RNC elects Trump’s daughter-in-law as co-chair, marking his expanding party influence – as it happened (2024)

A federal appeals court has reinstated bribery and fraud charges against Brian Benjamin, the former New York lieutenant governor.

Here is more from the Associated Press:

The decision by the 2nd US Circuit court of appeals in Manhattan reversed a December 2022 ruling by a lower-court judge that wiped out the bulk of the case against the Democrat, leaving only records falsification charges.

The appeals court said in its written decision that a jury could infer from the alleged facts in the case that Benjamin promised to allocate $50,000 in state funds to a non-profit organization controlled by a real estate developer in return for campaign contributions from the developer.

“We conclude that the indictment sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.”

In an opinion written by Judge Steven J

For further details on Benjamin’s 2022 resignation after his arrest, click here:

Joe Biden will have a busy schedule next week, traveling to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan, the White House announced.

All three states are must-wins for the president if he is to be re-elected. The first stop will be in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday, where Biden will “deliver remarks on lowering costs for American families” then participate in a campaign event, the White House said.

On Wednesday, he’ll travel to Milwaukee, and the following day to Saginaw, Michigan, both for unspecified “political events”.

Asked by a reporter about his use of the word “illegal” to describe an undocumented murder suspect, Joe Biden’s campaign on Friday sought to shift the focus to Donald Trump and his hardline immigration rhetoric.

“I know it may have been difficult to hear over the incessant heckling of Marjorie Taylor Greene last night,” Michael Tyler, Biden’s campaign communications director, said on a call with reporters, “but we should be very clear about what the president was saying when it comes to fixing our broken system and to rejecting the cruelty in the hateful extremism that’s being pushed by people like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who were actually just trying to demonize immigrants in an attempt to score political points.”

While Biden was working to pass bipartisan immigration reform, Tyler said Trump is using immigrants as a “political punching bag” and “peddling Nazi rhetoric”.

He then enumerated Trump’s immigration proposals, including a return of family separation, mass deportation and ending “birthright citizenship”.

“Are we going to deal with this issue with the dignity and the humanity it demands or are we going to fall back with Donald Trump’s xenophobia, his racism and his inaction?” Tyler said. “That’s the fundamental choice for the American people in this election.”

Asked whether this would hurt the campaign’s outreach effort with Latino voters, the campaign insisted they would continue to “demonstrate the clear contrast” with Trump on the issue of immigration and how the candidates are treating members of the Hispanic and Latino communities.

“We are running this campaign against a man who was promising to rip kids away from their mothers again, who’s promising to erect mass deportation camps, who is promising to end birthright citizenship and is using hate as one of its chief political currencies,” Tyler said.

“Our community knows Joe,” said campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez. “They know who is fighting for our community; they know who’s fighting for us. They know the incredible track record that he has in investing and so many areas that are benefiting our community and they also know his values, his values of faith, of family, of hard work. All of those are so consistent with what our community stands for. And in this election we know that those values will continue to shine through as voters make their choice.”

Donald Trump is continuing to fight E Jean Carroll’s defamation judgment, with his lawyers earlier this week requesting a new trial, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:

Attorneys for Donald Trump have requested a new trial in the defamation case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, hours before he was unofficially crowned the Republican party’s presidential candidate.

Trump’s attorneys, led by Alina Habba, filed papers in federal court on Tuesday arguing that the jury’s compensatory and punitive awards of $83m for denying he sexually abused her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s are out of proportion and should be reduced.

The former president’s lawyers identified case law that they said could reduce punitive damages to no more than $36.6m – and less if the compensatory component of the judgment, including millions to restore Carroll’s reputation, were reduced as well.

In court papers, the attorneys also argued that a district court could grant a motion for a new trial because evidence had been excluded from the case and the jury had been “erroneously instructed”.

“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” the attorneys wrote.

Donald Trump has posted a $91.6m bond as he appeals the judgment against him in the E Jean Carroll defamation case.

It comes after US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan on Thursday denied Trump’s request for more time to secure an $83m bond to pay damages to the former Elle magazine columnist.

In January, jurors agreed with Carroll that Trump had defamed her in June 2019 by denying he had raped her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan. The jury awarded $83.3m to Carroll in her trial against Trump

Kaplan made the verdict official on 8 February and gave Trump 30 days to post a bond or come up with cash during his appeal, which is expected to challenge the jury’s finding of liability and the amount of damages.

Trump had sought to delay enforcement of the verdict until the judge ruled on his motions to throw it out, which he filed on Tuesday. But the judge said Trump should not have waited 25 days after the verdict before seeking a delay, adding that Trump failed to show how he might suffer “irreparable injury” if required to post a bond.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said “smokin” Joe Biden was “on fire” during his State of the Union address on Thursday, adding that the president “was lit.”

The president “delivered a compelling vision” for the American people while “crushing Maga extremism” in his speech, Jeffries told reporters at his weekly news conference.

Asked about Biden’s response to far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s heckling and demand that he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been killed by an undocumented migrant, Jeffries said the president “acknowledged the horrific nature of the murder and emphasized the need to keep our community safe”.

Jeffries was then asked about Biden’s language referring to the Venezuelan national who police say killed Riley as “an illegal”. Asked if there were members of his caucus who were upset with Biden’s language, Jeffries said:

Joe Biden delivered an incredible speech that was very well received by the American people – beginning, middle and end.

Joe Biden has welcomed the latest jobs report, which showed employers added 275,000 jobs across the US last month.

A statement by the White House hailed the “days of trickle-down” as being “over”, adding that “the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.” Biden’s statement reads:

The great American comeback continues. Last night, I put forward my vision for America’s future: one where we build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, where we invest in all Americans, and where the middle class has a fair shot and we leave no one behind.

Three years ago, I inherited an economy on the brink. Now, our economy is the envy of the world. We added 275,000 jobs last month – nearly 15 million since I took office. Unemployment has been under 4% for the longest stretch in more than 50 years. Wages keep going up. Inflation keeps coming down. And I’m taking action to continue lowering costs by taking on Big Pharma, getting rid of hidden junk fees, and making housing more affordable.

Across the country, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told. The days of trickle-down are over.

Joe Biden joked that he wished sometimes that he was “cognitively impaired” as he spoke with the New York congressman Jerry Nadler on the floor of the House chamber after his State of the Union address.

“No one’s gonna call you cognitively impaired now,” Nadler told him after his speech.

Biden quipped:

I kinda wish sometimes I was cognitively impaired.

Biden, 81, faced criticism after failing to undergo a cognitive exam as part of his annual physical last month, which came after a justice department report that described him as an “elderly man with a poor memory”.

Katie Britt’s Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew responses ranging from the baffled to the satirical to the appalled, even among fellow rightwingers.

“What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump adviser told Rolling Stone.

“It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another unnamed Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.

The 42-year-old Alabama senator is a rising Republican star, widely respected on Capitol Hill and her selection to respond to Biden was a golden opportunity to introduce herself to the wider American electorate.

In his address Biden used his bully pulpit effectively, attacking Republicans in a fiery speech and inviting a strong response. But Britt’s speech, delivered with overt theatricality, oscillating in tone between the wholesome and the wholly horrific, did not land well even in her own party.

A majority of Americans who watched Joe Biden’s State of the Union address had a positive reaction to the speech, according to a flash poll.

More than six in 10 Americans who watched the speech reacted positively, according to the CNN poll, with 35% reacting very positively.

That pattern mirrors the reception for Biden’s speeches in previous years, the outlet reported. Last year 72% of viewers reacted positively, with 34% saying their reaction was very positive.

In a survey conducted before Biden’s speech last night, 45% of respondents said the president’s policies are moving the country in the right direction. That number increased to 62% after Biden’s address, the poll showed.