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      Biden campaign says Trump ‘directly to blame’ for Florida abortion ruling – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s campaign team said Donald Trump is “directly to blame” for the ruling upholding an abortion ban in Florida, given that the former president nominated three of the supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.“Because of Donald Trump, Maga [’Make America Great Again’] Republicans across this country are ripping away access to reproductive health care and inserting themselves into the most personal decisions women can make, from contraception to IVF,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on a press call.“And make no mistake: Donald Trump will do everything in his power to try and enact a national abortion ban if he’s reelected.”Earlier today, the Biden campaign released a new ad, titled “Trust”, that highlights Trump’s past comments bragging about the reversal of Roe and also warns of the possibility of a federal ban. The ad will air across battleground states as part of the Biden campaign’s broader media blitz this spring.“These are the stakes in November, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows them,” Rodríguez said. “Here’s the bottom line: Trump and Maga Republicans are working to ban abortion nationwide, while President Biden and Vice-President Harris will never stop fighting to protect reproductive freedom.”Democrats have condemned a Florida supreme court ruling that will allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect, while seizing on a separate decision green lighting an initiative protecting access to the procedure to go before voters in November. The party has seen success in recent elections by campaigning against efforts to cut off access to abortion, and will try to replicate that in Florida, a state where Democratic candidates have struggled in recent years. To hammer the point home, top House lawmakers convened a hearing in the state, which Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called “ground zero” in the fight for abortion access.Here’s what else happened:
      The Biden campaign said Donald Trump was “directly to blame” for the Florida court ruling upholding the state’s abortion restrictions.
      Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse signaled he was open to at least some of what Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is considering to approve military aid to Israel and Ukraine.
      Tina Smith, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, wants to repeal a moribund 19th-century law that some fear could be used to stop abortions nationwide.
      Opponents of Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza are encouraging voters to choose “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s primary today.
      Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said he wants to fight “the isolationist movement” in his party.
      Joe Biden plans to today hold a small meeting with Muslims at the White House, rather than the larger gathering it traditionally hosts during Ramadan, in the latest sign of his administration’s tensions with the community over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza, National Public Radio reports.The Biden administration has repeatedly approved weapons transfers to Israel as it presses on with its invasion of Gaza, sparking protests from Muslims who have organized efforts to withhold their votes for Biden during the primaries. Here’s more on the White House meeting tonight, from NPR:
      The gathering is in lieu of the traditional Ramadan iftar dinner or Eid celebrations the White House usually hosts with Muslim leaders, and it comes amid ongoing political tensions given the war in Gaza.
      The goal, according to people familiar with the plans, is to allow guests to have a “substantive” conversation with the president about the situation in Gaza. Vice President Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will also attend, the sources said. Biden last met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders at the White House in late October.The sources said the White House had initially planned to host a small, solemn Ramadan dinner Tuesday evening, but plans changed after a number of Muslim invitees said they did not feel comfortable dining at the White House while scores of Palestinians are on the brink of starvation.
      The White House still intends to host a small iftar dinner later Tuesday evening for a dozen or so Muslim staffers — a scaled-down version of the traditional celebration.
      Some Democrats fear the rift between Biden and Arab and Muslim communities could cost him support crucial to winning the November election, particularly in swing state Michigan. Here’s more on that:Another tentative and potential sign of movement has emerged on the long-stalled military aid package for Ukraine and Israel.Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse weighed in on Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s comments yesterday, where he floated some potential demands he may make to move the package through his chamber. Whitehouse seems alright with two of the three changes Johnson requested, but takes issue with the third:Republicans and Democrats have been tussling over the aid proposal for months, and it’s unclear if Johnson’s mulled concessions will be palatable to Democrats, or enough for his fellow Republicans, many of whom are demanding new, strict border security policies to support the bill. Here’s more on where the House speaker says he now stands on the bill:Donald Trump is making a swing through Michigan and Wisconsin today, two states he will almost certainly need to win if he is to return to the White House.His stop in Michigan took him to Grand Rapids, an area where Democrats have lately made inroads in what was traditionally Republican territory. It’s also the site of a murder allegedly committed by an undocumented immigrant, and during his appearance in the city, Trump reiterated his vows to crack down on people in the country illegally:Attacks on migrants have been a mainstay for Trump since his first run for the White House, and thus far, this campaign has been no different:The first criminal trial Donald Trump faces begins 15 April in New York City, on charges related to making hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election. The former president has taken to insulting various people involved in the case, and as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, now faces a gag order:The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s forthcoming criminal trial in New York expanded an existing gag order on Monday, preventing the former president from making inflammatory comments about the judge’s family members, after they became the target of Trump’s personal attacks.The new protective order continues to allow Trump to rail against the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump last year with falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal before the 2016 election.But Trump is now expressly prohibited from assailing the family members of any lawyers or court staff involved in the case, as well as family members of the judge and the district attorney, the New York supreme court justice Juan Merchan wrote in the revised order.The order cited the recent attacks Trump had leveled at the judge’s daughter and rejected Trump’s contention that he should be free to criticize what he perceived to be conflicts of interest and other complaints because they amounted to “core political speech”.“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” Merchan wrote. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’.”Elsewhere in Florida, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the federal judge handling Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to hiding classified documents has yet to schedule a start date, despite the best efforts of prosecutors:The prospects of Donald Trump going to trial in July on charges of retaining national security documents, as suggested by special counsel prosecutors, are rapidly diminishing, with the judge overseeing the case yet to issue a schedule weeks after she was presented with the potential options.The US district judge Aileen Cannon received proposed trial start dates from Trump and the special counsel Jack Smith more than a month ago in advance of a hearing ostensibly to settle the matter in Fort Pierce, Florida, but she has still not decided when the proceeding will begin.As a result, Trump has been able to avoid filing certain pre-trial motions that have to be completed before the case can proceed to trial, playing into his strategy of trying to delay the case as much as possible before the 2024 election in November.Trump’s legal strategy for all of his criminal cases has been to delay, under the calculus that winning re-election would enable him to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who could direct prosecutors to drop the case, or pardon himself if he was convicted.There are more than 13.4 million people registered to vote in Florida, according to its division of elections, and one of them very well may be Donald Trump.Long associated with New York’s real estate scene, he changed his residence from the Empire State to the Sunshine State during his time in the White House. That means he can vote on Florida’s ballot initiative that will decide whether abortion rights are enshrined in the state constitution – and you can expect that reporters will try their darnedest over the coming months to get him to reveal which way he leans on the issue.Floridians will have an opportunity to weigh in on the question of abortion access this November, when they vote on an initiative that would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution.Speaking on the Biden campaign press call, Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic leader of the Florida house, argued that the state supreme court’s decision to uphold an abortion ban underscored the urgency of the November elections.“We are seeing what Trump’s agenda looks like here in Florida: extremist politicians inserting themselves into women’s healthcare, threatening doctors with prison time and endangering women’s health and lives,” Driskell said.“The only thing that can stop governmental interference into our lives and exam rooms is to stay in the fight and by exercising our right to vote. This November, Florida will draw a line in the sand and say enough.”Democrats hope that the presence of the abortion initiative on the ballot might tip the scales in their party’s favor in Florida, but they acknowledge that the task will be difficult, given Republicans’ recent dominance in the purple state. Trump carried the state by 3 points in 2020, increasing his advantage from 2016 even as he lost the national election to Biden.“We’re clear-eyed about how hard it will be to win Florida, but we also know that Trump does not have it in the bag,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “We definitely see Florida in play.”Joe Biden’s campaign team said Donald Trump is “directly to blame” for the ruling upholding an abortion ban in Florida, given that the former president nominated three of the supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.“Because of Donald Trump, Maga [’Make America Great Again’] Republicans across this country are ripping away access to reproductive health care and inserting themselves into the most personal decisions women can make, from contraception to IVF,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on a press call.“And make no mistake: Donald Trump will do everything in his power to try and enact a national abortion ban if he’s reelected.”Earlier today, the Biden campaign released a new ad, titled “Trust”, that highlights Trump’s past comments bragging about the reversal of Roe and also warns of the possibility of a federal ban. The ad will air across battleground states as part of the Biden campaign’s broader media blitz this spring.“These are the stakes in November, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows them,” Rodríguez said. “Here’s the bottom line: Trump and Maga Republicans are working to ban abortion nationwide, while President Biden and Vice-President Harris will never stop fighting to protect reproductive freedom.”Democrats have condemned a Florida supreme court ruling that will allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect, while seizing on a separate decision to allow an initiative protecting access to the procedure to go before voters in November. The party has seen success in recent elections by campaigning against efforts to cut off access to abortion, and will try to replicate that in Florida, a state where Democratic candidates have struggled in recent years. To hammer the point home, top House lawmakers convened a hearing in the state, which Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called “ground zero” in the fight for abortion access.Here’s what else has happened:
      Tina Smith, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, wants to repeal a moribund 19th-century law that some fear could be used to stop abortions nationwide.
      Opponents of Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza are encouraging voters to choose “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s primary today.
      Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said he wants to fight “the isolationist movement” in his party.
      Congress has some unfinished business to deal with when it returns to Washington DC next week, in the form of a military aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other US allies. It’s been held up by Republicans in the House, some of whom are opposed to further aid to Kyiv, and the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that the Senate’s top Republican has signaled he will make overcoming these holdouts a priority:Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.Israel’s allies, including the United States and Britain, are demanding it investigate the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza that were with the World Central Kitchen charity.Follow our live blog for more on this developing story: More

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      Republicans propose renaming Dulles airport after Trump as ‘symbol of freedom’

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      Dulles airport should be renamed for Donald Trump, a Republican co-sponsor of a bill to do so said, because there would be “no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength”.Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania told Fox News Digital: “In my lifetime, our nation has never been greater than under the leadership of President Donald J Trump.“As millions of domestic and international travelers fly through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump international airport’ as they land on American soil.”The bill stands no chance of becoming law, given Democratic control of the Senate and White House, but it could cause embarrassment if Republican House leaders give it a vote. Reschenthaler is chief deputy whip.Dulles is a major international airport in Virginia, not far from central Washington DC. It is named for John Foster Dulles, who was US secretary of state under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, between 1953 and 1959.Trump was president between 2017 and 2021, leaving office amid the Covid pandemic and with the US Capitol strewn with smashed glass and human feces after his supporters attacked it, a riot meant to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory and now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests.Notwithstanding a second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, 88 criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments) and multimillion-dollar civil penalties (for tax fraud and defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”), Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden again.Reschenthaler is one of seven House Republicans listed as sponsors of the bill to rename Dulles for Trump. The others are Chuck Fleischmann and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Barry Moore of Alabama, Troy Nehls of Texas and Michael Waltz of Florida.Moore said: “In 1998, Congress renamed the National airport in Washington after one of our great presidents, Ronald Reagan.”Reagan is actually in Virginia.Moore continued: “It is only fitting that we would do the same for another one of our greatest presidents, Donald J Trump, especially as he stands against the onslaught of weaponised government to fight for Americans like us.”Rejoinders were swift.Don Beyer, a House Democrat from Virginia, said: “One of Trump’s first acts as president was a racist Muslim ban that blocked permanent American residents from their own country. I went to Dulles to try to help innocent people caught up in the chaos. I remember grandparents detained for hours as their terrified families waited.“I remember Republicans like those who wrote this bill hiding and giving mealy mouthed responses when asked about the suffering Trump’s Muslim ban caused. They know Dulles will never be renamed after Trump. Again, that’s not the point, the point is to suck up to their Dear Leader.”Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who represents part of Dulles, said: “Donald Trump is facing [88] felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.” More

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      Mitch McConnell: I will fight isolationist Republicans for rest of Senate term

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      Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.The Senate did pass a foreign aid package containing new support for Ukraine in its war with Russia but it remains stalled in the House, where a Trump supporter, Mike Johnson, is speaker.McConnell entered the Senate when Ronald Reagan was president and is an old-fashioned Republican foreign policy hawk. Under his leadership, however, 26 of 49 Republicans voted against the Senate foreign aid bill, which also contained support for Israel and Taiwan.McConnell said his fellow Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul, “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist”. Other loud voices for Trump’s “America first” approach include JD Vance, the first-term senator from Ohio reportedly under consideration to be named Trump’s running mate.Identifying “the most dangerous time for the free world since right [before] the Berlin Wall fell down”, McConnell told WHAS: “What’s made [Republican isolationism] more troublesome is, it seems to me, others are heading in that direction, making arguments that are easily refuted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’re not losing any of our troops – the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting. If the Russians take Ukraine, some Nato country would be next and then we will be right in the middle of it.”Asked if he had spoken to Trump – who he endorsed in March – McConnell said: “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the Senate.”Of the presidential election, McConnell said the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, had “got problems, too”.“Both these candidates don’t score very well with the public,” McConnell said. “One of them’s going to win. What am I going to do? I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn my job over to the next majority leader.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr calls Biden ‘much worse threat to democracy’ than Trump

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      After Donald Trump said that he loved how Robert F Kennedy Jr was running for president, the independent candidate called Joe Biden “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, citing the Biden White House’s involvement in a US supreme court case focused on social media.A noted anti-vaxxer who has peddled conspiracy theories, Kennedy currently faces an uphill task to get on enough state ballots, though on Monday his campaign said his name would appear on the ballot in the crucial state of North Carolina.Both the Republican and Democratic parties have increasingly seen Kennedy as a threat in the November election over fears that he could siphon off enough votes to swing the election. It remains unclear whose support base Kennedy might tap into. Historically a Democrat with a strong environmental record, Kennedy has drifted rightwards on various issues and his anti-vaccine views could attract Trump supporters.Kennedy’s remarks in an interview on CNN on Monday centered on the pending supreme court case Murthy v Missouri, which tests the limits of how much the government can pressure social media companies to remove content.The case comes out of efforts by the Biden administration to push social media platforms to take down false posts about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that Biden won and which Trump has consistently lied was stolen from him.In oral arguments before the court last month, justices appeared skeptical of arguments in favor of limiting contacts between government officials and social media companies, a practice known as “jawboning” that some argue is tantamount to censorship.Kennedy told CNN that Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech”.“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech … to censor his opponent,” Kennedy told the outlet.He did not address the more than 80 criminal charges pending against Trump for trying to forcibly overturn the outcome of his defeat to Biden, improperly retaining classified government materials after the Republican left the White House and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.Kennedy also did not address the multimillion-dollar civil penalties Trump is facing for business practices deemed fraudulent or a rape claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Kennedy is averaging close to 10% in polling from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ. That makes him the highest polling third-party candidate in a presidential race since the businessman Ross Perot in 1992, according to the Hill, citing a RealClearPolitics national average analysis.The Democratic national committee on Monday excoriated Kennedy for his remarks about the Democratic incumbent.“With a straight face Robert F Kennedy Jr said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,” Mary Beth Cahill, a Democratic national committee senior adviser, said in a statement.Cahill accused Kennedy of merely seeking to be a “spoiler candidate” and – referring to Trump’s Make America great again slogan – said he pushed “his Maga talking points in prime time”.Cahill said there was “no comparison” between Biden and Trump, whose supporters mounted the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol in early 2021. She also alluded to how Trump has promised to be dictator on “day one” if returned to the presidency.Notably, as NBC pointed out, Cahill previously served as chief of staff for Kennedy’s uncle, the late US senator Ted Kennedy.Her remarks criticizing Kennedy came after other members of his family had visited the White House to celebrate St Patrick’s Day without him.His interview on CNN came a few days after Trump – in a rare show of political equilibrium – joined Democrats in attacking Kennedy’s nascent candidacy, casting him as a liberal in disguise who was more “radical left” than Biden.But Trump also made it a point to say he supported Kennedy’s campaign because he was likely to divert more votes from Biden than from him.“It’s great for Maga,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I love that he is running!” More

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      Biden faces test in Wisconsin as Gaza supporters call for ‘uninstructed’ vote

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      Voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots today in an election that will test voter enthusiasm for Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and potentially enshrine two amendments in the state constitution affecting election administration across the state.The president and former president are already the presumptive nominees and will almost certainly face off in the general election in November, and it seems that the threat of prosecution, general unpopularity and advanced age can’t stop them.But while the primary will not offer alternative candidates, a group of activists in Wisconsin see it as an opportunity to push Biden on his policy toward Israel’s war on Gaza. The organizers, inspired by Michigan’s “uncommitted” campaign, which garnered more than 100,000 votes there, are calling on voters to choose “uninstructed” instead of Biden.“The margins of our elections are so incredibly close – less than 1% in the last two presidential election cycles – so I think it would behoove the administration to pay attention,” said Reema Ahmad, the lead organizer of the Listen to Wisconsin campaign.Organizers with the campaign aim to turn out as many voters for “uninstructed” as Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 to demonstrate their critical role in November, Ahmad said. The campaign has relied on the support of a broad network of progressive organizations, including the state’s largest network of Latino voters, Voces de la Frontera Action and Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), groups that helped propel Biden to his narrow 2020 victory.Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York also hold presidential primaries today, and voters in Arkansas and Mississippi will participate in primary runoffs. Voters in Rhode Island and Connecticut will also have an “uncommitted” option on the ballot, and in New York, pro-Palestine activists are encouraging voters to leave their presidential primary options blank in protest.The Trump campaign faces no similar challenge within the party, making Republican discontent with him harder to gauge. On 6 March, the former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, whose campaign gave anti-Trump Republicans a means to show their frustration with him, dropped out, and Trump snapped up enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination less than a week later. Haley and four other Republicans will still appear on the Wisconsin ballot alongside Trump.Brandon Scholz, a retired Wisconsin GOP strategist, said primary turnout could lend some insight into how both candidates will fare in November. In 2020, Biden clawed back parts of the country that Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016 – especially in the suburbs, and especially suburban women. Biden also benefited from strong support from Black and Latino voters – groups that recent polls show could be slipping away from him.“You want to do what you can to turn your base – your hardcore Dems and your hardcore Republicans, you want to be able to get them to the polls, because the last thing you want to do is come out looking like you didn’t do anything,” Scholz said.Whether or not the Trump campaign will mobilize voters outside the Maga movement is another question.“Observers will look to see what sort of participation traditional Republicans will have in this primary,” said Scholz. “And then finally, for both campaigns what are the ‘double haters’ going to do?”Also on the ballot in Wisconsin are two constitutional amendments that voting rights and government watchdog groups warn could have a negative impact on elections administration in the state.The first proposed amendment, which would ban elections offices from accepting private grant money to fund their operations, comes amid GOP anxieties – and election-denying conspiracy theories – about the role of funding from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Center for Tech and Civic Life. During the 2020 election, the Facebook co-founder and his wife used funding from their organization to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in polling places and send voters information during the 2020 election.The donations from Center for Tech and Civic Life became a key focus of Republicans, many of them activists who questioned the results of the 2020 election. “Zuckerbucks”, they argue, unfairly benefited Democratic strongholds – although there is no evidence that the grants, which reached small and large municipalities across the state, played a role in Biden’s victory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe second proposed amendment would enshrine in the state constitution a provision that already exists in Wisconsin statute, mandating that “only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums”.Both proposals were passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature, which sent them to voters after the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, vetoed them. And both, worries Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of Wisconsin’s League of Women Voters, could hurt voters.“There’s no guarantee that the election will be funded fully in the absence of outside money,” said Cronmiller, of the proposal to ban elections offices from accessing private grants. Without sufficient funding – and the state legislature has not proposed additional resources to elections offices – she argued towns and counties are forced to hire fewer poll workers and host fewer polling locations, causing longer lines and a slower tally of the votes and disproportionately impacting poorer and smaller towns.“They might not have the opportunities that a bigger municipality, that has deeper pockets, might have in order to serve their citizens,” she said.The second proposed amendment, Cronmiller and other elections experts and voter advocates say, could prevent non-profits and other third-party groups from assisting voters in critical ways during elections. Groups that assist in driving voters to the polls, provide residents with information about voter registration, or help in the recruitment of poll workers, for example, could find themselves facing legal challenges for their work.“We’re all scratching our heads and wondering: is this allowed? If this passes, and if we don’t do those things, how do voters get to the polls?” said Cronmiller.“Is this a way to suppress the vote?” More

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      Extremist ex-adviser drives ‘anti-white racism’ plan for Trump win – report

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      The anti-immigration extremist, white nationalist and former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller is helping drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Donald Trump returns to power next year, Axios reported.“Longtime aides and allies … have been laying legal groundwork with a flurry of lawsuits and legal complaints – some of which have been successful,” Axios said on Monday.Should Trump return to power, Axios said, Miller and other aides plan to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.Such an effort would involve “eliminating or upending” programmes meant to counter racism against non-white groups.The US supreme court, dominated 6-3 by rightwing justices after Trump installed three, recently boosted such efforts by ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions.America First Legal, a group founded by Miller and described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union, is helping drive plans for a second Trump term, Axios said.In 2021, an AFL suit blocked implementation of a $29bn Covid-era Small Business Administration programme that prioritised helping restaurants owned by women, veterans and people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups.Miller called that ruling “the first, but crucial, step towards ending government-sponsored racial discrimination”.Recent AFL lawsuits include one against CBS and Paramount alleging discrimination against a white, straight man who wrote for the show Seal Team, and a civil rights complaint against the NFL over the “Rooney Rule”, which says at least two minority candidates must be interviewed for vacant top positions.Reports of extremist groups planning for a second Trump presidency are common, not least around Project 2025, a blueprint for transition and legislative priorities prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right Washington thinktank.Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to [Joe] Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”Throughout Trump’s term in office, Miller was a close adviser and speechwriter – though one of the 45th president’s less successful TV surrogates, ridiculed for using “spray-on hair”.Controversies were numerous. Among them were reported advocacy for blowing up migrants with drones (which Miller denied); for sending 250,000 US troops to the southern border; and for beheading an Isis leader, dipping the head in pig’s blood and “parad[ing] it around to warn other terrorists” (Miller denied it and called the source of the story, the former defense secretary Mark Esper, a “moron”).In 2019, after Miller was discovered to have touted white nationalist articles and books, 55 civil rights groups wrote to Trump, protesting: “Stephen Miller has stoked bigotry, hate and division with his extreme political rhetoric and policies throughout his career. The recent exposure of his deep-seated racism provides further proof that he is unfit to serve and should immediately leave his post.”On Monday, Cedric Richmond, co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, said: “It’s not like Donald Trump has been hiding his racism … [but] he’s making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy … It’s up to us to stop him.”Despite his legal advocacy in the cause of eradicating “anti-white racism”, Miller is not himself a lawyer.Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, recently told the Guardian those close to the former president were now “looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding. Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.” More

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      Mike Johnson hints vote on Ukraine aid is up next despite threat to speakership

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      The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has raised expectations that a vote on funding for Ukraine could be imminent in the chamber, even at the risk of the Republican losing his leadership position.Johnson touted “important innovations” to a possible Ukraine package during an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, and he suggested a vote on a standalone bill could come soon after Congress returns from Easter recess on 9 April.But the Louisiana Republican acknowledged forces in his party were trying to unseat him over his efforts to find a bipartisan solution to stalled US funding for Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s military invasion, which began in February 2022. The far-right extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Johnson in March, but she stopped short of calling it for a floor vote.The White House, meanwhile, has warned that delays are costing Ukraine lives and territory because Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, “gains every day” Congress does not pass a funding measure.“What we have to do in an era of divided government, historically, as we are, you got to build consensus. If we want to move a partisan measure, I got to have every single member, literally. And some things need to be bipartisan,” Johnson said, acknowledging the shrinking Republican majority in the House.“We’ve been talking to all the members especially now over the district work period. When we return after this work period, we’ll be moving a product, but it’s going to, I think, have some important innovations.”Those innovations include efforts to placate Republican hardliners, who have cooled on continuing to support Ukraine financially with the war there now in its third year. They include a loan instead of a grant, or harnessing Russian assets confiscated in the US under the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (Repo) for Ukrainians Act.“If we can use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s just pure poetry,” Johnson said. “Even [former president Donald] Trump has talked about the loan concept, where we’re not just giving foreign aid, we’re setting it up in a relationship where they can provide it back to us when the time is right.”The specter of Trump, the prospective Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, has loomed large over the wrangling for a Ukraine deal. He was instrumental in Johnson’s refusal to call a House vote on a $95bn wartime funding bill that passed the Democratic-led Senate in February, which also included aid for Israel in its war in Gaza.Trump has also demanded Republicans reject any Ukraine funding measure that ties in money for US border security in order to deny the Joe Biden White House a “win” on immigration ahead of November’s election, hence Johnson’s pursuit of a standalone solution.The friction has led to rightwingers, such as Greene, threatening Johnson’s position. Other Republican colleagues, however, have leapt to the speaker’s defense. The New York congressman Mike Lawler blasted Greene’s motion to vacate as “idiotic” on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “It’s not actually going to help advance the cause she believes in, and in fact it undermines our House Republican majority,” he said.Some Democrats have indicated they would support Johnson if a vote to remove him were called, though other Republicans have acknowledged his precarious position.“I’m not going to deny it. It’s a very narrow majority, and one or two people can make us a minority,” the Nebraska congressman Don Bacon told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.Without identifying Greene by name, he added: “We have one or two people that are not team players. They’d rather enjoy the limelight, the social media.”Bacon is one of several Republicans who have worked across the aisle to craft a Ukraine aid proposal. “We put a bill together that focuses on military aid, a $66bn bill that provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. There’s enough support in the House to get this done,” he said.Of Johnson’s plans to bring a House vote next week, Bacon added: “He’s doing the right thing.” More

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      in Elections

      RNC plan for 2020 denialist to head ‘election integrity’ unit raises alarms

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      As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has cemented its hold on the Republican National Committee (RNC), alarms are being raised about the organisation’s tapping of the fervent election denialist Christina Bobb to run an “election integrity” unit.Bobb is a former Trump lawyer and ex-reporter for the far-right One America News Network, who gained prominence after Trump’s 2020 loss for promoting bogus fraud charges in Arizona, Wisconsin and elsewhere, and was part of Trump-backed efforts to substitute fake electors for ones that Joe Biden won in some states.Bobb helped spread phoney voting fraud claims with Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the former campaign operative Mike Roman, both of whom along with Trump and others face charges in Fulton county, Georgia, of conspiring to overturn Biden’s win there; Bobb was not charged.Last year Bobb wrote Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024, a book that was chock full of baseless charges about 2020 election fraud.Former judges, ex-Republican congressmen and election watchdogs voice strong concerns about Bobb’s mission and the potential dangers posed by her flood of erroneous charges of voting fraud.“By designating Bobb to the RNC post, they’re beginning to promulgate the same false narrative of widespread election fraud that we saw in 2020 and 2021 but way earlier,” said John Jones, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania and now president of Dickinson College.“There’s a concept known as illusory truth,” he added. “If you keep saying these same falsehoods over and over, people begin to believe they’re true, and it has the potential to morph into violence. That puts judges, prosecutors and others at risk.”The RNC’s hiring of Bobb comes as Trump keeps falsely claiming that the 2020 election was rigged and talks up new efforts this year to “guard the vote” to ferret out potential fraud. Experts have conclusively said fraud was not a factor in Trump’s loss by over 7 million votes, and stressed that historically voting fraud has been minimal.Bobb’s “election integrity” post at the RNC is expected to involve teams of poll workers, poll watchers and other efforts in swing states and she has begun talking with key Maga allies with similar missions. Bobb last month told the far-right reporter Breanna Morello that her top goal is “empowering the grassroots”.Bobb was on at least one conference call in March with a half-dozen Trump-allied groups including ones that echo her false claims about 2020 election fraud, according to a person on the call, who said: “We’re all going to coordinate.”Among the groups on the call, he added, was Arizona-based Turning Point Action, which has a track record of promoting falsehoods about 2020 election fraud.Many experts raise red flags about Bobb’s new RNC post.The former Republican congressman Charlie Dent said the RNC’s hiring of Bobb “is a further indication of how the RNC has not only become an arm of the Trump campaign, but an outlet for the most extreme elements of the election denial movement”.Likewise, the ex-Republican congressman Dave Trott predicted: “Bobb will be leading the charge and saying the election was rigged if Trump loses.”Some key Democrats are also alarmed by what Bobb’s RNC role may presage.“Putting Christina Bobb in charge of election integrity is like putting Donald Trump in charge of integrity,” the Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said. “They’re designing a platform for lies to wage the next insurrection.”Although Bobb’s “election integrity” slot is new and a work in progress, the RNC’s new leadership seems to be banking on her.Lara Trump, the new RNC vice-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on 12 March: “We have the first-ever election integrity division at the [RNC]. That means massive resources going to this one thing.”Lara Trump added: “We will have trained poll watchers, poll observers, poll workers, people in tabulation centers all across this country,” and signaled that volunteers for these slots and lawyers are needed.Bobb, whose official RNC title is senior counsel for election integrity, wrote on X: “I’m honored to be a part of the new team at the RNC.”Besides Bobb, the RNC in March tapped Charlie Spies, who had previously served as its election law counsel, to be its chief counsel.Further, the RNC also named William McGinley, a veteran election lawyer who worked in the Trump administration, as outside counsel for election integrity, a move that could presage more litigation.But Bobb’s litany of baseless fraud claims as she worked with key Trump allies to overturn the 2020 election results, shadow her new RNC role.For instance, Bobb used her perch at One America News Network (OAN) to spread bogus claims of fraud that led to a defamation lawsuit against her and OAN by the voting technology firm Dominion; Bobb and OAN have both denied any wrongdoing.Separately Bobb signed a letter falsely certifying to the justice department on Trump’s behalf in 2022 that after a “diligent search” he had returned all the classified documents the special counsel Jack Smith later charged the former president with illegally taking to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House.A subsequent FBI raid found about 100 classified documents; Bobb, who reportedly was interviewed by the FBI, indicated that another lawyer drafted the letter she signed.Given that Bobb was only tapped for her RNC post this month, it is unclear whether she has begun recruiting staff or taken other steps to develop the RNC’s election integrity program.But a source close to the Trump campaign stressed that “the key to election observing is redundancy”, meaning that it would involve multiple coordinated efforts, which suggests that the RNC program will be done in tandem with similar poll-watching and poll worker drives by Trump allied groups.The need for “redundancy” and Bobb’s early conference call with several outside groups are emerging as key strategies for Bobb, as she revealed in an interview on 15 March with Morello, a conservative journalist who used to be with Fox News.Bobb told Morello that her top goal at the RNC is “empowering the grassroots. This has to be a grassroots approach … We have to empower people in their communities.”The RNC press office did not reply to a request for comment.The RNC’s election integrity drive this year comes after a few decades when a moratorium was imposed on RNC poll-watching operations due to aggressive tactics it employed in 1981 that went beyond permissible programs.At some polling places in New Jersey in 1981, the GOP used off-duty police officers and provided rewards to some people who claimed they had evidence of voting fraud. After those incidents, the party agreed to halt poll-watching efforts until 2018, when the moratorium terminated.Still, some lawyers and election veterans are troubled by the RNC’s hiring of Bobb given her history of election denialism and Trump’s obsession with debunked claims of fraud in 2020.“I don’t think it’s a good thing when a major party hires fringe characters who don’t understand how elections work,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.Other lawyers express similar worries about Bobb’s background.“It’s unclear whether the RNC wants those who are not already loyalists to take its commitment to ‘election integrity’ seriously,” said the former federal prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman.“But if it does, picking someone who, according to the Florida indictment against Trump, was the vehicle for certifying his false statements about returning all the classified documents in his possession, is an odd choice.”Looking ahead, Chioma Chukwu, the deputy executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, called Bobb’s hiring by the RNC “a dangerous sign of how entrenched the election denial movement has become on the right”.“Elevating Bobb – who continues to push baseless lies about voter fraud – to a top post focused on ‘election integrity’ serves no purpose other than to sow chaos and confusion in November, allowing partisan actors to cry ‘foul’ if their preferred candidate loses.” More