Trump takes to Truth Social on Easter Sunday to attack ‘crooked’ prosecutors and judges: Live

Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are sounding off on Joe Biden after he issued a statement recognising Trans Visibility Day becasue it happened to coincide with Easter Sunday this year.

Read the full story from John Bowden here:

Senator Susan Collins of Maine shocked probably absolutely no one by saying on Thursday that she will not be voting for Donald Trump in November, The Portland Press Herald reported.

The five-term Republican senator, who previously endorsed Nikki Haley in the primary, says she “cannot support” the former president as makes a third run for the White House.

“I don’t think it should surprise anyone that I will not support him,” she said.

Ms Collins was one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Mr Trump at his second impeachment trial in January 2021 on charges that he incited the mob that stormed the US Capitol.

During a tour of a medical centre in Portland, Maine, she told media that she would not leave the Republican Party, unlike her colleague Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has mulled running an independent who caucuses with Republicans.

When asked about the other candidates in November’s election she said she is “not happy with President Biden’s administration” and laughed when asked about Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“Like many Mainers, I don’t like the choice that appears to be coming our way since I do not think either President Trump or President Biden should be president.

“I don’t know what I shall do. It’s a long ways between now and November.”

Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana has also said he will not endorse Mr Trump.

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and some big names from the entertainment world teamed up Thursday night to deliver a rousing New York embrace of President Joe Biden that hauled in a record-setting $26 million-plus for his reelection campaign.

The mood at Radio City Music Hall was electric as Obama praised Biden’s willingness to look for common ground and said, “That’s the kind of president I want.” Clinton said simply of the choices facing voters in 2024: “Stay with what works.”

Biden himself went straight at Donald Trump, saying his expected GOP rival’s ideas were “a little old and out of shape.”

Moderator Stephen Colbert, in an armchair conversation with the trio, called them “champion talkers” and joked that the three presidents had come to town “and not one of them is here to appear in court,” a dig at Trump’s many legal troubles.

The eye-popping fundraising haul was a major show of Democratic support for Biden at a time of persistently low poll numbers. The president will test the power of his campaign cash as he faces off with Trump, who proved with his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton that he didn’t need to raise the most money to seize the presidency.

During the nearly hourlong conversation, Obama and Clinton explained just how hard Biden’s job is. They spoke of loneliness and frustration over policies that work but aren’t immediately felt by the public. They gave an insider’s view of the office as they sought to explain why Biden was best for the job.

“It is a lonely seat,” said Obama, who had hitched a ride to New York on Air Force One with Biden.

The talk was by turns humorous and serious, ending with all three donning sunglasses in the mostly dark music hall, a nod to the trademark Ray-Ban sunglasses that Biden often wears.

The sold-out Radio City Music Hall event was a gilded exclamation mark on a recent burst of campaign travel by Biden, who has visited several political battlegrounds in the three weeks since his State of the Union address served as a rallying cry for his reelection bid. Thursday’s event also brought together more than three decades of Democratic leadership.

The music hall’s marquee advertised the big-dollar night as “An Evening with Joe Biden Barack Obama Bill Clinton.” NYPD officers lined surrounding streets as part of a heavy security presence.

In a statement to The Independent on Thursday, retired Capitol Policer officer Aquilino Gonell said of Mr Trump: “As the opportunistic grifter that he is, he claims to support the police, law and order, the rule of law yet, he has not met with any officers from Capitol Police who were injured and assaulted or the ones that lost their lives because of his actions and inaction in his attempt to cling to power and the mob that he incited and wanted to lead.”

Gustaf Kilander has the story:

On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson made two seemingly contradictory moves.

First, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced he had spoken with Johnson and explained that “quick passage of US aid to Ukraine by Congress is vital.”

Later in the day, Johnson announced the managers for the Senate trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas after the House voted to impeach him last month. Unsurprisingly, he named House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Greene as managers. He also threw a bone to the far-right by picking MAGA Republicans like Clay Higgins of Louisiana; Arizona’s Andy Biggs, one of the chief election deniers who voted to boot Kevin McCarthy; and Harriet Hageman, who beat Liz Cheney in they Wyoming Republican primary after Cheney vocally criticised the GOP and Donald Trump.

But more surprisingly, he also named Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand conspiracy theorist and ardent opponent of Ukraine aid, who last week filed a motion to vacate to initiate a no-confidence vote against Johnson.

Johnson’s decision to name Greene to the committee, especially after his talk with Zelensky, shows how the leader of the US House of Representatives has tried to balance keeping conservatives happy while also fulfilling his basic duties of governing: for every one act of governing, he has to pull one outrageous stunt that keeps the extremists in his conference from throwing him into the volcano the way they did his predecessors.

Judge Michael Luttig, the influential conservative and former federal judge who co-authored a report refuting claims of electoral fraud in 2020, has given a stark warning about former president Donald Trump.

Judge Luttig began: “​​The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimization of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man – the former President of the United States.”

He continued: “In the months ahead, the former president can only be expected to ramp up his unprecedented efforts to delegitimize the courts of the United States, the nation’s state courts, and America’s system of justice, through his vicious, disgraceful, and unforgiveable attacks and threats on the Federal and State Judiciaries and the individual Judges of these courts.

“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years.

“But suffice it to say, never in history has any person leveled such attacks and been met with such passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation.”

Judge Luttig further wrote: “It is a regrettable commentary on our times that a lone federal judge, The Honorable Judge Reggie B. Walton — because no one whose responsibility it is to do so has had the courage and the will — would finally be left no choice but, himself, to express on national television the profound concerns of the entire Federal and State Judiciaries over Donald Trump’s contemptible attacks on the federal and state courts, the judges of these courts and their families, and the other participants in the judicial process.”

He continued: “It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States in the first instance to protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system from the reprehensible spectacle of the former president’s inexcusable, threatening attacks, just as it is the responsibility of the respective State Supreme Courts in the first instance to protect their courts and their state judges from the same.”

In conclusion, he wrote: “Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined.”