Closing summary
In a speech on the Normandy coastline, Joe Biden honored the US soldiers who stormed the strategic Pointe du Hoc on D-day, and likened the war against Nazi Germany to today’s struggle against Vladimir Putin. The day before, Biden gave a rare sit-down interview to ABC News, and hit back at Donald Trump’s comment that his executive order on immigration was “weak and pathetic”. “Is he describing himself?” Biden quipped. In Washington DC, supreme court justice Clarence Thomas returned to the news when he belatedly disclosed that he had gone on two trips with conservative activist Harlan Crow – which generated much controversy among Democrats when they were first revealed last year.
Here’s what else happened today:
Trump raked in big bucks at a fundraiser hosted by tech figures in San Francisco.
Late-night hosts cracked wise about Biden’s age as the president visited D-day veterans who were even older than him.
The supreme court may issue more opinions next Thursday. Trump’s immunity petition and two major abortion cases remain pending before the conservative-dominated court.
Rudy Giuliani is looking to sell his apartment as he goes through bankruptcy.
More GOP senators are pledging not to work with the Democrats over Trump’s felony convictions.
Meanwhile, the ranks of Republican senators who have signed a pledge vowing not to work with Democrats on issues like spending bills and confirming judges in protest of Donald Trump’s conviction have grown.
Eight Republicans initially signed on after a jury found Trump guilty of felony business fraud charges last week, and the number has now grown to 14, Utah’s Mike Lee announced:
🔥 🔥 🔥
— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) June 7, 2024
UPDATE: three cheers for @SenatorHagerty for joining our pledge to stop the lawless Biden agenda dead in its tracks.
Has your Senator signed? pic.twitter.com/3DnHvCX4az
Donald Trump’s felony conviction may have been a boon for his fundraising, but as the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports, it may be costing him support in his general election rematch against Joe Biden:
After a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last week, Republicans rallied around the former president, insisting the verdict would only damage Joe Biden’s standing in the presidential election.
But some new polling data casts doubt upon that argument, as a small but crucial number of Americans in key voting blocs appear to be moving toward Biden in the aftermath of the verdict.
According to a post-verdict analysis of nearly 2,000 interviews with voters who previously participated in New York Times/Siena College surveys, Trump’s advantage over the president has narrowed from three points to one point. That shift may seem insignificant, but it could prove decisive in a close presidential election, as is expected in this year’s contest. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across three battleground states prevented a tie in the electoral college.
Perhaps more worrisome for Trump is the specific areas where he appears to be bleeding support. According to the Times analysis, disengaged Democratic-leaning voters and those who dislike both Trump and Biden were more likely to say that the verdict made them reconsider their options in the election.
Donald Trump may be raking in the dough, but the same cannot be said for some of his closest allies.
His attorney Rudy Giuliani is moving to sell his Manhattan apartment, after he late last year filed for bankruptcy:
Bankruptcy court approves Rudy Giuliani hiring a broker to sell his Manhattan apartment pic.twitter.com/o4SVc43Yk7
— Sam Levine (@srl) June 7, 2024
Giuliani’s financial woes intensified in December, when two Georgia election workers won a massive defamation judgment against him after he falsely claimed they tampered with ballots in the swing state after the 2020 election:
Trump rakes in $12m with San Francisco fundraiser
San Francisco is known for its liberal politics, but Donald Trump yesterday brought in $12m from a fundraiser in the city hosted by tech and crypto entrepreneurs friendly to his campaign to the White House, Reuters reports.
Trump has seen a fundraising surge following his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges in New York. Here’s more from Reuters about how yesterday’s fundraiser, which brought Trump-flag waving supporters to San Francisco’s chilly, foggy streets, came about:
Venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, as well as Sacks’ wife Jacqueline, held the reception and dinner with Trump at the Sacks’ swanky mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.
The gathering - where top tickets were $500,000 per couple - was sold out, a source with knowledge of the fundraiser told Reuters. It raised some $12 million, according to Republican National Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon and another source.
While San Francisco is heavily liberal - Democrat Joe Biden won 85% of the city’s vote in the 2020 election against then-President Trump - a growing number of high-profile local venture capitalists and crypto investors have thrown their support behind Trump ahead of his November rematch against Biden.
“President Trump is relaxed, happy, and cracking jokes about AI,” Dhillon, a conservative lawyer, posted on X from the event.
Executives from crypto exchange Coinbase, crypto investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and other crypto leaders were in attendance, Dhillon added. Trump talked about how Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has warned about crypto being used by scam investors and criminals, is “going after crypto,” according to Dhillon.
Biden last week vetoed what he described as a Republican-led resolution that would “inappropriately constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues” relating to cryptocurrency assets.
Trevor Traina, a San Francisco-based tech executive and former Trump ambassador to Austria, said business regulations implemented during Biden’s presidency had alienated some people in the tech industry.
Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has just released a television advertisement slamming Donald Trump for comments it characterizes as derogatory towards the US military and its veterans.
Its release comes after the president spent the last couple of days marking the 80th anniversary of D-day, including with a speech earlier today about the importance of democracy. See the ad here:
Supreme court likely to issue new opinions 13 June
The supreme court may issue another batch of opinions on Thursday, 13 June, when it will next convene for a non-argument session.
The conservative-dominated body has a number of high-profile matters it has yet to weigh in on. These include Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and two cases dealing with abortion access. One deals with whether abortion pill mifepristone can remain available, and the other over whether the Biden administration can require federally funded hospitals carry out abortions in emergencies, even in states with bans on the procedure.
And despite the demands of Democrats, conservative justice Samuel Alito is poised to consider Trump’s immunity case, even though reports emerged that flags supporting rightwing causes were displayed at his properties.
Other justices cashed in on book deals.
Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh, collected $340,000 in royalties from the Javelin Group and Regnery Publishing for a book that has not yet been published and Neil Gorsuch, reported $250,000 from royalties for his book “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” which will be published by HarperCollins.
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Also included in newly released annual reports of the finances of the supreme court justices are details surrounding Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who collected nearly $900,000 last year for her upcoming memoir and was gifted four Beyoncé concert tickets by the singer valued $3,700.
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Thomas belatedly reported the trips paid for by Crow, including a hotel room in Bali, Indonesia as well as food and lodging in Sonoma County, California, a region known for its fine wine.
Thomas’s amendments to include Crow’s gifts are part of the financial disclosures of almost all nine supreme court justices that were released on Friday. (Justice Alito received a nearly three-month extension to release his).
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Clarence Thomas’s acknowledgement of travel with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow comes after Democrats recently demanded supreme court justice Samuel Alito recuse himself from cases dealing with the 2020 election after two flags linked to rightwing causes were reported to have flown at his properties. Last week, Alito declined to that, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:
Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from supreme court cases involving the former president Donald Trump and January 6 defendants because of the controversy over flags that flew over his homes.
In letters to members of Congress on Wednesday, Alito says his wife was responsible for flying an upside-down US flag over his home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house last year.
Neither incident merits his recusal, he wrote.
“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he wrote.
The court is considering two major cases related to the 6 January 2021 attack by a mob of Trump supporters on the Capitol, including charges faced by the rioters and whether the former president has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.
Alito has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.
The New York Times reported that an inverted American flag was seen at Alito’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.
Conservative supreme court justice Thomas acknowledges travel with rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow - report
Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, has belatedly acknowledged that he went on two trips paid for by rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, NBC News reports.
The admission comes in an amended financial disclosure covering 2019:
In new financial disclosure report, Justice Thomas amends 2019 report to disclose trips with Harlan Crow. Both of these I believe were previously reported on by ProPublica. pic.twitter.com/0FmOkzH3BW
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) June 7, 2024
Last year, ProPublica broke the story of the entanglements between Thomas and other conservative supreme court justices, including Samuel Alito, and rightwing figures with interests before the court such as Crow.
It drew objections from Democrats, who called for the supreme court to adopt an enforceable ethics code. But their efforts to hold the conservative-dominated body to account have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the justices, and the fact that they do not have the votes to pass legislation addressing the court.
In attendance for Joe Biden’s speech earlier at Pointe du Hoc was John Wardell, a 99-year-old veteran who came ashore about a week-and-a-half after D-Day.
For late-night talkshow hosts, Biden’s visit with World War II veterans was the perfect opportunity to crack wise about the president’s advanced age. Here’s our round-up of their zingers:
Before he began speaking at Pointe du Hoc, Joe Biden was given a tour of the site by its superintendent, Scott Desjardins.
The White House pool reporter covering the president today spoke to Desjardins, who said Biden was impressed by the bravery of the US army rangers that scaled the promontory and fought off German counter attacks for two-and-a-half days.
“He was impressed of course. This is an impressive story. It’s hard not to be impressed,” said Desjardins, who noted Biden saw a link to the importance of Nato:
He made it very clear that this is required. No one can go at this alone anymore.
Joe Biden spoke from atop a former German bunker at Pointe du Hoc, a promontory that was a site of a fierce battle on D-Day:
Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan spoke from the very same spot:
When it comes to marking D-day’s anniversary, times have certainly changed, as C-SPAN points out.
Joe Biden’s speech today was mostly about the importance of democracy, though he did name drop Vladimir Putin, and liken the threat he poses to Europe to that of the Nazis.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy joined Biden and other western leaders for the commemoration in France, but when Barack Obama marked the occasion 10 years ago, Putin was in attendance:
D-Day 70th anniversary: Putin
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 7, 2024
D-Day 80th anniversary: Zelensky pic.twitter.com/f48r07o4g8
'I simply refuse to believe that America's greatness is a thing of the past' - Biden
As Joe Biden wrapped up his speech, he said the rangers who stormed Pointe du Hoc would want Americans to believe in the importance of democracy.
“I stand here today as the first President to come to Pointe du Hoc when none of those 225 brave men who scaled this cliff on D-day are still alive,” the president said.
“I‘m here to tell you, with them gone, the wind we hear coming off this ocean will not fade. It will grow louder as we gather here today.”
Biden continued:
So, listen to the echoes of their voices. To hear them, because they are summoning us, and they’re summoning us now.
They ask us, what will we do? They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs, they’re asking us to stay true what America stands for. They’re not asking us to give or risk our lives, but they are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves. They’re not asking us to do their job. They’re asking us to do our job, to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy, to stand up (to) aggression abroad and at home, to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
My fellow Americans, I refuse to believe, I simply refuse to believe that America’s greatness is a thing of the past.
Biden compares fight against Hitler to resisting Putin
Joe Biden compared the storming of Normandy’s beaches that led to the allies defeating the Nazis in Europe to the campaign to oppose Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“Every Marine who stormed this beaches decided a feared dictator, who had conquered a continent, had finally met his match. Because of them, the war turned. They stood against Hitler’s aggression,” Biden said.
He then turned to the challenges of today:
Does anyone doubt that they would want America to stand up against Putin’s aggression here in Europe today? They stormed the beaches alongside their allies. Does anyone believe these rangers want America to go alone today?
They fought to vanquish a hateful ideology the 30s and 40s. Does anyone doubt they wouldn’t move heaven and earth to vanquish hateful ideologies of today? These rangers put mission and country above themselves. Does anyone believe they would exact any less from every American today?
These rangers remembered with reverence those who gave their lives in battle. Could they, or anyone, ever imagine that America wouldn’t do the same?
Biden began by recounting the effort by US army rangers on D-day to take Point du Hoc, where they believed Nazi artillery that could threaten the Normandy landings were stationed.
“All they knew was time was of the essence, and only 30 minutes, 30 minutes to eliminate the guns high in this cliff, guns that could halt the Allied invasion before it even began,” Biden said.
He recounted the tale:
These were American Rangers. They were ready. They ran toward the cliffs, and mines planted on the beach by field marshal … Rommel exploded around them, but still they kept coming. Gunfire rained above them, but still they kept coming. Grenades thrown from above exploded against the cliff, but still they kept coming. Within minutes, they reached the base of this cliff. They launched their ladders, the ropes and grappling hooks, and they began to climb. When the Nazis cut their ladders, the rangers used the ropes. When the Nazis cut the ropes, the rangers used their hands and inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard, the rangers clawed literally clogged their way up this mighty precipice until the last they reached the top.
Biden’s at the podium now.
He was wearing his aviators, but just took them off.
Joe Biden has appeared, and will soon begin his speech at Normandy’s Pointe du Hoc on democracy.
He is about 40 minutes late to starting the address. Cameras show the president walking along the edge of the promontory, along with someone who looks like a local official or guide, and is pointing out features to Biden.
Beyond marking the anniversary of D-day, Joe Biden is using his visit to Normandy to rally support for Ukraine. Today, the Guardian’s Angelique Chrisafis reports that he apologized to Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the delay in getting the country military aid:
The US president, Joe Biden, has apologised publicly to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for the months of delay in American military assistance that allowed Russia to make gains on the battlefield, and announced a further $225m (£177m) in military aid to Ukraine.
Meeting Zelenskiy in Paris on Friday, Biden told him: “You haven’t bowed down, you haven’t yielded at all, you continue to fight in a way that is … just remarkable. We are not going to walk away from you.”
Biden said: “I apologise for those weeks of not knowing” what was going to happen in terms of funding. He was referring to the uncertainty while Congress waited six months before sending a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine in April. “Some of our very conservative members [of Congress] were holding it up. But we got it done, finally,” he added.
Biden said the American people were standing by Ukraine for the long haul. “We’re still in. Completely. Thoroughly.”
In his forthcoming speech from Normandy’s Point du Hoc, Joe Biden will remind Americans and the world of how difficult it can be to maintain a democracy.
“When we talk about democracy – American democracy – we often talk big ideas like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What we don’t talk about enough is how hard it is,” the president will say, according to excerpts released by the White House.
“American democracy asks the hardest of things: to believe that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. So democracy begins with each of us.”
Biden to address democracy in Normandy speech
We’re a few minutes away from Joe Biden delivering a speech on the Normandy coastline, where the White House says the theme will be democracy – meaning the president may take more shots, veiled or unveiled, at Donald Trump and his authoritarian plans.
Biden will speak from Pointe du Hoc, a strategic promontory that was a key objective for US forces during the D-day invasion, and gained renewed attention four decades later when Ronald Reagan delivered a notable address from the point. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh:
On Friday, Biden is due to speak at Pointe du Hoc, where 80 years ago 225 US Rangers scaled 35-metre sheer cliffs using rope ladders shot over the top to capture a strategically situated artillery bunker. It was perhaps the most dangerous single mission on D-day, and casualties were severe. Only 90 were still able to fight when a count was taken a couple of days later.
There is almost certainly another reason for the location of Biden’s address, given the US president has an election to fight. Forty years ago a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, spoke on the cliffs at the same battle site, and in front of an audience of military veterans he justified the struggle of the day in terms not obviously recognisable in Donald Trump’s Republican worldview.
“We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: it is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost,” Reagan declared – very different to Trump’s comments that he would refuse to defend Nato members who do not spend enough on defence, never mind previous threats to quit the alliance altogether.
'Is he describing himself? Weak and pathetic?' Biden quips as rhetorical war against Trump heats up
Joe Biden yesterday gave an interview to ABC News during his visit to France. The president was in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day, but American politics are never far from his mind, and Biden was asked about the executive order he signed before departing Washington DC this week, which will shut the US southern border to new asylum seekers when it becomes “overwhelmed”.
Interviewer David Muir wanted Biden’s reaction to comments from Donald Trump that the order was “weak and pathetic”. The president seized on the opportunity to do something he and his re-election campaign have done with increasing regularity: insult the former president. Here’s what Biden said:
Is he describing himself? Weak and pathetic? Come on, look, everybody knows what’s happened. We had a deal, it was much broader than this, much better, much more accepted, across the board, and he got on the phone and told the Republicans, don’t support it. It will hurt me, it will help Biden.
He is referring to the February episode in which Trump intervened with Republicans to get them to scuttle a bipartisan compromise to tighten immigration policy – reportedly so he could campaign on solving the problem himself, if elected.
Biden’s comments are also a sign of how the president is not holding back in laying into Trump, who since 2015 has distinguished himself with his willingness to call people names. Earlier this year, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt took a look at the strategy:
Updated
Trump calls for the indictment of January 6 committee members as Biden fires back over immigration attacks
Good morning, US politics blog readers.
Yesterday, Steve Bannon’s nearly two-year-long effort to avoid going to jail for defying the House committee investigating the January 6 attack appeared to reach its end, when a judge ordered him to begin his four-month jail sentence by 1 July. Bannon was a former top White House adviser to Donald Trump and instrumental in crafting his Maga ideology. In response to the judge’s decision, the ex-president posted on Truth Social that the committee’s members should be indicted. Add that to the list of things Trump has threatened to do if he returns to the White House.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is in France to participate in events marking the 80th anniversary of D-day. In an interview yesterday with ABC News, he was asked about Trump’s comment that his order this week to curb the flow of asylum seekers was “weak and pathetic”. “Is he describing himself?” the president shot back.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Biden is set to speak at 10am ET on democracy at Pointe du Hoc, a promontory on the Normandy coast where a fierce battle took place on D-day.
The US economy added 272,000 jobs in May, much more than expected, even as unemployment increased slightly. Read more here.
Trump sat for an interview with television personality Dr Phil – seemingly in front of the stage at Mar-a-Lago where classified documents were found, as the Biden campaign is eager to point out.
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