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      Appeal court judge denies Trump’s third attempt this week to delay hush money trial – live

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      The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.

      An appeals court judge in New York denied Donald Trump’s third attempt in three days to delay his hush-money criminal trial. Trump was denied his attempt to push back the 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president.
      Donald Trump said he believes the Arizona supreme court went too far with its ruling upholding a near-total abortion ban. Asked if he would sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, Trump said: “No.”
      In response, the Biden campaign said Trump “owns the suffering and chaos happening right now” and warned that he has banned abortion “every chance he gets”.
      Asked what he would say to the people of Arizona, Joe Biden said: “Elect me. I’m in the … 21st century, not back then.” Biden also said he is “considering” a request from Australia to end the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
      Kamala Harris will visit Arizona on Friday as part of her nationwide reproductive freedoms tour. The White House said Harris would highlight “extremists” in the state who are pushing for abortion bans during her visit.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up withoperatives from Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.
      The House voted to block the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo before a 19 April expiration date.
      House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity” at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, a Trump campaign official said. Johnson met with Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Wednesday, marking the first time the two have spoken since Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership late last month. Greene described the meeting as “passionate”.
      The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.
      Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006, Reuters neatly recaps.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on Trump’s motion for him to recuse himself. The defense has argued that the judge’s daughter’s work for a political consulting firm with Democratic clients poses a conflict of interest.On Monday, a judge at the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.On Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers and family members of the judge and district attorney Alvin Bragg. Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel.The appeals court judge, just moments after the hearing wrapped up in New York this afternoon, has ruled against Donald Trump’s third attempt this week to delay his hush-money criminal trialTrump was denied his attempt to push back his 15 April trial on charges stemming from hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, paving the way for the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, Reuters reports.During an earlier hearing, Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the trial should be delayed because justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, has not yet ruled on their request for him to recuse himself.Bove also said Merchan was wrong to deny their request to bar prosecutors from presenting Trump’s tweets during his 2017-2021 presidential term as evidence. Bove said presidential immunity should prevent the prosecutors from presenting those posts as evidence. At the hearing before associate justice Ellen Gesmer at a mid-level state appeals court called the appellate division, Bove said:
      We are scheduled to begin trial under circumstances that will violate President Trump’s rights.
      Steven Wu, a lawyer for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, said Trump’s lawyers had brought the requests too late, saying:
      There is a powerful public interest in ensuring that this criminal trial go forward.
      The hearing is over at the appeals court in New York where lawyers for Donald Trump are making the argument for the third time in three days that his hush-money criminal trial should be delayed.Jury selection will begin on Monday, so time is running out for Trump. We await the court’s decision.As colleague Cameron Joseph wrote earlier today, this follows a longstanding pattern of Trump freaking out as major threats approach, and his team responding with frenetic energy.Trump’s team throws everything it can at the wall, while Trump continues his tirade against presiding judge Juan Merchan – while pushing the bounds of the judge’s gag order.To get the latest court developments delivered to your inbox, in the Guardian US’s free Trump on Trial newsletter put together by Cameron, sign up here.And you can read today’s here.Lawyers for Donald Trump have been back in court for almost the last hour trying to stave off the first-ever criminal trial of a former US president, which begins on Monday.In a more technical legal take from NBC, the TV network explains the following:
      The court docket for the state Appellate Division shows Trump’s attorneys filed the challenge as a lawsuit invoking a provision of New York law known as Article 78. Article 78 challenges allow litigants, whether in ongoing litigation or otherwise, to seek relief from allegedly unlawful state or local government action.
      The documents were filed under seal. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it involved Judge Juan Merchan’s refusal to step aside from presiding over the case.
      Trump is a defendant in four criminal cases, two federal and two state. The hush-money case in New York is first up. The Georgia election interference case, the federal election interference case and the federal classified documents case do not have trial dates yet. The presidential election is on 5 November and Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, prior to his expected anointment at the Republican National Convention this summer.Donald Trump’s lawyers told a New York appeals court judge on Wednesday that the former US president’s 15 April trial should be delayed because the judge has not yet ruled on their motion for him to recuse himself, in his third last-ditch attempt so far this week to delay the case, Reuters reports.The Republican presidential candidate is accused of covering up a $130,000 hush-money payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence ahead of the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and denies any such encounter with Daniels.On Monday, a judge at a mid-level state appeals court known as the appellate division denied Trump’s request to delay the case while he pursues a challenge to the trial being held in heavily Democratic Manhattan.And on Tuesday, another judge rejected his bid to pause the trial while he appeals Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to impose a gag order restricting his public statements about potential witnesses, court staff, lawyers, and family members of the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Those appeals will still be heard by a full panel. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in the trial on Monday.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, told donors and supporters last weekend that he would help raise money for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to multiple reports.DeSantis, who dropped out of the Republican presidential race in January, told his allies about his plans to help his former rival during a private gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in south Florida, a DeSantis adviser told NBC News.DeSantis is “committed to helping Trump in any and every way”, said Texas businessman Roy Bailey, who attended the retreat. He said:
      I will follow the governor’s lead and I will do anything that he or President Trump ask me to do to help him win this election.
      A Trump campaign adviser said they were not aware that the Florida governor was going to start raising money for them but added that “everyone should be working towards defeating Joe Biden and electing President Trump”, NBC reported.Joe Biden, during a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, at the White House, said Japan’s attempts to set up a leader-to-leader summit with North Korea is “a good thing” as he reiterated his administration’s willingness for its own talks without preconditions.Biden said:
      We welcome the opportunity of our allies to initiate dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As I’ve said many times, we’re open to dialogue ourselves without preconditions with the DPRK.
      The Biden administration has repeatedly expressed openness to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but has never received a response.House speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on “election integrity”, a Trump campaign official said.The press conference is scheduled to take place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, AP reported, citing a source as saying that Johnson and Trump will have a “joint announcement” on Friday.When the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Read the full analysis by the Guardian’s reproductive health and justice reporter: Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 electionThe House has voted to block the reauthorization of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a high-profile warrantless surveillance program that is now in limbo ahead of a 19 April expiration date.House Republicans have been fiercely divided over how to handle the issue, and Wednesday’s vote comes months after a similar process to reform and reauthorize the program fell apart before it even reached the House floor.The law allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.It is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the National Security Agency to specifically target US citizens.Joe Biden was asked what he would say to the people of Arizona following the state supreme court’s ruling to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect.The president, referring to the 1864 abortion ban which passed when Arizona was still a territory, replied:
      Elect me. I’m in the 20th century … 21st century … not back then. They weren’t even a state.
      From the Washington Post’s JM Rieger:Cornel West’s announcement that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state.West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by three points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”. West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday”:
      I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors. And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.
      Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”. “How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said.
      So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.
      Democrats in Florida are teaming up with operatives from Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in an all-out assault on Republicans’ extremist positions on abortion, believing it will bring victory in presidential and Senate races in November.They fired an opening salvo on Tuesday, tearing into Donald Trump’s “boasting” about overturning federal abortion protections a day earlier, and assailing the incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott for supporting Florida’s six-week ban that takes effect next month.Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor and former candidate for the party’s presidential nomination who signed the ban into law, also found himself under fire.The Florida supreme court ruled last week that the six-week ban will take effect on 1 May, as well as allowing a ballot measure for November that could see voters enshrine the right to the procedure into law.The moves instantly propelled the state to the forefront of the national abortion debate, and allowed Democrats, all but wiped out in Florida in successive national elections, to seize on the issue as vote-winner.Biden’s campaign has released a statement following Trump’s criticism of the Arizona abortion ban, warning that he has previously “[banned] abortion every chance he gets”.A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said that Trump will enact a national abortion ban given his track record, adding that the former president “proudly overturned Roe”.
      Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘“an incredible thing’” and ‘“pretty amazing’” just today.
      Trump lies constantly – about everything – but has one track record: banning abortion every chance he gets. The guy who wants to be a dictator on day one will use every tool at his disposal to ban abortion nationwide, with or without Congress, and running away from reporters to his private jet like a coward doesn’t change that reality.
      Greene added that Johnson asked if she was “interested” in being apart of a group of advisers for him.Green said:
      I said, ‘I’ll wait and see what his proposal is on that.’ Right now. he does not have my support, and I’m watching what happens with FISA and Ukraine.
      Greene added that she told Johnson he “failed” on the latest government spending dealing and received “a lot of excuses” in return.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have concluded their meeting, with varying descriptions on how it went.The meeting, which lasted over an hour, came after Greene filed a motion to vacate the speakership.Greene described the meeting as “passionate”, NBC News reported. When asked if the meeting was “productive”, Greene said:
      He’d have to completely change everything he’s done to be productive.
      Meanwhile, Johnson gave a more diplomatic answer, calling Greene a “friend” even as the two Republicans have differed on “strategy”.
      She’s a colleague. I’ve always considered her a friend … Marjorie and I don’t disagree on philosophy. We’re both conservatives. Sometimes we disagree on strategy.
      From Punchbowl News’ Mica Soellner:Trump also said that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected president in 2024, ABC News reported.Trump further clarified his position while speaking with reporters on Wednesday.In response to the question of if he would sign an abortion ban, Trump said “no” and shook his head.The latest remarks from Trump come as Democrats have warned that he would authorize an extreme ban if elected, noting how federal abortion rights were overturned due to supreme court judges secured during Trump’s administration. More

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      Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election

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      When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, Republicans across the country cheered. Freed from Roe’s regulations, GOP lawmakers promptly blanketed the US south and midwest in near-total abortion bans.But today, after a string of electoral losses, stories of women being denied abortions and polls that confirm abortion bans remain wildly unpopular, the political calculus has changed. Republicans are now trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if the car crashes, they had nothing to do with it anyway.Nowhere encapsulates the GOP’s backpedal on abortion better than Arizona, whose state supreme court on Tuesday ruled to let an 1864 near-total abortion ban go into effect. That ban, which outlaws abortion in all cases except to save the life of a woman, was passed before Arizona became a state, before the end of the civil war and before women gained the right to vote.Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a diehard ally of Donald Trump, once called that ban “a great law”. But on Tuesday, the inflammatory politician became one of several GOP officials to denounce the ruling, urging the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support”. On Wednesday, Trump also indicated that he thought Arizona’s near-total ban – whose revival was enabled by a US supreme court ruling he has repeatedly taken credit for – had gone too far. “It’ll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights,” he said.Abortion remains banned past 15 weeks in Arizona, since the 1864 ban is being held up by legal delays. But Arizona is expected to be a key battleground state in the 2024 elections, and abortion rights supporters have gathered more than half a million signatures in support of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. Democrats are hoping that measure will boost turnout and their candidates – including Joe Biden – to victory.In other words, this ban threatens to become a political nightmare for Republicans come November.Lake and Trump are caught in the quandary that is now facing Republicans in Arizona and beyond its borders. For 50 years, the GOP became increasingly wedded to the anti-abortion movement, passing restrictions that cut off access to the procedure and littering the courts with lawsuits to overturn Roe. These restrictions won them votes from anti-abortion advocates, as well as cash from influential advocacy groups. But because Roe stopped many of these restrictions from taking effect, it shielded Republicans from reckoning with the real-world consequences of anti-abortion policies – or with the outrage of voters. Since Roe was overturned, and those real-world consequences have come into focus, abortion rights-related ballot measures have succeeded in several Republican strongholds, including Kansas and Kentucky.Lake didn’t say what that “commonsense solution” might be, but other Republicans have tried to take a stab at it. Juan Ciscomani, who represents Arizona in the US House, called the decision no less than “a disaster” and claimed he was a “strong supporter of empowering women to make their own healthcare choices”. He also, in the same statement, said the 15-week ban “protected the rights of women and new life”.This seems to be the party line that many Arizona Republicans are now congealing around: they will support a 15-week ban, which the state legislature first passed in 2022, but not a near-total ban. This, too, is a gamble. Last year, when Virginia Republicans tried to take control of the state legislature by proposing to “compromise” and ban abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy, they fell short.Yet the post-Roe electoral firepower of abortion has never been tested in a presidential election. Biden has spent months trying to blame abortion bans on Trump, since he appointed three of the justices who overturned Roe. Trump, meanwhile, alternates between congratulating himself for overturning Roe, both rebuking and flirting with the idea of a national ban, and claiming, as he did earlier this week, that abortion access should now be left up to the states.For Republicans, the only option may be to take a cue from their party’s leader and rewrite their own history. When asked about Lake’s previous support for the 1864 ban, her campaign suggested to the New York Times that Lake was referring to a different law.But in the comments praising it, Lake even referred to the 1864 ban by its statute number, 13-3603. “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books”, she said. More

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      Cornel West announces running mate for independent US presidential bid

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      The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”.“I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors,” West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday. “And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.”Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”.“How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said. “So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.”The news comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state. West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by 3 points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Cornel West and Jill Stein will each run from the extreme left and likely garner a paltry number of votes. Not all of their voters would support Biden, but none of them would support Trump,” Jonathan Cowan and Jim Kessler, leaders of the center-left thinktank Third Way, wrote in a USA Today op-ed last week.“The lessons from 2016 and 2000 are clear: minor party does not mean minor impact. No-hope candidates can change the outcome of an election, even by garnering a relative handful of votes.”West has previously dismissed concerns about how his presence on the ballot might boost Trump, arguing that he has a moral obligation to give a voice to progressives’ concerns in this election.“I’ve got to be able to speak the truth no matter what. I’m planning to do that until the very end,” West said at a fundraising event in October. “So in that sense, who knows who’s stealing from who.” More

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      ‘It’s our job to change it for the better’: can artists influence the US election?

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      “I think what we’ve learned is that one man’s hope is another man’s fear,” broadcaster Alex Wagner observed in the final episode of the Showtime channel’s The Circus. “Barack Obama was the embodiment of hope for a lot of people and the embodiment of fear for a sizable portion of this country. And the same is true for Donald Trump. They are twinned emotions and we as a country cannot reconcile that.”Street artist and social activist Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster was a defining image of Obama’s winning 2008 election campaign. Sixteen years on, with another presidential poll looming, it can often feel like fear has the upper hand in American politics. But Fairey is again at work to show that art can make a difference.The 54-year-old is co-chair of Artists For Democracy 2024, a campaign launched this month by the progressive advocacy organisation People for the American Way. It aims to create art that will motivate citizens to vote against the authoritarian Trump and reclaim concepts such as “freedom”, “patriotism” and “the American way”.The lineup of more than 20 artists includes co-chair Carrie Mae Weems along with Beverly McIver, Titus Kaphar, Hank Willis Thomas, Victoria Cassinova, Christine Sun Kim, Alyson Shotz, Amalia Mesa-Baines, Angelica Muro and Cleon Peterson. Together they are setting out to cut through the political noise to surprise, entertain and shock voters out of apathy.Fairey, who has contributed four images stressing the importance of democratic participation, says by phone from Los Angeles: “The amazing thing about art is that it can get to someone’s emotions around empathy, compassion, seeing that the country should work for everyone, not just for the super rich and powerful. Some of these goals with outreach are just to stimulate that moral centre of people.“All humans are capable of making good choices, bad choices, having moments of joy, moments of pain, moments of hope, moments of fear. If we’re following the wrong story, the wrong narrative, making a more compelling alternative narrative can shift the wind back in the other direction, so that’s what I try to do all the time.”View image in fullscreenArtists for Democracy 2024 also includes a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of billboards in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and an effort that will include peer-to-peer texting, radio PSAs, on-the-ground organisers, targeted digital ads and art activations with potential expansion into more battleground states such as North Carolina and Georgia. Activities include the release of visual prints, custom-made merchandise, radio ads, digital ads, celebrity videos, bus wraps and billboards.People for the American Way was founded in 1980 by the TV producer Norman Lear as an advocacy group aimed at countering the rising power of the evangelical right. One of the pieces included in the campaign is a portrait of Lear – who died last December aged 101 – by Fairey that was inspired by the photographer Peter Yang.The organisation has long engaged artists, from an advert narrated by the actor Gregory Peck urging Americans to reject the nomination of Judge Bork to the supreme court to board members including Seth MacFarlane, Alec Baldwin, Josh Sapan and Kathleen Turner.During the 2020 election it ran an Enough of Trump campaign in swing states featuring billboards, street teams, art installations, digital content, organising and a six-figure crowdfunding campaign. Trump was indeed defeated, only to roar back with a 2024 White House run that is even more radical, extreme and driven by vengeance.Fairey admits: “I never thought that Trump would be viable after January 6. He made many efforts to undermine all the institutions that preserve a functioning democracy while he was president the first time and he failed to completely undo all the safeguards.“But he has more people who will be complicit with his malfeasance this time and so, if he’s elected, it will be a lot more destructive. I actually really care about democracy and care that people will have a say in all of the things that government does that affect their lives, so it’s pretty fucking important.”Warning of Trump’s dictatorial tendencies, he continues: “I’m not someone who is prone to hysteria but this is an existential threat for a lot of the things that Americans have taken for granted and the success of this country has been built upon.”But the notion of artists diving into politics might set off alarm bells. The perception that Hillary Clinton was palling around with Hollywood stars in 2016 fed an “us v them” narrative, dividing America between coastal elites and Trump-loving “deplorables” in the heartland. Could artistic interventions be seen as patronising, preachy and counterproductive?Fairey insists that that some issues cut across partisan lines. “The idea that your freedom to vote might be limited can appeal to some people who normally don’t like liberal ‘woke’ talking points.“I grew up in South Carolina which always votes for Republicans and yet I had and still have tons of progressive friends. Sometimes the outreach in those places makes people who might feel apathetic or like they don’t have allies feel a little bit more courageous. I don’t think it’s a wasted effort at all.”There is another challenge this time. Opinion polls show that Biden’s staunch support for Israel as it wages war in Gaza is alienating young people, progressives and Arab Americans. More than 100,000 Michigan voters in the Democrats’ presidential primary election cast “uncommitted” ballots in a massive protest against the president.View image in fullscreenFairey understands the concerns but makes a case for pragmatism. “I do think that’s a problem but what I would say to any of those people is, regardless of how you feel about Joe Biden, if you can understand that your idealism has to be married to the pragmatic side of having a functional democracy, your next round of opportunity to place someone you like more than Joe Biden in the White House or any other political office is going to depend on democracy working.“So don’t be shortsighted. Consider that, whatever you don’t like about Joe Biden, Trump will be much worse. Anybody who’s young who has listened to Trump talk about Israel should know that Israel is going to get more unconditional support from Donald Trump. If you care about a ceasefire and human rights in Gaza, Trump will not be the person to perform better on that.”Fairey will vote for Biden, albeit not with the same enthusiasm that he felt for Obama. “I’m an idealist but I also understand that there is never going to be someone who’s running a perfect party, a perfect president or perfect Congress. This is where I get very frustrated with people who decide that it just doesn’t make any sense to participate at all if they don’t get precisely what they want, because all they do is ensure that they’re going to get even less of what they want.”McIver is another veteran of the Enough of Trump initiative four years ago. This time she has produced Black Beauty II, an image of a woman patterned with flowers beneath the word “VOTE” – in which the “T” is stylised as a woman’s fallopian tubes and uterus.The 61-year-old year old was “horrified” when the rightwing supreme court ended the constitutional right to abortion. “As a woman, I’m past the age where I would ever have an abortion but I still think it’s extremely important that all women fight for women’s rights,” she says by phone from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.McIver, who is African American, is clear-eyed about what a second Trump presidency would mean. “To even fathom that could happen makes me incredibly uncomfortable and very worried for humanity at large. I just think that we have to beat them. We have to get out there and vote.“I’m gonna take people to the polls, I’m gonna make phone calls, whatever it takes to get people out to vote is extremely important because I can’t imagine that the humanity of the world has gone that low that it would be acceptable for Trump to be president again. That’s a hopeless thought.”View image in fullscreenMcIver is convinced that art can make a difference and rejects the charge of liberal elitism. “That’s funny as a Black woman who grew up in the projects in Greensboro, North Carolina, whose family was raised on welfare, who wasn’t expected to amount to anything and art saved me, if you will.”Living with “roaches and rats” in the projects, she recalls watching Lear’s sitcom Good Times, about a family living in a public housing project in inner-city Chicago. “They were in the projects and the character JJ was an artist and he made paintings –that gave me hope about what my future could be, so the last thing I think about myself is an elitist. My family tells me I’m not all the time.“I’ll definitely own being a humanitarian and wanting good for everyone – guilty of that for sure. ‘We can’t trust the artist because they are elitist. Their work sells for X dollars.’ All that’s about fear, which is how Trump is running this campaign and has run it in the past. We just gotta realise that, before fear, we’re all human.”For Peterson, the political wake-up call came in 2017. A brawl erupted outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s diplomatic escort beat up protesters, leaving nine people injured and two under arrest.“I thought, well, this is strange, this is something different with all this divisive language and hatred and everything going on in the public dialogue, getting people riled up with fear,” the 50-year-old says from Los Angeles. “It looked very similar to stuff I’d seen in history and that’s when I started getting scared.”Peterson, too, regards Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy. “He’s trying to destroy institutions and we’re becoming like a culture of grift. I’ve found within myself that I can be all right with a certain amount of grift in the world but, when it become all-encompassing, I just can’t deal with it any more.“In terms of what’s going on, you can’t take this stuff seriously. This guy’s selling Bibles and NFTs – it’s just gotten crazy. We’re listening to super-technical arguments in the courts that that are just meant to be disruptive. Nothing is productive any more. It’s just a battle of fake ideas all day long.”Peterson has faith in the power of the artist to effect change. “I see it as our job – not just visual artists but writers, musicians, painters – to tell some form of truth in the world and also express some form of ideals and also have some kind of vision reminding people of the past and also a hopeful image of the future.“People feel disengaged and alienated, like they’re powerless nowadays, and maybe our role as artists is to say look, you guys actually do have some power here. In a world like where we can become overwhelmed with crisis, it’s our job to change it for the better if we want a better life.” More

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      He voted Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020. He’s the kind of voter candidates are desperate to swing

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      For the past 35 years, Scott Richardson and his wife, Theresa, have run a small, cheerful restaurant and catering business outside Philadelphia. Occasionally Yours has long been a community meeting spot in the town of Swarthmore. More recently, it has taken on another, unexpected, role – on the stage of national politics.Richardson is an independent-minded small business owner in a key swing state – exactly the kind of person US presidential candidates are desperate to woo. In 2016, when Pennsylvania went Republican for the first time since 1988, he voted for Donald Trump. Then, in 2020, dismayed by Trump’s Covid response, he switched to Joe Biden, in no uncertain terms. Richardson’s vote tracked how the state went in both elections.This year, polls show Biden and Trump evenly matched in Pennsylvania, with approval ratings for both men at historic lows. And Richardson himself isn’t ecstatic about the options.“I just don’t understand how in a country of 300 and whatever we are, 50, 60 million people, that these are the two gentlemen that we have to choose from,” he says. “I just don’t understand how we can be in this position, but we are.”But he is clear on one thing: he’s sticking with Biden.“In 2016, I voted for Trump because I was ready to have it mixed up – you know, just turn things upside down,” he says. But “my definition of turning things upside down and what actually happened are two completely different scenarios.” Trump, he says, was “inept” when it came to handling the pandemic, doing far too little to confront it even when it was clear it was coming. In Richardson’s view, Biden got handed a “crappy, crappy economy” and has slowly been getting the US back on its feet.In July 2020, Richardson told the Washington Post it was now his “life’s mission” to swing voters from Trump to Biden. A month later, he was on stage, virtually, at the Democratic national convention, describing what his business had endured during Covid. “We’ve literally had to reinvent our business several times since the beginning of the year,” he told Eva Longoria, the host on that August evening. “To be honest with you, I’m just frustrated.” He wished Americans could just unite “on this one issue” and forge ahead. Once again, plenty of Richardson’s fellow Pennsylvanians seemed to share his view: the state went blue.As their 2024 rematch approaches, Biden and Trump are dueling for Pennsylvania for a second time. The result, as ever, could hinge on perceptions of the economy. And while some key figures look good for Biden – unemployment below 4%, the stock market breaking records, the rate of inflation way down from its 2022 peak – for many Americans, those numbers haven’t translated into a sense of financial wellbeing.Richardson has never been wedded to a particular party: he grew up in a deeply Republican area of upstate New York, spent years as an independent, registered Republican to support Bob Dole in the 90s, then switched to Democratic to back Barack Obama. Now both parties are vying for people like him.When it comes to the economy, “I don’t believe in fast change,” he says. The economy “couldn’t get much worse than when [Biden] took over”. But now he’s seeing “slow growth, consistent employment numbers”.He has seen inflation gradually decline at the smaller suppliers he uses. “Lettuce was $3 for a nice beautiful head, and then during the inflation it maybe went for $4.50. And now it’s like $3.25.” That doesn’t mean things are easy, especially for people with low incomes: “I mean, you’re going into the grocery store, it used to cost you $100. Now it costs you $150.”Still, Occasionally Yours is thriving. As the world reopened, customers returned to the restaurant, and demand for catering grew. “People got really, really anxious to have parties,” he says. Sales last year were “through the roof better” – up more than 20%, he says.Richardson acknowledges that his own experience isn’t necessarily representative; different industries experience different headwinds. “But it seems to me that people are still spending money.”He credits much of his own business’s recent success not to the economy but to its capacity for change. Over the years, Occasionally Yours has seen a succession of redesigns and menu updates. “People say ‘if you build it, they will come’,” he says. “My experience is if you put an avocado on it, they will come.”He thinks some of his pro-Trump friends with small businesses are misdirecting their anger at Biden, when their real enemy might be big-box stores. “Maybe you’re blaming factors on politics that maybe aren’t as big a factor in your life,” he says, “but the news tells you that they are.”There are some areas, he says, where politics can have a big impact. Richardson has been most impressed by the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden pushed.“I’ve been to Florida, up into New England and over into Ohio and across the north – there is not one state, one county, anywhere I traveled that doesn’t have a damn bridge torn apart, or something being fixed,” he says. “It’s something that, in my opinion, our country needed for many, many years and now it’s actually getting done – and those are great-paying friggin’ jobs.” He has questions about how the country will pay for it, but “a country, you know – you need to invest in it in order for it to get better”.View image in fullscreenRichardson has also benefited from a rare experience: he’s met the president in person. In June 2020, he got a call from the then candidate’s team asking if he’d like to join a roundtable for small business owners. He agreed – not because he was a particular fan, but because “who the hell wouldn’t? What an opportunity.”His first words to Biden were “I voted for Trump in 2016”. “And I believe what [Biden] said to me was, ‘We all have our crosses to bear.’”At the meeting, Richardson was touched by Biden’s reaction to a woman’s story of grief at losing someone to Covid. Biden told the woman: “I can tell you from personal experience: there will be a time in your life when the thought of your loved one will bring a smile to your face instead of a tear to your eye.” He’d heard Biden say it before, “but when you’re right there listening to him and how sincere he was … from that point on I was voting on the character of the man,” Richardson says. “I’ve met other politicians and, to me, they were phoney as hell.”That roundtable led to his appearance at the DNC, filmed from the restaurant. “I mean, I was nervous nervous, heart racing, I’m gonna have a panic attack type of thing.” Afterward, there was some political backlash: the restaurant got a few one-star reviews from strangers, and Richardson received a few profanity-laced phone calls. Still, “it was something that I’ll never forget, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”Now, after 35 years of working every weekend, Richardson is ready to pass the baton: three and a half decades to the day after the Richardsons signed the lease to open their restaurant, a new business is taking over the location. The Richardsons are retiring.In the meantime, he’s hoping not to see the dawn of a new Trump era – in addition to the former president’s handling of the economy and Covid, Richardson is disgusted by his business practices. “He played all these games for so many years. And because of his ego, he gets drawn into being president, which is the maximum ego trip. It exposed all his private matters … I think it’s gonna come back to haunt him.” More

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      US defense secretary rejects Israel genocide accusations; Blinken and Cameron urge US House to pass Ukraine aid – as it happened

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      The US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has said.Austin, addressing a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing today, said:
      We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created.
      He also avoided referring to the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October as a genocide, calling it a “horrific terrorist attack” and “certainly … a war crime”.Austin’s testimony was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding the war.
      Arizona’s supreme court ruled to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect. The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Tuesday was a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.
      Joe Biden criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling, blaming “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and calling the ban “cruel”.
      Kamala Harris, in response to the ruling by the Arizona supreme court, said the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”, and said Donald Trump was resopnsible for the ruling. Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday.
      Secretary of state Antony Blinken and his UK counterpart, foreign secretary David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington during a joint press conference following talks in Washington on Tuesday.
      Blinken said the supplemental budget request that the president has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      Defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the US has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday just days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban.The vice president’s trip to Arizona, her second this year, was already in the works prior to Tuesday’s court decision and will likely take on a heightened focus on abortion rights and access, Politico reported.The White House said Harris will use her visit “to continue her leadership in the fight for reproductive freedoms”.Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the supreme court, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred.
      To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.
      Despite widespread legal and historical opinion that Trump’s immunity claim is groundless, the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three justices, will consider the claim.Oral arguments are scheduled for 25 April. The court recently dismissed attempts, supported by leading historians, to remove Trump from ballots under the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to bar insurrectionists from office.As we reported earlier, defense secretary Lloyd Austin told the Senate earlier today that the US government has seen “no evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.Austin addressed a Senate armed services committee during a budget hearing and was interrupted several times by protesters calling for the US to stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza.The UK also confirmed in meetings with US counterparts that there would be no changes to arms exports to Israel, although it would be kept under review.Here’s the clip:Louisiana’s Republican-controlled senate advanced a bill on Monday that would empower state and local law enforcement to arrest and jail people in the state who entered the US illegally, similar to embattled legislation in Texas.Amid national fights between Republican states and Joe Biden over how and who should enforce the US-Mexico border, Louisiana joins a growing list of legislatures seeking to expand states’ authority over border enforcement.Proponents of the bill, such as the legislation’s author, GOP state senator Valarie Hodges, say Louisiana has the “right to defend our nation”. Hodges has accused the federal government of neglecting responsibilities to enforce immigration law, an argument heard from GOP leaders across the country.Opponents argue the bill is unconstitutional, will not do anything to make the state safer, and will only fuel negative and false rhetoric directed toward migrants.Across the nation, reliably red legislatures have advanced tougher immigration enforcement measures.The Oklahoma house passed a bill that would prohibit state revenue from being used to provide benefits to those living in the state illegally. A bill in Tennessee, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, would require law enforcement agencies in the state to communicate with federal immigration authorities if they discover people who are in the country illegally. Measures that mirror parts of the Texas law are awaiting the governor’s signature in Iowa, while another is pending in Idaho’s statehouse.Lawmakers and climate advocates called on utilities to “ditch the American Gas Association” at a press conference at the US Capitol on Tuesday.“Americans are already paying the price of climate change,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
      They shouldn’t have to pay the salaries of those who are fueling it.
      A trade association representing more than 200 US utilities, the AGA has a well-documented history of lobbying against climate regulations and policies – activity funded in part by members’ ratepayers’ utility bills. It’s a “dirty game,” said Xavier Boatwright of the Sierra Club.Both the event and a protest outside the AGA’s headquarters earlier Tuesday were led by the anti-gas nonprofit organization the Gas Leaks Project.“There’s nothing natural about natural gas,” said the group’s senior communications director Maria Luisa Cesar.The extraction and use of gas, called natural gas by industry interests, emits planet-heating and toxic pollution. Reports show the AGA has been aware of these dangers for 50 years, but has continued to undercut climate efforts. Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse said:
      The fossil fuel industry depends in roughly equal parts on hydrocarbons and lies.
      In August, the New England utility Eversource cut ties with the American Gas Association. Advocates are calling on other utilities to follow its lead. Four states have also passed legislation to prevent the use of ratepayer dollars to fund political activity.Also in Arizona, Eva Burch, a Democratic state lawmaker who drew national attention after announcing her decision to seek an abortion earlier this month, said today’s court decision to enforce a ban – using a law that was originally drafted in the 19th Century before women could vote and before Arizona was a state – would have devastating consequences for women such as her.“A couple of weeks ago I had an abortion – a safe legal abortion here in Arizona for a pregnancy that I very much wanted,” Burch said.
      Somebody gave me a procedure so that I wouldn’t have to experience another miscarriage – the pain, the mess, the discomfort. And now we’re talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail. This is outrageous.
      Burch predicted the ruling would backfire on conservatives who have fought to allow the ban to be enforced.“The people of Arizona have had enough,” Burch said.
      We are electing pro-choice candidates in November. Watch it happen.
      Kamala Harris has responded to a ruling by the Arizona supreme court to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, saying the state had “rolled back the clock to a time before women could vote”.In a statement, the vice president said there was “one person responsible” for the ruling, which will allow a law first passed in 1864 to go into effect, “by his own admission … Donald Trump”.Harris said the “extreme and dangerous” ban criminalizes almost all abortion care in the state and “puts women’s lives at risk”, adding:
      It’s a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v. Wade, and made it possible for states to enforce cruel bans.
      She added:
      The alarm is sounding for every woman in America: if he has the opportunity, Donald Trump would sign off on a national abortion ban. He has called for punishing women and doctors. If he wins, he and his allies have plans to ban abortion and restrict access to birth control, with or without Congress.
      Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, called today’s news from the state’s supreme court on an abortion ban a “dark day” for the state and implored abortion rights supporters to make their voices heard in November.Hobbs vowed to do everything in her power to preserve access to reproductive care and contraception in the state, pointing to actions she has already taken. After winning the election in 2022, Hobbs last year issued a sweeping executive order banning county attorneys from prosecuting women who seek abortions and doctors who perform them.Asked about the possibility that her directive could be challenged in court, Hobbs said: “Bring it on.”At the news conference, held moments after the state supreme court released its decision, Hobbs called on the Republican-led state legislature to “immediately” repeal the ban. But the legislature is unlikely to do so. The leaders of both chambers joined anti-abortion activists in favor of allowing the territorial-era ban to take effect.“The legislature has ignored the will of the voters on this issue for decades,” she said.
      The ballot box is the way that voters can have their say and overrule the legislature on this issue that the vast majority of Arizonans support.
      The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just said that US government agencies were still involved in an “informal review” of the Israel Defense Forces’ review of the killing by the Israeli military of seven aid workers with the group World Central Kitchen in Gaza earlier this month.Sullivan said that the CIA director, Bill Burns, was involved in further talks in Cairo in Egypt at the weekend, where states such as the US and Qatar are trying to broker a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages held by Hamas since the massacre it perpetrated in southern Israel last 7 October.Sullivan said the US “has seen Israel take some steps forward” in the talks, while the latest statements from Hamas were regarded as “less than encouraging”.He said more humanitarian aid was reaching Gaza, which he said was “good, but not good enough”, amid Israel’s blockade and siege of the Palestinian territory.And amid Israel pulling troops out of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, in a pause in its offensive actions, Sullivan said the US has still not seen “a credible and executable” plan from Israel about what it would do to move or protect Palestinians in the event that, as it has pledged to do, it invades Rafah.Joe Biden has just arrived back at the White House after a very short trip to Washington’s main Union Station rail hub, to deliver remarks about healthcare.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was originally due to brief the media at 1.30pm in the regular daily session in the west wing, but obviously everything is being pushed back because the president’s schedule shifted later than originally expected, also. The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will join the briefing. It’s getting underway now.We’ll bring you highlights from the briefing. There has been a lot of international-facing news today, especially with the latest on high-level talks in the Middle East about Israel’s war in Gaza and US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron meeting in Washington, DC, and urging the US Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine.Joe Biden has criticized the Arizona supreme court ruling from earlier today to let an old law on the books banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect – albeit with a 14-day delay to allow further legal challenges before it does.The US president blamed “the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” and called the ban “cruel”.In a statement issued from the White House moments ago, Biden said: “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest. This cruel ban was first enacted in 1864 – more than 150 years ago, before Arizona was even a state and well before women had secured the right to vote.”The statement ended with: “Vice-President Harris and I stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose. We will continue to fight to protect reproductive rights and call on Congress to pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v Wade for women in every state.”Kamala Harris has taken a strong lead in recent months on efforts by the Biden administration and the Biden-Harris re-election campaign to win support for protecting reproductive rights.This follows, in particular, the landmark overturning of the federal right to abortion by the conservative-dominated supreme court in 2022 and further attacks on rights ranging from abortion pills to contraception to IVF by the hard right.The Arizona supreme court ruled on Tuesday to let a law banning almost all abortions in the state go into effect, a decision that could curtail abortion access in the US south-west and could make Arizona one of the biggest battlefields in the 2024 electoral fight over abortion rights.The justices said Arizona could enforce a 1864 near-total abortion ban, first passed before Arizona became a state, that went unenforced for decades after the US supreme court legalized abortion nationwide in the 1973 decision Roe v Wade. However, the justices also ruled to hold off on requiring the state to enforce the ban for 14 days, in order to allow advocates to ask a lower court to pause it again.The ban can only be enforced “prospectively”, according to the 4-2 ruling. Minutes after the ruling Kris Mayes, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, vowed not to prosecute any doctors or women under the 1864 ban.You can read the full story here.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, urged Congress to approve new military aid for Ukraine after talks in Washington.
      Blinken and Cameron held a joint press conference where the US secretary of state said the stalled Ukraine funding is critical for US, European and world security. The supplemental budget request that Joe Biden has made of Congress is “urgent” and should be taken to a vote “as quickly as possible”, Blinken said. Victory for Ukraine is “vital for American and European security”, Cameron said.
      Cameron also met with Donald Trump over dinner on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate. During the briefing with Blinken, Cameron defended the meeting as a standard encounter with an opposition figure and said it covered a number of pressing global issues but did not elaborate. “These things are entirely proper,” he said.
      Trump’s campaign said the former president and Cameron discussed the Ukraine war and “the need for Nato countries to meet their defense spending requirements”.
      The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, told a Senate armed services committee hearing that the US has seen no evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
      A New York appeals court judge rejected the latest bid by Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.
      Republican far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene escalated her threat to oust Mike Johnson, issuing a searing indictment of the House speaker in a letter explaining her decision to file a motion to oust him.
      There’s a key US Senate race in Ohio this year, where the incumbent leftwing Democrat, Sherrod Brown, is expected to face a tough challenge from Bernie Moreno, a car dealer turned Trump-backed populist firebrand.Like many Trump-backed candidates, Moreno is making it his business to blame China for woes affecting blue-collar workers. Earlier this year, he went so far as to tell a conservative radio host: “The Buick Envision was made in China, I told General Motors I wouldn’t sell one of them, don’t even ship it to me.”The problem about the claim, which Moreno has made elsewhere, is that as Spectrum News reports … “Moreno’s dealership did sell the Chinese-made SUVs for several years, and even promoted the vehicles on social media, according to numerous social media posts.”After detailing such posts, Spectrum adds:
      “GM, the parent company of Buick, confirmed to Spectrum News the Envision was only manufactured in China. The SUV became the first Chinese-made vehicle to be imported by a major US automaker when it debuted in Michigan in 2016.
      The imports were called a “slap in the face” by the United Auto Workers union, which felt the vehicles should be made on US soil by American workers.
      A spokesperson for Moreno, Reagan McCarthy, told Spectrum: “In response to the closure of the Lordstown Plant here in Ohio [in March 2019], Bernie made a decision to stop any new inventory of Envision’s [sic] from being sold at his dealership. After he sold off the inventory he already had on the lot, he refused to take orders for more Envisions. There is zero contradiction here.”There are contradictions elsewhere in Moreno’s campaign statements, though, as the Guardian discussed here:A New York appeals court judge has rejected the latest bid by Donald Trump to delay his 15 April trial on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star.Trump’s lawyers had requested the trial to be postponed indefinitely while he appeals a gag order that bars him from commenting about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case.Trump’s attorneys argue that Justice Juan Merchan’s order restricting his public comments is an unconstitutional prior restraint on his free speech rights while he campaigns for president. Merchan imposed the order last month after finding Trump made statements in various legal cases that the judge called “threatening, inflammatory” and “denigrating”.During the hearing on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer Emil Bove said:
      The First amendment harms arising from this gag order right now are irreparable.
      Justice Cynthia Kern issued the order following a Tuesday morning hearing, but a full panel of appeals judges will later consider the former president’s underlying challenge to the gag order.Austin, asked what the consequences of a deadly mass famine in Gaza would be, said:
      It will accelerate violence, and it will have the effect of ensuring that there’s a long-term conflict.
      Addressing the Senate armed services committee, the defense secretary added:
      It doesn’t have to happen … We should continue to do everything we can, and we are doing this, to encourage the Israelis to provide humanitarian assistance. More

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      US election officials quit at higher rates in 2020 than other cycles, study shows

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      A new study confirms what election experts have been warning about for years: increased harassment and threats following the 2020 election have led election officials to quit at higher rates than in previous election cycles.The study, conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and using data on more than 18,000 chief election officials across the 50 states, found that while turnover in election offices had been steadily increasing since 2004, election officials have left their jobs at higher rates since the 2020 election – with turnover increasing from 28% in 2004 to 39% in 2022.While election worker turnover has increased across the country, the problem is especially pronounced in larger cities. In jurisdictions with more than 100,000 voting-age residents, the turnover rate of election officials has reached close to 46%, the study found. Before 2020, election workers in large jurisdictions typically quit their jobs at a steady rate of 35%.According to a separate 2022 survey, about 20% of election workers from smaller communities reported harassment, while close to 70% of officials in larger cities faced harassment – with the threats particularly acute in swing states.Long before the 2020 election, persistent underfunding and an ageing workforce drove turnover in the field of election administration; the increasingly complexities of the job, including the requirement that officials have cybersecurity expertise, has also increased pressure.Spikes in threats and harassment can often be traced directly to Trump and his allies’ claims of fraud and meddling by Democrats. In a 2023 report, the Guardian found that a deluge of violent threats against election officials in Maricopa county, Arizona, had originated from the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. New laws implemented by states after the 2020 election to limit external funding for election offices and withdraw from the bipartisan voter registration management program Electronic Registration Information Center (Eric) further deprive election officials of resources.Critically, the study found, head election administrators vacating positions overseeing large jurisdictions were likely to be replaced by administrators with, on average, 11 years of experience in the field.The high rate of turnover means that some of the officials administering the presidential election will have less experience leading elections and could lack the institutional knowledge that helps in an increasingly complicated role.The concern is reflected in reporting by the Guardian, which has covered numerous examples of election offices plagued by high turnover, threats and harassment. In some cases, high turnover has led to real human error, as in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, where high-profile mistakes have fueled conspiracy theories about election administration.“It has become the expectation that if somebody walks into this office, they’re not going to be here long term,” Emily Cook, Luzerne county’s election director, told the Guardian last month. “You kind of just document everything that you can, prepare as best as you can, at least in my opinion. Learn as much from whoever’s sitting here while they’re here. And we can keep moving forward.” More

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      US historians file brief with supreme court rejecting Trump’s immunity claim

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      Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred. To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.”Trump faces four federal election subversion charges, arising from his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, fueled by his lie about electoral fraud and culminating in the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.He also faces 10 election subversion charges in Georgia, 34 charges over hush-money payments in New York, 40 federal charges for retaining classified information, and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Despite such unprecedented legal jeopardy, Trump strolled to the Republican nomination to face Biden in November and is seeking to delay all cases until after that election, so that he might dismiss them if he returns to power. His first criminal trial, in the New York hush-money case, is scheduled to begin next Monday.Despite widespread legal and historical opinion that Trump’s immunity claim is groundless, the US supreme court, to which Trump appointed three justices, will consider the claim.Oral arguments are scheduled for 25 April. The court recently dismissed attempts, supported by leading historians, to remove Trump from ballots under the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war to bar insurrectionists from office.In a filing on Monday, the special counsel Jack Smith urged the justices to reject Trump’s immunity claim as “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.Seven of the 15 historians who filed the amicus brief are members of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive policy institute at New York University law school.Holly Brewer, a professor of American cultural and intellectual history at the University of Maryland, said: “When designing the presidency, the founders wanted no part of the immunity from criminal prosecution claimed by English kings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That immunity was at the heart of what they saw as a flawed system. On both the state and national level, they wrote constitutions that held all leaders, including presidents, accountable to the laws of the country. St George Tucker, one of the most prominent judges in the new nation, laid out the principle clearly: everyone is equally bound by the law, from ‘beggars in the streets’ to presidents.”Other signatories to the brief included Jill Lepore of Harvard, author of These Truths, a history of the US; Alan Taylor of the University of Virginia, author of books including American Revolutions, about the years of independence; and Joanne Freeman of Yale, author of The Field of Blood, an influential study of political violence before the civil war.Thomas Wolf, co-counsel on the brief and director of democracy initiatives at the Brennan Center, called Trump’s immunity claim “deeply un-American”, adding: “From the birth of the country through President Clinton’s acceptance of a plea bargain in 2001 [avoiding indictment over the Monica Lewinsky affair], it has been understood that presidents can be prosecuted.“The supreme court must not delay in passing down a ruling in this case.” More