“With a verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money trial set to come as soon as next week, President Joe Biden’s campaign is exploring a shift to a new, more aggressive posture,” NBC News reports.
“Regardless of the outcome, top Biden campaign officials plan to stress to voters that Trump will be on the ballot in the fall and that no potential court proceeding will change that fact.”
A person familiar with the discussions summed it up this way: “Donald Trump’s legal troubles are not going to keep him out of the White House. Only one thing will do that: voting this November for Joe Biden.”
“The Biden administration is increasingly concerned that the intensifying military alliance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could vastly expand Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities and increase tensions in the Asia-Pacific region,” NBC News reports.
“U.S. officials are also bracing for North Korea to potentially take its most provocative military actions in a decade close to the U.S. presidential election, possibly at Putin’s urging.”
“The timing, they said, could be designed to create turmoil in yet another part of the world as Americans decide whether to send President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump back to the White House.”
Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland Daniel Fried: “Since former President Trump brought it up, the question might be whether he is in contact with Russian authorities about Evan Gershkovich and, if so, whether he has pushed for Evan’s immediate release or suggested that the Russians keep holding him, perhaps to Trump’s advantage.”
TPM’s Josh Marshall: “Trump seems to be saying pretty clearly that he has an understanding with Putin that Gershkovich will under no circumstances be released until after he is elected and if he’s not elected, well, sucks to be him. Could this have anything to do w Manafort again working with Trump’s campaign?”
Luppe Luppen, channeling Trump: “Russia, Russia, Russia is a hoax but also I’m expressly working hand-in-glove with Putin’s regime to keep an American imprisoned in Russia until I am restored to power. Not anyone else, mind you; it has to be me.”
Former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed: “As a former wrongful detainee in Russia, I would just like to remind everyone that President Trump had the ability to get myself and Paul Whelan out of Russia for years and chose not to. I would be skeptical of any claims about getting Evan Gershkovich back in a day.”
Two senior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL), are requesting a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts “as soon as possible” amid reports that properties owned by Justice Samuel Alito displayed two flags with links to the Jan. 6 insurrection, Politico reports.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a new law to allow some Arizona doctors to become temporarily licensed in the state to perform abortions, Politico reports.
Washington Post: “Many U.S.-made satellite-guided ammunitions in Ukraine have failed to withstand Russian jamming technology, prompting Kyiv to stop using certain types of Western-provided armaments after effectiveness rates plummeted.”
“Russia’s ability to combat the high-tech munitions has far-reaching implications for Ukraine and its Western supporters — potentially providing a blueprint for adversaries such as China and Iran — and it is a key reason Moscow’s forces have regained the initiative and are advancing on the battlefield.”
“It’s been less than two weeks since Google debuted ‘AI Overview’ in Google Search, and public criticism has mounted after queries have returned nonsensical or inaccurate results within the AI feature — without any way to opt out,” CNBC reports.
An example: “When asked how many Muslim presidents the U.S. has had, AI Overview responded, ‘The United States has had one Muslim president, Barack Hussein Obama.’”
“Special counsel’s office prosecutors have asked a federal judge in Florida to place a gag order on Donald Trump that would limit his ability to comment about law enforcement that searched his Mar-a-Lago resort,” CNN reports.
“The request – a first in the classified documents mishandling case – comes after the former president has been repeatedly and falsely criticizing the FBI for having a policy in place around the use of deadly force during the search and seizure of government records at his resort in August 2022.”
“Donald Trump won’t be speaking to his usual self-selected crowd of adoring red-hatted MAGA fans when he addresses the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday,” Politico reports.
“As delegates gathered at the Washington Hilton on the eve of his speech, the party’s decision to host the former president, which had split the organization, erupted Friday into open revolt. Fuming delegates at the convention said they plan to protest Trump’s speech, and one group sought unsuccessfully to remove the former president along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from the agenda — a move that resulted in thrown punches and obscenities between supporters and opponents of the move.”
New York Times: “The attention to an often-overlooked minor party underscored the tug of war over right-leaning, independent-minded voters. In a race likely to be decided by narrow margins, Mr. Trump cannot afford to lose any votes. And Mr. Kennedy, with his anti-establishment message and zigzagging ideology, has been veering into Mr. Trump’s lane.”
“Republicans right now think inflation is a much bigger problem than Democrats do, and a lot of that is just politics. But here’s another possibility: Many of the places Republicans live indeed have had significantly higher inflation than Democratic enclaves,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“In new research, economists Carola Binder, Rupal Kamdar and Jane Ryngaert examined Labor Department inflation figures for U.S. metropolitan areas, and compared them with voting data. Their finding: Metro areas with more Republicans and independent voters tended to have higher inflation in 2022 than places where Democrats live.”
New York Times: “It is the silver lining for Mr. Trump, as he spends his first sustained period of time in Manhattan since he moved to Washington in 2017. He passes the days in a dingy courtroom downtown, where he faces 34 felonies, listening to people from his old life describe him as a depraved liar who sullied the White House. At the end of it all, he could be sent to prison.”
“But in the evenings, people who have spoken to him say, he has been enjoying being back in the penthouse apartment that he moved into four decades ago. He still considers it home — and a permanent reminder of the easiest period of his life.”
“That period was the greed-is-good era in which Mr. Trump sold himself nationally as a titan of industry, despite a relatively small, and local, real estate portfolio.”
“Donald Trump has baselessly and publicly cast doubt about the fairness of the 2024 election about once a day, on average, since he announced his candidacy for president,” according to an analysis by the New York Times.
“Though the tactic is familiar — Mr. Trump raised the specter of a ‘rigged’ election in the 2016 and 2020 cycles, too — his attempts to undermine the 2024 contest are a significant escalation.”
“When House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries negotiated a pair of major government funding bills with Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this year, he also quietly secured a significant victory for his own party: a considerable bump in money for transportation, housing and urban development projects back in House Democrats’ home districts,” CNN reports. “Ultimately, an increase in earmark spending, the full details of which have not been previously reported, was tucked into the transportation, housing and urban development bill for almost every single Democratic member for at least one project.”
“For more than two decades, through two wars and domestic upheaval, the idea that al-Qaeda acted alone on 9/11 has been the basis of U.S. policy. A blue-ribbon commission concluded that Osama bin Laden had pioneered a new kind of terrorist group—combining superior technological know-how, extensive resources, and a worldwide network so well coordinated that it could carry out operations of unprecedented magnitude. This vanguard of jihad, it seemed, was the first nonstate actor that rivaled nation-states in the damage it could wreak,” The Atlantic reports.
“That assessment now appears wrong. And if our understanding of what transpired on 9/11 turns out to have been flawed, then the costly policies that the United States has pursued for the past quarter century have been rooted in a false premise.”
“The global War on Terror was based on a mistake.”
“An aide to Mayor Eric Adams who served as his longtime liaison to the Turkish community and whose home was searched by the FBI has been cooperating with the corruption investigation into the mayor and his 2021 campaign,“ the New York Times reports. “The cooperation of the aide, Rana Abbasova, could represent a significant development in the broad corruption inquiry, which has focused in part on whether Mr. Adams’s campaign conspired with the Turkish government to funnel illegal foreign donations into campaign coffers — and whether Mr. Adams pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on a new high-rise Turkish consulate despite safety concerns.”
Jacob Heilbrunn: “Mr. Trump’s economic and foreign policy nationalism would subvert the preponderance of power that America has enjoyed since 1945 and that he has promised to bolster. It has been threatened from without but never from within.”
“As he vows to upend America’s relations with the rest of the globe, the danger is not that Mr. Trump would fail to live up to his principles. It’s that he would.”
The Washington Monthly finds that the vast majority of protests over the war in Gaza are happening at elite colleges and universities.
Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker (R) said that his “heart is broken in a thousand pieces” after his daughter and son-in-law were taken hostage then later killed by a gang in Haiti, the Daily Beast reports.
“There’s plenty of work for senators seven days a week if you want to work, but you can’t solve this country’s problems if you’re only working two and a half days a week. I want a Republican leader that’s going to make sure that we put in a full day.”— Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is 90 years old, quoted by NOTUS.
Olympic gold medalist and former congressional candidate Marty Nothstein (R) faces charges of stalking and criminal mischief in connection with an incident involving his ex-girlfriend, the Allentown Morning Call reports. Nothstein had similar charges filed against him in the past.
With Trump comparing President Biden unfavorably to Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Viktor Orban, it might be time for you to watch extended excerpts from Trump’s rally last night in the Bronx to stay familiar with how routinely he is fascisting.
Four Senate Republicans — Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Todd Young (R-IN) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) — told The Hill they do not plan on attending the Republican convention in July to celebrate what will be a coronation of Donald Trump.
Five others — Sens. Mike Rounds (R-SD), Susan Collins (R-ME), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — indicated they have not decided whether to go at this point.
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