Comment on White House announces $105 million in Africa aid

“The Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating Joe Biden as early as mid-July to ensure that the president is on November ballots, while helping to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance,” Bloomberg reports. “A potential date for Biden’s nomination is July 21, when the Democratic convention’s credentials committee meets virtually… The panel is meeting to finalize procedures before the party’s convention in Chicago starts on Aug.

A new St. Anselm College poll in New Hampshire — conducted after last week’s presidential debate — shows Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, 44% to 42%, with another 4% saying they planned to vote for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Biden led the same poll by 10 percentage points in December. Said pollster Neil Levesque: “I think it’s now conclusive that New Hampshire is really a competitive state in the presidential election.”

“The Trump Organization has signed a new deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a residential high-rise tower in the city of Jeddah, extending the family’s close ties with the kingdom,” the New York Times reports. “Saudi Arabia has become one of the few reliable sources of growth for the Trump family’s business operations, as new real estate deals in the United States have slowed or stopped since the Jan.

Rick Hasen: “Even putting aside the risks for future presidential authoritarianism, Roberts offers no acknowledgement that the court’s fact-intensive, slow-moving process has let Donald Trump run out the clock on claims of election subversion in 2020. Roberts surely was aware that this was an implication of the decision and surely the risks to democracy from this decision had to have crossed his mind.” “Roberts’ failure to even acknowledge those risks, even if he thought the risks were worth taking because of larger principles at stake of protecting the presidency from bogus prosecutions in the future, is going to be Roberts’ legacy for American democracy.

“Donald Trump may never see the inside of a criminal courtroom again,” Politico reports. “The Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling that Trump — and all presidents — are immune from prosecution for their ‘official’ actions immediately gutted some of the central allegations that special counsel Jack Smith leveled against Trump a year ago, when he charged the former president with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election.

“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent to today’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.