Tag: donald trump

Arizona’s top court allows near-total 1864 abortion ban to go into effect | Courts News

In 1864, the territory of Arizona in the United States passed a law that criminalised nearly all abortions.

Arizona was not even a state at the time of the law’s passage. But now, 160 years later, its state Supreme Court has ruled the near-total ban can go into effect in 14 days.

The court’s decision on Tuesday triggers what would be one of the most restrictive state laws to govern abortion access in the US.

Writing for the majority in the four-to-two ruling, Judge John Lopez explained that Arizona’s legislature had never established a right to abortion access in the state.

“We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgement, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens,” he said.

A previous court decision had blocked the 1864 law from being enforced, but Tuesday’s decision lifts the stay on the law.

Under the 1864 Arizona law, “every person” who participates in conducting an abortion can be held criminally liable and face a minimum sentence of two years in prison. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, although there is an exception when a pregnant person’s life is at risk.

Arizona joins 14 other states with near-complete abortion bans. In 2022, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortions, leaving questions of abortion access largely up to individual states.

The decision spurred alarm among reproductive health advocates, and Democrats were swift to criticise Arizona’s state Supreme Court bench, composed of justices entirely appointed by Republican governors.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, for instance, condemned the ruling as “unconscionable and an affront to freedom”. She said she would not prosecute any doctor or woman under the “draconian law”.

“Today’s decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn’t a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn’t even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state,” she said in a statement.

In post on the social media platform X, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, also a Democrat, called Tuesday “a dark day in Arizona”.

“But my message to Arizona women is this: I won’t rest, and I won’t stop fighting until we have secured the right to abortion. That is my promise to you,” she said.

Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other healthcare services, pledged to continue providing abortion services until the law goes into effect.

“Today’s deplorable decision from the state Supreme Court sends Arizona back nearly 150 years,” the group wrote on X. “This ruling will cause long-lasting, detrimental harms for our communities. It strips Arizonans of their bodily autonomy and bans abortion in nearly all scenarios.”

Planned Parenthood had initially challenged the century-old abortion ban in 1971.

Two years later, the US Supreme Court upheld the federal right to abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. That paved the way for a judge to side with Planned Parenthood and block the 1864 abortion ban.

But the Roe decision has since been overturned, throwing the right to abortion access in question across the country.

In 2022, then-state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, challenged the court order that effectively placed the 1864 ban on ice. Planned Parenthood appealed, and when Governor Hobbs and Attorney General Mayes took office in 2023, they declined to continue the state’s attempt to defend the ban.

But that was not the end of the legal push to put the 19th-century ban in place. Pro-abortion rights obstetrician Eric Hazelrigg and Yavapai County Attorney Dennis McGrane stepped in, championing the 1864 ban in the courts with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group.

Tuesday’s ruling means the 1864 law will supersede a March 2022 law signed by then-Republican Governor Doug Ducey that banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Abortion on ballot

The decision supercharges an issue that looms large in advance of November’s presidential election: Abortion is set to be a prominent issue on the ballot.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has positioned himself as a defender of reproductive health and women’s rights, while his likely Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, has voiced support for limits on abortion.

While Trump has flirted with support for a federal abortion ban, he said earlier this week that the procedure’s legality should be left up to the states. That, in turn, has stirred the ire of some conservatives, who had hoped he would take a firmer stance against abortion nationwide.

Biden’s campaign has accused the former president of “scrambling” to avoid being held accountable at the ballot box for his abortion stance. Trump has repeatedly highlighted his role in appointing the US Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v Wade.

Biden beat Trump by just more than 10,000 votes in Arizona in the 2020 election.

In a statement released by the White House on Tuesday, Biden decried the Arizona ban as “extreme and dangerous”.

“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” he said.

But activists in Arizona are hoping that they can take the issue of abortion access directly to the voters this November.

Organisers say they have gathered enough signatures to add a measure to November’s ballot that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. Such referendums have had a perfect success rate in recent elections and have been credited with mobilising Democratic voters.

Other states have likewise seen a tightening of abortion law, with some gearing up for a prospective showdown on November’s ballots.

Florida’s Supreme Court, for instance, upheld a six-week abortion ban in the state last week. Critics, however, say six weeks is too short a period for most people to know if they are pregnant.

But on the same day, the Florida Supreme Court allowed a ballot measure to proceed that would likewise allow voters to decide whether abortion rights should be protected in the state constitution.



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Trump says abortion should be up to US states, avoids backing national ban | Donald Trump News

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the issue of abortion access should be left up to states to decide, eschewing calls from within his party to support a nationwide ban on the procedure in the United States.

In a video posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday, the former US president said he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark legal precedent that had guaranteed abortion rights on the national level for decades.

The US Supreme Court, bolstered by a 6-3 conservative majority that included several Trump appointees, overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022. That put the question of abortion access largely in the hands of individual states to decide, though some anti-abortion activists have pushed for a nationwide ban to be implemented.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said in Monday’s video.

“Many states will be different,” he said, adding that, “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

Reproductive rights are expected to be a central issue heading into November’s presidential election, which is set to pit Trump against his Democratic Party rival, President Joe Biden.

Biden has made defending access to reproductive healthcare a central plank of his re-election campaign, condemning Trump and Republican Party lawmakers for supporting the end of Roe v Wade.

Conservatives had spent decades trying to overturn the 1973 legal precedent, and several Republican-led US states enacted strict limits on abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision nearly two years ago, in a case known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

But abortion has become an Achilles heel for the Republican Party, as polls show abortion bans and restrictions are unpopular and most Americans want to protect access to the procedure.

The Pew Research Center reported in April 2023 — nearly a year after Roe was overturned — that 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 36 percent who said it should be illegal.

Looking along partisan lines, the survey found that 84 percent of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 40 percent of Republicans or right-leaning independents said the same.

November’s election is expected to be hard fought, and experts say Trump could risk losing votes in critical swing states if he were to come out strongly in favour of a national abortion ban.

Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican political consultant, told the Reuters news agency that “leaving abortion to the states is [Trump’s] way of punting on the issue”.

“Now that the primary is over, there’s nothing to be gained from proposing a national abortion ban, as he’ll lose support from voters in many swing states,” Hoffman said.

Trump’s comments on Monday drew criticism from anti-abortion groups in the US, however.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, said the organisation was “deeply disappointed” by Trump’s position.

The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision “clearly allows both states and Congress to act”, she said in a statement. “Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Republican and ally of the former president, also said he disagreed with Trump’s stance.

“I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks,” Graham wrote on the social media platform X.

Meanwhile, Biden slammed his predecessor for making “it clear once again today that he is — more than anyone in America — the person responsible for ending Roe v Wade”.

“Trump is scrambling,” Biden said in a statement.

“He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe the voters will hold him accountable in 2024. Well, I have news for Donald. They will.”



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‘Fishing’: Judge denies Trump team bid to seize NBC Stormy Daniels material | Donald Trump News

Judge Juan Merchan criticised the defence team’s attempt to compel NBC to turn over documents related to Stormy Daniels.

A New York Judge has blocked an attempt by Donald Trump‘s lawyers to force the NBC news network to turn over materials related to a recent documentary about adult film actor Stormy Daniels.

The ruling on Thursday by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan comes shortly before a trial related to both Trump and Daniels is set to start on April 15.

In New York, Trump – the former United States president – faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for alleged hush money payments he made to Daniels and others.

Marchan called the Trump team’s efforts to subpoena NBC “the very definition of a fishing expedition”. The request, he said, did not meet the heavy legal burden needed to require a news organisation to provide unrestricted access to its reporting.

The ruling is the latest setback for Trump, who is set to be officially named the Republican Party’s candidate for the 2024 presidential race. He faces four separate criminal cases, with the New York trial the first to begin.

The case centres on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to hide the true nature of the hush money payments, made during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The payments were made through his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who allegedly helped bury negative stories about Trump, a presidential hopeful at the time.

Among other payments, Cohen offered Daniels $130,000 to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Daniels is set to be a key prosecution witness in the trial.

On Wednesday, Merchan also rejected a request from the defence team to delay the trial until the US Supreme Court rules on claims of presidential immunity claims Trump has made in a separate case. Merchan said the request was untimely.

Trump’s lawyers had previously failed to block Cohen and Daniels from testifying in the trial.

The New York indictment was the first of the four criminal cases against Trump to be announced.

After the history-making indictment in March of last year, Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 felony counts. His lawyers had argued the payments were legitimate legal expenses. The former president has also denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Trump’s lawyers had subpoenaed NBC Universal on March 11. They sought all documents related to the production, editing, marketing and release of the documentary, as well as any compensation Daniels received and any agreements between her and the network.

The lawyers argued the subpoena would yield evidence that NBC Universal and Daniels colluded to release the documentary close to the start of the trial to bias the public and increase profits.

NBC had denied those claims.

In the four-page decision, Judge Merchan wrote that the defence subpoena was “far too broad” and that its collusion claims were “purely speculative and unsupported” by evidence.

Merchan added the subpoena sought to “rifle through the privileged documents of a news organization”.

In addition to the New York state hush money case, Trump also faces two federal criminal cases. One, in Florida, is for allegedly hoarding classified documents after leaving office. The other, in Washington, DC, accuses him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential elections.

He faces a fourth criminal case in Georgia for efforts to overturn election results in that state too.

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US judges reject Trump’s attempt to dismiss charges in two criminal cases | Donald Trump News

Trump has sought to dismiss cases accusing him of election interference in Georgia and of mishandling classified files.

Donald Trump has suffered setbacks in two criminal cases against him, after judges in the United States nixed the former president’s efforts to dismiss charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.

In Florida on Thursday, US District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Trump’s attempt to have the case accusing him of mishandling secret government files thrown out.

Trump had argued that US law authorised him to retain highly sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving office in 2021. He cited the Presidential Records Act, which allows former presidents to keep personal records unrelated to their official responsibilities.

But prosecutors said he was not authorised to keep secret information related to US national security, even if he viewed the records as personal.

Separately on Thursday, the judge overseeing the election interference case in Georgia rejected Trump’s argument that the indictment seeks to criminalise political speech protected by the First Amendment.

The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the right to free speech.

But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote in his decision that, at the current pretrial stage, he must consider the language of the indictment in a way that is favourable to the prosecution.

Georgia prosecutors have accused Trump and 18 others of joining a conspiracy to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 vote in the US state.

But McAfee wrote that the charges do not suggest that Trump and the other defendants are being prosecuted simply for making false statements, but rather that they acted willfully and knowingly to harm the government.

“Even core political speech addressing matters of public concern is not impenetrable from prosecution if allegedly used to further criminal activity,” the judge wrote.

Thursday’s decisions mark the latest developments in ongoing efforts by Trump and his legal team to challenge the four criminal indictments against him, two of which relate to his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He lost that race to current President Joe Biden.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in all the cases. He has also accused prosecutors of conducting a politically motivated “witch hunt” that aims to derail his 2024 election campaign.

Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and is expected to face Biden in November’s contest.

While the criminal indictments have failed to curb Trump’s support among his Make America Great Again (MAGA) base, experts say a potential conviction in any of the cases could affect his chances at the ballot box.

But it remains unclear whether a verdict will be reached before the election, and Trump’s team has sought to delay many of the legal proceedings.

Trials in any of the four cases could create scheduling conflicts during a busy campaign season.

Georgia decision

Thursday’s decision in Georgia echoed an earlier ruling in the federal election interference case against Trump, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in December that “it is well established that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is used as an instrument of a crime”.

The Georgia judge, McAfee, added in his decision that even lawful acts involving speech protected by the First Amendment can be used to support a charge under Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, which is being invoked in the case.

But McAfee did leave open the possibility that Trump and others could raise similar arguments “at the appropriate time after the establishment of a factual record”.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in Georgia, said in an email to The Associated Press (AP) that Trump and the other defendants “respectfully disagree with Judge McAfee’s order and will continue to evaluate their options regarding the First Amendment challenges”.

He called it significant, though, that McAfee made it clear they could raise their challenges again later.

A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis declined to comment to AP.

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US prosecutors spar with judge over order in Trump classified document case | Donald Trump News

United States prosecutors involved in the criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Florida have questioned a judge’s order that they indicate risks tipping the case in the former US president’s favour.

Their 24-page filing was issued late on Tuesday, as part of an ongoing case looking into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office.

In the filing, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors rebuked Judge Aileen Cannon for ordering that instructions be provided to an eventual jury suggesting that Trump could have kept the classified documents as part of his “personal” record-keeping.

The judge’s order appeared to be a hat tip to the defence’s argument that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) entitled Trump to keep the sensitive government documents, something Smith and his team have disputed.

“That legal premise is wrong,” Smith and his colleagues wrote, adding that any jury instruction to that effect would “distort the trial”.

The court filing was an unusual display of public discord between the prosecutors and the judge, who Trump nominated to the bench.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has questioned a judge’s order that appears to lend credence to a Trump defence argument [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]

Questions over judge

Judge Cannon, who serves on the federal court in the Southern District of Florida, has previously faced scrutiny over decisions she has made in the long-running classified document case.

In September 2022, for instance, she granted the Trump legal team’s request to have a “special master” appointed to filter through the classified documents retrieved from the former president’s home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.

Legal experts decried the move as unprecedented, and it delayed the US Department of Justice from having full access to the documents as part of its investigation. An appeals court ultimately ended the special master’s review.

In Tuesday’s court filing, meanwhile, Special Counsel Smith and his team argued that Judge Cannon’s order would not only colour a prospective jury’s perception of the facts, but also slow the case down significantly.

No trial date has been set in the classified documents case. It was the first federal criminal indictment Trump faced as a result of Smith’s investigations.

“Whatever the Court decides, it must resolve these crucial threshold legal questions promptly,” Smith and his colleagues wrote. “The failure to do so would improperly jeopardize the Government’s right to a fair trial.”

Judge Aileen Cannon, seen here in a screenshot from her Senate confirmation hearings, has faced scrutiny for her handling of Trump’s legal proceedings [US Senate/AP Photo]

Allegations of withholding documents

The case began in 2021, shortly after Trump left office that January. According to the indictment, the National Archives and Records Administration attempted to retrieve classified documents it believed remained with the former president.

But Trump and his allies allegedly refused to return the documents, instead attempting to conceal them in unsecured locations at his Mar-a-Lago estate, including in a bathroom and shower area.

In March 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal investigation into the matter, and a grand jury subpoenaed Trump to return all the classified records.

Special Counsel Smith, who was appointed by the US Justice Department that November, has accused Trump of obstructing that subpoena and other efforts to recuperate the documents, which contained national security secrets.

The government ultimately recovered more than 300 classified documents from the Mar-a-Lago resort, where dozens of public events had taken place.

Trump faces 40 felony charges in relation to the classified documents case. His aid Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira were also charged.

The former president, however, has consistently denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. As part of his defence, he argued that he had declassified the documents before leaving office, though audio recordings have since surfaced where he indicates otherwise.

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump said in a piece of audio from 2021.

Trump’s legal team has also raised the question of whether these documents fall in the realm of “personal” records under the Presidential Records Act.

But in Tuesday’s court filings, Smith and his fellow prosecutors sought to quash that argument.

“Trump has never represented to this Court that he in fact designated the classified documents as personal,” they wrote. “The reason is simple: he never did so.”

Smith and his team also asserted that, by invoking the Presidential Records Act, Trump sought to make his actions “impervious” to judicial review.

“It would be pure fiction to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the President of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private’,” the court filings said in one sharply-worded section.

Trump is the subject of four separate criminal indictments, including the classified documents case. He has framed all four, however, as being the product of a politically motivated “witch hunt” designed to derail his re-election efforts in November.

The first slated to go to trial is a state-level case in New York, concerning alleged hush-money payments during the 2016 presidential race. It is scheduled to start on April 15.

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Shares in Trump Media tumble after filings reveal a $58m loss last year | Donald Trump News

The company debuted on the stock market last week, offering Trump a ray of hope amid pending financial woes.

Shares in former President Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group surged last week after debuting on the stock market in the United States.

But a disclosure that the company lost nearly $58.2m in 2023 has sent those stocks tumbling, dropping by 23 percent as of Monday.

The volatile first week, which came in the wake of a merger with the shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp, underscored the unpredictability of a venture that the former president may be relying on for financial salvation.

Trump faces mounting legal penalties and court costs, as he contends with four criminal indictments and a slate of civil cases. He is also running for president in November’s election, and legal fees are reportedly draining his campaign coffers.

Trump Media’s stock made a strong debut on March 26, fuelled by retail buyers, including some supporters of the former president. It closed up 16 percent at nearly $58 a share on its first day of trading.

However, Monday’s disclosure saw shares fall by $14.45 to $47.51.

The disclosure is part of an 8-K filing to the federal Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), designed to update shareholders about recent events affecting the company and its stock.

The resulting stock plunge arrives at a critical juncture for Trump, who faces a looming deadline to pay a $175m bond in a New York civil fraud case.

His defence team had argued that the initial $464m bond was too high — and the former president would be unable to find underwriters to post that sum. The amount was lowered upon appeal.

Last week’s Trump Media merger offered some hope, however, for an eventual infusion of cash. The deal was estimated to raise Trump’s net worth by as much as $3bn, although he is unable to sell his shares until six months after the deal.

Still, experts said the theoretical rise in value could help Trump’s team persuade a company to underwrite his bonds going forward.

Trump has said he will pay the $175m bond by Thursday’s deadline, although he has not yet done so.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has said her office is prepared to begin seizing Trump’s assets if he does not pay.

Last month, Trump also posted a bond of more than $91m, as he appeals a defamation judgement in a case brought by writer E Jean Carroll.

Even with the decline in Trump Media’s stock, the company still had a market value of $6.3bn on Monday, and Trump is set to own between 58 percent and 69 percent of the company.

The company remains embroiled in a separate legal battle with its co-founders, Wesley Moss and Andrew Litinsky. They accuse Trump Media of trying to improperly dilute their stake.

The company, however, has said the pair failed to earn their shares. It seeks to strip them of their ownership and wants a judge to declare they had no right to appoint two board members.

Trump Media owns the social media platform Truth Social, which Trump co-founded in 2021 after he was suspended from apps like Twitter, now known as X.

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Trump posts video with image of Biden bound and tied | Donald Trump

NewsFeed

Biden’s campaign is condemning an image of the US president shown ‘hog-tied’ on the back of a pickup truck. The video was posted, without comment, to Donald Trump’s account on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Published On 1 Apr 2024

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Biden campaign touts record-setting fundraising haul for single event | Joe Biden News

The Radio City Music Hall event has raised $25m, underscoring deep-pocketed support for Biden despite lagging in polls.

Hours before United States President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were scheduled to take the stage at the iconic Radio City Music Hall, Biden’s campaign had already hailed an “historic” fundraising haul.

The $25m raised by the event scheduled for Thursday evening set a record for the most funds raised for a single political event in the US. The record haul is an indication that Biden maintains strong ties to supporters with deep pockets even as polls show his popularity flagging.

“This historic raise is a show of strong enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris and a testament to the unprecedented fundraising machine we’ve built,” said campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“Unlike our opponent, every dollar we’re raising is going to reach the voters who will decide this election – communicating the president’s historic record, his vision for the future and laying plain the stakes of this election.”

The event on Thursday promises to be the crown jewel in a series of high-profile fundraisers over the last two weeks since Biden nabbed enough delegates during the primary season to make him the Democrat’s nominee in waiting. Party delegates are expected to officially nominate Biden at the Democratic National Convention in August.

The latest haul was announced as the Biden campaign has widened its financial lead over Trump’s. Biden’s team reported $71m in cash on hand at the end of February while Trump’s team reported less than half, or $33.5m.

A prolific fundraiser in his two previous presidential campaigns, Trump has kept a low profile in recent weeks, in part because of court appearances for various legal cases; he is paying for his legal defence with donors’ funds. His next political rally is scheduled for Tuesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Like most fundraising events, Tuesday night’s offers different tiers of access depending on donors’ generosity. More money gets donors more intimate time with the president.

A photo with Biden, Clinton and Obama costs $100,000. A donation of $250,000 earns donors access to a reception, and $500,000 buys access to an even more exclusive gathering.

The centrepiece of the fundraiser is an onstage conversation between Biden, Obama and Clinton, moderated by late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert. There will also be a lineup of musical performers, including Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Lea Michele.

Thousands are expected to attend the event, with the cheapest tickets going for $225. First Lady Jill Biden and DJ D-Nice are then set to host an after-party at Radio City Music Hall with 500 guests.

Leon Panetta, who served in top positions under Clinton and Obama, described the fundraiser as an important moment for Biden’s campaign.

“What it does, first and foremost, is to broaden and reinforce the support of all Democrats,” he told The Associated Press news agency.

Panetta said Clinton and Obama, both known as more effective speakers than Biden, could strengthen the president’s re-election campaign.

“I can’t think of two people who would be better at putting together that kind of message,” he said.

Still, while big money has come to define US presidential campaigns, it is not everything.

In 2016, then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton vastly outraised and outspent Trump. But the former reality television star was able to overcome the deficit by using the social media platform formerly known as Twitter to stay on the media’s radar on a daily basis for relatively little money.

During that campaign cycle, Trump’s headline-grabbing statements and actions generated heaps of so-called “free media” attention, which industry experts valued at about $5bn, far outpacing the free media earned by Clinton in the months before the general election.

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Who is election disrupter Robert F Kennedy Jr? | Elections

Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of the most famous United States political dynasty, will announce his running mate on Tuesday as he competes as an independent candidate in the 2024 US presidential election.

The odds are stacked against him as no third-party candidate has won the presidency in more than a century and a half.

But the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist has been able to create a media buzz, thanks to his strong brand recognition: His uncle was former President John F Kennedy, and his father was Robert F Kennedy, a former US attorney general and senator.

He ditched the Democratic Party after failing to secure its presidential nomination and is playing to both far-left and far-right elements in his long-shot bid for the White House.

His campaign appears to be resonating among so-called double haters, who dread the prospect of a rematch between incumbent Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who is the frontrunner to win the Republican Party’s nomination despite his legal woes.

Recent opinion polls indicated that while he might take voters from both candidates, it is Biden whom he could hurt the most.

The committee in the US House of Representatives that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters shows footage of a 2020 presidential election debate between Trump, left, and Biden. The two men are set for a rematch in November [File: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters]

Amid a climate of political disenchantment, Kennedy has projected himself as a political outsider and blasts “corporate kleptocracy” while touting his environmental credentials.

A longtime vaccine sceptic, he has been accused of spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on alternative media outlets, such as conservative host Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. Rogan has also been accused of spreading falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines on The Joe Rogan Experience.

While Kennedy’s detractors have branded him a conspiracy theorist, his supporters hail him as a truth teller.

So who is this political freewheeler? Where does he come from? What does he think, and does he really stand a chance of winning?

What is Kennedy’s background?

Kennedy’s family name evokes privilege and tragedy in equal measure. He was just nine years old when President John F Kennedy was shot dead in November 1963. His father, Robert, suffered the same fate while mounting his own presidential bid five years later.

Senator Robert F Kennedy addresses a throng of supporters in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, after winning California’s presidential primary election. A moment later, he was fatally shot [Dick Strobel/AP Photo]

Grief-stricken, RFK Jr turned to heroin to “fill an empty space inside of me”, finally getting clean after an arrest for possession. His second wife, Mary, mother of four of his six children, also battled addiction and died by suicide. He is now married to Cheryl Hines, famous for her role on the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Kennedy suffers from a speech impediment called spasmodic dysphonia, which causes muscles in the larynx to spasm, although the condition has not seemed to have dented his performance on shows hosted by the likes of Rogan and conservative Canadian best-selling author Jordan Peterson, where his shoot-from-the-hip style plays well.

His controversial views have led his own family to disavow him. “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” his siblings said in a statement posted on X. “We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”

What does he stand for?

Not one for sticking to a script, Kennedy holds a mixed bag record of often contradictory views that make him difficult to pigeonhole.

Take the environment. Once named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time magazine, the former environmental lawyer is known for his campaigns to clean up the nation’s waterways, reduce the use of toxic pesticides and promote renewables. Yet his calls for “freedom and free markets” as a solution to climate change have raised fears that he would let industry set the pace for curbing fossil fuel use.

He has also threatened to repeal Biden’s signature climate legislation, which pushes for a transition to a green economy.

His libertarian streak came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic when he accused the US government’s then-chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, of “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy”. He also claimed the virus was engineered to attack Caucasians and Black people, sparing Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews.

His views on the Israel-Palestine conflict are typically contradictory. Kennedy supported Roger Waters last year amid mass outrage over a gig that saw the Pink Floyd co-founder donning Nazi attire and projecting the logo of an Israeli arms firm on a giant inflated pig. Yet, months later, the politician staunchly defended Israel’s no-limits war on Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people and pushed the besieged enclave to the verge of famine.

Isolationist by nature, he opposes aid to Ukraine, blaming the US and NATO for creating a “proxy war” with Russia. In a recent interview, he said the billions in funding to the war-torn country could be used for “healing farms” for people in the throes of addiction and depression as he highlighted the fentanyl crisis.

“His task will be to straddle the huge chasm between RFK Jr, the very liberal, progressive environmentalist and the anti-vaccination crusader,” said Steffen Schmidt, professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Iowa State University.

On immigration, RFK Jr opposes Trump’s plan to erect a wall on the US border with Mexico. He has also been critical of Biden’s handling of the border crisis. He has promised to secure the border with the use of modern technology, such as cameras and detectors, to stop entry of undocumented immigrants. He backs expanding legal immigration into the US.

Will voters buy his mixed messages?

That’s difficult to predict. According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, six in 10 respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the two-party system and wanted a third choice.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans see him as a threat. The former are especially worried, fearing that the lure of his star-power name could siphon votes from Biden.

According to several opinion polls released in February and March, 40 percent of Americans have a favourable opinion of RFK Jr. His approval ratings have come down since December when Gallup showed 52 percent of Americans liked him – more than those for Trump or Biden.

“RFK Jr appeals to those Republican right-wing folks who enjoy conspiracy theories, but he also appeals somewhat to those who are really far left,” said Melissa Smith, author of the 2022 book, Third Parties, Outsiders, and Renegades: Modern Challenges to the Two-Party System in Presidential Elections. “It’s sort of like the far right and the far left wrap around and can coalesce around a candidate like this.”

Kennedy often cites support from Gen Z, the generation born from 1997 to 2012. His policy ideas do not appear to be geared towards the youth vote. He has, for example, called for a 15-week federal ban on abortion and blames video games and rising use of antidepressants for gun violence. But his straight talk on economic inequality resonates with younger people struggling with low wages and high housing costs.

Could he really make an impact?

While Republicans and Democrats are automatically on the presidential ballot, outsider candidates need to spend millions collecting signatures from registered voters and hiring lawyers to fight off legal challenges from established parties over complex ballot access rules that vary from state to state.

“The electoral system was created by the two big parties to keep third-party candidates from winning,” Schmidt said.

So far, Kennedy has qualified for the ballot in only one state, Utah. He has filed paperwork to create his own We the People Party in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi and North Carolina and is setting up the Texas Independent Party in the Lone Star state.

His campaign team told the The New York Times that it reckoned the moves would slash the number of signatures he needs across all 50 states by 330,000.

Even if he makes it onto ballots, analysts believe his chances of success are remote. Many cited the case of Ross Perot, the wealthy Texan who polled as a frontrunner against Bill Clinton and George HW Bush in 1992. He fell short of expectations, securing only a fifth of the popular vote and failing to win a single electoral vote. A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.

Former presidential candidate Ross Perot addresses the 1996 California convention of the Reform Party, the political party he founded [Reed Saxon/AP Photo]

Still, Kennedy could make a difference in the election. The average of opinion polls tracked by US election data site RealClearPolitics showed that while Trump leads Biden nationally by 2 percentage points in a two-candidate race, that gap widens to more than 4 points if Kennedy is also in the race.

In key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump’s lead over Biden grows if Kennedy and other candidates are considered.

“Do I think he will win? Absolutely not. Do I think he might steal a few votes? Yes. But will he really impact the election? If history can be trusted, the answer is no,” Smith said.

Any other outside bets?

Kennedy is not the only third-party candidate making a well-funded credible bid for the presidency. No Labels, a centrist group that has yet to name a candidate, has qualified in 14 states so far. And Cornel West, an African American philosopher and left-wing activist, launched his own bid after breaking with the Green Party.

But ultimately, Kennedy has something the others do not. Whatever his policies, his links to the closest thing the US has ever had to a royal family could yet work in his favour.



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New York court lowers $454m bond as Trump appeals civil fraud case | Courts News

Ruling gives former President Donald Trump, who had faced possible seizure of his assets, 10 days to post $175m bond.

An appeals court in the United States has agreed to pause the collection of Donald Trump’s $454m civil fraud judgement, delivering a victory to the former US president and preventing authorities in New York from beginning to seize his assets.

A New York state appellate court on Monday granted Trump’s request to push back the deadline for payment, as well as reduce the bond he would be required to pay while he appeals.

Trump — who had been facing the immediate seizure of some of his real estate assets — now has 10 days to post a smaller $175m bond, rather than pay the full amount.

His legal team had previously argued that a $454m bond was too steep and that the former president would not be able to raise the funds before Monday’s deadline. New York Attorney General Letitia James had signalled she was prepared to seize Trump’s assets if he missed the cut-off date.

The revised bond amount and deadline come after Trump was found liable last month for overstating his net worth to dupe investors and lenders.

After the court’s ruling, in a post on his Truth Social platform, the ex-president said
his legal team “will abide by the decision … and post either a bond, equivalent securities, or cash”.

James’s office said Trump is “still facing accountability for his staggering fraud”.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the civil case against Trump in 2022 [File: Mike Segar/Reuters]

Trump is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for the 2024 US presidential race, but he faces numerous legal woes — both civil and criminal — leading to mounting legal expenses.

Monday’s decision is expected to help ease his cash crunch. Last week, Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the judgement “is not possible under the circumstances presented” because getting a bond for such a large sum of money is “a practical impossibility”.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case and has accused authorities of conducting a politically motivated witch hunt that seeks to derail his re-election campaign.

On Monday morning, he used Truth Social to rail against those involved, including James, the attorney general who filed the civil lawsuit in 2022.

Trump accused them of trying to “to take away, and sell off, very successful properties and assets that took me years to zone, build and nurture into some of the best of their kind anywhere in the World — WHEN I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG!”

Last month, Trump was found liable for fraudulently inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to secure better loan and insurance terms. In his decision, Justice Arthur Engoron said Trump had engaged in fraud by overvaluing his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses.

It was the culmination of a three-month, non-jury trial in Manhattan. The trial focused primarily on how much Trump should pay in penalties.

Judge Engoron ultimately ordered Trump to pay $355m, plus interest, leading to the current tally of close to $454m.

Ordinarily, under New York state law, a litigant can pause the collection of a penalty by paying the full amount in a bond, while they pursue an appeal.

Aside from the civil fraud case, Trump also faces four separate criminal indictments. Those relate to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, accusations he mishandled secret government documents, and an alleged hush-money payment during the 2016 race.

He has pleaded not guilty in all four cases. A trial date in the hush-money case was set on Monday for April 15.

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