US Election 2024: Grumpy Old Men

[Ralin]

In a world where states can kick people off the ballot unilaterally, Republican states will kick Biden off the ballot and vice versa.

If only there was some sort of court that could overrule states that do that for spurious reasons on a case by case basis.

[Gandalf]

American domestic media coverage of the contest.
"Biden has problems, he's so old, the economy is only doing REALLY good not REALLY REALLY good, he didn't instant transmission to the Kremlin and kill Putin on Feb 23, 2022 and he sometimes says things that are old man speak."

"Trump is bad too I guess."

Media wants a proverbial horse race which draws viewers to the ads. The sheer spectacle of Trump isn't enough any more, so there needs to be some extra spice added.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Trump keeps making incendiary statements. His campaign says that won't change.

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — He’s argued his four criminal indictments and mug shot bolstered his support among Black voters who see him as a victim of discrimination just like them.

He’s compared himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, and suggested that he is a political dissident, too.

And in nearly every public appearance, he repeats falsehoods about the election he lost.

Candidates on the verge of winning their parties' nominations generally massage their messaging and moderate positions that may energize hardcore primary voters but are less appealing to a broader audience. In political terms, they “pivot.”

Not Donald Trump. The former president is instead doubling down on often-incendiary rhetoric that offends wide swaths of voters, seeming to be doing little to rein in his most irascible and oftentimes self-defeating instincts. That’s even as some of his most loyal allies have suggested he shift his focus and tone down rhetoric that risks offending independent voters and people outside his base.

“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That’s not going to change,” said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita. “Our job is not to remake Donald Trump.”

LaCivita and other top campaign officials instead say their role is to provide the organization "to amplify and to force project” Trump's message.

The campaign, he said, had already assumed a general election posture before voting began, running ads attacking President Joe Biden before the Iowa caucuses. So while Trump is now talking less about his last remaining GOP rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his campaign is focused on building out a general election infrastructure as it turns its focus from early voting states to November battlegrounds.

That includes efforts to take over the Republican National Committee, with plans to consolidate the party’s and campaign’s fundraising, political operations, communications and research operations. LaCivita is in line to become the RNC's chief operating officer while retaining his role on the campaign.

“The campaign’s pivot,” LaCivita said, “is just a realization that we’ve already secured what we need to win. That manifests itself in not only the messaging but the mechanics.” He said to expect “more of the same” after Trump clinches the nomination, which is expected later this month.

Trump’s hardest edges, no matter how familiar to Americans nine years after he first ran for president, produce welcome fodder for Biden's reelection team, which wants to motivate disaffected Democrats and independent voters by warning about a second Trump term.

Trump’s speeches at rallies can stretch for two hours as he meanders between policy proposals, personal stories and jokes, attacks on his opponents and complaints that he is being persecuted by the courts, and dire warnings about the country’s future. Trump often adds asides that were not in his prepared remarks. But some of his most divisive comments are part of his script.

He has bragged about nominating three Supreme Court justices who voted to end a national right to abortion, even as he urges Republicans not to be too extreme on an issue Democrats have credited for several victories. In promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, he has talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing Adolf Hitler. And he once described his enemies as “vermin,” language opponents deride as authoritarian.

At one rally this past weekend, Trump went so far as to cast Biden’s handling of the border as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”

“Donald Trump is still Donald Trump — the same extreme, dangerous candidate voters rejected in 2020, and they’ll reject him again this November regardless of the team he has around him,” said Biden spokesman Kevin Munoz.

Trump’s advisers have at times encouraged him to speak less about grievance and retribution and more about his vision for a second term. But after three campaigns for the White House and four years in office, Trump is set in his ways. Former aides learned long ago that trying to pressure Trump to rein in his impulses often only led him to dig in deeper. And his campaign team seems to respect and trust the former president’s political instincts, pointing to his sweep of the GOP primaries so far.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump would not change. Americans "deserve a president who will not sugarcoat what’s happening in the world,” he said.

Interviews with Republicans, including Trump supporters and those still backing Haley’s beleaguered bid, reflect concerns that Trump risks fumbling a clear opportunity against Biden, who faces low approval ratings and widespread voter questions about his age and readiness for a second term.

“At some point (Trump) needs to take the spotlight off himself,” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman who backs Haley. Davis noted improving economic indicators but said Biden remains burdened by concerns about inflation and “has been bad on the border” and “terrible on the deficit.”

Even Trump voters seem to recognize the problem: According to AP VoteCast data, about half of Republicans in conservative South Carolina — including about a quarter of Trump’s own supporters — are concerned he is too extreme to win the general election. While Trump dominates among conservative voters, those voters represented just 37% of the electorate in the November 2020 presidential election.

Trump held rallies Saturday in North Carolina and Virginia, two states that hold primaries on Super Tuesday but are also potential swing states in November’s general election.

Both states highlight Trump’s potential problems in November: He dominates among conservatives, especially in rural and small-town America, but struggles with more moderate voters in more urban settings.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who was re-elected in 2020 even as Trump won his state, said he welcomes the contrast between Trump and Biden.

“Do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about the American people?" he asked in an interview. "Or do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about himself?”

Biden won Virginia in 2020. A year later, Virginians elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor. Youngkin emphasized education and economic policy, and attracted urban and suburban moderates who rejected Trump. Some of the states’ suburban and exurban congressional districts have become more favorable to Democrats in the Trump era.

Notably, Youngkin has not endorsed Trump. He declined an interview request through aides.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who sometimes speaks to the former president, compared 2024 to 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan won a landslide over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, who was saddled with inflation, high unemployment and international conflict. Reagan, dubbed “the happy warrior,” won 44 states and a new Republican Senate with “a positive vision,” Gingrich said, that was about more than Carter’s record.

“When you have the kind of numbers Biden has, what people need is about 70% positive, 30% anti-Biden,” Gingrich said, insisting Trump could usher in a Republican wave like when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Just as possible, however, is a repeat of 2018, when Republicans lost the House majority, or 2020, when Trump lost and Democrats reclaimed Senate control, or 2022, when Republicans lost winnable Senate races and failed to flip the chamber.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests Trump and his campaign should “just keep doing what they’re doing.”

But Graham himself has pivoted. After he ran for president in 2016, Graham vowed that “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.” Now, he is a Trump confidant.

“Everybody that wants to give him advice, he beat like a drum,” Graham said at Trump’s South Carolina victory party.

___

Colvin reported from New York.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Trump's last Republican rival Nikki Haley drops out of presidential race

Donald Trump is poised to be the only Republican candidate running for president as his last rival Nikki Haley formally announced the end to her campaign.

"I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets," she said from South Carolina on Wednesday.

"Although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in."

Her departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Biden.

Haley, who was Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023, had vowed to stay in the running until Super Tuesday despite a number of dismal outings in the polls.

But, after Trump won 14 out of 15 Republican primary elections on Tuesday, her campaign has been left with nowhere to go.

What is Super Tuesday? The biggest day in the US Presidential election so far
Haley congratulated Trump during her announcement but failed to endorse him bid for presidency.

Following her speech, Trump said the former South Carolina governor got "trounced" on Super Tuesday and invited her supporters to join his political movement.

Despite rejecting any backing from Haley's supporters and publicly stating his campaign "will no accept them" in January.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden acknowledged Haley's "courage" for speaking the "truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin".

Referencing Trump's previous remarks on Haley supporters, Biden added: "I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign. I know there is a lot we won’t agree on.

"But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground."

Haley, 52, previously called for competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 - a knock on both Trump, who is 77, and Biden, who is 81.

She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat Biden in the general election.

Without her own pathway to the White House, she must now decide whether or not to endorse Trump, who in his speech on Tuesday night called for party unity without mentioning Haley once.

The former president is currently on track to reach the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.

She actually won Vermont

[Rogue 9]

She actually won Vermont

And DC! And pointedly declined to endorse Trump in her suspension announcement.

[Gandalf]

So that's I guess the setup to Haley 2028, hoping that by then everyone is burned out on Trump.

[Rogue 9]

After publicly opposing and attacking Trump for months and then refusing to endorse him, we'll see if the Republican base will ever elect her for anything again.

[bilateralrope]

So that's I guess the setup to Haley 2028, hoping that by then everyone is burned out on Trump.

I see three possibilities for 2028:
- Trump wins this year. He can't run again
- Trump loses this year. I doubt he can delay his trials long enough, so he's going to have to try and run from wherever he's been incarcerated.
- Trump dies
Either way, I can't see him being a serious candidate in 2028

[Tribble]

Option 4: Trump wins, declares himself dictator as planned and suspends the constitution to “make America great again,” including term limits. Stays in office until he dies or is forcibly removed.

Edit: and yeah, I know he can’t legally suspend the constitution, but since when have technicalities like that ever stopped him from trying?

[Zaune]

After publicly opposing and attacking Trump for months and then refusing to endorse him, we'll see if the Republican base will ever elect her for anything again.

Assuming the Republican Party still exists in its current form by then.

[Gandalf]

I see three possibilities for 2028:
- Trump wins this year. He can't run again
- Trump loses this year. I doubt he can delay his trials long enough, so he's going to have to try and run from wherever he's been incarcerated.
- Trump dies
Either way, I can't see him being a serious candidate in 2028

Interestingly, there's another possibility, in that while Trump is alive and able to campaign, he has a demonstrable congnitive decline. So a decent amount of die hards stick with him, based on the idea that a declining Trump is better than a full strength Democrat.

[bilateralrope]

I see three possibilities for 2028:
- Trump wins this year. He can't run again
- Trump loses this year. I doubt he can delay his trials long enough, so he's going to have to try and run from wherever he's been incarcerated.
- Trump dies
Either way, I can't see him being a serious candidate in 2028

Interestingly, there's another possibility, in that while Trump is alive and able to campaign, he has a demonstrable congnitive decline. So a decent amount of die hards stick with him, based on the idea that a declining Trump is better than a full strength Democrat.

I'd count that under "Trump wins this year".

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Will Biden's fiery State of the Union address be enough to reverse low polls and age perceptions?

Joe Biden knew how much was riding on this speech. It wasn't just about what he would say, but how he would say it.

In the end, despite his occasional characteristic slips, mangling of words and the odd bungle, he delivered with passion, even anger at times.

He framed so much of the agenda before the country as a stark choice: American values like democracy, fair competition and a robust challenge to Russia pitted against tax breaks for multi billionaire corporations, a supine foreign policy in Ukraine and an eroding of the institutions which are the bedrock of the Republic.

He continuously criticised Donald Trump, but never by name, instead referring to him as "my predecessor" 13 times.

Another ghost being exorcised by Biden was his age.

He intoned each line with vigour, taking on the hecklers with ad-libbed challenges.

He lost his thread while improvising a response to a heckling Trump Loyalist, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and then somehow managed to mangle the name of a young woman killed by an illegal migrant, Laken Riley, instead saying Lincoln Riley.

But it was not enough to derail the momentum he had built.

This was the Joe of old, a flashback to his days as a Senator, brimming full of fury and righteous indignation.

We glimpsed his undeniable hunger for re-election and at times his compassion when mentioning those in the audience like the parents of detained journalist Evan Gerschkovich.

The elephant in the room was his age and towards the end he confronted it head on, saying: "My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it's how old are our ideas. Hate, anger revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas.

"But you can't lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.

"To lead America the land of possibilities you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done."

This to me was the apotheosis of his message: dwell not on when I was born, but where I will take you, think about the future not the past, tomorrow not yesterday.

The choice could not be starker for America: yes two old men, but men with very different visions for the country.

Donald Trump responded with typical bluster on his social media platform last night describing it as the "angriest, least compassionate and worst State of the Union speech ever made".

The battle lines are drawn for what promises to be a gruelling and deeply personal campaign.

[LadyTevar]

It was suggested we need a thread for all the AMERICAN Election News.

Here it is, use it.

[Gandalf]

Axios

I can't really post the article here, because it has a lot of links, some graphs, and formatting that won't really translate.

But the general point is that the Biden campaign has a massive fundraising advantage over the Trump campaign, as they both look to November.

Considering Trump's ability to generate free media, this is far from a be all and end all thing, but it's an interesting insight.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Now there are two.

[LadyTevar]

Now there are two.

And then there was ONE.

If we'd been using this thread I'd have remembered it was here.

[Soontir C'boath]

Stephen A. Smith: Not "Wise" For Hillary Clinton To Tell Undecided Voters To "Get Over It," How'd That Work In 2016?
Posted By Tim Hains
On Date April 3, 2024

ESPN's Stephen A. Smith commented on Hillary Clinton telling voters upset about being forced to choose between Biden and Trump to "get over yourself," Tuesday night on CNN.

"I don’t understand why this is even a hard choice," Clinton told "The Tonight Show." "People who blow that off are not paying attention."

"How did that work out for her in 2016?" Smith said. "You can bring up a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, the last thing you need to do is to do anything that could agitate a potential voter in this particular election."

STEPHEN A. SMITH, ESPN HOST, "FIRST TAKE": I don't think it was a very wise statement on her part. How did that work out for her in 2016? I think that's something that we have to recognize. Yes, she won the popular vote. But at the end of the day, she wasn't the President of the United States. It was him.

You can look at her not campaigning in Wisconsin in the last days, not campaigning in Pennsylvania in the last days. You can look at some of the stuff that they were saying about her that sort of distracted things from where it should have been in terms of Comey and his report from the FBI.

You can bring up a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, the last thing you need to do is to do anything that could agitate a potential voter in this particular election.

PHILLIP: What do you make about the actual argument that she's making? I mean, she's basically saying two old people, yes. But they're substantively different. I mean -- Comey has 91 counts against him.

SMITH: Well, listen. Nobody's brought that up more than me. You know, four indictments, 91 counts, impeached twice. I'm not voting for him. I've said that to a lot of people. I've said that to you. But at the end of the day, what I'm saying is that at some point in time, you've got to take into account what the voters are thinking about. The voters, a lot of them out there, tens of millions of them out there, by the way, don't care what he's going through right now.

They don't care about his guilt or innocence, his perceived guilt or innocence. They don't care about the 91 counts. They're thinking about their lives. And a lot of times we see politicians taking the positions that they're taking. And while we can respect their candor and their honesty, they do seem a bit detached at times from what the voters are actually feeling and what the voters are actually thinking.

Nobody wants to hear that from Hillary Rodham Clinton at this particular moment in time, because especially if you're Joe Biden, what are you really, really worried about right now? You're worried about folks coming to the polls. You're worried about them showing up to the polls to vote for you. You're not worried even about them voting for Trump. You're worried about them not showing up to vote for you. That doesn't exactly encourage them to get up out of their seats and go to the polls.

PHILLIP: I mean, is it enough to tell voters you should be afraid of what could happen if Trump is elected? That was the other part of the point.

SMITH: Well, normally I would say yes. The problem is, it's an age-old move by both parties and the binary system that we're living with. The Republicans will tell you, you've got so much to fear. I mean, look at the streets. Look at the lack of safety. Look at some of the things that are going on. Look at the immigration crisis.

And they'll point to the left. The left will look at the right, and they will say, look at all of this stuff that's going on. Do you want to turn back the clock? Do you want to, you know, resort going back to a -- days that a lot of folks who support Trump come across as wishing as if we were back in the 60s or the 50s? They'll say things like that. And so, what happens is that ultimately, if you say something enough, you're whistling into the wind. It's nothing new that we're hearing now compared to what we've heard before in a lot of people's eyes, specifically as it pertains to Trump.

That clearly is different. Ninety-one counts, four indictments, twice impeached. That is a different animal. There is no doubt about that. But all in all, when you hear the rhetoric coming from one side or another, in the end, does it really, really sound that much different to you? The answer to the voters has been no.

Smith dropping truth bombs.

[Gandalf]

A rare good showing from Smith.

Biden has some real shortcomings, and going "But Trump" just doesn't seem to be enough.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Trump sues hush money judge in last-ditch effort to stop criminal trial

Donald Trump intends to sue the judge overseeing the Manhattan hush money case against him in another last-ditch effort to stop his first-ever criminal trial, less than one week before jury selection is scheduled to begin.

A state appellate court docket indicates the former president has filed litigation against New York Justice Juan Merchan, who imposed a gag order preventing parties in the case from targeting members of the court, attorneys and their families. The documents remained under seal.

Mr Trump is expected to ask appeals court judges to block the gag order and move the case out of Manhattan, among the latest attempts to delay the proceedings after failing to stop the first among the four criminal trials he is expected to face in the coming months.
Last year, in the first criminal indictment against him, a grand jury charged the former president with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with repayments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged a hush money scheme to prevent the release of potentially compromising stories about Mr Trump and his affairs.

The case from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could rely on Cohen’s testimony that Mr Trump authorised his business to falsely file payments as legal expenses, part of an alleged effort to quash stories that could interfere with then-candidate Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to prosecutors.

The filings from Mr Trump’s legal team on Monday appeared on the docket hours after Mr Bragg’s office swatted down attorneys’ demands to remove the judge from the case, which the district attorney called an attempt to “pollute” the court and continue Mr Trump’s attacks “as part of a meritless effort to call the integrity of these proceedings into question.”

That motion represented “yet another last-ditch attempt to address [the] defendant’s real objective … to delay this proceeding indefinitely.”

Mr Trump’s attorneys similarly sued a judge last year to block gag orders in a sweeping civil fraud case that prevented the former president from disparaging court staff. Appeals judges rejected those requests, and gag orders have remained in place.

Judge Merchan’s order, issued hours after Mr Trump lashed out at his daughter on his Truth Social last month, blocks the former president from making any such statements “made with the intent to materially interfere” with any work in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial on 15 April.

Mr Bragg initially requested a limited gag order in February, citing Mr Trump’s “long history” of “inflammatory” remarks aimed at the prosecutors, judges, court staff and others wrapped up in his mountain of criminal and civil litigation.

The district attorney’s office also pointed to Mr Trump’s threatening social media posts, including a photo he posted that depicts him wielding a baseball bat at the back of Mr Bragg’s head.

The gag order request also noted that Mr Bragg’s office received at least two “terroristic mailings” that included envelopes with white powder.

Mr Trump “has a long history of making public and inflammatory remarks about the participants in various judicial proceedings against him, including jurors, witnesses, lawyers and court staff,” according to prosecutors, noting that such statements “pose a significant and imminent threat to the orderly administration of this criminal proceeding.”

Last week, the judge expanded the scope of the order to prohibit attacks against family members of court staff and attorneys involved in the case, citing Mr Trump’s “very real” threat to the trial’s integrity.

“The average observer must now, after hearing [Mr Trump’s] recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves but for their loved ones as well,” Judge Merchan wrote.

“Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice, and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law itself,” he added.

[Solauren]

Trumps actions remind me of an increasingly desperate man.

I think he knows he's screwed if he doesn't get elected as POTUS again (then then promptly pardons himself on everything he can, and pressures governors to do the same for State level charges), and that these criminal trials are going to screw with his chances of getting elected again.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm not even sure it's that nuanced, I get the impression it's more him thinking "oh fuck, consequences, I don't want those." He's talked/shouted his way out of everything so far, he just thinks he has to go harder.

[Rogue 9]

Oof. The Biden campaign is really leaning into the abortion issue.

[bilateralrope]

Meanwhile Trump has picked loyalty over competence for the RNC:

Trump’s RNC takeover triggers strife and staff exits as purge partly backfires

Presumptive Republican nominee installed allies to run party but loyalty tests have led to weakening of certain areas, including data

Hugo Lowell in Washington
Mon 8 Apr 2024 11.00 BST

Donald Trump’s allies installed to run the Republican National Committee have faced a tumultuous first month in charge, buffeted by staffing problems and operational headaches as they attempt to bring the party apparatus under the control of the Trump campaign before the 2024 election.

The internal strife at the RNC has prompted the Trump campaign to privately admonish its new leaders in recent weeks. And the move to orchestrate a purge may have partly backfired with far-reaching consequences for the RNC, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.

The Trump takeover of the RNC arrived with a show of force just days after the new chair, Michael Whatley, and the new co-chair Lara Trump were elected, when emails went out to entire teams at the organization informing them they could resign and reapply for their jobs, or be terminated.

The idea was to ensure there would be no overlap between the RNC and the Trump campaign, which already had robust political and communications teams, and to weed out any staffers who were not fully committed to Trump and the wider Maga movement.

But the threats of termination and the rumored loyalty tests – which turned out to be accurate when staffers were asked in job interviews if they thought the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, though there has been no evidence of election fraud – may have been too aggressive.

In the weeks that followed, although the new RNC leadership quietly extended offers to a majority of former staffers, with the exception of those who worked in the RNC political department, some staffers on crucial teams declined to return, the sources said.

The situation means the RNC has been left without people with deep knowledge of election operations at the Republican party’s central committee, and who were willing to work for salaries far lower than what they could earn in the private sector.

Bringing the RNC under the wing of the Trump campaign was supposed to generate synergies. While some of those efficiencies have been realized, the sources said, the potentially overly aggressive approach may have done damage elsewhere.

A spokesperson for the RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The loss of talent may be particularly notable on the RNC’s data team – increasingly important in presidential elections – which is being relocated out of RNC headquarters in Washington and to the Trump campaign’s headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida.

The new RNC leadership recently started offering the data team staffers housing within the Trump campaign campus, described informally as “Trump Village”, hoping that defraying residential costs and logistical concerns would be an incentive for them to stay on.

For some staffers, the residential component to the job may have had the opposite effect. Some staffers who declined return offers suggested they disliked the notion of living at work, which might also mean living alongside the most hardcore Trump campaign staffers.

Separately, while senior Trump campaign advisers have always said working on a presidential campaign means relocating to where the campaign is based, the notion of moving to Florida did not enthrall some ex-RNC staffers, who pointed out they thought they were working for the GOP.

The prospect of loyalty tests also appears to have unnerved some RNC staffers who declined to return to their old jobs.

RNC staffers have long known the way to answer the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen is to say there were “irregularities”, the fact that they were being quizzed made them think the Trump campaign inherently distrusted people from the RNC, and they would always have a target on their backs.

The one bright spot for the new RNC leaders since their takeover has been Trump recording his best fundraising month of 2024, now that the former president is working with the committee as part of a joint fundraising agreement.

Trump and the RNC pulled in $65.6m in March, the party announced last week. The party said that Trump, the RNC and their shared accounts now had $93.1m cash on hand for April, roughly double what they had a month earlier as they narrowed the cash gap with Joe Biden’s campaign coffers.

The joint fundraising agreement has been a priority for weeks. By doing joint fundraising, Trump and the RNC can accept donations as large as $814,600. During the Republican primary, Trump had been limited to taking checks with a maximum amount of $6,600 through his campaign.

Filtering people based on if they thought 2020 was stolen from Trump, then relocating the data team to Trump's campaign headquarters makes me think they are going to alter the data to tell Trump only what he wants to hear. Hopefully that damages his campaign enough.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Donald Trump says Arizona's abortion ban goes 'too far'

Donald Trump said Arizona's new abortion ban goes "too far" after the state's Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision in allowing the enforcement of a long-dormant law that bans nearly all abortions.

After a reporter asked the former US president on Wednesday if Arizona went "too far" Mr Trump responded with: "Yeah they did and it'll be straightened out and as you know, it’s all about states’ rights.”

The comments echo those made by current president and Mr Trump's presidential rival, Joe Biden.

The comments come days after Mr Trump said each state should decide its own rules on abortion in a video released on Monday. For months there had been mixed messages and speculation over his stance on the topic.

In the video, Mr Trump again took credit for the US Supreme Court's decision to end Roe v Wade in June 2022, saying that he was “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of the constitutional right to an abortion and he thanked the conservative justices who overturned it by name.

While he again articulated his support for three exceptions — in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk — he went on to describe the current legal landscape, in which different states have different restrictions.

The ruling in Arizona drastically changes the legal landscape within the state around terminating pregnancies.

The law, which predates Arizona’s existence as a state, provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother's life is "in jeopardy".

US Supreme Court preserves access to abortion pill for now
President Joe Biden has described the new abortion ban in Arizona as "dangerous" and "cruel".

Mr Biden said on Tuesday that the law "fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest", and described the Republican officials who enacted the legislation as being "committed to ripping away women’s freedom".

"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," he said.

The comments from both Mr Biden and Mr Trump come as both battle to win over American citizens in the run-up to the US presidential election in November.

“My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land — in this case, the law of the state," Mr Trump said in the video, which was released on his media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify any timings in terms of when abortion should be allowed, and declined to endorse a national cutoff.

Democrats immediately denounced the ruling in Arizona, blaming Mr Trump for the loss of abortion access after the US Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion.

Arizona’s highest court suggested doctors can be prosecuted under the 1864 law, though the opinion written by the court’s majority didn’t explicitly say that.

The law orders prosecution for anybody "who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument... with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life.”

How did Arizona reach this point?

The decision on Tuesday threw out an earlier lower-court decision that concluded doctors couldn’t be charged for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The law was enacted decades before Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912.

A court in Tucson had blocked its enforcement shortly after the US Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v Wade decision guaranteeing the constitutional right to an abortion.

Have you heard our new podcast Talking Politics? Every week Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda…


Roe v Wade was then overturned in June 2022, ending the protections for abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years.

After the ruling then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, successfully requested that a state judge lift an injunction that blocked enforcement of the 1864 ban.

The state Court of Appeals suspended the law as Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, urged the state’s high court to uphold the appellate court's decision.

What happens next?

Under a near-total ban, the number of abortions in Arizona is expected to drop drastically from about 1,100 every month, as estimated by a survey for the Society of Family Planning.

Last year abortion rights advocates began a push to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional right to abortion. If proponents collect enough signatures, Arizona would become the latest state to put the question of reproductive rights directly before voters.

The proposed constitutional amendment would guarantee abortion rights until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. It also would allow later abortions to save the mother’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.

What are other states doing?

Now that each state can make its own rules when it comes to abortion, there is huge variation in what is allowed from state to state.

Ohio enshrined the right to abortion in November in response to the overturning of Roe v Wade, meanwhile a hospital in Alabama paused IVF treatment in February in the wake of a ruling claiming frozen embryos are children.

In addition to Arizona the states that have made abortion illegal since the overturning of Roe v Wade are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia.

You know a state has crossed the line when fucking Donald Trump says they've gone too far.