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      Rightwingers’ push to recall Wisconsin Republican speaker fails again

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      A protracted push by rightwing activists to recall Wisconsin’s Republican assembly speaker failed for a second time after the bipartisan commission overseeing elections in the state voted to toss their petition, finding they failed to submit a sufficient number of signatures.The effort to trigger a recall election for Robin Vos illustrates a growing chasm between the Wisconsin Republican party establishment, which has been led by the powerful assembly speaker for more than a decade, and the party’s Maga base.It is an especially delicate matter for the bipartisan elections commission, which has been the focus of conspiracy theories floated by allies of Donald Trump including the group attempting to recall Vos.After reviewing the signatures gathered for the recall petition – and challenges to the signatures – commission staff found earlier this week that the recall campaign had garnered, by the narrow margin of 16 signatures, sufficient support to bring about a recall.But during the meeting on Thursday, which at times became heated, Vos’s legal team asserted that more than 100 additional signatures should be struck, given that they had been gathered outside the allotted time frame, after the petitioners’ filing date was extended due to a federal holiday.Democratic commissioner Mark Thomsen pushed back fiercely against Vos’s argument, arguing that if the commission were to throw out the recall petition on what he called a “technicality”, they would deny the petitioners their right to recall.“The effect is it would be giving the most powerful person in the assembly a free pass from the constitutional right of the 6,000-plus people that have asked to recall,” said Thomsen.Thomsen repeatedly emphasized the importance of impartiality and the perception of impartiality on the commission.“Let us have the courage to say that this [effort] is valid,” said Thomsen.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublican commissioner Don Millis, who motioned to dismiss the petition, acknowledged that while “it certainly is a close call”, the 188 signatures gathered over Memorial Day weekend should be tossed.Carrie Riepl, a Democratic commissioner, joined Republicans in a 4-2 vote to reject the recall petition.The first time activists filed for a recall election, the effort fell dramatically short of the required number of signatures – some of which were not gathered from Vos’s assembly district at all. More

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      RFK Jr claims Republicans, Democrats and CNN conspired to exclude him from debate

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent US presidential candidate polling at about 8%, won’t be at tonight’s Biden-Trump TV smackdown in Atlanta. But he’s not taking the diss quietly, and has accused debate host CNN of colluding with the major party campaigns to exclude him.In an email statement on Wednesday, the Kennedy campaign claimed that 71% of Americans want to see him on the debate stage, and in an act of counter-programming he plans an alternative “real” debate on Elon’s Musk’s Twitter/X platform at the same time.“The American people want leaders who trust them to make up their own minds,” Kennedy said. “Instead, our last two presidents are restricting voters from choosing anyone other than themselves. Presidents Biden and Trump have sucked trillions of dollars from the pockets of working people and Americans deserve to hear from the one candidate who can hold them to account.”Kennedy’s anger and frustration at what he describes as his exclusion despite six qualifying polls and confirmed ballot access in five states – with Democratic legal challenges to his inclusion in five more, including one in New Jersey under the state’s “sore loser law” – comes as Democrats accuse him of being a political stooge for Republicans.“RFK Jr was recruited to run by Maga Republicans, is being propped up by Trump’s largest donor, and his own campaign staff has said their goal is to hurt President Biden,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CBS News.Corridoni said Kennedy had “no real grassroots support, no pathway to 270 electoral votes, and his campaign is resorting to a pattern of deception and shortcuts to circumvent state rules for independent candidate ballot access”.Biden supporters worry Kennedy’s famous name and his history of environmental advocacy could sway voters from the left. His family members are largely against his candidacy, which they have made clear in public statements and by visiting the Biden White House en masse on St Patrick’s Day in March.But Republicans also have not welcomed his quixotic intervention in a tight race that could serve to siphon off vital votes from both candidates. Donald Trump has described him as “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat, including West and Stein,” referring to third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein.But Kennedy, who filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in April claiming the Biden and Trump campaigns and CNN violated federal campaign laws in scheduling the debate, has predicted Trump will win the 90-minute debate, telling Piers Morgan this week that the ex-president could in fact “win a prize for the greatest debater in modern American history, probably since Lincoln-Douglas”.Many of Kennedy’s supporters come from among the “double-haters” – polls show that about one in four voters don’t like either Biden or Trump – including a growing percentage of US adults who identify as independents, from both sides of the political spectrum, and from what has been described as “wellness world elites” attracted to conspiracy-minded views on health and medicine, and environmentalists.Christy Jones, 54, a holistic health and mindfulness coach from Glendora, California, told the Associated Press that she worries people won’t know Kennedy is running if he’s not on the debate stage. “He could still win if people choose to be courageous,” she said. “If all the people that actually want change voted for him he would be in. People are asking for change.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSujat Desai, a 20-year-old student from California, told the AP that Kennedy’s absence from the debate is a major hurdle for him to overcome. “I think it’s a pretty lethal blow not to be in this debate, and it would be detrimental not to be in the next.”On Thursday, TV doctor Dr Phil released a preview of an interview with Kennedy also scheduled to be broadcast tonight in which Kennedy said he’d invited Biden to co-fund a poll in October “and whoever is least likely to beat Donald Trump will withdraw”.But this surge of debate-surrounding publicity may only serve to obscure another reality that Kennedy, after months of campaigning and fundraising, is approaching a lull in events, and he lacks money for a television commercials while he fights for ballot access.A Kennedy campaign spokesperson said the candidate “has a full schedule for July with many public events, mostly on the east coast and including one big rally” that would be announced next week. More

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      Biden and Trump look to debate to open up race currently in a dead heat

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      It could be the moment when a rematch that few seem to want finally comes to life: like two ageing prizefighters, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will enter the arena of political bloodsport on Thursday evening to resume a verbal sparring bout that will revive memories of the ugly exchanges when the two debated face to face four years ago.A CNN studio in Atlanta will host the first presidential debate of the campaign between the same two candidates who contested the last election, which Biden won.With more than four months to go until polling day in November, it is the earliest in any US presidential campaign that a debate between the two main candidates has ever been staged.While some see the timing as premature, it could provide a chance to open up a contest that has become overshadowed by, among other things, Trump’s recent felony conviction, as well as assorted other legal travails that see him facing 54 criminal charges for trying to overturn the last election and for retaining classified documents.Knife-edge polls indicate a race essentially tied, with a national polling average for May and June showing the candidates at 46% each. Polls in seven key battleground states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina – give Trump a narrow advantage, though usually within the margin of error.For non-Trump supporters, it is a troubling scenario given he incited a violent insurrection against the US Capitol to stop Congress certifying the results of the 2020 election that he refused to accept that he lost, despite Biden winning by more than 7m votes.Both candidates are deeply unpopular: Trump because his opponents see him as an aspiring dictator who threatens democracy, Biden because, at 81 (although just three years older than his Republican opponent), he is viewed – even among many Democrats – as too old for another term as president.Both will attempt to change their respective narratives in the debate. Trump, openly hostile towards immigrants, will probably attack Biden over an uptick of migrants at the border, despite Biden’s recent moves to tighten it. But Trump advisers know he needs at least some moderate voters to win, and will be hoping he can tone down his most virulent rhetoric, such as saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.Biden, for his part, will be aiming to dilute criticism of his age with an energetic performance along the lines of his State of the Union address earlier this year. He could be prepared to go on the offensive regarding Trump’s criminal record, and for how Trump takes credit for stacking the supreme court with conservatives in order to overturn the right to abortion.The stakes for both could not be higher. “We have a majority of voters who are unhappy with the incumbent, but they don’t have great recollection of what the prior officeholder did either,” said Patrick Murray, head of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University. “That sets us up for a very tight race where people just don’t know when they want to go.“Very rarely do you have anything like 18, 19, 20% of an electorate who say [as they do now] ‘I don’t like the fact that I could vote for either one of these.’ We’ve only seen this phenomenon one other time in living memory, which was eight years ago, with the Clinton-Trump race.”The two men will meet in transformed circumstances from 2020, when the world was still grappling with the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown rules limited political campaigning.Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine and Israel has become embroiled in a long and devastating war in Gaza, developments requiring US military aid and diplomatic commitment.The lingering effects of inflation, fuelled by Covid-era public spending, is partly dousing the otherwise rosy economic situation, pulling down Biden’s approval ratings even as the US outgrows other developed economies and unemployment sees historic lows. Meanwhile, Biden – contrary to his pre-election promises – has embraced some of Trump’s fiercely anti-immigrant policies by temporarily shutting the southern US border to a tide of asylum seekers should a number of daily crossings be exceeded.Many of these changes have rebounded to Trump’s advantage, with polls showing a majority favouring him on the economy over Biden, a trend Murray attributed to “rosy retrospection”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You think you’re not happy with the way things are right now and you automatically remember the past as having been better. We’re seeing that now with Donald Trump,” he said. “When we ask [voters] looking back to Donald Trump’s presidency, to approve or disapprove of the job he did, he gets 48% approval. He never got a 48% approval rating when he was president.”Trump’s achilles heel – and the possible key to Biden’s salvation – may lie in arguably the most startling domestic change to have happened since the last election, the US supreme court ruling in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that guaranteed women’s right to abortion.“It’s a good issue for Democrats in an election where they’re hunting for issues that are good for them,” said Kyle Kondik, of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Pretty clearly the public opinion is closer to them on abortion rights than it is to the Republican position.”That advantage was illustrated in a campaign video Biden released on Monday that blamed Trump personally for the court’s abortion ruling, pointing out that the decision had depended on the votes of three conservative justices appointed by him when he was president.The video followed an equally personalised attack in another television advert released and widely circulated in swing states the week before. Titled Character Matters, it targeted Trump’s criminal status arising from his felony conviction in a New York court last month of falsifying documents to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor who testified that the pair had sex.According to Murray, the president’s only route to victory is to intensify and broaden such attacks to woo a bloc of an estimated 6-7 million anti-Trump voters who backed Biden last time but have cooled on him and are inclined to sit out the forthcoming election.“Those are the voters I’d be going after, if I was Biden,” he said. “There’s a host of issues – Roe v Wade, January 6, book banning – but the real issue is that Donald Trump represents a change in how the government deals with your personal freedoms.“That’s the kind of thing that can move this, this group of voters sitting on the fence. This group was for Biden; if he can win them back, he moves the needle four points in his direction and we’re talking about an entirely different ballgame.” More

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      Supreme court says Idaho abortion ruling ‘inadvertently’ published online – as it happened

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      The supreme court has acknowledged to Bloomberg Law that the ruling in a case over whether hospitals in Idaho can be required to carry out abortions in emergencies was published by accident.The court’s public information officer Patricia McCabe told the outlet: “The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website. The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”Bloomberg Law goes on to report that the ruling is 6-3 in favor of the Biden administration, with conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissenting. However, the ruling is structured to allow litigation over the issue to continue, and not resolve the broader question of whether the federal government can require emergency abortions be performed in states where the procedure is banned:
      The high court decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health,” Justice Elena Kagan said in a concurring opinion.
      Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that she wouldn’t have dismissed the case, according to the copy that was briefly online.
      “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
      The posted decision indicates the court won’t resolve broader questions about the intersection of state abortion bans and a federal law designed to ensure hospitals treat patients who arrive in need of emergency care.
      The case is the supreme court’s first look at a state abortion ban since the conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. The court on 13 June preserved full access to the widely used abortion pill mifepristone, saying anti-abortion doctors and organizations lacked legal standing to press a lawsuit.
      The supreme court turned down an attempt by Republican-led states to block the Biden administration’s coordination with social media companies on fighting disinformation, one of only two decisions the conservative-dominated panel released today. They still have yet to rule on cases concerning Donald Trump’s prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election and the scope of federal government regulations, but will issue more opinions on Thursday and Friday. But perhaps an even bigger story than what the court actually decided is what it inadvertently decided. Bloomberg Law noticed that the court had accidentally posted its opinion in a closely watched case pitting Idaho against the Biden administration, and a 6-3 majority was going to require the Republican-led state to allow emergency abortions – at least for now.Here’s what else happened today:
      House Republicans convened a little-known congressional body to intervene on behalf of top Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s attempts to stay out of jail.
      The supreme court once again overturned the ultra-conservative fifth circuit court of appeals, in its ruling over social media disinformation. Here’s why that’s significant.
      Trump claims he can get detained US journalist Evan Gershkovich out of jail in Russia, if he wins the November election. The Wall Street Journal reporter’s trial began behind closed doors today.
      Encounters at the southern border dropped by 40% after Joe Biden imposed restrictions that will temporarily restrict access to asylum seekers, the homeland security department said.
      Progressives are not pleased after congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his Democratic primary yesterday, and are training their ire on the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).
      A group of Black campaign surrogates for Donald Trump met at a barbershop in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood Wednesday, ahead of the head-to-head between Trump and Joe Biden here tomorrow.Trump made a phone appearance to tout his accomplishments for the Black community while in office and his proposal to end taxation on tips.“Let the people earn what they earn,” Trump said, adding that he was aware he was talking to people in a barbershop who do tipped service work. “And it has been so popular beyond anything.”Both Trump and Biden are blitzing metro Atlanta with events leading up to the debate. Rocky’s Barber Shop, a Black-owned business in Atlanta’s more affluent neighborhood, hosted conservative Black leaders from metro Atlanta. Shelley Winter, a conservative talk show host here, asked Trump if he thought that CNN debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would treat him fairly.“Well, I think it would be good for them if they did,” Trump replied. “I think probably not,” he added, expressing lingering ire about Tapper cutting off his televised victory speech after winning the primaries.
      So they cover the whole primary, but they don’t cover my victory speech. So am I going to get it fair? Probably not, but it would be very good for CNN. They’re having a lot of ratings problems.
      Two potential choices for vice president who did not need a haircut found themselves at the shop anyway Wednesday: congressman Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and former housing and urban development secretary Dr. Ben Carson.“I just want to encourage you to continue to speak out because the attacks on you have been absolutely ridiculous,” Carson said. “We’re praying that God will give you the strength to bear it because you’re standing in there for all of us.”Donalds said we would see if he was Trump’s vice presidential pick. Does he want to be vice president? “Of course!” he replied.Trump said on Saturday that he had already made up his mind about who he would choose to be vice president, and that his choice would be present in Atlanta for the debate.The number of encounters at the south-west border was down 40% in the three weeks since Joe Biden announced new rules restricting asylum, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday.According to a DHS fact sheet, the average daily arrests over a seven-day period has fallen to under 2,400 encounters per day, the lowest level of encounters since January 2021. It is still not low enough to lift the order. Asylum processing resumes when encounters fall to an average of 1,500 encounters across a seven-day period.“It’s a remarkable feat that our personnel have accomplished in just such a short period of time,” DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday. “Congress failed to act. The president has acted.”But he said congressional action was needed to send more resources to border patrol and that without legislation the order could be lifted or reversed by the courts or a future administration.Last week, CBP said encounters fell by 25%, meaning illegal border crossings dropped significantly since then.Encounters were already on a downward trend before Biden’s asylum order, due in part to a crackdown on northward migration by Mexican officials. Seasonal patterns also affect crossings.Opponents have sued the administration to block the order.Cori Bush, the Democratic congresswoman of Missouri and another prominent member of the progressive “Squad”, has issued a statement calling Jamaal Bowman her “brother-in-service” and attacking Aipac’s role in his primary defeat last night.Bowman is the “true representation of transformational leadership and brings … the power of everyday people from our communities to Congress each and every day,” Bush wrote.
      AIPAC and their allies—backed by far-right Donald Trump megadonors—poured a tidal wave of cash into this primary race showing us just how desperate these billionaire extremists are in their attempts to buy our democracy, promote their own gain, and silence the voices of progress and justice. There should be no question about the need to get Big Money out of politics.
      A recent poll shows Bush at risk of losing in her own primary contest for Missouri’s 1st congressional district, one point behind challenger Wesley Bell. The pollster, The Mellman Group, said:
      Bush is still seen favorably, but assessments of her and her performance are moving in a negative direction, while Bell’s image is improving, leaving him with an underlying image advantage. With some six weeks to go and 11% [of voters surveyed] still undecided, this race can go either way, but Bell has achieved a slight advantage.
      Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat on Tuesday was a “loss for young people and anyone who cares about our continued movement toward justice, peace, and building a multiracial democracy,” Protect Our Power said in a statement.The progressive group blamed “Aipac and the Maga billionaires who recruited and paid for George Latimer’s campaign from start to finish” for the defeat, and vowed “to tell Aipac they have no business creating division in our democracy”.In a separate letter of protest, Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP) said it was “saddened” by the results that had unseated a congressman who “has been one of the few members of Congress committed to defending Palestinian human rights”.“Today is a sad day for American democracy,” said JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. She added:
      To protect progressive candidates moving forward it is essential that Democrats reject Aipac.
      Progressive groups are calling on House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to reject the endorsement and donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in the wake of congressman Jamaal Bowman‘s primary loss in New York.The United Democracy Project, a super Pac affiliated with Aipac, dumped nearly $15m into Bowman’s district as part of its successful effort to elevate George Latimer to the Democratic nomination.A coalition of progressive groups, outraged over Aipac’s involvement in the race, sent a letter to Jeffries today demanding that he reconsider his association with the group and denounce its tactics.“AIPAC turned the NY16 race into the most expensive Democratic primary in history, waging anunacceptable assault on our democracy, our communities, and our shared future. We call on you to take action to address this threat,” the letter reads.
      AIPAC’s interference in Democratic politics poses a grave danger to the vision our organizations fight for every day: a future in which everyone can access a high quality education, comprehensive healthcare, a liveable climate, affordable housing, good jobs for good pay, humane immigration policies, human rights centered foreign policy — and more.
      Latimer defeated Bowman by 17 points yesterday, and he is now heavily favored to win the seat in November, as the Cook Political Report rates the district as solid Democrat.The abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All has said it agrees with Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson’s reported reservations in the copy of the opinion briefly posted on the supreme court’s website.“This is not a victory but a delay,” the group said in a statement responding to the court’s reported decision to permit abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho.
      The abortion bans that are putting people’s lives on the line in the first place will continue to remain on the books. We’re grateful that the Biden administration is fighting to preserve the shreds of access possible in states where anti-abortion extremists are doing everything in their power to block people from the care they need, even under the most dire of circumstances.
      The group said it will not forget that Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans are responsible for those bans, adding:
      Our rights are on the line, and we must send President Biden back to the White House to restore the federal right to abortion and end these bans once and for all.
      The copy of the opinion suggesting that the supreme court may rule to permit abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho may not be final and could be changed.According to the copy obtained by Bloomberg, a majority of justices will reportedly dismiss the case as “improvidently granted”, meaning the supreme court should not have accepted the case.The ruling would reinstate a lower court’s order that had allowed Idaho hospitals to perform abortions in cases where a woman’s health may be endangered, according to the outlet.Currently, the state’s law only allows abortions when a woman’s “life” is in danger. Idaho has sought to have abortion exempted from the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), a precedent critics said would endanger pregnant people in any state that has abortion restrictions.Although many states allow doctors to perform an emergency abortion when a woman’s life or health is at risk, effectively mirroring Emtala, Idaho only allowed doctors to intervene when a woman was on the brink of death, a much higher bar for intervention. The Biden administration sued Idaho to enforce the law.The Emtala law, signed by abortion opponent Ronald Reagan, sought to protect pregnant women in active labor in particular. Until its passage, hospitals often transferred or “dumped” women who could not pay when they suffered an emergency on public hospitals, even when in advanced stages of labor.Emtala had endured a series of attacks, including by some hospital administrators who viewed it as an “unfunded mandate”. Although the federal government required hospitals to treat sick patients, it never provided money to care for indigent patients.Bernie Sanders has joined those blaming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) for congressman Jamaal Bowman’s primary loss in New York last night.Bowman, whose criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza made him a target for pro-Israel lobbying groups, was defeated by George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist, after Aipac and an affiliated group spent almost $15m to defeat him.Sanders, in a statement today, said it was an “outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded super PACs to buy elections.” He added:
      AIPAC and other super PACs spent over $23 million to defeat Bowman. He spent $3 million. That is a spending gap which is virtually impossible to overcome.
      It is not a coincidence that with our corrupt campaign finance system we also have a rigged economy that allows the very rich to get much richer while many working people are falling further behind. Big Money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.
      The Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus has responded to the news that the supreme court may be poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho.“We are all watching,” the caucus posted to X, adding:
      With lives hanging in the balance, we hope this indicates a step forward for patients’ access to emergency abortion care.
      Now, it is up to #SCOTUS to confirm that this is true and they will indeed protect that right and uphold federal law.
      Alexis McGill Johnson, the head of Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider, writes that any decision that falls short of guaranteeing patients’ access to abortion care in emergencies would be “catastrophic”. More

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      Trump rehashes baseless claims about Biden in barrage of pre-debate bluster

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      Donald Trump has unleashed a fusillade of baseless accusations against Joe Biden and CNN moderators ahead of Thursday’s first US presidential debate in an apparent “pre-bunking” exercise designed to have his excuses ready-made if he is declared the loser.In a familiar rehash of tactics used in previous campaigns, the presumptive Republican nominee has intensified demands that Biden should take a drug test and accused him of being “higher than a kite” in last January’s State of the Union address, when the president won praise for an energetic performance.“DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform this week.The post came after Trump repeatedly told audiences that Biden would come to the debate “jacked up” after being given “a shot in the ass”.One Trump adviser graphically illustrated the imagery of Biden needing an injection by sharing a picture of a syringe.Even Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician under Trump and Barack Obama who is now a Republican congressman for Texas, got in on the act by writing a letter to Biden calling on him to take a drug test.Trump has also taken aim at Jake Tapper, one of the CNN moderators in Thursday’s debate in Atlanta, repeatedly calling him “fake Tapper” in speeches and interviews.The barbs were reinforced by the Trump campaign’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Monday when she twice attacked Tapper in an interview on the network, prompting the presenter Kasie Hunt to abruptly terminate the exchange.Trump’s son Eric has also joined in the chorus, reinforcing the view that the attacks are part of a coordinated strategy to minimise the debate’s importance.“Understand that he’s not just going to be debating Joe Biden, he’s going to be debating CNN,” Eric Trump told Fox News on Sunday, adding that the network planned to give Biden “a free pass”.Conservative supporters of Trump have also questioned the impartiality of Dana Bash, Tapper’s co-moderator, partly by falsely stating she is married to Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff, who has been critical of the former president. In fact, the pair have not been married for 17 years.Both lines of attack reprise well-worn Trump tactics.The unfounded allegations of drug use by Biden appears designed to forestall a stronger-than-expected debate from the president following months in which Trump’s campaign have denigrated the president’s supposedly failing mental powers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt echoes similar specious claims Trump made against Biden in 2020 and also against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, when he accused her of being suspiciously “pumped up” at a presidential debate and demanded that she take a drug test before the next one.The complaints against the moderators are also familiar. In 2020, Trump repeatedly branded Kristen Welker, the moderator of the second debate screened by NBC as a “dyed-in-the-wool, radical-left Democrat”.“It’s called pre-bunking. He’s preparing his audience to dismiss the entire event,” Joan Donovan, a media studies professor at Boston University told the Washington Post. “It’s a communication strategy that is part of his playbook.”Even sources sympathetic to Trump have acknowledged that the accusations may either be false or part of a planned strategy.Maria Bartiromo, a Fox news anchor, responded sceptically to the earlier accusations by Trump supporters that Biden was taking performance-boosting drugs. “These are very serious charges. We don’t know that, we’re not doctors. We have no idea,” she told Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman for Florida, when he accused the president of being ‘jacked up”.Referring to Trump’s criticism of Tapper, one unnamed Republican source close to the former president told the Washington Post that it was “Trump being Trump”, adding: “There’s nothing unusual about any of this stuff in terms of how it’s playing out.” More

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      Anti-Trump Republican Adam Kinzinger endorses Biden for president

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      The former Republican representative Adam Kinzinger has endorsed Joe Biden for president, as the Biden campaign attempts to win over anti-Trump voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.In a video released on Wednesday, Kinzinger said he was a “proud conservative” who had put “democracy and our constitution above all else.“And it’s because of my unwavering support for democracy that today, as a proud conservative, I’m endorsing Joe Biden for re-election,” Kinzinger said.Kinzinger warned that former president Donald Trump poses a “direct threat to every fundamental American value.“He doesn’t care about our country. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself,” Kinzinger added.Biden acknowledged Kinzinger’s endorsement in a reply on X.“This is what putting your country before your party looks like. I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam,” Biden said.Kinzinger’s announcement has received predictable flak from far-right Republicans.In a reply to the endorsement, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said: “Oh look, Kinzinger finally came out of the closet. As usual, we knew all along, so not a surprise and none of us care.”Kinzinger has remained one of the most staunch Republican critics of Trump.Following the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Kinzinger publicly denounced Trump for inciting “an angry mob” with false claims of stolen election results. Kinzinger was also among 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.Later, Kinzinger and Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the only two Republicans who joined a committee to investigate the Capitol insurrection.Kinzinger later announced he would not seek re-election in 2021 after facing a potential primary challenge from a pro-Trump candidate due to changes in district mapping.In a February interview with the Guardian, the former congressman warned that a second Trump term would be “devastating for the world order”.“The best-case scenario is a completely inept, ineffective government,” Kinzinger said.“The worst-case scenario is look, in his four-year term, he did not understand what he was doing. He was just trying to survive and he actually listened to people around him until the end. Now he’s going to put people around him that share his views, that will only reaffirm his views and, frankly, some of these people are pretty smart and they know how to work around the constitution or around the law to bring these authoritarian measures in.”Kinzinger’s announcement comes weeks after the Biden-Harris campaign announced that Kinzinger’s former chief of staff Austin Weatherford would be running the Biden campaign’s outreach to Republican voters. More

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      Lauren Boebert, hard-right Republican, wins Colorado primary after moving districts

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      Despite a series of personal scandals, Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Colorado Republican who narrowly avoided defeat in 2022, won out over a crowded field of other Republican primary candidates in the fourth congressional district – previously led by Ken Buck – which leans more heavily Republican.Boebert’s primary win is one of the most closely watched results of Colorado’s primary elections, which chose the winners in several bitter intra-party fights among the state’s Republicans, including in two competitive House districts that could help determine control of Congress in November.Boebert had moved from one politically divided congressional district in Colorado to a more safely Republican district, which will allow her to avoid a rematch with the Democratic opponent who nearly defeated her last election cycle.In Boebert’s former district, Jeff Hurd, who is seen as a more old-school and mainstream Republican, won the GOP primary and will face Adam Frisch, the Democrat who came within 546 votes of defeating her in 2022, is likely to face a tighter race against the winner of the Republican primary there. Voters in the district supported Trump with 53% of the vote in 2016 and 2020.Colorado’s most competitive US House race this fall will probably be in the eighth congressional district, where first-term congresswoman Yadira Caraveo is running unopposed in the Democratic primary. Her Republican opponent will be either state representative Gabe Evans, an army veteran and former police officer, or former state representative Janak Joshi, a retired physician who has the state party’s endorsement.Colorado’s primary landscape was reshaped by the sudden resignation this March of Buck, a former Republican congressman and staunch conservative. Buck cited his frustration with his own party in his resignation, telling CNN: “Instead of having decorum – instead of acting in a professional manner – this place has really devolved into this bickering and nonsense.”The fierce Republican infighting through the primary election has prompted accusations that the state GOP chair, Dave Williams, is running an “inquisition” and “has decided he must purify and purge the Republican party”, as former GOP chair Dick Wadhams said at an event hosted by Axios in Denver.Williams has faced allegations that he has improperly used the state party’s email list to announce his campaign for Congress and that he spent party money to buy mailers that included an attack on political consultant and talk radio host Jeff Crank, his Republican primary opponent.The GOP chairman also faced criticisms for asking party candidates to fill out a policy questionnaire that was also an explicit loyalty test, with questions such as “​​Do you support President Trump’s populist, America-first agenda?”Williams is “cannibalizing the Republican party so he can go to Congress”, Kelly Maher, a veteran GOP operative who filed a complaint against Williams with the Federal Elections Commission, told the Associated Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBuck, the former Republican member of Congress who resigned from his seat in March, triggered a special election for a candidate who will serve out the remaining six months of his term. The race appears on the ballot alongside the regularly scheduled primaries on Tuesday.Former Parker mayor Greg Lopez is seen as likely to win in this race, but he is seen as a placeholder who plans to step down after the general election winner is sworn into office in January.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Judge partially lifts Trump gag order in hush-money case – as it happened

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      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, amid a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else happened today:
      Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order imposed on Trump in his New York hush-money case and allowed him to attack jurors and witnesses.
      Joe Biden’s approval ticked up slightly in June, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, but Trump maintained the edge when it came to handling of the economy.
      Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
      Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
      Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
      Federal prosecutors have released new photos of the classified documents they discovered two years ago at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, in a filing that rejects an attempt by the former president’s lawyers to get the case against him thrown out.The photos reveal that top secret documents were mixed in with keepsakes like copies of the New York Times, Maga hats and cases of Diet Coke:Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, on the latest revelations from prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith in the long-running case:Hillary Clinton has, interestingly enough, debated both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, though it is of course her general election loss to the former for which she is best remembered. Ahead of the Trump-Biden debate scheduled for Thursday, she offered some thoughts on what debating the ex-president is like, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:Hillary Clinton has said it would be a “waste of time” for Joe Biden to attempt to refute Donald Trump’s contentions in Thursday’s presidential debate because “it’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are”.The former secretary of state wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that Trump “starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather”.“This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated,” she said.Clinton debated Trump while unsuccessfully running for the White House against him in 2016 – and she had also debated Biden during a presidential primary eight years earlier.Trump was later accused of speaking over Clinton and looming over her in a way that she later described as “really weird”.Clinton predicted in her op-ed that Trump’s strategies would “fall flat” if Biden “is as direct and forceful as he was” during his State of the Union address in March.Referring to Trump, she added: “Expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.”Reuters and Ipsos just dropped a new poll ahead of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s Thursday’s debate face-off, which shows the former president has the edge among voters when it comes to concerns about the economy, while the current White House occupant is more trusted to preserve America’s democracy.It also found a slight bump in Biden’s approval rating, from a not-great 36% in May to a still-not-great 37% this month.The survey does not tell us much we do not know, since previous polls have shown Trump with the edge on economic matters, though it does underscore the validity of the Biden campaign’s strategy of characterizing Trump as a threat to democracy.The survey found Trump was viewed as the better choice for the economy, the top concern of voters, by 43% of respondents, against Biden’s 37%. He was also the preferred pick of respondents when it came to handling foreign policy and terrorism, with 40% support against Biden’s 35%.The second-biggest concern for respondents was the state of the country’s democracy, and when it came to that, Biden was the pick of 39% of those polled, while Trump picked up 33% support.Speaking of attacks, a CNN presenter’s interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson went awry yesterday, when she began criticizing the moderators of the ex-president’s upcoming debate against Joe Biden, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports:CNN abruptly terminated a live interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson on Monday after she criticised the two journalists whom the network chose to moderate the much anticipated upcoming debate between the former president and Joe Biden.Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Kasie Hunt, the presenter of CNN This Morning, after saying Trump would be entering a “hostile environment on this very network” when he debates the incumbent president in Atlanta on Thursday.Asked what strategy Trump would pursue on the debate stage, she said he would be contending “with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known … and their biased coverage of him”.Leavitt’s comments were aimed, without initially naming them, at the moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They triggered an immediate reaction from Hunt, who defended her colleagues.“So I’ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle,” Hunt said. Citing analysts of previous debates, she added: “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.”Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial that resulted in the former president’s conviction in New York City on charges related to hush-money payments, told CNN he won’t be intimidated by Trump’s attacks.His comment came after Judge Juan Merchan modified the gag order on Trump, and allowed him to make statements about witnesses in the case – such as Cohen.Here’s what he told CNN:And now we wait to see if Donald Trump unleashes a new volley of insults against those involved in his criminal conviction last month in New York City.The place to watch is his Truth Social account, which the former president has used in place of his account on X (formerly Twitter) to comment on a variety of subjects, his criminal trials included. He has left his account on X dormant since owner Elon Musk allowed him back on to the site two years ago, with the sole exception of tweeting out the mug shot taken in Georgia, when charges were brought against him in the election subversion case.Before its modification, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump for repeatedly violating the gag order imposed against him in his hush money case. Here’s more on that:The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money criminal case has modified a gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the trial until his sentencing date next month, Reuters reports.Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling allows Trump to go on the attack against his former fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, the adult star Stormy Daniels, and other witnesses.But Merchan ruled that Trump is still bound by the order’s restrictions on speaking about lawyers and staff for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the court, if those statements could interfere with the case.More than a dozen Nobel prize-winning economists have warned that inflation will soar once again if Donald Trump takes back the White House in November.In a letter obtained by Axios, 16 Nobel laureates wrote that the presumptive Republican nominee’s plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy.
      While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump.
      They go on to write that a second Trump term would have “a negative impact on the US’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the US’s domestic economy.”
      Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.
      Hunter Biden’s license to practice law in Washington DC has been suspended after he was convicted earlier this month of three federal gun charges.The filing on Tuesday by the DC court of appeals states that Hunter Biden, the president’s eldest living son, is “suspended immediately” from practicing law in the city.The appeals court also directs the DC board on professional responsibility to to hold additional proceedings to “determine the nature of the offense and whether it involves moral turpitude.”Hunter Biden was found guilty earlier this month on three felony counts related to a handgun purchase while he was a user of crack cocaine.US senator Rand Paul celebrated Julian Assange’s freedom, but criticized the US plea deal as harmful.In a post to X, Paul said that he was “relieved” Assange was being reunited with his family, but argued that Assange’s plea deal was dangerous for first amendment rights and criminalizing to journalism.
      I’m relieved Assange is finally free and reuniting with his family after years of wrongful persecution. Yet, this plea deal sets a dangerous precedent, criminalizing journalism and damaging our First Amendment rights. The “Land of the Free” can and must do better.
      Follow the Guardian’s coverage of Julian Assange’s plea deal here.Voters in three states are casting ballots in primaries that could prove crucial to determining the party control, and the ideological bent, of the next Congress. In New York, progressive Democrat Jamaal Bowman is fighting for his seat against challenger George Latimer, in a race where Bowman’s criticism of Israel has become a major issue. Over in Colorado, far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert is looking to overcome personal scandals and secure her place in the House by winning the GOP primary in a district that is even more friendly to Republicans than the one she presently represents. And in Utah, Republicans are deciding whether their next senator will be a moderate like the retiring senator Mitt Romney, or someone who vows to do what Donald Trump wants.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Aileen Cannon, the Florida judge handling Trump’s classified documents case, is on her third day of hearing arguments on motions that could decide the trajectory of the closely watched case.
      Last week’s primary in Virginia between Republican congressman Bob Good and challenger John McGuire remains too close to call, but Trump knows who he wants to win.
      Who will Trump pick as his running mate? We take a look at what clues have emerged.
      Voting is ongoing in New York, where progressive congressman Jamaal Bowman is facing a tough challenge in the Democratic primary from George Latimer, the executive of Westchester county.On X, Bowman posted a video encouraging volunteers to come to his district and knock on doors to rally voter support, or to work phone banks:Latimer has meanwhile been calling attention to his endorsements. Here’s Ken Jenkins, the deputy executive of Westchester county, in New York City’s suburbs: More