Closing summary
Almost two years after he was first found guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6 committee, a federal judge today ordered Steve Bannon, an influential figure in Donald Trump’s Maga movement, to begin serving his four-month sentence by 1 July. In a defiant speech outside the courthouse, he accused the justice department of using his case to retaliate against Trump, and predicted a big win for Republicans in the November presidential election. Speaking of Trump, the former president gave an interview to Fox News last night, where he argued he “would have every right to go after” political adversaries like Joe Biden, if he is returned to the White House. In response, the Biden campaign said Trump was “visibly rattled” by his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges.
Here’s what else happened today:
The supreme court released a new batch of opinions, which did not include much-awaited decisions on Trump’s petition for immunity from federal prosecution over his 2020 election meddling, and two cases dealing with abortion access.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Milwaukee over restrictions on protesters ahead of the Republican National Convention.
Trump called for the supreme court to overturn his conviction on felony charges connected to falsifying documents related to hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election.
Hunter Biden’s federal gun charges trial continues in Delaware, with testimony from the widow of his late brother, Beau Biden.
The NAACP civil rights group asked Biden to halt all shipments of weapons to Israel.
Joe Biden does not do too many sitdown interviews with reporters, but took questions from ABC News during his visit to France for the D-day anniversary.
He was asked about his recent decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied weaponry to strike inside Russia. Here’s what he had to say:
“[Putin's] concerned me for 40 years. He's not a decent man.”
— The Recount (@therecount) June 6, 2024
— President Biden, in an ABC News exclusive, when asked whether he's concerned about Putin vowing retaliation for NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their arms inside Russia pic.twitter.com/ipfOFMNVjT
Here’s more on the president’s decision, which comes as Russia steps up attacks aimed at the city of Kharkiv:
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Rights group announces lawsuit against Milwaukee over RNC protest restrictions
The American Civil Liberties Union said this morning it has filed a lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee over restrictions on protesters at the Republican National Convention that it says violate the first amendment.
The convention, beginning on 15 July, will see thousands of delegates converge on the city’s Fiserv Forum and culminate in Donald Trump formally accepting the party’s nomination. Various groups have already announced plans to protest the event, and the ACLU claims the city’s restrictions on where they can do that are not in line with the constitution.
Here’s more:
BREAKING: We sued the City of Milwaukee for establishing unconstitutional protest rules that violate the First Amendment rights of people planning to protest during the Republican National Convention next month. pic.twitter.com/FQXjL3b83f
— ACLU of Wisconsin (@ACLUofWisconsin) June 6, 2024
We’re representing the Coalition to March on the RNC, a group of protesters that applied for a parade permit over a year ago. With just six weeks before the RNC, Milwaukee has neither approved the permit nor identified a parade route whatsoever.
— ACLU of Wisconsin (@ACLUofWisconsin) June 6, 2024
But the city is limiting demonstrators to an undisclosed parade route somewhere in a 90-square block area around Fiserv Forum. Protesters have a right to demonstrate within “sight and sound” of an event, and these additional rules will render them unseen and unheard.
— ACLU of Wisconsin (@ACLUofWisconsin) June 6, 2024
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You’re not hearing too much about Joe Biden on this blog today, because the US president is in France to mark the anniversary of D-day, and call for support for Ukraine. The Guardian’s Leonie Chao-Fong has the scoop:
Joe Biden has marked the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings in Normandy with an impassioned call to western allies to continue supporting Ukraine in the face of the “unending struggle between dictatorship and freedom”.
Speaking on Thursday at a ceremony at the Normandy American cemetery attended by his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and dozens of surviving veterans from the second world war, Biden drew parallels between the Allied troops who fought to free Europe and the alliance of nations that came together to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.
The president warned that democracy was under great threat than at any time since the end of second world war. Describing Vladimir Putin as a “tyrant bent on domination”, Biden said the Russian leader and “the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked.
“To surrender to bullies, to bow to dictators, is simply unthinkable,” Biden said. “If we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there, Ukraine’s neighbours will be threatened, all of Europe will be threatened.”
Joe Biden criticized the international criminal court last month, after its chief prosecutor, Karim Kham, requested arrest warrants for two of Israel’s top leaders over their actions during the war in Gaza.
That did not sit well with actor George Clooney, whose wife, Amal Clooney, worked on the case. He called up the White House to make his displeasure known, the Washington Post reports:
Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, to express concern about Biden’s denunciation of arrest warrants sought by ICC prosecutors for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, especially his use of the word “outrageous.” The prosecutors also sought warrants for top Hamas leaders.
The actor was also upset about the administration’s initial openness to imposing sanctions on the ICC because his wife might be subject to the penalties, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
Clooney’s call came just weeks before he is set to appear at a fundraiser for Biden’s reelection campaign next Saturday in Los Angeles. His concerns spread throughout Biden’s orbit, leaving some officials to worry that the high-profile actor would withdraw from participating in the marquee fundraiser, which will also feature former president Barack Obama, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel and actress Julia Roberts.
Biden has supported Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, despite a wave of protests from activists upset by the civilian toll caused the invasion of Gaza. Here’s more about why the president objected to the ICC chief prosecutor’s arrest warrant application:
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Johnson’s statement comes after a recent report from the Washington Post which revealed that Israeli fighter jets used US munitions to strike a UN school located in Gaza on Thursday.
Two weapons experts verified the weapons’ type to the Post, using footage of debris from the attack.
Here’s more from the Post’s Louisa Loveluck, Niha Masih, Hajar Harb, Kyle Melnick and Miriam Berger:
Israeli fighter jets appear to have used US-made munitions in a strike that killed dozens of people inside a UN school in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to two weapons experts who examined verified footage from the debris.
The nose cones of two GBU-39 small diameter bombs were visible in footage taken by an eyewitness, Emad Abu Shawish, in the aftermath of the strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp. His images were verified by Storyful and independently geolocated by the Washington Post.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said the strikes targeted a gathering of militants at the school. But the facility was also packed with thousands of civilians displaced by the war, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 40 people were killed, including 14 children and nine women, and 74 others were wounded. Khalil al-Degran, spokesman for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah, said that the bodies of children killed in the strike were brought to his facility.
Read the full article here (paywall).
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Johnson’s demand for Biden came after Israel launched airstrikes against a refugee camp in Rafah during the Memorial Day weekend, an attack that killed dozens of people and was widely condemned by the international community.
Here are Johnson’s full remarks, available here:
The NAACP has, and continues to express our profound sympathy to civilians whose lives have been unjustly impacted in the crossfire of conflict. What happened on October 7 was a tragedy, and it is our hope that those with loved ones still in captivity are reunited as expeditiously as possible.
As the nation’s leading civil rights organization, it is our responsibility to speak out in the face of injustice and work to hold our elected officials accountable for the promises they’ve made. Over the past months, we have been forced to bear witness to unspeakable violence, affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable. The most recent statement from the Biden administration is useful but does not go far enough. It is one thing to call for a ceasefire, it is another to take the measures necessary to work towards liberation for all. Decades of conflict reflect that factions inside Israel and Hamas actively work against resolution of the conflict. The latest proposal must clarify the consequences of continued violence. The United States and the international community must be willing to pull the levers of power when appropriate to advance liberation for all.
The Middle East conflict will only be resolved when the US government and international community take action, including limiting access to weapons used against civilians. The NAACP calls on President Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel and other states that supply weapons to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. It is imperative that the violence that has claimed so many civilian lives, immediately stop. Hamas must return the hostages and stop all terrorist activity. Israel must commit to an offensive strategy that is aligned with international and humanitarian laws. Peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians can only align when the humanity and common needs of people within the region are respected. Centuries of conflict reflect that violence results in more violence. The spillover effect in the United States is more racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.
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The president of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) has asked Joe Biden to end the shipment of all weapons and artillery to Israel, in a new post to X.
Derrick Johnson, who has led the civil rights organization since 2017, made the demand as more than 35,000 Palestinian people have been killed by Israel’s attacks against the territory.
Johnson said:
We’re calling on [Biden] to draw the red line and end the shipment of all weapons and artillery to Israel. It is imperative that the violence that has claimed so many civilian lives comes to an end immediately.
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The day so far
Almost two years after he was first found guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6 committee, a federal judge today ordered Steve Bannon, an influential figure in Donald Trump’s Maga movement, to begin serving his four-month sentence by 1 July. In a defiant speech outside the courthouse, he accused the justice department of using his case to retaliate against Trump, and predicted a big win for Republicans in the November presidential election. Speaking of Trump, the former president gave an interview to Fox News last night, where he argued he “would have every right to go after” political adversaries like Joe Biden, if he is returned to the White House. In response, the Biden campaign said Trump was “visibly rattled” by his conviction last week on felony business fraud charges.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The supreme court released a new batch of opinions, which did not include much-awaited decisions on Trump’s petition for immunity from federal prosecution over his 2020 election meddling, and two cases dealing with abortion access.
Trump called for the supreme court to overturn his conviction on felony charges connected to falsifying documents related to hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election.
Hunter Biden’s federal gun charges trial continues in Delaware, with testimony from the widow of his late brother, Beau Biden.
'This is about shutting down the Maga movement,' Bannon says after judge orders him to jail
Speaking outside the courthouse, Steve Bannon vowed to appeal his jail sentence to the supreme court, and accused the justice department of pursuing him as a way to retaliate against Donald Trump.
“They’re not going to shut up Trump, they’re not going to shut up Navarro, they’re not going to shut up Bannon, and they’re certainly not going to shut up Maga,” said Bannon. He was referring to Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House trade adviser, who is serving a similar prison sentence on contempt of Congress charges.
Bannon went on to predict an overwhelming victory in the November presidential election:
All of this is about one thing. This is about shutting down the Maga movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump. Not only are we winning, we are going to prevail, and every number and every poll shows that. There’s nothing that can shut me up and nothing that will shut me up … There’s not a prison built, or a jail built that will ever shut me up.
All victory to Maga. We’re going to win this, we’re going to win at the supreme court, and more importantly, we’re going to win on November 5 an amazing landslide, with the Senate, the House and also Donald J Trump back as president United States.
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After a federal judge revoked Steve Bannon’s bail and ordered him to begin serving his prison term by 1 July, he held a brief press conference outside Washington DC’s federal courthouse.
Before he began speaking, a protester holding up a sign reading “lock him up” shouted “Get out of my way” at Bannon’s security guards, who were keeping him away from the former Donald Trump White House adviser.
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Judge orders Steve Bannon to begin prison sentence by 1 July
A federal judge has ordered Steve Bannon, a far-right strategist and Donald Trump ally, to report to prison by 1 July to begin serving his sentence for contempt of Congress, Reuters reports.
Bannon was convicted in 2022 for ignoring a summons from the bipartisan House committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, and his four-month sentence was upheld by an appeals court last month. Here’s more on the long-running legal saga:
This post has been corrected to note that Bannon must begin serving his sentence by 1 July, not on 1 July.
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Meanwhile, in Congress, Donald Trump has orchestrated the appointment of two allies to the House intelligence committee, which deals with some of the most sensitive information the US government possesses. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Robert Tait:
Two far-right Republicans have been appointed to the highly sensitive House of Representatives intelligence committee at the direction of Donald Trump, a move likely to antagonise the security establishment.
Representatives Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Ronny Jackson of Texas, known for their fierce loyalty to Trump and vocal support of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, were installed by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, ahead of other qualified GOP members and apparently without consulting the body’s chair, Mike Turner.
Turner has sought to restore the committee’s bipartisan character following years of bitter party infighting between Republicans and Democrats.
The appointments of Perry and Jackson to a committee that helps to shape US foreign policy and oversees intelligence agencies such as the FBI and the CIA has caused consternation on Capitol Hill. It also signals Trump’s hostility to organisations that he has vowed to purge if he is re-elected.
Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman who served on the House select committee that investigated the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, called the move “insane” on a social media post.
The pair were appointed to slots opened up by the resignations from Congress of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Chris Stewart of Utah.
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Joe Biden is also dealing with some unwelcome legal attention. His son, Hunter Biden, is on trial in Delaware on federal gun charges, and the Associated Press reports that the widow of the president’s late son Beau Biden took the stand today:
Testifying in Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial, Hallie Biden – the widow of Joe Biden’s oldest son, Beau – described panicking after finding a gun in his truck.
“I panicked and I wanted to get rid of them,” she testified about finding a gun and ammunition in the console of Hunter Biden’s truck in October 2018.
Prosecutor Leo Wise asked why she panicked, and Hallie responded: “Because I didn’t want him to hurt himself, and I didn’t want my kids to find it and hurt themselves.”
Hallie said she considered hiding the gun but thought her kids might find it. She then decided to throw it away.
“I was afraid to touch it. I didn’t know if it was loaded,” Hallie said.
She put the gun in a leather pouch, stuffed it in a shopping bag, and tossed it in a trash can outside an upscale grocery market near her house.
The prosecution played surveillance footage showing Hallie dumping the gun in the trash.
While Donald Trump’s felony business fraud trial in New York concluded last week with a guilty verdict, other prosecutions of the former president have stalled. Yesterday, an appeals court in Georgia put his trial on election fraud charges on hold, likely until after the 2024 election, the Guardian’s George Chidi reports:
The Georgia court of appeals has put a hold on the trial of Donald Trump and other defendants while it considers whether to disqualify the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, the lead prosecutor in the case.
Trump had appealed an order by the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee that declined to disqualify Willis after bombshell revelations about a romantic relationship with her chosen special prosecutor. As part of their effort to dismiss the case, Trump and his co-defendants alleged Willis’s relationship meant she should be recused from the case.
On Monday, the appeals court selected a three-judge panel to hear the appeal and docketed the case to be heard in October. Then on Wednesday, the court paused the case while this argument plays out.
Both Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow and a spokesperson for Willis’s office declined to comment on the court’s order.
The order staying the case in Fulton county essentially ensures that the former president will not be tried on charges of election interference and racketeering in Georgia before the November election.
“The history books will look back on what the country lost by not having a televised trial before November 2024 and historians will wonder what Fani Wills was thinking. And they’ll just scratch their heads,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor in Georgia and a close observer of the case. “I don’t know how much Judge McAfee could have done between now and the appeal’s pendency anyway. But the real loss is McAfee’s ability to deal with the question of presidential immunity and the supremacy clause over the summer.”
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Biden campaign says Trump 'visibly rattled following his felony conviction'
In response to Donald Trump’s insistence that he could “go after” Joe Biden and other political adversaries if re-elected, the Democratic president’s campaign said it indicated that the former president was “visibly rattled” by his felony conviction last week.
“Tonight in prime time, America saw Donald Trump consumed by rage and visibly rattled following his felony conviction; a man who has clearly snapped and whose candidacy is becoming more dangerous by the day,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director.
He continued:
Donald Trump is so consumed with personal grievance that he does not care who he hurts so long as Donald Trump benefits. That’s why he sicced a violent mob on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election he lost; that’s why he’s pledging to rule as a dictator and calling for a bloodbath; that’s why he thinks the extreme state level abortion bans he made possible are ‘a beautiful thing to watch’. It’s why the American people voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump to begin with and why Trump can never step foot back in the Oval Office ever again.
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Trump says 'I would have every right to go after' adversaries if re-elected
Days after a New York City jury found him guilty of 34 felony charges for falsifying his business records to conceal hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election, Donald Trump on Wednesday said he would have the power to retaliate against Joe Biden and other political adversaries, if he returns to the presidency.
“Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them, and it’s easy, because it’s Joe Biden and you see all the criminality, all of the money that’s going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News conservative commentator Sean Hannity.
Trump appears to suggest he would pursue corruption charges against Biden. House Republicans have tried for years to prove that the president has profited illicitly from his family’s overseas business dealings, but have yet to turn up proof. Last year, they began the process of impeaching Biden, but have yet to bring the charges up for a vote, in part because they have not been able to find evidence to support them.
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The opinions released by the supreme court today concerned lower-profile matters before the justices.
They have yet to weigh in on Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from the federal charges brought against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, conservative challenges to abortion drug mifepristone, and the Biden administration’s policy that federally funded hospitals must carry out emergency abortions, even in states with bans on the procedure.
The supreme court has lately been issuing batches of opinions once per week, and we will let you know when we find out the date of its next release.
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The final opinion of the day is Becerra v San Carlos Apache Tribe, which deals with the Indian Health Service’s financial obligations.
The decision brought together an ideologically motley group of justices: the chief justice, John Roberts, wrote the opinion, which was joined by fellow conservative Neil Gorsuch. The court’s three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, also signed on.
The other conservatives, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented in an opinion written by Brett Kavanaugh.
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The second case is Connelly v United States, which deals with taxation and life insurance.
Conservative justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court’s opinion, which was unanimous.
The first case is Truck Insurance Exchange v Kaiser Gypsum Company, which deals with US bankruptcy law.
Liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the court’s opinion, which all justices joined except for conservative Samuel Alito, who did not take part in deciding the case.
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Supreme court to release latest batch of decisions
It’s almost 10am in Washington DC, which means the supreme court will release its latest decision, or decisions.
As always, we do not know in advance which cases they will release their opinions on, but we will follow the decisions’ release on this live blog.
Top Senate Republican suggests Democratic lawmakers should face 'discipline' for pressuring court
As Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell played a major role in creating the conservative supermajority on the supreme court, by confirming Donald Trump’s rightwing justices and blocking Barack Obama from appointing a liberal judge in 2016.
Republicans are now in the minority in the Senate, but McConnell still leads the party, and he is not happy with Democratic senators who have called for Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases concerning the 2020 election, or for the chief justice, John Roberts, to sit down for a meeting to discuss the court’s ethics.
In a speech on the chamber’s floor yesterday, McConnell warned that two of the Democratic senators calling for the court to (so far unsuccessfully) act, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, could face “discipline” because they are lawyers who have been admitted to the supreme court’s bar.
Here’s more from McConnell:
Three of our colleagues have taken it upon themselves to write to the chief justice and demand Justice Alito’s recusal in cases. One went so far as to tell the chief that he should strip Justices Alito and Thomas of the ability to write majority opinions unless they recuse from the cases liberals don’t want them hearing.
This goes beyond the standard disgraceful bullying my Democratic colleagues have perfected. Recusal is a judicial act.
These senators are telling the chief justice, privately, to change the course of pending litigation. This is known as ex parte communication and it is frowned upon by the ABA’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct.
This matters because at least two of these colleagues of ours, the junior senator from Rhode Island and the senior senator from Connecticut, seem to be members of the supreme court bar. If so, they are, therefore, potentially engaged in unethical professional conduct before the court.
They may be under the mistaken impression that their persistent attempts to threaten the federal courts are a permissible use of their legislative office.
But they are officers of the court and bound by a different set of rules than a mere senator. These rules provide for discipline against those who engage in ‘conduct unbecoming’ an officer of the court.
I might suggest to our colleagues that unethical ex parte communications seeking to change the course of pending litigation is such conduct. And that the court should take any remedial action it feels to be appropriate.
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Trump calls on supreme court to intervene after felony conviction
As president, Donald Trump created the conservative supermajority on the supreme court by appointing three rightwing justices who have since supported decisions overturning the constitutional right to abortion, and weakening firearm protections and environmental regulations.
When the court heard arguments over Trump’s petition for immunity from the federal charges against him for allegedly conspiring to overturn the election, those same justices seemed open to a ruling that will likely have the net effect of further delaying his federal trial, perhaps until after the November election. And after he was convicted last week of felony business fraud charges, the president openly appealed to the court to throw the conviction out. The Guardian’s Robert Tait has more:
Donald Trump has called on the US supreme court to step in and annul his guilty verdict in a hush-money trial that left him with the unwanted distinction of being the first former US president to be a convicted felon.
The 2024 presumptive Republican nominee made his plea in a typically florid post on his Truth Social site, highlighting that a sentencing hearing scheduled for 11 July falls just four days before the GOP’s national convention in Milwaukee, when his nomination is expected to become official.
“The ‘Sentencing’ for not having done anything wrong will be, conveniently for the Fascists, 4 days before the Republican National Convention,” Trump wrote. “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?”
A jury in Manhattan found the ex-president guilty last Thursday on all 34 counts of falsifying documents to conceal a sexual liaison with an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won over Hillary Clinton.
The verdict, which Trump has pledged to appeal, raised the atmosphere in this year’s presidential campaign to fever pitch more than five months before polling day, with Republicans circling the wagons while Democrats sought ways to exploit it.
Supreme court could upend abortion access and give Trump immunity with new rulings
Good morning, US politics blog readers.
The supreme court will issue another batch of decisions this morning at 10am ET, and a host of hot-button issues are pending before the conservative-dominated bench. While there is no telling in advance which cases the justices will weigh in on, they have yet to decide a case that could see the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone rolled back, and another over whether the Biden administration can require states with bans on the procedure to perform emergency abortions at federally funded hospitals. But perhaps the most controversial case pending before the supreme court is Donald Trump’s petition for immunity from the federal election meddling charges brought against him by special prosecutor Jack Smith. It is a divisive matter not only because the case involves the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, but also because one of the justices on the bench, Samuel Alito, was reported to have flown flags sympathetic to Trump’s cause at two of his properties.
Democrats are outraged by Alito’s conduct, but last week the conservative justice said he would not recuse himself from that case or any other dealing with the 2020 election. Should the Trump case be decided today, how Alito rules will be one of the most closely watched elements. We’ll let you know if that happens.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, suggested Democratic senators who pressured the supreme court to act on Alito’s flag flap should face “discipline”.
Joe Biden is marking the 80th anniversary of D-day with a visit to Normandy. He’s speaking now, and you can follow it live here.
Trump once again made clear that he would use his powers “to go after” his political opponents, if elected, in an interview yesterday with Fox News.
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