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      Migrants, real and imagined, grip US voters, 1,500 miles north of border

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      Rhinelander is closer to the Arctic Circle than to Mexico, so it is no great surprise that few people in the small Wisconsin city have laid eyes on the foreign migrants Donald Trump claims are “invading” the country from across the US border 1,500 miles to the south.But Jim Schuh, the manager of a local bakery, is nonetheless sure they are a major problem and he’s voting accordingly.“We don’t see immigrants here but I have relatives all over the country and they see them,” he said. “That’s Biden. He’s responsible.”Large numbers of voters in key swing states agree with Schuh, even in places where migrants are hard to find as they eye cities such as Chicago and New York struggling to cope with tens of thousands of refugees and other arrivals transported there by the governors of Texas and Florida.Trump has been pushing fears over record levels of migration hard in Wisconsin where the past two presidential elections have been decided by a margin of less than 1% of the vote. A Marquette law school poll last month found that two-thirds of Wisconsin voters agree that “the Biden administration’s border policies have created a crisis of uncontrolled illegal migration into the country”.Trump has twice held rallies in Wisconsin over the past month at which migrants have been a primary target. In Green Bay he called the issue “bigger than a war” and invoked the situation in Whitewater, a small city of about 15,000 residents in the south of the state.Republican politicians have turned Whitewater into the poster child for anti-migrant rhetoric in Wisconsin after the city’s police chief, Dan Meyer, appealed for federal assistance to cope with the arrival of nearly 1,000 people from Nicaragua and Venezuela over the past two years.Meyer made clear in a letter to President Joe Biden in December that he was not hostile to the foreign arrivals as he expressed concern about the “terrible living conditions” endured by some.“We’ve seen a family living in a 10ft x 10ft shed in minus 10 degree temperatures,” he wrote.But the police chief said that his department was struggling to cope with the number of Spanish-speaking migrants because of the cost of translation software and the time taken dealing with a sharp increase in unlicensed drivers. Meyer also said that his officers had responded to serious incidents linked to the arrivals including the death of an infant, sexual assaults and a kidnapping.However, he told Biden that “none of this information is shared as a means of denigrating or vilifying this group of people … In fact, we see a great value in the increasing diversity that this group brings to our community.”That did not stop Republican politicians from descending on Whitewater to whip up fear.The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a close ally of Trump who has spoken at the former president’s political rallies, and a Republican member of Congress from the state, Bryan Steil, held a meeting in the city to denounce what they described as the “devastating” consequences of the migrant arrivals.Johnson blamed “the whole issue of the flood of illegal immigrants that have come to this country under the Biden administration”.Steil declined to back Meyer’s appeal for federal financial assistance and said the answer lay in legislation to secure the border. However, the congressman was among those Republicans who killed off a bipartisan border security law after Trump opposed the legislation in an apparent move to keep the crisis a live political issue going into the presidential election.View image in fullscreenRepublican members of the Wisconsin legislature wrote to Biden in January demanding action over what they claimed was a surge in violent crime in Whitewater even though Meyer has said he sees no threat to residents from the migrants and that “we are a safe community”.Some Whitewater residents are furious at the political intervention. Brienne Brown, a member of the city council for six years, said residents had been welcoming of the migrants, with community organisations providing food, furniture and bedding to many.“The spotlight fell on us because Ron Johnson and Bryan Steil decided to make it a political event for themselves. Most people here were incredibly angry. They feel like they’ve been used as a political football,” she said.“The crime that is occurring is super low level, which is mostly our police department pulling over somebody in a car who doesn’t have a licence.”The police chief has called for migrants to be allowed to obtain driving licences but the Wisconsin legislature will not allow it.Brown said that the serious incidents of assault involved domestic violence as well as the case of a woman who abandoned her newborn baby in a field, and that those kind of crimes remained uncommon.Wisconsin has long relied on migrant workers, many of them undocumented, as farm labour. Studies have suggested that the state’s dairy farms would grind to a halt without foreign workers. Historically, most were from Mexico. Whitewater tended to attract people from Guanajuato as migrants from the Mexican state sent word back about job opportunities.Brown noticed a change during the Covid crisis.“I’d knock on doors a lot just to talk to my constituents right around the pandemic. I started noticing that a lot of them were not from Mexico. They were from Nicaragua and Venezuela,” she said.Brown said the workers moved into accommodation left by students forced to return home by the pandemic lockdown.“We have a lot of farms, a lot of chicken farms, a lot of egg farms. There are factories that make spices, there are factories that can food. They’re always looking for low-paid workers and they never have enough. So there was plenty of work available,” she said.Schuh, like many other Americans critical of what they describe as Biden’s open border policy, makes a point of distinguishing between those who go through the formal process of immigration with a visa and those walking across the border to seek asylum or work illegally.“I have nothing against immigrants but it has to be done the right way,” he said.Trump continued to stoke the issue at a rally in Michigan earlier this month when he blamed Biden for the murder of Ruby Garcia in March. The former president claimed his administration had deported the man who has confessed to the shooting, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, and that “crooked Joe Biden took him back and let him back in and let him stay in and he viciously killed Ruby”. Ortiz-Vite was deported in 2020 following his arrest for drinking and driving. It is not clear when he returned to the US.Trump told the rally that he spoke to Garcia’s family and that they were “grieving for this incredible young woman”. But Garcia’s sister, Mavi, denied that anyone in the family spoke to the former president and accused him of exploiting the murder for political ends.“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” she told WOOD-TV.“It’s always been about illegal immigrants. Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?” More

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      No Going Back: Kristi Noem and other Trump veepstakes also-rans

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      Donald Trump will never tap Kristi Noem to be his running mate. Indeed, she may never have had a real shot, but in the past few weeks her literary efforts have certainly helped torch whatever dreams she had of living in government housing, complete with Secret Service detail, a heartbeat from the Oval Office.Last weekend, at a vice-presidential cattle call, Trump failed to summon Noem to the stage. She reportedly left early. But at least she made it to Mar-a-Lago for a brief namecheck from Trump. Two other supposed vice-presidential hopefuls, Tulsi Gabbard and Ben Carson, failed to elicit even a mention. As it happens, like Noem, they have campaign books to sell.No Going Back, Noem’s memoir, dwells in a hell of its own, its fires stoked by her stunning story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, and an unnamed goat. The resultant controversy will be a tale for the political ages but more amazing still is that Noem simply refuses to say sorry. In her book, she writes that if elected president herself, the first thing she’d do “is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds”, adding: “Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.” Talk about twisted.This is not the top table. In The Perilous Fight, Carson manages to argue for a nationwide abortion ban at a time when the US has never been more pro-choice, while Trump, seeking to escape a political trap, unfurls the banner of states’ rights. Way to read the runes, Dr Ben.For Love of Country is Gabbard’s bid for relevance. A former Democratic congresswoman, she is now a Fox News regular. She aims to feed the beast but may be consumed by it. Or, more likely, something worse: ignored.For unvarnished self-destruction, Noem wears the crown and will for some time to come. More than two weeks after the Guardian broke news of her cruelty toward defenseless animals and willingness to boast about it, she remains in the public eye, a punchline for daytime and late-night TV, a spectacle without a clue. On a dimwitted book tour, her attempts to sell her work double as a prolonged act of self-immolation.When you cause your seven-year-old to ask, “Where’s Cricket?” – and then print the tale in a mass-market hardback – you have a problem. But when it is revealed that in order to commit the story to print you dismissed the objections of editors and advisers, you are walking where most candidates dare not tread.A Politico headline blared: Kristi Noem’s Team Told Her to Nix the Dog Story Two Years Ago. The site added: “It would have violated the first rule of campaign memoirs: Do no harm.”Some publicity is just bad. Ask Trump about the Access Hollywood tape, about groping women, which nearly cost him the 2016 election. He also overdid the “best sex ever” gambit, regarding a New York Post headline about his extra-marital adventures. Trump now spends his days as a criminal defendant, on trial thanks to alleged affairs, passing gas and getting slapped with contempt sanctions and the threat of jail.Noem has not progressed quite that far. But with her tale of killing set to ring through the ages, when it came to a quite separate unforced error even her publisher threw her to the wolves.“At the request of Governor Noem, we are removing a passage regarding Kim Jong-un from her book No Going Back, upon reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and eBook editions,” Center Street announced. “Further questions about the passage should be referred to the author.”Such questions may not get straight answers. Noem refuses to say she never met the North Korean dictator. Pro-tip: visiting England doesn’t mean you had tea with the king.View image in fullscreenCampaign trail books often come with awkward subtitles. Noem’s is: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward. Catchy. Carson is not to be outdone. Underneath his own jaunty banner – Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family – the retired neurosurgeon, 2016 Republican primary contender and former US housing secretary offers heartfelt jeremiads and dubious blurbs. Apart from that … not much to help his cause.Carson calls for a national abortion ban, writing: “The battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. The practice continues in many more states.”Said differently, Carson thinks it’s time New York was more like Mississippi. Polling and election results suggest that’s not a popular stance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarson’s book jacket is graced by Tucker Carlson and Franklin Graham. Tucker’s gonna Tucker. Billy Graham’s son has threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they criticize Trump. Mary Miller, a member of Congress from Illinois, also praises Carson, offering this nugget of wisdom: “It is important to stand strong against the woke cultural tide at work to water down the importance of the traditional family, and I applaud Dr Carson for calling attention to this issue.”It’s always worth repeating that Miller once had this to say: “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’”Carson dedicates his book to “the strong traditional families that provide the solid foundation of our nation”. He bashes pornography but is of course silent about Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model, who claim affairs with Trump.Last and least of the three would-be VPs, Gabbard delivers an awkward mix of memoir and screed. She grew up in Hawaii and served in Iraq. Her father was a Republican until he became a Democrat. Convenience may be a family brand.In 2020, Gabbard ran against Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, then endorsed him. Now she takes a cudgel to the man and a flamethrower to her old party. As to be expected, she attacks Hillary Clinton over comments about Gabbard and Russia. Once again, Gabbard gets her facts wrong. Clinton never called her a “Russian asset”.Gabbard reportedly turned down an offer to be Robert Kennedy Jr’s running mate. She won’t be Trump’s VP but a cabinet slot isn’t out of the question.Generally, campaign books endeavor to simultaneously show enough leg and sanitize a wannabe’s ambition, aiming to make a contender interesting without giving too much away. But such memoirs can still say and do plenty.Think of The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama’s profession of political faith from 2006, used to develop themes that would underlie his 2008 White House run. Promise Me Dad, Biden’s memoir, burnished his image as a warm uncle, put the memory of Beau Biden, his late son, front and center, and provided a foundation for success in 2020.Now, on the Republican side, JD Vance is a leading contender to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016, brought him to national prominence and eventually a Senate seat for Ohio. Noem, Carson and Gabbard are nowhere near that league.
      No Going Back is published in the US by Center Street
      The Perilous Fight is published in the US by HarperCollins
      For Love of Country is published in the US by Regnery More

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      Barron Trump will not be a delegate at Republican National Convention after all

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      Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron Trump, won’t be serving as a Florida delegate to the Republican National Convention after all, his mother’s office said on Friday.“While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” Melania Trump’s office said.The chair of the Republican party of Florida, Evan Power, had said on Wednesday that the 18-year-old high school senior would serve as one of 41 at-large delegates from Florida to the national gathering, where the GOP is set to officially nominate his father as its presidential candidate for the November general election.Power did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.In an interview earlier on Friday on Kayal and Company on Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Donald Trump was asked about Barron joining the Florida delegation. “He’s really been a great student. And he does like politics,” Trump said. “It’s sort of funny. He’ll tell me sometimes: ‘Dad, this is what you have to do.’”Barron Trump has been largely kept out of the public eye, but he turned 18 on March and is graduating from high school next week. The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York said there would be no court on 17 May so that the former president could attend his son’s graduation.Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump and Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, are part of the Florida delegation to the convention taking place in Milwaukee from 15 July to 18 July. More

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      US campus protests give Trump a target for his violent rhetoric of vengeance

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      Donald Trump delights in railing against his enemies, and when protesters set up encampments at college campuses nationwide to decry Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the former US president gained another useful antagonist.For some observers, Trump’s language is both dangerous in the current political environment as he seeks to rile up his base and a dark hint at how he might treat dissent and demonstrations should he defeat Joe Biden and achieve his ambition of returning to the White House in 2025.His language is certainly extreme.“These are radical-left lunatics, and they’ve got to be stopped now,” Trump said earlier this month outside the Manhattan courtroom where he is being tried on business fraud charges.The day prior, police had rounded up demonstrators at Columbia University, home to one of the most contentious protest sites. Trump called the sweep “a beautiful thing to watch”.He then deployed blood-curdling and violent rhetoric to describe the protesters. “Remove the encampments immediately. Vanquish the radicals, and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place for which to learn,” he said at a rally in swing state Wisconsin. “The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you possibly noticed, and Biden’s nowhere to be found.”Joe Biden has in fact weighed in on the protests, acknowledging that the right to demonstrate is protected in the country while saying “dissent must never lead to disorder”.But the campus unrest has nonetheless vexed the Democratic president as he navigates a backlash to his support for Israel, which may cost him votes essential to winning the November election against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee whom polls show currently has a narrow lead over Biden.When it comes to the protests, the former president’s course of action is far more clearcut. Though congressional investigators have blamed Trump for instigating the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol, that has not stopped Trump from decrying the pro-Palestinian students as dangerous rabble-rousers who would not be tolerated under his administration.“It’s an old playbook,” said Robert Cohen, a history and social studies professor at New York University. “Nothing original about it except that he’s more unrestrained, in the kind of ludicrous way he talks about it, because he’s openly fascistic about this.”“To feel like it’s a beautiful thing when you’re using, basically, military force to suppress dissenters, that’s really sick, if you think about that in the context of a democratic society,” Cohen said.While the majority of college demonstrations in the United States have been peaceful, police arrested more than 2,500 people at the protests, which have spread to campuses in Europe, the UK, Lebanon and India.A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released earlier this week indicated that Biden supporters are split in their views of the demonstrations. Among those who plan to vote for the president, 39% oppose the protesters’ tactics but agree with their demands, 30% support them overall and 20% are against them.There’s far less diversity among Trump supporters: 78% are against the protests, and the ranks of those who support them to any degree are in the single digits.David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said Trump was reacting to the encampments in concert with conservative news outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, whose personalities echo the former president’s condemnation of the students, and incentivize him to keep up his attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You’ve got almost dual filters, reinforcing each other: Trump’s comments, and the outlets that these voters watch and trust the most,” he said in an interview.Trump may also see the protests as a way to win over undecided voters, Paleologos said, since his survey found voters who backed the students were a minority overall.“He’s figured out that if he criticizes the protesters themselves and their behavior, he wedges into the issue that potentially gets to seven-in-10 voters or two-thirds of voters,” Paleologos said.It would not be the first time a presidential candidate has profited from attacking student movements, said Cohen, who has studied the years of demonstrations on college campuses against the Vietnam war.“Doesn’t matter how non-violent they are, how admirable their goals are, dissenting student movements are always unpopular,” said Cohen, blaming the decades-long trend on America’s “overarching culture of conservatism”.“With these politicians on the right, they love this stuff. They know that playing up these student movements works because people don’t like these student movements,” he said.Yet the solutions they embrace often only lead to more intense protests.“Usually when you repress it, it just gets worse in terms of dissent and protest, because people who may not have been concerned about, in this case, Israel and Palestine, they are upset when their friends get arrested for just sitting on a plaza,” Cohen said. 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

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      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s conviction for defying Jan 6 committee subpoena – as it happened

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      A federal appellate court ruled unanimously today to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House special committee on the January 6 capitol attack. It’s a blow for the far-right media executive who helped usher Donald Trump into office in 2016 and was a key architect of the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Bannon was originally sentenced to four months in prison; this ruling makes his incarceration a real possibility, although he could appeal the decision again.Here’s what else happened today:
      Trump’s 2024 campaign will be “lean,” according to a Washington Post report, which also revealed numerous swing state officials’ worries that they lack critical campaign resources ahead of the 2024 election.
      Paul Manafort offered his consulting services to a Chinese media venture after Trump pardoned him in 2020 – and is likely to join the Trump 2024 campaign soon.
      Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas, who the Department of Justice has charged with receiving bribes from foreign entities.
      Rudy Giuliani can’t stop fanning the flames of election conspiracy theories – a habit that got his show on the conservative talk radio station WABC, in New York, cancelled.
      Rudy Giuliani’s show on the conservative talk radio station WABC in New York was cancelled after Giuliani continued to platform falsehoods about the 2020 election – a violation of the radio station’s policy.According to the New York Times, which first reported the cancellation, Giuliani had been warned repeatedly to stop discussing election lies on air.“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” John Catsimatidis, who owns the station, told the New York Times. “We warned him twice.”In a 9 May letter to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren this week urged the Treasury to step up measures recommended by the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity (TACRE).“I am concerned that the recommendations made by members of the TACRE remain in limbo at Treasury,” Warren wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Reuters. Warren requested the department provide a timeline by May 23 for implementing the remaining proposals.The Disney heiress and activist Abigail Disney blasted South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and the Republican Party in an email to voters, per an exclusive Guardian report from Martin Pengelly:Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced today plans to unleash funding to mitigate the spread of bird flu in cattle – a measure intended to slow the spread of the virus.The spread of the virus to dairy cows poses an immediate risk to the workers in close contact with livestock and has raised concerns about the virus mutating and spreading to humans.Officials have promised nearly $200m for tracking and testing, and to compensate farmers who have taken a loss due to the spread of the virus.Two months after the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Colorado lacked the authority to ban Donald Trump from the ballot there, a separate fight over ballot access is playing out in Ohio, over Joe Biden’s eligibility to appear on the ballot this fall.The partisan fight that has been brewing for months escalated this week when the GOP-controlled state legislature blew past a Thursday deadline to pass legislation ensuring the president will have ballot access in November.Because the Democratic National Convention falls after the state’s certification deadline for presidential candidates, the state legislature was tasked with passing a law to push that deadline ahead.But Republicans in the state say they will grant Biden ballot access only if they garner the votes to also pass legislation banning foreign nationals from donating to state referendum campaigns – a push that stems from their anger over donations from a Swiss billionaire to Democratic-backed ballot measures in the state last year.Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas.Cuellar’s former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and consultant Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, are now cooperating with the Department of Justice in its case against the Texas Democrat.Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted last week for allegedly accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from a Mexico City bank and an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan.Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaigns are a study in contrasts.While Biden spends his Friday fundraising on the west coast, making campaign stops in California and Washington, Trump sits through another day of his New York trial over Trump’s alleged falsification of business records in connection with hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.And while the Biden campaign has launched a massive fundraising campaign, Trump’s operation appears strained amid his legal battles. According to a report today in the Washington Post, swing state GOP operatives are worried they lack critical campaign infrastructure ahead of the 2024 general election (the Trump campaign insists that’s not the case).Donald Trump’s fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to appear in court Monday – his testimony in the hush money case will be key, given Cohen’s role in facilitating the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. You can follow updates on the case on the Guardian’s live trial blog here:In the unanimous decision by a federal appellate court to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt, circuit court judge Brad Garcia wrote that Bannon “deliberately refused to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena in that he knew what the subpoena required and intentionally did not respond; his nonresponse, in other words, was no accident.”Bannon has maintained that he refused to comply with the congressional subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the advice of his former lawyer, Robert Costello – a justification the appellate court has rejected.Bannon could continue to appeal the case, including by turning to the U.S. Supreme Court.Far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon has, since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, maintained the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Even as other figures in the conservative movement shy away from the claim, Bannon has made the falsehood a rallying cry. In March, the Guardian’s David Smith wrote about Bannon’s incendiary role in right-wing politics: Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.After Steve Bannon’s criminal conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 capitol attack was upheld by a federal appeals court, the far-right political operative could soon be forced to begin a 4-month prison sentence initially ordered in 2022.Leaked audio showed that ahead of the 2020 general presidential election, Bannon was familiar with Trump’s plans to declare an early victory. Since 2020, he has continued to push falsehoods about the 2020 election and host prominent conspiracy theorists on his influential War Room podcast.When the House committee investigating the January 6 attacks issued a subpoena for Bannon, he refused to comply. The court’s decision to uphold his conviction delivers a blow to the Trump ally.A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reportedly upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the United States House select committee on the January 6 capitol attack.Paul Manafort returned to international consulting after Donald Trump pardoned him in 2020, The Washington Post reports.Manafort, in the years since obtaining clemency, worked on a Chinese streaming media venture. Now, the Post reports, Manafort is poised to join Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Manafort denied that his work on the Chinese media project would form a conflict of interest in the U.S.-China relationship.Before chairing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Manafort’s former firm, called Black, Manafort, and Stone notoriously lobbied U.S. congress on behalf of foreign governments – including on behalf of human rights-abusing dictatorships, among them the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.Former president Donald Trump has adopted the legal strategy of stalling and stalling to ensure his most sensitive trials will take place after the election. That strategy is working, reports Sam Levine:As had been expected for months, Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday scrapped a 20 May trial date that had been set in south Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents. The delay was almost entirely the doing of Cannon, a Trump appointee, who allowed far-fetched legal arguments into the case and let preliminary legal matters pile up on her docket to the point where a May trial was not a possibility.On Thursday, the Georgia court of appeals announced it would hear a request from Trump to consider whether Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, should be removed from the election interference case against him because of a relationship with another prosecutor. The decision means both that Trump will continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and draw out the case. “There will be no trial until 2025,” tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been closely following the case.The third pending case against Trump, a federal election interference case in Washington, also appears unlikely to go to trial before the election. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution last month and seemed unlikely to resolve it quickly enough to allow the case to move forward ahead of the election.Swing state GOP officials say they have not received key campaign resources ahead of the 2024 general presidential election, The Washington Post reports. This comes amid a funding crunch for Donald Trump’s campaign, which is looking lean as the former president faces mounting legal costs.Top campaign officials rejected the idea that their operation was suffering.But Republican Party officials in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan said they worried that their funding and operations would be insufficient – and that the campaign had not built out enough of an infrastructure in those key states.“There is no sign of life,” Kim Owens, an Arizona Republican Party operative, told the Post.Good morning! After easily surviving an attempt to oust him by the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, House speaker Mike Johnson appears to be basking in it. In an interview with Politico, Johnson – the conservative Republican who developed his career in the legal world of the Christian right and joined his colleagues in contesting the results of the 2020 election – waxed poetic about bipartisanship and consensus.He had high praise for House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and proclaimed – of bipartisanship – that the American political system “doesn’t work unless you understand the principles that undergird it.”His praise came after the House easily quashed far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust Johnson on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Having said this, Johnson was just as quick to defend his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Johnson, who led the effort to garner congressional Republican support for a Texas lawsuit attempting to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, said he had no regrets over the legal maneuver.Here’s what’s going on today:
      Amid the former president’s mounting legal costs, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is taking a “lean” approach, Washington Post reports.
      Trump returns to court today, rounding out a week marked by detailed testimony from adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump.
      Joe Biden will participate in campaign events on the west coast this afternoon. More

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      Abigail Disney evokes Old Yeller in plea to reject Republicans after Kristi Noem kills dog

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      Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”Noem describes the day she killed Cricket (and an unnamed goat) in No Going Back, a campaign memoir published this week but first reported late last month by the Guardian.Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, met her fate in a gravel pit because Noem deemed her “untrainable” after she disrupted a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens. The goat, which had not been castrated, was deemed too aggressive and smelly and a danger to Noem’s children. By the governor’s own admission, it took two blasts with a shotgun to finish the goat off.Noem has repeatedly defended her story as indicative of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in life as well as politics. Nonetheless, she has reportedly slipped way down Donald Trump’s list of possible vice-presidential picks, should the presumptive Republican nominee avoid prison on any of 88 criminal charges and should he beat Biden in November.Two weeks after the Guardian report, shock and revulsion over Noem’s story continues to ring throughout the US. This week, amid a string of uncomfortable interviews even on usually friendly rightwing networks, also questioning an untrue claim to have met the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, the governor cut short a promotional tour for her book.In her email in support of the PCCC, Disney said: “Walt Disney also understood story telling. Together, we must make sure all voters see how this sad Kristi Noem episode is part of the larger story of the 2024 election: America could vote into the White House extremists that glorify cruelty and lack basic empathy and compassion.”View image in fullscreenAsking readers to post pictures of beloved pets and the hashtag #UnleashTheVote, Disney also promoted a petition against “Trump and extreme Republicans who lack the character to lead our nation”.Old Yeller, which the Guardian called “one of the best and most poignant boy-and-his dog movies”, was released in 1957. It tells the story of a family in Texas in 1869 that adopts a large yellow dog.Disney said: “In Old Yeller, the family comes to see the lovable stray dog as an indispensable member of the family. The film’s climactic moment is a heartbreaking one, when the father has no choice but to shoot Old Yeller when the dog contracts rabies because of the inevitable threat to their lives – and, out of compassion, to end the suffering the dog would have to endure.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Noem shot her family’s 14-month-old puppy after a hunting trip, in her own account, because she was too hard to teach. ‘I hated that dog,’ she wrote, framing the killing of a puppy as an example of strength.“Kristi Noem is not strong. Like Trump, she is cruel and selfish.”Listing positions taken by Trump and supporters like Noem, Disney said: “If Kristi Noem was actually strong, she would stand up to the January 6 insurrectionists instead of celebrating them. Or she would make billionaires pay their fair share of taxes instead of lining up for their campaign donations.“If she had real courage, she might even criticise the supreme court for abolishing abortion rights or making it easier to flood our streets and schools with guns.“True strength is not demonstrated through harshness, brutality, or callous indifference, but through steadfast kindness and compassion. Our pets teach most of us this lesson every day through their loyalty and unconditional love.“Let’s make sure Americans demand leaders who do the same when it comes time to vote.” More

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      Netanyahu says Israel will ‘stand alone’ as White House says major Rafah invasion wouldn’t help efforts to defeat Hamas – as it happened

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      Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel will “stand alone” if needed in its attempt to defeat Hamas, Reuters reported.Netanyahu’s latest comments come after Biden threatened to stop providing military aid to Israel if Israel launches a major military operation in Rafah.In a statement, Netanyahu said: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone. If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails.”Netanyahu’s recent remarks signal towards an increased tension between Israel and US as Israel continues its attacks in Gaza.
      Biden last night said the US will stop supplying specific weapons to Israel if it launches a major ground operation in Rafah in Gaza – a move commended by progressive lawmakers like Senator Bernie Sanders and democratic US house representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
      In response, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials said Israel will “stand alone” if needed in order to defeat Hamas – a show of blatant disregard for the US, with whom Israel has a historically ironclad relationship.
      Republican house speaker Mike Johnson expressed surprise at Biden’s threat to Israel, saying it was a “complete turn” from his previous positions. Johnson accused Biden of having a “senior moment.”
      Senior Biden administration officials like Mag Gen Patrick Rider of the Pentagon underscored the US’s opposition to Israel’s looming invasion of Rafah. State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said an invasion would not bring security to Israel and could further imperil the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
      That’s it for this blog. Thank you for following along.Rider also added the US would continue to try and ensure humanitarian aid will reach Palestinians by land, sea, and air. Up until now, Israel has placed severe restrictions on humanitarian aid.Earlier this week, the head of the United Nations World Food Program said parts of Gaza have entered a “full-blown famine”.In the Pentagon’s daily press briefing, Mag Gen Patrick Rider was asked why restrictions weren’t placed on these bombs earlier in the conflict, considering the mass civilian loss they are known to inflict.In response, Rider said: “We absolutely do not want to see innocent lives lost in this tragic conflict. We’re going to continue to consult with Israel … and continue to ensure civilian safety is taken into account.”When asked if the Biden administration knew of how many civilian deaths were caused by these 2,000lb US bombs used by Israel, Rider declined to answer.The vast majority of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza so far have been women, children, and other civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry.Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made his position on Biden’s announcement to potentially suspend weapons clear:Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), the organization founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, issued a statement on Biden’s suspension of massive bombs to Israel, urging the president to do more.Dawn’s advocacy director Raed Jarrar said: “Israel has time and again made clear that it will not heed the gentlest of admonishments from the Biden administration to stop its carnage in Gaza. The Biden administration should abandon wishful notions that it can positively impact Israel’s conduct and focus on ending American complicity in Israel’s war crimes and genocidal policies.”State department spokesperson Matthew Miller addresses Biden’s threats to withhold weapons from Israel in a press briefing.Miller underscores the Biden administration’s opposition to a major Rafah invasion and the belief it will weaken Israeli security, but still supports Israel’s right to defend itself against other threats. He does not clarify if withholding weapons from Israel applies to other threats.He says the amount of civilian lives lost in Gaza is “unacceptable,” but adds Israel has “achieved a great deal of its military objectives” in degrading Hamas.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel will “stand alone” if needed in its attempt to defeat Hamas, Reuters reported.Netanyahu’s latest comments come after Biden threatened to stop providing military aid to Israel if Israel launches a major military operation in Rafah.In a statement, Netanyahu said: “If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone. If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails.”Netanyahu’s recent remarks signal towards an increased tension between Israel and US as Israel continues its attacks in Gaza.White House spokesperson John Kirby emphasized during his Thursday briefing that weapons are still being shipped to Israel.The clarification comes after Biden threatened to pause military aid to Israel if Israel launched a massive military assault in Rafah.Kirby said: “Weapons shipments are still going to Israel. And they’re still getting the vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves.”From Washington Post reporter John Hudson:Here is more context on the significance and nuances of Biden’s latest decision, from Politico.
      Biden’s “statement was the clearest conditioning of aid that the administration has made since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza”, [Politico’s] Jonathan Lemire and Jennifer Haberkorn write. “And it sent immediate ripples through national politics, with conservatives accusing the president of abandoning a long-held ally and some liberals hailing the pronouncement.”
      It’s hard to overemphasize what a big deal this is. For decades, American presidents from both major parties have supported Israel with few to no questions asked. But Biden and the administration have been increasingly irritated by Netanyahu for months, specifically on the threats to invade Rafah and the number of civilians Israel has killed over the last seven months.
      But there’s more nuance than appears at first blush:
      First: The Israeli military is already in Rafah. They’ve been bombing the area for weeks, but haven’t yet mounted a massive ground invasion. Which is why, as [Politico’s] Erin Banco reports, to “aid groups working in Rafah, the debate over Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza looks like only one thing: semantics.”
      Second: Though Biden made clear that while he would no longer send the IDF weapons they could use in Rafah, the U.S. will continue to send defensive weapons.
      “We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks,” Biden told CNN. “But … it’s just wrong. We’re not going to – we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
      At the heart of it, Biden’s warning to Netanyahu is that there are other ways to go after Hamas in Rafah – and those alternatives are the only approaches the White House finds acceptable, a Biden administration official told Playbook last night.
      The White House said that a major invasion of Rafah by Israel would not advance attempts by Israel to defeat Hamas, a spokesperson said on Thursday, Reuters reported.“Smashing into Rafah, in [Biden’s] view, will not advance that objective,” spokesperson John Kirby said in a media briefing.Kirby added that conversations about Rafah between the US and Israel are still ongoing.The latest remarks from Kirby come as Biden and other US officials have repeatedly denounced a military operation in Rafah, noting that such a move would lead to a humanitarian crisis.More Democratic congressmen have supported Biden’s threat to block US weapons to Israel if Israel launches a major military assault in Rafah.US representative Seth Moulton said that he was “more skeptical” of Israel’s plans to invade Rafah after meeting with the Israeli ambassador on Wednesday and supports Biden’s decision, in a post to X.
      I’ve always said that Israel must defeat Hamas. The question is whether invading Rafah ultimately helps or hurts that cause. After meeting with the Israeli Ambassador today for an hour, I’m even more skeptical of their plan. I support President Biden’s decision.
      House speaker Mike Johnson said that he hoped Biden was having a “senior moment” after hearing about his threat to withhold US military aid to Israel.In an interview with Politico Wednesday, Johnson spoke about his reaction to Biden’s latest warning:
      My reaction, honestly, was, ‘Wow, that is a complete turn from what I have been told, even in, you know, recent hours … I mean, 24 hours ago, it was confirmed to me by top administration officials that the policy’s very different than what he stated there. So I hope that’s a senior moment.
      Johnson said that he had had “classified discussions” with “top administration officials” on Wednesday and was told there would be no delays with supplying weapons to Israel.He added that after Biden’s announcement, he approach White House officials who told him that the Biden’s threat does not impact the aid package passed by Congress.Johnson said:
      So this statement by the president tonight, I just want to – I hope, I believe he’s off-script. I don’t think that’s something that staff told him to say.
      US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who previously called Israel’s attacks on Gaza an “unfolding genocide”, said that “[Biden]’s historic shift to include Israel in US standards makes the world safer and our values clear.”“President Biden enforcing conditions on US military aid and holding the Israeli gov to the same bar we hold all our allies to is the responsible, secure, and just thing to do,” she added.Other progressive representatives have applauded Biden’s threat to withhold US military aid to Israel if Israel launches a major military operation in Rafah.Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said Biden’s threat of withholding US military air is the “right and just thing … to do”, in a post to X.“The United States has a clear obligation to stop the massacre of innocent civilians,” she added.Defence minister Yoav Gallant told Israel’s “enemies and friends” on Wednesday that it would do whatever necessary to achieve its war aims in Gaza and the north, in an apparent response to US pressure to halt its operation in Rafah, reports Reuters.The comments, at a ceremony to commemorate Israel’s war dead, followed US president Joe Biden’s warning that the US would halt weapons supplies if Israel moved into Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.“I turn to Israel’s enemies as well as to our best of friends and say – the State of Israel cannot be subdued,” he said, according to remarks released by his office. “We will stand strong, we will achieve our goals – we will hit Hamas, we will hit Hezbollah, and we will achieve security.”The comments, from one of the war cabinet ministers considered to be most sensitive to the risk of alienating the US, underlined the scale of the standoff between the Biden administration and the Israeli government, said Reuters.“We have no choice, we have no other country. We will do whatever is necessary, and I repeat – whatever is necessary, in order to defend the citizens of Israel, to remove the evil threats against us, and to stand up to those who attempt to destroy us,” he said.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defied mounting international pressure to agree to a ceasefire but has not so far ordered troops to enter Rafah, where Israel says four battalions of Hamas fighters are based.In the north, Israeli forces have been engaged in exchanges of fire across the Lebanon border with forces of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia ever since the start of the war in Gaza last October.Other Israeli officials have vowed to pursue Israel’s military goals in Gaza despite Biden’s threat to cut off US weapons if Israel launches a major military assault on Rafah.Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said his government would pursue its goals in Gaza despite the US warning, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).“We will achieve complete victory in this war despite President Biden’s push back and arms embargo,” Smotrich said in a statement.“We must continue the war until Hamas is totally eliminated and our hostages are back home. This involves conquering Rafah completely and the sooner the better.”Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, also criticized Biden’s remarks, noting that Biden’s latest warning could give Israel’s adversaries “hope to succeed”.“If Israel is restricted from entering an area as important and central as Rafah where there are thousands of terrorists, hostages and leaders of Hamas, how exactly are we supposed to achieve our goals?” he said on public radio.“This is not a defensive weapon. This is about certain offensive bombs. In the end the State of Israel will have to do what it thinks needs to be done for the security of its citizens.”Progressive representative Ilhan Omar acknowledged the work of student protesters after Biden said that US bombs supplied to Israel have been used to kill civilians in Gaza.In a post to X, Omar said that “young people across the country protesting” helped move Biden’s rhetoric. Omar specifically highlighted Biden saying that “civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs”, referring to US bombs supplied to Israel.Omar said:
      This is what young people across the country were protesting for and finally the needle has moved in a significant way. I hope we see more progress, but don’t ever let people tell you that your voices are meaningless and your actions are worthless. The arc of what is possible is always within us to bend.
      Omar’s remarks are one of many reactions from progressive lawmakers at Biden’s threat to stop arm shipments to Israel if there is a major military assault in Rafah.Progressive lawmakers welcomed Joe Biden’s decision that the US will stop supplying bombs and other munitions to Israel if it launches a major military assault on the southern city of Rafah in Gaza.US representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin celebrated the announcement in a post to X.“No offensive weapons in Rafah. Good! Thank you [Biden]! Millions of innocent Palestinians have been forced into a corner. Now it’s time for a ceasefire and to release all the hostages. It’s time to end the bloodshed once and for all.”Former Bernie Sanders adviser Matt Duss told Politico: “He’s shifting on a really important point here because the moment requires it, and I applaud that. It’s a recognition of how dire this moment is.” He added: “I understand folks who are having a tough time with the fact that this took so long, but I think it’s really important, you know, to acknowledge the steps the president is taking now.”Republicans, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, have criticized Biden’s latest action. Johnson called the decision a “betrayal” as the question of military aid had already been voted on in Congress.Two top Israeli officials criticized US president Joe Biden on Thursday for threatening to stop certain arms supplies to Israel if it invades Rafah, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).“This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said on public radio in Israel’s first reaction to Biden’s warning.Biden’s announcement comes as the US, UN and humanitarian agencies have warned that an invasion of Rafah – where millions of Palestinian people have been displaced amid Israeli attacks – would trigger a humanitarian crisis.“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said during an interview with CNN.“We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells used,” Biden added. More