New York prosecutors ask judge to uphold Trump"s hush-money conviction Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports. Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP: The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case. Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity. Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution. The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing. Family members of American hostages being held captive in Gaza said they held “productive and honest” discussions with Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House today. Relatives said they “came today with a sense of urgency” and emphasized the need to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that could result in the release of their loved ones, AP reported. They said: We got absolute commitment from the Biden administration and from prime minister Netanyahu that they understand the urgency of this moment. They added that they were more optimistic about a deal than they have been in months. Nikki Haley, in the CNN interview, criticized Republicans who have referred to Kamala Harris as a “DEI” candidate. “It’s not helpful,” the former South Carolina governor said. There’s so many issues we can talk about when it comes to Kamala Harris that it doesn’t matter what she looks like. It matters what she’s said, what she’s fought for, and the lack of results that she’s had because of it. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, offered no apologies for the “tough things” she said about Donald Trump during the Republican primary race, but said she did not doubt her decision to support the former president in the November election. Haley, in her first interview since endorsing Trump, told CNN that she was not surprised by Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. “I didn’t take happiness in it,” Haley said. There is an issue we have in DC, where people will go into office and they won’t let go. And then their staffers and their family keep propping them up, and it’s a problem for the American people. She argued that the Democrats’ decision to put forward Kamala Harris as their nominee would give them “the weakest candidate they could put in”. Harris “is much more progressive than Joe Biden ever was”, Haley said, adding: The fact they put in Kamala Harris – kudos for putting in someone younger – the fact that you put in one of the most liberal politicians you probably could have put in, it’s going to be an issue. Liberal justice Elena Kagan announces support for enforcing supreme court ethics code – report Elena Kagan, a member of the three-justice liberal minority on the supreme court, said she would support creating an enforcement mechanism for its recently adopted code of ethics, Bloomberg Law reports. The nation’s highest court last year adopted a code setting out “rules and principles that guide the conduct of members of the court” following media reports of connections between conservative justices and parties with cases before the judges. However, the code was criticized for having no enforcement mechanism, leaving the judges to essentially enforce it on themselves. According to Bloomberg Law, Kagan told a judicial conference in California that if chief justice John Roberts creates “some sort of committee of highly respected judges with a great deal of experience and a reputation for fairness” to enforce the code, she would approve. In the months since the code was adopted, conservative justice Samuel Alito was reported to have flown flags connected to rightwing causes at his property, sparking further uproar over the court’s impartiality. Biden meets with Netanyahu and families of American hostages Joe Biden greeted Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon at the White House, the day after the Israeli prime minister addressed Congress in a speech boycotted and criticized by many of the president’s fellow Democrats: “We’ve known each other for 40 years, and you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years. So, from a proud Zionist Jew to a proud Zionist Irish American I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel. I look forward to discussing with you today thank you,” Netanyahu told Biden in the Oval Office. He was the first foreign leader to meet the US president since he abandoned his bid for a second term. The two leaders then met in private with the families of Americans taken hostage by Hamas in the 7 October attack. Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet separately with Netanyahu this afternoon. In addition to catching up to Donald Trump in polls of voters nationwide, the Guardian’s Melissa Hellmann reports that Kamala Harris is much more trusted than the former president among African Americans: A vast majority of Black Americans trust Kamala Harris and distrust Donald Trump – 71% compared to 5% – according to the largest-known survey of Black Americans since the Reconstruction era. The survey of 211,219 Black people across all 50 states showed that the presumptive Democratic nominee may have a higher chance of winning over Black voters than the Republican candidate. At a virtual press conference on Thursday afternoon, the Black-led innovation thinktank Black Futures Lab, revealed findings from its 2023 Black Census, which was conducted with the help of 50 Black-led grassroots organizations and national partners across the country from February 2022 to October 2023. The latest survey garnered seven times the respondents from the first census in 2018, which received 30,000 responses. Two-thirds of the respondents were women, a majority were from the south, and nearly half were from 45 to 64 years old. Black Futures Lab believes that the census results will help inform voter mobilization efforts ahead of presidential and local elections. “For us to be powerful in politics, we must control the agenda,” said Black Futures Lab’s field director Natishia June at the press conference. “This is why the Black Census is crucial.” New York prosecutors ask judge to uphold Trump"s hush-money conviction Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports. Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP: The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case. Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity. Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution. The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing. Harris accuses Trump of "backpedaling" on presidential debate planned for September In remarks to reporters as she deplaned after returning to Washington DC, Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of trying to cancel the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for 10 September. “I’m ready to debate Donald Trump. I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” the vice-president said. “Now, here he is backpedaling and I’m ready and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. And so, I’m ready to go.” The polls published by the New York Times and Siena College over the past year have been among the most talked about surveys in US politics – perhaps because they have typically shown Joe Biden struggling to match Donald Trump’s support. In an analysis of their latest batch of data, which is the first with Kamala Harris as the Democratic contender, Nate Cohn, the Times’s chief political analyst, writes that this poll is much different than those that came before it. Here’s why: Mr. Trump hits a high in popularity. Overall, 48 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of him, up from 42 percent in our last poll (taken after the debate but before the convention and assassination attempt). It’s his highest favorable number in a Times/Siena poll, which previously always found his favorable ratings between 39 percent and 45 percent. Ms. Harris is surging. In fact, her ratings have increased even more than Mr. Trump’s. Overall, 46 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of her, up from 36 percent when we last asked about her in February. Only 49 percent have an unfavorable view, down from 54 percent in our last measure. As important, her favorable rating is higher than Mr. Biden’s. In fact, it’s higher than his standing in any Times/Siena poll since September 2022, which so happens to be the last time Mr. Biden led a Times/Siena national poll of registered voters. The national political environment is a little brighter. The share of voters who say the country is on the “right track” is up to 27 percent – hardly a bright and smiley public, but still the highest since the midterm elections in 2022. Mr. Biden’s approval and favorable ratings are up as well. The ranks of the double haters have dwindled: With both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump riding high, the number of voters who dislike both candidates has plunged to 8 percent, down from 20 percent in Times/Siena polls so far this year. He concludes with: With all of these underlying changes in the attitudes about the candidates, there’s no reason to assume that this familiar Trump +1 result means that the race has simply returned to where it stood before the debate. For now, these developments have mostly canceled out, but whether that will still be true in a few weeks is much harder to say. Polls show Harris catching up to Trump in voter support New polling indicates Kamala Harris has re-engaged voters turned off by Joe Biden’s candidacy, and is vying closely against Donald Trump in crucial swing states. While it’s unclear if the vice-president has the overall advantage, the data is a reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who had grown nervous after months of polling had showed Biden at best tied, or at worst trailing, Trump nationally and in the states along the Great Lakes and in the southern Sun belt whose voters are set to decide the election. The closely watched New York Times/Siena College poll found that among likely voters nationwide, Trump has only a one-point lead. In their previous survey following the Trump-Biden debate, the former president led by six points: Emerson College found that Trump leads in most swing states, albeit narrowly and with Wisconsin tied: However, that data was far better than Biden’s numbers in those states the last time Emerson polled voters on his candidacy. “Harris has recovered a portion of the vote for the Democrats on the presidential ticket since the fallout after the June 27 debate,” said executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball. “Harris’ numbers now reflect similar support levels to those of Biden back in March.” Some Democratic and labor leaders from battleground states joined the DNC press call today, and reported genuine and widespread enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. “There’s a lot of excitement on the ground,” said Yolanda Bejarano, chair of the Arizona Democratic party. “We are seeing just a lot of folks coming out, trying to find out what they can do to volunteer, to help get Vice-President Harris elected.” Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, described the environment in the battleground state as “electric” and echoed Harris’s message that Americans “won’t go back” to a time of fewer rights. “Trump was devastating to the auto industry and auto workers here in Michigan. They are not going to go backwards. We’re moving forward,” Bieber said. “President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been the biggest supporters of union workers and the auto industry here in Michigan, and people are fired up. I’ve been doing this stuff a long time now, and I’ve never seen the energy and excitement as I am right now.” The Democratic national committee held a press call today to attack Donald Trump and JD Vance for their “anti-worker” agenda, after Republicans spent much of their convention pitching themselves as economic populists. “It’s more of that trickle-down economic fairytale that has never worked. It has gutted so much of our economy. It’s hurt working people; it’s hurt the labor movement,” said Congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania. “It’s been great for big corporations and billionaires and Wall Street. It is fiscally irresponsible, and we can’t let it happen again.” Touting the legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, Deluzio argued Kamala Harris would continue the president’s pro-labor record if she wins in November. “We’re going to take more strong action to bring home offshore jobs, to bring home more manufacturing, to defend the ability and the freedom for folks to form and join the union,” Deluzio said. “That’s the backbone of the union way of life.” Republican congressman who examined Trump"s ear insists it was struck by bullet Republican congressman and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson accused the FBI director, Christopher Wray, of making a “politically motived move” when he told Congress that it was not yet clear if the former president was hit by a bullet or shrapnel after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania. Following the assassination attempt, Jackson issued a memo offering some details of the wound Trump suffered. Before we get into what he said about the FBI director, it’s worth noting that Jackson denied that Trump had contracted Covid-19 back in 2020, before being refuted by an official in the then-president’s administration.