Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s brand new US election newsletter.
Here’s what you need to know …
1. Trump’s mouth gets him further into debt
Donald Trump already owes $454m as a result of his civil fraud case in New York, and has been ordered to pay $88.3m to E Jean Carroll over a defamation lawsuit. Given Trump struggled to find the money for the former, the last thing he needed was to be fined $9,000 in his New York criminal trial, after he attacked witnesses online. Could the judge give him jail time if he does it again?
2. Biden’s banter bus
“The 2024 election is in full swing and yes, age is an issue,” Joe Biden said at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday. “I’m a grown man running against a six-year-old.” The joke continued Biden’s transition from grownup-in-the-room to Burn King in Chief, with the president and his campaign increasing their mocking attacks on Trump’s golf game, finances and mental aptitude.
Could student protesters turn the 2024 election?
Tensions on university campuses, already high as a wave of pro-Palestinian encampment-style protests sweeps the US, got even higher overnight.
The protests, which have seen students pitch tents or occupy buildings at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and others, began as an effort to get universities to ditch investments in companies which provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military.
First, I’m very sorry to hear about your cancer, and I hope your treatment ends soon with your cancer in remission. I’m crossing my fingers for you.
Second, you go fuck yourself. You’re doing it again where you’re doubling down on this being someone else’s problem to solve. Sure you have a voice and an opinion, and instead of facing the truths of what you’re proposing you’re saying it someone else’s responsibility to come up with a perfect solution and implement it. I’m confident you’ll be there at the conclusion of said plan calling out how shitty it was because it didn’t do everything. Yes, you have cancer, are you’re trying to use that as a free pass to stand on a hill of moral superiority by pointing out a problem and calling everyone else assholes for not solving it to your liking? Those close to me that have (or have had) cancer told me when they found out they had cancer they didn’t want to be pitied and treated differently. They wanted to be treated just like everyone else that didn’t have cancer. I’m going to show you respect and assume you’re the same.
If you want me to pull my punches and let your weak arguments stand unopposed because you have cancer, just let me know. I’ll respect that choice of yours too.
I agree we are in different places on where the end result of this would be. The problem isn’t so much convicting the criminal today, its what that conviction does to the office of the President forever into the future. I’m not saying this to say we shouldn’t do something, but that it isn’t about the orange guy today, its about what it means to everyone else after he’s convicted.
Nope, not “only I”. Apparently all of the leaders of our government for the last 50 years too.
In charge? No, a participant? Yes. No one is asking you to lead the team, but if you want to play the game you’ve at least got to be on the field, not just a spectator in the stands.
I’m not talking about post-WWII Truman era. I’m talking about Nixon and his crimes. Thats what we were talking about.
I don’t feel good about that, but thats a different argument that doesn’t have anything to do with Trump or Nixon.
And Starbucks tried to do something similar being anti-union, and got smacked down. We now have unions at Starbucks locations all over the place. If you look, you’ll always find ugly battlefields. I’m not telling you to stop looking, but understand the battle isn’t over, and it could result in a win for the good guys like when Starbucks lost against unions, like when Jim Johns lost against the FTC this week and unilaterally destroyed predatory companies from using Non-compete agreements. source
So you want the worst to happen if you lose an argument? How does that help anyone?
I’d ask what you see the alternative is to avoid that, but we’ve been over that. You only point out problems and not even any elements of solutions.