Hello there, and welcome to the Guardian’s brand new US election newsletter. I hope you’re having a nice week.
It’s less than six months until election day, and Donald Trump, when he’s not in court or looking at racing cars, is spending time weighing his vice-presidential pick. It’s becoming quite the spectacle.
But first, some of the happenings in US politics.
Here’s what you need to know …
1. I don’t feel so good
Donald Trump’s trial over hush-money payments to an adult film star saw Stormy Daniels recall her sexual encounter with the president in front of a presumably nauseous Manhattan courtroom. Will this trial – and the three others he faces – torpedo Trump’s election chances? One poll this week found that it will depend on whether he is convicted. About 80% of Trump’s supporters would definitely stick with him if he becomes a felon, while 16% would “reconsider” their support. Just 4% say they would definitely ditch him.
2. Biden gives antisemitism speech
In a speech on Tuesday at a Holocaust remembrance event, Joe Biden condemned what he called the “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world”, amid widespread student protests over American support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Thousands of students have been arrested around the US, during a frequently militaristic police response. Republicans have tried to use the unrest to paint Biden as weak and sow division among Democratic voters.
3. TikTok hits back after US government crackdown
TikTok and its parent company are suing the US government after Biden signed bipartisan legislation which could potentially ban the app from the US if it is not sold to another owner. It comes as Russian state-affiliated accounts have used TikTok to draw attention to Biden’s age and immigration policies. Critics have said ByteDance, TikTok’s China-based parent company, could also collect sensitive information about Americans. But others – including TikTok – say the US is unfairly singling out the social media platform, potentially hurting free speech and independent content makers. The debacle is fraught in an election year when many young people get news from TikTok, and Biden himself has a campaign account.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
The election is in November, and Donald Trump has yet to decide on his vice-presidential candidate. That’s not unusual – assuming he’s not in prison by then, he’s got plenty of time – but what is kind of new is the very public auditioning for the role.
Trump summoned several of the candidates to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, where he forced them to parade around on stage, in what sounds like a version of the Miss Universe competition he used to haunt.
But the contenders, who range from long-time sycophants to more recent converts, have been doing some parading of their own.
Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who ran for president against Trump in 2016 (Trump dubbed him “Little Marco”, Rubio suggested Trump had a small penis, but the two have since made up) has been near-ever present on TV in recent weeks, as has Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman who was once seen as a sober legislator, but has since evolved into a Trump disciple.
Doug Burgum – recently dubbed “less interesting than a wooden post” – and Tim Scott, who both ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination this year, have also been showing up on TV shows to defend Trump’s legal entanglements and threats to undermine the election.
There’s also JD Vance, a big-faced beardy man who once believed Trump to be an “idiot” but has since changed his mind, and Byron Donalds, who with Scott is one of the five Black Republicans in Congress.
One thing appears to be certain: it will not be Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who has dominated headlines after admitting that she shot and killed her dog in a gravel pit.
Will the identity of Trump’s running mate really make a difference?
In 2016, Trump was viewed with suspicion by some evangelical voters – voters he needed to come out in droves for him to defeat Hillary Clinton. That’s why he chose Mike Pence, a devout Christian who just released a book that is literally called So Help Me God.
But religious Republicans have pretty much made their peace with Trump since then – largely because the supreme court he appointed overturned the federal right to abortion.
Reports indicate that what Trump is really looking for is an uber-loyal attack dog, someone who can tear into Trump’s critics on air, before coming back to the White House to quietly snuggle at his feet.
It would be easy to see a vice-president as inconsequential. But since the US became a thing, nine vice-presidents have stepped into the top job: eight times because the sitting president died, and once because the president – Richard Nixon – resigned. Without wanting to be too macabre, Donald Trump is quite old, and is not known as a healthy eater. (In the name of Journalism I once lived like Trump for a week. I genuinely think it took years off my life.)
Anyway: some of these people might fancy their chances of ascending to the throne.
On the road
A dispatch from our Washington bureau chief, David Smith:
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? OK, it’s a plane, with “TRUMP” written in giant gold letters on the side. I watched the Boeing 757 dubbed “Trump Force One” fly into Freeland, Michigan, last week, accompanied by the booming soundtrack of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun.
It reminded me that the Trump Show has always been about reality versus fantasy. Reality for Trump right now is hour after hour sitting in a cold, dingy New York courtroom. Fantasy is stepping out of his private jet into afternoon sunshine and the warm glow of a campaign rally where the crowd chants his name.
The demographics were telling: overwhelmingly white and dominated by retirees. Every Trump supporter I interviewed is convinced that the trial in New York is a witch-hunt designed to hobble his election chances. When I asked about his dictatorial ambitions, they brushed the question aside and preferred the word “leader”.
Who had the worst week?
On Monday Judge Juan Merchan, handling Trump’s hush-money payments trial, said he “will have to consider a jail sanction” if Trump doesn’t stop publicly criticizing witnesses and the jury. But if Monday was bad for Trump, Tuesday was worse.
“I had my clothes and my shoes off, I believe my bra, however, was still on. We were in the missionary position …” so went the testimony of Stormy Daniels, who was allegedly paid $130,000 to remain quiet about the claimed encounter, which she says took place in 2006, a year after Trump married his wife Melania. (Trump denies having sex with Daniels.)
Daniels said that Trump told her she reminded him of Ivanka Trump, his daughter, before the two became intimate. Asked by the prosecution whether the encounter with Trump was “brief”, Daniels said: “Yes.”
‘It’s my favorite book’
I spent no short amount of time last week reading the God Bless the USA Bible, a special version of the holy text Trump is hawking online. If you enjoy the Bible, but feel like it is missing images of American flags and bald eagles, then this is the book for you.
If, however, you want a Bible without sticky pages, which hasn’t been dubbed “blasphemous”, and which doesn’t cost $60, then maybe give it a pass.
Read the full story here.
Elsewhere in US politics
• Milwaukee is replacing its top election official, Sam Levine and Alice Herman write, which means “there will be a new head of elections in one of the most critical cities in a key battleground state”. Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes in 2020.
• Bernie Sanders won more than 13m votes in the 2016 presidential primary, as his brand of democratic socialism inspired young people across the country. He didn’t win, of course, but Martin Pengelly reports that Sanders plans to run for re-election to the Senate.
• Israeli troops have now begun their invasion of Rafah in Gaza, highlighting what Julian Borger called “a moment of truth for Biden’s policy on Israel and the Palestinians”. Biden had called the heavily populated area a “red line” and warned Israel of severe civilian casualties if it invaded.
