’s about putting country over party.”Avlon’s own marriage is bipartisan. His wife, Margaret Hoover, is a TV host and political commentator whose great-grandfather, Herbert Hoover, was the unlucky president hit by the Great Depression.Avlon is “proud of her and her family and the work she does to defend and extend his legacy. When Margaret and I are on air together or doing something onstage together, I hope it serves as a reminder that people can disagree agreeably – again, that partisan politics shouldn’t define every aspect of our lives, especially our personal lives. We can have honest disagreements, as long as it’s accompanied by an assumption of goodwill.”Avlon also started out working for a Republican: Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, long before he became Trump’s attack dog. As speechwriter and policy director, Avlon was there on 11 September 2001, when the towers fell.“September 11 is one of the defining moments in my life,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s unusual. I think New Yorkers understand how it defined our collective character. And I think some folks have slipped into a certain 9/11 amnesia. And I’ve warned against the wisdom of that, in a lot of segments, on air and written.“I’ll always be proud of the work we did in those days. My team and I were responsible for writing the eulogies for 343 firefighters, for police officers and Port Authority workers. And I think that memory, and the example they set by running into the fire, and the way we were briefly able to unite as a nation, in the aftermath, those are all core parts of my character and my experience.“And I think folks in Suffolk county will understand that, because they’ve experienced it themselves or they’ve been touched by it themselves. You don’t have to be retired police officer or firefighter to understand the importance of that day and its aftermath to our communities. It’s just part of who I am.” More