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      Alleged ‘deal’ offer from Trump to big oil could save industry $110bn, study finds

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      A “deal” allegedly offered by Donald Trump to big-oil executives as he sought $1bn in campaign donations could save the industry $110bn in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis suggests.The fundraising dinner held last month at Mar-a-Lago with more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, reportedly involved Trump asking for large campaign contributions and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.Congressional Democrats have launched an investigation into the “ethical, campaign finance and legal issues” raised by what one Democratic senator called an “offer of a blatant quid pro quo”, while a prominent watchdog group is exploring whether the meeting warrants legal action.But the analysis shared with the Guardian shows that the biggest motivation for oil and gas companies to back Trump appears to be in the tax system, with about $110bn in tax breaks for the industry at stake should Joe Biden be re-elected in November’s election.Biden wants to eliminate the tax breaks, which include long-standing incentives to help drill for oil and gas, with a recent White House budget proposal targeting $35bn in domestic subsidies and $75bn in overseas fossil fuel income.“Big oil executivess are sweating in their seats at the thought of losing $110bn in special tax loopholes under Biden in 2025,” said Lukas Ross, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Action, which conducted the analysis.Ross said the tax breaks are worth nearly 11,000% more than the amount Trump allegedly asked the executives for in donations. “If Trump promises to protect polluter handouts during tax negotiations, then his $1bn shakedown is a cheap insurance policy for the industry,” he said.View image in fullscreenSome of the tax breaks have been around for decades, and are a global issue, but the US oil and gas industry benefited disproportionately from tax cuts passed by Trump when he was president in 2017.Next year, regardless of who is president, a raft of individual tax cuts included in that bill will expire, prompting a round of Washington deal-making over which industries, if any, will help fund an extension.Lobbying records show that Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Cheniere and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have all met lawmakers this year to discuss this tax situation, likely encouraging them to ignore Biden’s plan to target the fossil fuel industry’s own carve-outs.Chevron and ConocoPhillips, the analysis shows, lobbied on a deduction for intangible drilling costs, the largest federal subsidy for US oil and gas companies, which is worth $10bn, according to federal figures.View image in fullscreenOther lobbying centered on more generalized tax breaks that the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of. ExxonMobil lobbied for a little-known bill that would restore a bonus depreciation deduction to its full value, which, according to Moody’s, would allow big oil to avoid Biden’s newly established corporate minimum tax.“Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Biden said following his inauguration in 2021. But Congress and the president will have to agree to any new tax arrangements next year, and the fossil-fuel industry continues to have staunch support from Republicans and some Democrats.The API insisted its industry gets no favorable treatment in the tax system. “America’s energy industry proudly invests in communities, pays local, state and federal taxes and receives no special tax treatment from the federal government,” an API spokesperson said.“This nonsense report is another attempt to distract from the importance of all energy sources – including oil and natural gas – to meet America’s growing energy needs.”Who was at Mar-a-Lago?The high stakes for the fossil-fuel industry, as well as for the climate crisis, have placed scrutiny upon those who attended Trump’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Although representatives of large oil companies were present, the majority of known attendees were executives of smaller firms focused on specific subsections of the fossil-fuel industry, such as fracking or gas exporting.Those companies are not often held to account in international forums such as the UN climate talks or the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which means they are less likely to make buzzy climate pledges. They may also be more threatened by regulations on individual parts of the US fossil fuel economy, such as auto-emissions standards aiming to quell gas-car usage.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The oil majors … see their future in plastic [production]. That doesn’t apply to the smaller companies who don’t work across the industry,” said Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity. “They’ve got nothing to shift to.”Among other reported attendees were the head of the company Venture Global, which rivals Qatar as one of the world’s leading liquefied natural gas exporters. This year, the company came under fire after it was revealed to have been using millions of gallons of water to construct a Louisiana LNG terminal while a nearby community faced extreme shortages. The firm was also accused late last year of reneging on its contracts by Shell and BP.Another attendee: Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, which after years of court fights had to pay $5.3m to Pennsylvania landowners who say they were cheated out of gas royalties. The company’s earlier CEO, John McClendon, was indicted in 2016 on charges of conspiring to rig bids on oil and gas leases in Oklahoma.Billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm, who founded fossil fuel exploration company Continental Resources, was also present. He helped raise money for Trump’s 2016 presidential run and was under consideration to be Trump’s energy secretary, and was reportedly one of the seven top donors who had special seats at Trump’s inauguration. Though he eschewed the former president after his 2020 loss, he donated to his primary campaign in August.View image in fullscreenAsked about the meeting, API spokesperson Andrea Woods said the organization “meets with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum on topics important to our industry”. She said the premise of Democrats’ investigation into the meeting is “patently false and an attempt to distract from a needed debate about America’s future – one that requires more energy, including more oil and natural gas”.Amid the scrutiny of last month’s Mar-a-Lago dinner, Trump is continuing to court oil-tied funders. On Tuesday evening, he held a Manhattan fundraising dinner that cost a minimum of $100,000 to attend.Among the event’s hosts, advocacy group Climate Power noted, was John Catsimatidis, the chief executive of the much-scrutinized gas refiner United Refining Company and owner of two grocery chains, a radio station and holding company Red Apple Group.Between 2017 and 2023, United Refining Company’s small refinery in western Pennsylvania was the most dangerous refinery in the country, with federal data showing it reported 10 times the average number of injuries for a refinery – 63% higher than the next-most dangerous facility.The company also reportedly sought to dodge environmental regulations using a process championed by Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.Catsimatidis has also been criticized for neglecting vacant gas-station properties and for blaming gas prices on “open” borders, corporate taxes and worker benefits. The Pennsylvania town home to United Refining pays some of the highest gas prices in the state, despite the presence of the refinery, raising suspicions among some residents about the company’s practices.Trump this week also held a fundraiser hosted by the US senator JD Vance, who is one of the largest recipients of big-oil funding in Congress, and another with Joe Craft, a major Trump donor who owns massive coal producer Alliance Resource Partners. In 2016, Craft reportedly gifted Pruitt courtside basketball tickets after the agency crafted pro-coal regulations. More

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      Louisiana must use House map with second mostly Black district, US supreme court rules

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday ordered Louisiana to hold congressional elections in 2024 using a House map with a second mostly Black district, despite a lower-court ruling that called the map an illegal racial gerrymander.The order allows the use of a map that has majority Black populations in two of the state’s six congressional districts, potentially boosting Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the closely divided House of Representatives in the 2024 elections.The justices acted on emergency appeals filed by the state’s top Republican elected officials and Black voters who said they needed the high court’s intervention to avoid confusion as the elections approach. About a third of Louisiana is Black.Like much of the south, voting is racially polarized in Alabama so any majority-Black district is likely to favor Democrats. Republicans narrowly control the US House and are fighting for an advantage in every seat.It is the latest development in a long and twisted legal saga over Louisiana’s congressional districts.Louisiana lawmakers were forced to add a second majority-Black district last year after a federal judge said the map they drew violated the Voting Rights Act. The state approved a map, but then non-white voters challenged it in court, saying lawmakers relied too much on race when drawing it. Lower federal courts agreed the map should be struck down, and the state said it should not be required to use the map for this year’s elections.The supreme court’s order on Wednesday halts that argument and means the map with a second majority-Black district will be used for this year’s election. What happens after that is unclear.The supreme court has previously put court decisions handed down near elections on hold, invoking the need to give enough time to voters and elections officials to ensure orderly balloting. “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote two years ago in a similar case from Alabama. The court has never set a firm deadline for how close is too close.The court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all said they would not have granted the request to intervene. Only Jackson explained her reasoning.“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” she wrote in a brief dissent. “We have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson was objecting to what has come to be known as the Purcell principle – a novel idea adopted by the supreme court that they should not intervene in an election dispute when election day is near. The liberal justices and other critics have accused the court of using the principle to benefit Republicans.Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by federal courts in the past two years in a swirl of lawsuits that included a previous intervention by the supreme court. More

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree to two US presidential debates

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      Shortly after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign proposed two TV debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump ahead of November’s presidential vote, both men have agreed upon two debate dates: 27 June and 10 September.CNN confirmed that it would host the first debate of 2024 on that date at 9pm ET from the crucial battleground state of Georgia.ABC later confirmed they’d host a second debate on 10 September during prime time.A third date, 2 October, has been proposed by Trump in a Truth Social post on Wednesday afternoon: “Let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you, DJT!”Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, with the Trump campaign, told ABC News of the upcoming and pending debate dates: “We propose a debate in June, a debate in July, a debate in August, and a debate in September, in addition to the Vice Presidential debate. Additional dates will allow voters to have maximum exposure to the records and future visions of each candidate.”On Wednesday morning, Biden said in a video shared on social media: “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”He then jabbed: “So let’s pick dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” referring to the free day in Trump’s current campaign finance violations trial in New York.In a post on Twitter/X, independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr accused Biden and Trump of “colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want. They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”Biden’s proposal bucked a tradition of three debates, typically held in the fall, that are organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. Democratic party officials said in a release on Wednesday that moving the timing up, reducing the number of debates and ending them sooner reflected changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters”.The Democrats’ proposal also noted that debates in previous elections cycles had not concluded until after early voting started and the commission’s debates were “structured like an entertainment spectacle and not a serious exchange of ideas that reflect the enormous stakes of the election”.The commission “has consistently demonstrated an inability to enforce their own rules” in the debates and called for a firm time limit on answers, and alternate turns to speak “so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption”.Later on Wednesday morning, Trump accepted Biden’s offer to debate him in June and September, telling Fox News Digital that “it is time for a debate to take place – even if it has to be held through the offices of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which are totally controlled by Democrats and who, as people remember, got caught cheating with me with debate sound levels”.He added on Truth Social: “Crooked Joe Biden is the worst debater I have ever faced – he can’t put two sentences together.”That missive concluded with Trump saying: “I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That’s only because he doesn’t get them. Just tell me when, I’ll be there. Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!”Biden volleyed back with a message on X shortly after Trump’s various remarks, saying he was up “for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”Arranging the presidential debates has become increasingly vexed, with both parties seeking a competitive advantage. But they are considered highly important in gaining the attention of crucial swing voters who may only then be tuning in to the choice of candidates.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile not mandated in any constitutional sense, they are now considered an intrinsic part of the election process. But even the Democrats’ proposal on Wednesday was designed for point-scoring.“As Donald Trump has said he will debate ‘anytime, anywhere’, we hope both campaigns can quickly accept broadcast media debate invitations on the parameters above,” the Biden campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, wrote in a letter to the commission before Trump’s acceptance of the challenge. “Americans need a debate on the issues – not a tedious debate about debates.”The Biden campaign had said it would work directly with news organizations to set up the debates, sidelining the debating commission which has overseen them since 1988. In CNN’s press release announcing the 27 June debate, the news organization noted it would take place “in CNN’s Atlanta studios” and “no audience will be present”.Until now, there has been uncertainty about whether Biden would agree to debate Trump at all. Trump skipped every Republican primary debate, pointing to his polling lead in that selection process, and Biden refused to debate his Democratic challengers.Trump, who has polling leads in five of six crucial swing states, has goaded Biden often, saying last month he was willing to debate his rival “anytime, anywhere, any place”, starting “now”.The Trump campaign called for presidential debates to be held earlier and more frequently so voters “have a full chance” to see the candidates in action and argued that by the time of the first scheduled debate, on 16 September, more than 1 million Americans will probably have already voted, with more than 8.7 million voting by the third debate, penciled in for 9 October.Last month, 12 US news organizations issued pleas to the campaigns to agree to TV debate schedule.“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time, it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high,” the organizations including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NBC, NPR and the Associated Press said in a statement.“Amidst that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation,” they added.In 2020, Biden and Trump debated twice, with a third debate canceled after Trump tested positive for Covid-19. 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      We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat | Bernie Sanders

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      In 1776, Americans, living in a British colony, put their lives on the line and fought for independence from the king of England. They wrote the strongest democratic constitution that had ever been written as they created a new nation. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1861, civil war broke out in the United States and more than 600,000 Americans died in the war between the states. Slavery was abolished. Over the ensuing decades, racist forces regained power and established an apartheid form of government throughout the old confederacy. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1929, Wall Street collapsed. The United States and much of the world experienced the Great Depression. Unemployment rose to 25% and millions of Americans descended into economic desperation. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and the federal government’s role in addressing the needs of working people was transformed. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and an unprepared United States was forced to mobilize and fight a world war on two fronts: Hitler in Europe and Japan in Asia. The future of democracy and the prevention of barbarism in the world was at stake. That was a pivotal moment in American history.Today, in 2024, our country once again faces a pivotal moment in American history. The crises facing us are enormous. The consequences if we fail are unthinkable.As the nation moves rapidly toward oligarchy, the billionaire class exerts enormous influence over the economic and political life of the nation. While the rich become much richer, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and real, inflation-adjusted wages for the average US worker have actually declined over the last 50 years. Never before have the 1% done so well, or enjoyed so much power.Our political system is corrupt. Thanks to the disastrous Citizens United supreme court decision, billionaires and their Super Pacs are able to spend hundreds of millions to elect or defeat candidates they target. As a result, more than 90% of House elections and more than 80% of Senate elections are won by the candidate who spends the most money.Our life expectancy and birth rate are in decline. Despite spending far more per capita on a broken healthcare system, the average American now lives 77.5 years – 18 months less than in 2019 – and the lowest of any wealthy nation on earth. Further, our total births last year fell to 3.59 million, the lowest level ever recorded.The climate crisis threatens the very future of the planet. The last 10 years have been the 10 warmest years on record. 2023 was by far the hottest year in recorded history and 2024 is on track to be even hotter. Unless there is a huge reduction in carbon emissions we will continue to see more drought, more flooding, more forest fires, more extreme weather disturbances, more mass migrations and more deaths as a result of the climate crisis.Artificial intelligence and robotics are radically transforming our society, causing enormous anxiety among workers. Most of the jobs we have today will likely not be here in 15 years. Will the increased productivity that AI brings simply make corporations wealthier as they discard their employees, or will workers benefit? The wellbeing of tens of millions depends upon that answer.The basic human rights that women have struggled to win are under severe attack. Since the supreme court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v Wade, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans, some with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Will the war against women continue? Will women once again, be reduced to second-class citizenship?The US now spends almost 1tn a year on the military, more than the next 10 countries combined. This is more than all federal funding for food, housing and education. Tens of billions of those dollars are currently supporting the horrific war in Gaza waged by the rightwing extremist Israeli government of Netanyahu.So. That’s where we are, and it’s not a pretty picture. People feel hopeless. They are exhausted. They are worried about the kind of future that awaits their kids and grandkids.We are in the midst of another pivotal moment in American history. How do we respond?First, we cannot simply turn away from the painful and complex realities that we face and bury our heads in the sand. We cannot stop reading the news or turn off the TV. The world is what it is. It is a mess. And the situation is not going to improve unless we do the hard work required.Second, we must be actively involved in the 2024 national elections – the most consequential in our lifetimes.Yes. I know. Biden is not popular and many progressives, including me, strongly disagree with his policies regarding Israel and this disastrous war in Gaza.But, let’s be clear. Biden is not running against God. He is running against Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in American history whose second term, if he is re-elected, will be worse than his first. And, on his worst day, Biden is a thousand times better than Trump.Are you concerned about the extreme income and wealth inequality we are experiencing, and the decline of the middle class? Trump wants to give huge tax breaks to billionaires and, as president, appointed viciously anti-union officials to high office. Biden, on the other hand, is the first president to ever walk a picket line – in support of striking UAW workers. He has helped create millions of decent paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and investing in manufacturing. Biden has also forgiven the debts of millions of struggling young people.Are you concerned about the right of women to control their own bodies? Trump brags about how he appointed three supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade. Biden is solidly pro-choice.Are you concerned about the climate crisis? Donald Trump thinks climate change is a “hoax”. A Trump victory will tell the entire world to continue their support for fossil fuels, and the planet we leave our kids and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy. Biden, on the other hand, has helped invest more money into sustainable energy and energy efficiency than any president in history.And if you have problems with Biden’s position on Israel and the war in Gaza, Trump’s position is far worse. Biden has at least restricted some powerful bombs from going to the Israel and has been critical of Netanyahu. Trump and his Republican colleagues are “all in” for the massive destruction of the Palestinian people.Oh. And there’s one other thing. And that’s the small matter of retaining our democracy. Biden is a traditional American politician who believes in democracy, free elections and the right of dissent. That’s not what Trump believes. He and his supporters have spent the last four years undermining faith in the rule of law and our democratic form of government. He is weighing pardons for more than 800 of his supporters who attacked the Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. And his advisers are drawing up plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.Clearly, our job is not just to re-elect Biden. It’s much more than that. We must defend the many progressives that we have elected to the House, some of whom who face significant financial opposition from Aipac and other special interest Pacs. And we must elect more strong progressive candidates who are on the ballot to the House, and state and local governments.We must work in coalition with all those who understand that we must do everything possible to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme rightwing Republican party, not just because he is “worse”, but because nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake in this election.Further, we must demand that Biden and the Democrats begin campaigning on a truly progressive agenda that addresses the needs of the working families of our country.Yes. Healthcare is a human right.Yes. The billionaire class must start paying their fair share of taxes.Yes. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.Yes. We must seriously address the housing crisis, which exists in almost every state in the country.Yes. We must strengthen public education in our country and make higher education available to all regardless of income.Bottom line: we must have the guts to take on and defeat a powerful and greedy ruling class and create a government which works for all, not just the few. The path forward is not easy. But now is not the time for despair or cynicism.During this pivotal moment, we must do what Americans have always done when change is needed: we must stand together, organize and fight for the country we know we can become.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chairman of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Democratic pollster: too much ‘inconsistency’ to draw conclusions about Biden-Trump rematch – as it happened

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      Good morning, US politics blog readers. The Biden campaign woke up to some disquieting news this morning, when a major poll was released showing that Donald Trump still leads Joe Biden in five of the six swing states that will be crucial to deciding the November election. Perhaps the most concerning part about the poll from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer was that while it was news, it was not exactly new – surveys have for months found the president trailing his predecessor in states he carried four years ago. What’s notable about this one is that the presidential campaign is now well underway, with Biden campaigning across the country in recent weeks, and his allies spending millions on advertisements intended to rebuild the coalition that elected him to the White House in 2020. Yet despite all that effort, the poll does not show much of an increase in his support.Perhaps more worrying for Biden’s prospects is what the survey says about the voting groups that are turning against him. While Black voters have been a reliable Democratic voting bloc, Trump’s support among them is 20%, the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in decades. The two men are also tied in support among Hispanic voters and 18-29-year-olds, groups that Biden won majorities of in 2020. We’ll tell you more about what else this poll has to say – and how Biden’s supporters are taking it – later on.Here’s what else is going on:
      Trump’s trial on business fraud charges continues in Manhattan, with the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen expected to take the stand. Follow our live coverage here.
      Bob Menendez, New Jersey’s Democratic senator, goes on trial today on a raft of corruption charges connected to allegedly using his position to aid the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
      Despite Biden’s worrying poll numbers, the same survey finds Democratic candidates leading in races that will decide control of the Senate.
      Democrats have been rattled by new polling that shows Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of six crucial swing states, with less than six months to go until election day. It was the latest disquieting opinion survey for the president, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout most of his term. However, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that polling is often unreliable this far out from an election, and the data also showed that Democratic Senate candidates were ahead of their Republican challengers in key races – though Biden will probably have to win re-election for his allies to keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Kamala Harris unexpectedly swore during an appearance at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.
      It’s infrastructure week at the White House once again.
      Simon Rosenberg, a perennial Democratic optimist, is not too worried about the latest polling on Biden’s re-election chances.
      The poll, which was conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer and Siena College, found voters were not paying particularly close attention to Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City. The prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen took the stand today, and you can follow the latest developments here.
      Republican lawmakers turned up outside Trump’s trial in New York to show their solidarity. Among the group was Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, who lamented that the former president was not getting enough respect, and Ohio senator JD Vance, who is viewed as a potential running mate.
      At her daily press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave no indication that the president was rattled by the poll released this morning showing him trailing Donald Trump in five crucial swing states.Instead, she endeavored to direct the press’s attention to the $1.2tn infrastructure bill Biden oversaw passage of three years ago that will overhaul the nation’s roads, bridges, rail and broadband:The legislation was indeed a major accomplishment for Joe Biden and Congress’s then-Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and one that had eluded Trump and Barack Obama. Whether voters will care is an open question. Biden’s approval ratings plunged into negative territory a few months before the bill’s November 2021 signing, and have not returned to positive territory since.Lately, Biden has been campaigning on using the funds to undo damage done to minority communities when the nation’s interstates highways were built. Here’s more on that:Perhaps the name Michael Cohen sounds familiar. Donald Trump’s personal lawyer was once his trusted fixer, but then publicly turned against him, and is now testifying against his one-time boss in court. Here’s more on the disaffected Trumpworld lieutenant, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore:Michael Cohen is Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who was for more than a decade his Mr Fix-It, but is now the prosecution’s star witness as it builds its case that the former US president sought to conceal hush-money payments to an adult film star.It is a classic story of two men who once worked hand-in-glove together, when Trump was a world-famous billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star, but now face each other across a Manhattan courtroom with the world’s attention fixed on them.Cohen served as Trump’s trusted adviser, personal attorney and self-described “attack dog with a law license”. But the relationship soured after Trump won the US presidential election in 2016 and did not offer Cohen a role in his administration.Cohen’s testimony could place Trump at the center of a scheme to meet Stormy Daniels’s demand for $130,000 in exchange for her silence. The payment, made from an account Cohen had set up, was allegedly repaid while Trump was president but disguised as “legal services”.The prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, is on the witness stand in Donald Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election. Here’s the Guardian’s Victoria Bekiempis with a rundown of what we have learned from his testimony so far today:Donald Trump told his one-time fixer Michael Cohen to bury Stormy Daniels’s account of an alleged sexual liaison weeks before the election, demanding that he “just take care of it”, according to trial testimony in Manhattan court on Monday.“This was a disaster, a fucking disaster,” Cohen, after he took the stand, recalled Trump saying. “Women will hate me.”Cohen described Trump as angry at the possibility that Daniels, an adult film star, might come forward surfaced shortly after the Washington Post published a hot-mic recording from an Access Hollywood taping in which Trump bragged about groping women “by the pussy” without their consent.Cohen is core to the case against Trump, because he is accused of shuttling $130,000 to Daniels days before the 2016 election – in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump 10 years earlier. Cohen told jurors that he had kept Daniels’s account under wraps in 2011, working with her then lawyer to remove a story about it that had been on a gossip site.“He was really angry with me,” Cohen recalled of Trump’s reaction after he informed him about Daniels. Trump, he said, remarked: “I thought you had this under control? I thought you took care of this.”A group of Republican lawmakers appeared outside the New York City courthouse where Donald Trump’s trial on charges of falsifying business records is taking place today.The group, which included Ohio senator JD Vance, who is thought to be a potential running mate for the former president, denounced the prosecution spearheaded by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. Here’s Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville:Beyond just winning the GOP’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump has moved to consolidate control over various parts of the Republican party, including its national committee. But as the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports, Trump has asserted himself in no other state like Florida:In practical terms, Barron Trump’s truncated stint on the political stage as a Florida delegate to the Republican party’s national convention was little more than symbolic. His father Donald Trump’s third successive presidential campaign as the Republican nominee was all but certain anyway, and the names of those who will confirm it are essentially inconsequential.It did affirm to many analysts, however, how the former president has maneuvered to seize almost total control of the party’s state apparatus nationwide. Nowhere is that more apparent than Florida, where the capitulation was completed by the choice of delegates for July’s convention in Milwaukee.Even though 18-year-old Barron Trump now stepped down, ostensibly after his mother, former first lady Melania Trump, discovered a pressing prior engagement, there will be plenty of other family members as representatives. Barron’s step-siblings Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany are named, along with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr’s fiancée.Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, and an assorted slew of other notable Trump acolytes and loyalists, are also on the list.The parallels in Trump’s subjugation of the national Republican party, and the installation of Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, as its co-chair, are hard to miss – especially as it was Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who was once seen as a potential “Trump killer” in the party’s nomination race until, of course, Trump quickly vanquished him.Polls routinely show immigration as one of the biggest issues on American voters’ minds ahead of the November elections – no matter how far from the Mexican border they may live. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reported that the issue has become the talk of a town in a northern Wisconsin city, after its police chief appealed to the Biden administration for help with new arrivals:Rhinelander is closer to the Arctic Circle than to Mexico, so it is no great surprise that few people in the small Wisconsin city have laid eyes on the foreign migrants Donald Trump claims are “invading” the country from across the US border 1,500 miles to the south.But Jim Schuh, the manager of a local bakery, is nonetheless sure they are a major problem and he’s voting accordingly.“We don’t see immigrants here but I have relatives all over the country and they see them,” he said. “That’s Biden. He’s responsible.”Large numbers of voters in key swing states agree with Schuh, even in places where migrants are hard to find as they eye cities such as Chicago and New York struggling to cope with tens of thousands of refugees and other arrivals transported there by the governors of Texas and Florida.Trump has been pushing fears over record levels of migration hard in Wisconsin where the past two presidential elections have been decided by a margin of less than 1% of the vote. A Marquette law school poll last month found that two-thirds of Wisconsin voters agree that “the Biden administration’s border policies have created a crisis of uncontrolled illegal migration into the country”.Democrats have been rattled by new polling that shows Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in five of six crucial swing states, with less than six months to go until election day. It was the latest disquieting poll for the president, who has struggled with low approval ratings throughout most of his term. However, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin pointed out that polling is often unreliable this far out from an election, and the data also showed that Democratic Senate candidates were ahead of their Republican challengers in key races – though Biden will probably have to win re-election for his allies to keep their majority in Congress’s upper chamber.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Kamala Harris unexpectedly swore during an appearance at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies.
      Simon Rosenberg, a perennial Democratic optimist, is not too worried about the latest polling on Biden’s re-election chances.
      The poll, which was conducted by the New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer and Siena College, found voters were not paying particularly close attention to Trump’s business fraud trial in New York City. The prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen took the stand today, and you can follow the latest developments here.
      In recent months, Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Barack Obama, has become an influential voice for Democrats trying to gauge Joe Biden’s chances in his looming rematch with Donald Trump.From his newsletter, here’s what he had to say about this morning’s authoritative, and disquieting, polling for the president:
      My advice with this and all polls is to take it seriously, but not literally. No poll is flawless; even the most accurate one can’t predict the future. Instead, think of polls as snapshots of how voters feel right now. Focus on the overall trends and significant insights rather than getting caught up in the day-to-day fluctuations. Use the poll data strategically to understand what resonates with voters and how to communicate our message effectively.
      As the first woman and first person of African-American and South Asian heritage to serve as vice-president, Kamala Harris is a barrier breaker. During an appearance today at a Washington DC summit organized by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, Harris shared some advice for others looking to do the same, in notably strong language (well, she said fuck). See the moment here: More

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      Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five key battleground states, new polls show

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      Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states less than six months out from election day, new polls showed.The surveys from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College put the former president up in Pennsylvania (three points), Arizona (seven), Michigan (seven), Georgia (10) and Nevada (12). Biden led by two points in Wisconsin.All leads bar Trump’s in Georgia and Nevada were within the margin of error.As the poll resonated throughout the political scene, the Biden campaign issued a statement from Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster.“The only consistency in recent public polls is inconsistency,” Garin said.“These results need to be weighed against the 30-plus polls that show Biden up and gaining – which is exactly why drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake.”Trump is currently on trial in New York City, on 34 criminal charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.That is effectively an election interference trial. The former president also faces four federal charges and 10 state charges, in Georgia, for attempted election subversion and 40 federal charges concerning his retention of classified information.Trump’s attempt to overturn Biden’s conclusive win in 2020 culminated in the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, by a mob he told to “fight like hell” in his cause.Nine deaths have been linked to the riot including law enforcement suicides and more than 1,200 people have been arrested, hundreds convicted and jailed, some for seditious conspiracy.And yet, amid much electorate concern that at 81 Biden is too old for a second term – though Trump is just four years younger – the Times said “a yearning for change and discontent over the economy and the war in Gaza among young, Black and Hispanic voters threaten to unravel the president’s Democratic coalition”.The polls showed 20% support for Trump among Black voters, which if it held in the election would be the highest level of such support for a Republican candidate since the civil rights era.There was better news for Biden in results culled from people who described themselves as likely to vote, with the current president leading in Michigan and narrowly behind in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Victories in those three states in November would probably be enough to keep Biden in the White House.Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party candidate seeking ballot access in all 50 states even while having said he once had a worm in his brain linked to cognitive problems, scored about 10% in the polls, drawing equally from both Trump and Biden.“The findings are mostly unchanged since the last series of Times/Siena polls in battleground states in November,” the Times said, listing factors that might be seen likely to aid Biden: the stock market gaining 25%, Trump’s criminal trials beginning and Biden’s campaign spending heavily in battleground states.But voters who spoke to the paper cited cost-of-living concerns and dissatisfaction with the social and political status quo as reasons to abandon Biden for Trump.Remarkably, the paper reported that “nearly 70% of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes – or even to be torn down entirely”.Abortion rights also looms as a key campaign issue.Trump has boasted of his role in appointing three rightwingers to the US supreme court, resulting in the removal of federal abortion rights in 2022 with the overturning of Roe v Wade, the ruling that guaranteed them.Democrats have focused on the issue, taking a string of wins when abortion rights have been on the ballot, even in Republican-run states.In the new polls, a familiar majority (64%) said abortion should be always or mostly legal (a stance shared by 44% of Trump voters). The polls also showed voters prefer Biden to handle abortion rights issues by 11 points.But nearly 20% of respondents blamed Biden more than Trump for the fall of Roe.Garin said: “The reality is that many voters are not paying close attention to the election and have not started making up their minds – a dynamic also reflected in today’s poll. These voters will decide this election and only the Biden campaign is doing the work to win them over.” More

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      How the right is weaponizing pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US

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      Republicans have identified recent college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the core of an election campaign narrative of chaos that they hope can be used to sink Joe Biden’s presidency.The approach was bluntly crystallised by Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, in a recent television interview when he mocked the encampments that have sprung up in recent weeks as “little Gazas” and lambasted the president for a perceived failure to unequivocally denounce instances of antisemitism.“The Democrats have deep philosophical divisions on Israel,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week programme. “That’s why you see all those little Gazas out there on campuses where you see people chanting vile antisemitic slogans … For two weeks, Joe Biden refused to come out and denounce it. That is the 2024 election.”In fact, Biden did condemn antisemitism in a White House statement criticising the protests on 1 May, but also spoke out against Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice.Cotton’s comments followed weeks of turbulence on university campuses across the US that have seen riot police forcibly dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments in widely televised scenes reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s.His labelling of the encampments as “little Gazas” was denounced as dehumanising by some who lauded the protesters for drawing attention to the death toll of Israel’s continuing military offensive in Gaza. While relatively few Americans identify the war in Gaza as a vote-influencer, Republicans are seeking to capitalise on the vocal minority who are expressing discontent over it.The conservative activist Christopher Rufo spelt out the approach in a recent article on Substack.“This encampment escalation divides the Left, alienates influential supporters, and creates a sense of chaos that will move people against it,” he wrote. “The correct response … is to create the conditions for these protests to flourish in blue [Democratic-run] cities and campuses, while preventing them in red [Republican] cities and campuses.”GOP intent was signalled by the visits of delegations, including Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, to Columbia University – centre of the recent protests – and to George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC, where protesters spray-painted graffiti and draped a Palestinian flag on a statue of the US’s eponymous founding father.“It’s what the protests say about American political society and culture that the Republicans are trying to pick up on,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University.“Biden has tried to make this election a referendum on what happened during the Trump administration, with his focus being ‘we don’t want to go back to the chaos of the Trump years.’ That argument can be undercut if people are seeing chaos from college campuses on their TV screens – Republicans are trying to say it’s no more stable and calm under Biden than it was under Trump.”Republicans are also expanding congressional investigations into antisemitism allegations in the protests, an approach that has already reaped political dividends after the presidents of two elite colleges, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, were forced to resign following criticism of their testimony in previous hearings.Besides the House’s education and workforce committee – whose hearings led to the resignations, and which has now invited three more university heads to testify – three other GOP-led committees have announced proceedings to scrutinise the protests.The House energy and commerce committee is set to investigate universities for possible breaches of the Civil Rights Act, a supposed protection against discrimination, while the oversight committee has called hearings on Democratic-run Washington’s response to the GWU protests.Meanwhile, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House judiciary committee, has asked Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, if the visas of any foreign students have been revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.The message is clear: even as the imminent college summer recess ushers in a likely period of campus calm, Republicans will strive to keep the issue in the public eye.The historical template is 1968, when mass protests against the Vietnam war fed bitter Democratic divisions, fuelled violent clashes with police at the party’s convention in Chicago (coincidentally the venue of this year’s convention) and ultimately led to the GOP candidate Richard Nixon winning that year’s presidential election.“I think the Republicans can make an issue of this and I don’t think they need to do very much to be successful,” said Alvin Felzenberg, a veteran former Republican operative and historian who served in both Bush administrations.“Just like in 1968, there’s not a Republican in this play. The Democratic coalition seems under threat and possibly out of control. I see a lot of parallels, and I think the Trump campaign is paying a lot of attention to what Nixon did then.”The deciding factor of whether history repeats may be Biden, who Felzenberg says has given the impression of “being blown about by events” as he has sought a balance between supporting Israel and pacifying progressive, pro-Democratic voters alienated by the soaring Palestinian casualties in Gaza.With nearly six months until election day, Biden has time to assert control.Working in his favour is that the current unrest is so far less violent than in 1968, a year scarred by political assassinations and race riots. While police action to dismantle the recent protests produced negative headlines and more than 2,000 arrests, it resulted in no serious casualties – an outcome Felzenberg said Biden should have publicly celebrated.“Biden gave a speech last week that was the perfect opportunity for him to say the police did a great job – and he didn’t do it, which made it look like he wasn’t in charge and is scared of all the people on his own side yelling at him,” Felzenberg said. “If I were one of the people around Joe Biden, I would spend the next few months showing that he can lead.” More

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      Florida is a prime example of Trump’s vise grip on state Republican parties

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      In practical terms, Barron Trump’s truncated stint on the political stage as a Florida delegate to the Republican party’s national convention was little more than symbolic. His father Donald Trump’s third successive presidential campaign as the Republican nominee was all but certain anyway, and the names of those who will confirm it are essentially inconsequential.It did affirm to many analysts, however, how the former president has maneuvered to seize almost total control of the party’s state apparatus nationwide. Nowhere is that more apparent than Florida, where the capitulation was completed by the choice of delegates for July’s convention in Milwaukee.Even though 18-year-old Barron Trump has now stepped down, ostensibly after his mother, former first lady Melania Trump, discovered a pressing prior engagement, there will be plenty of other family members as representatives. Barron’s step-siblings Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany are named, along with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr’s fiancee.Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, and an assorted slew of other notable Trump acolytes and loyalists, are also on the list.The parallels in Trump’s subjugation of the national Republican party, and the installation of Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, as its co-chair, are hard to miss – especially as it was Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who was once seen as a potential “Trump killer” in the party’s nomination race until, of course, Trump quickly vanquished him.“The big, sort of under-the-radar story in American politics over the last couple of years was the way Trump and his people had taken over state parties across the country,” said Dan Judy, a senior analyst for North Star Opinion Research, a Republican guidance and consultancy company based in Virginia.“Even early in the primary process, a year and a half ago when Ron DeSantis was riding high and leading a lot of the polls, I was always thinking: Trump has control of the state parties, he’s got his people in, and they are, for lack of a better word, going to attempt to rig the process in favor of Donald Trump.“If you look at it, that’s exactly what happened. A lot of state parties changed their rules to make their primaries winner-takes-all, which absolutely helped Trump, especially as it came down to a one-on-one with Nikki Haley. It was clear that she was going to have to win some of these things outright to get any delegates at all, and she couldn’t do it.“The fact that the Florida GOP has also been completely taken over by Trump folks is really indicative of a trend that has happened everywhere.”Judy pointed to how easily Trump took down DeSantis in the primary race, humiliating the governor he disparaged as “Meatball Ron” in his own state. DeSantis’s efforts to cajole Florida’s congressional delegation were ultimately futile, and he dropped out in January to avoid a spanking in the state’s March primary.“As high as he was riding after his huge re-election victory, just any hope that he would have had of continuing to be top dog in the Florida GOP went out the window when he failed to get any traction at all in the presidential race,” said Judy, who has worked for the winning campaigns of several Republican politicians, including DeSantis and the Florida senator Marco Rubio.“He’s not the kind of person who cultivates relationships, who builds relationships, who builds a party, an organization, and an apparatus. He’s just not that guy, and if you’re going around Florida looking for Ron DeSantis people, there are shockingly few of them.“But if Donald Trump is re-elected, there might be a place in the administration for him. If he wants to have a future in the current Republican party, he cannot be an enemy of Donald Trump, and you’re seeing him do the things that he needs to do to remain in good standing.”Those actions include a full-throated endorsement of the man who repeatedly demeaned and insulted him, and cozying up to him at a breakfast meeting near Miami last month, in which Trump claimed DeSantis pledged total fealty.In a similar vein, a succession of other senior state Republicans have fallen in line. Junior senator Rick Scott, a former Florida governor who faces a potentially tricky re-election battle in November, appeared last week alongside Trump to support him at his hush-money trial in Manhattan.And an elected member of the Florida cabinet, the chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, seemingly cannot do enough to champion the twice-impeached former president currently facing dozens of criminal charges in cases around the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPatronis, who was thwarted by DeSantis in January when he floated a bill to hand $5m of Florida taxpayers’ money to Trump for his legal bills, returned last week with an alternative proposal: he wrote to Trump announcing he was due $54,000 in “unclaimed property” that Patronis hoped he would use to fight “some very, very nasty people coming after you”.To observers of Florida politics, all of this, and particularly the surfeit of Trumps among the slate of delegates, is telling.“It does illustrate in pretty stark terms how effectively the former president has his hand on the state Republican party, and his influence on what goes on,” said Kevin Wagner, associate dean of Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F Schmidt college of arts and letters.“It’s not unexpected that the likely presidential nominee has significant influence in his home state, but even by that standard there’s a level of control over the party that’s pretty distinctive.“As a practical matter, the party is going to be united behind a former president, at least through an election year. And I think you’ll see that in the way that political leaders on the Republican side are behaving in Florida.”Wagner said voters were unlikely to care about Trump’s children carrying the state party’s flag in Milwaukee, with or without Barron Trump.“Among the Republican base that is very supportive of the former president, I don’t think any of this matters. In fact, they probably would approve,” he said.“Some Republicans might be bothered, but there’s no evidence in Florida right now that this is a particularly close race so it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot. The caveat is we are in May and the election’s in November.“But right now, I’d say that Donald Trump has a very strong position in the state of Florida, and that’s reflected by how political leaders in the state are responding to him, and also by the amount of deference that the party gives.” More