In his strongest condemnation of Netanyahu, Biden brands Israel’s actions in Gaza a ‘mistake'
Mike Bedigan reports:
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 16:45
Easy come, easy go: Trump booted off Bloomberg’s Billionaire list
Gustaf Kilander has the story:
On Tuesday, the former president was nowhere to be seen on the list of the world’s richest people, going from Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company, at $223bn, to John Sall, a businessman and computer software developer, in spot 500.
Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, began trading at $78 and finished its first day at $57.99, allowing Mr Trump to join the list of the world’s 500 richest people. But by Wednesday morning, the stock was trading at just above $36 – a likely cause of Mr Trump’s removal from the list of the top billionaires.
Shares in the company went down by 12 per cent on Friday and eight per cent on Monday, USA Today noted.
Read on...
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 16:29
Trump’s Ukraine ‘peace plan’ rejected by Cameron as he warns against ‘appeasing’ Putin
David Cameron has rejected Donald Trump’s reported peace plan for Ukraine and warned against ‘appeasing’ Putin just days after his surprise meeting with the former US President to push for extra funding for the war.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has also slated the idea, to give up swathes of territory to Russia, branding it “primitive”.
The foreign secretary said a show of Ukrainian “strength” rather than “appeasement and weakness” would bring the conflict to a halt.
Kate Devlin, The Independent’s UK politics and Whitehall editor, has the latest:
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 16:15
Biden and Trump react to latest inflation figures
Per Reuters:
US consumer prices increased more than expected in March as Americans paid more for gasoline and rental housing, leading financial markets to anticipate that the Federal Reserve would delay cutting interest rates until September.
The third straight month of strong consumer price readings reported by the Labor Department on Wednesday followed on the heels of news last week that job growth accelerated in March, with the unemployment rate slipping to 3.8% from 3.9% in February. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly said the US central bank is in no rush to start lowering borrowing costs.
...
In the 12 months through March, the CPI increased 3.5%, the most since September, also as last year's low reading dropped out of the calculation. That followed a 3.2% rise in February. The Fed has a 2% inflation target. The measures it tracks for monetary policy are running considerably below the CPI rate.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the CPI gaining 0.3% on the month and advancing 3.4% on a year-on-year basis.
Though the annual increase in consumer prices has declined from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, the disinflationary trend has virtually stalled in recent months.
With the cost of living looming large over November’s election, here’s how the candidates reacted:
President Joe Biden
Today’s report shows inflation has fallen more than 60% from its peak, but we have more to do to lower costs for hardworking families. Prices are still too high for housing and groceries, even as prices for key household items like milk and eggs are lower than a year ago. I have a plan to lower costs for housing—by building and renovating more than 2 million homes—and I’m calling on corporations including grocery retailers to use record profits to reduce prices. Fighting inflation remains my top economic priority. We’re making progress: wages are rising faster than prices, incomes are higher than before the pandemic, and unemployment has remained below 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years. But we have more to do: my agenda is lowering costs for prescription drugs, health care, student debt, and hidden junk fees. Rather than proposing solutions for hardworking families, Congressional Republicans want to slash taxes for billionaires and big corporations, while helping special interests and Big Pharma raise prices. I won’t let them.
Donald Trump
INFLATION is BACK—and RAGING! The Fed will never be able to credibly lower interest rates, because they want to protect the worst President in the history of the Untied States!
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 16:00
Explained: What does Arizona’s 1864 abortion law say and how was it revived?
The law predating Arizona’s statehood provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Arizona’s highest court suggested doctors can be prosecuted under the 1864 law, though the opinion written by the court’s majority didn’t explicitly say that.
The Tuesday decision threw out an earlier lower-court decision that concluded doctors couldn’t be charged for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Read more...
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 15:45
Trump posts morning rant about his legal woes
As with many other days, Donald Trump began his morning with a lengthy stream of conscious rant on Truth Social.
Here’s what the former president wrote:
The White House Thugs should not be allowed to have these dangerous and unfair Biden Trials during my campaign for President. All of them, civil and criminal, could have been brought more than three years ago. It is an illegal attack on a Political Opponent. It is Communism at its worst, and Election Interference at its Best. No such thing has ever happened in our Country before. On Monday I will be forced to sit, GAGGED, before a HIGHLY CONFLICTED & CORRUPT JUDGE, whose hatred for me has no bounds. All of these New York and D.C. “Judges” and Prosecutors have the same MINDSET. Nobody but this Soros Prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, wanted to take this ridiculous case. All legal scholars say it is a sham. BIDEN’S DOJ IS RUNNING THE CASE. Just think of it, these animals want to put the former President of the United States (who got more votes than any sitting President!), & the PARTY’S REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE, IN JAIL, for doing absolutely nothing wrong. It is a RUSH TO THE FINISH. SO UNFAIR!
A few fact-checks:
- There is no evidence that the trials have anything to do with Joe Biden as he has no jurisdiction over local or state cases (such as the hush-money trial and Georgia election interference case) and the federal cases are handled by Special Counsel Jack Smith specifically to avoid political interference.
- All criminal prosecutions of the former president were recommended by grand juries of members of the public.
- Charges were not made three years ago as each case was still under investigation. The civil case brought by E Jean Carroll was originally filed in 2019.
- This is not communism by any definition.
- The former president is not gagged except that he is not allowed to attack members of the court staff or their families.
- If all of these judges and prosecutors have the “same mindset” it is to prosecute and try people charged with crimes.
- The Department of Justice is not running the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Mr Trump.
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 15:27
Classified documents: Judge Cannon agrees to request for government witnesses
The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump granted a request by prosecutors aimed at protecting the identities of potential government witnesses.
But US District Judge Aileen Cannon refused to categorically block witness statements from being disclosed, saying there was no basis for such a “sweeping” and “blanket” restriction on their inclusion in pretrial motions.
The 24-page order centers on a dispute between special counsel Jack Smith‘s team and lawyers for Trump over how much information about witnesses and their statements could be made public ahead of trial. The disagreement, which had been pending for weeks, was one of many that had piled up before Cannon and had slowed the pace of the case against Trump — one of four prosecutions he is confronting.
Continue reading...
BREAKING: Ex-Trump executive Allen Weisselberg begins Rikers Island jail sentence after perjury plea
Alex Woodward reports:
Donald Trump’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg is returning to jail after pleading guilty to perjury over testimony he gave during a sprawling fraud case targeting the former president’s real estate empire.
Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison on Wednesday after reaching a plea deal with Manhattan prosecutors earlier this year to admit that he lied to investigators and a judge probing the former president’s real estate empire.
He previously spent 100 days at the notorious New York jail last year after he was convicted on a range of tax crimes in a separate case stemming from a sweeping criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s business.
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 14:46
Watch: McCarthy gets candid about why he’s no longer speaker
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 14:39
How much are Truth Social’s executives making?
But how much are key players in the company set to make?
Oliver O'Connell10 April 2024 14:11
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