Donald Trump’s would-be running mate has already outraged the US by shooting her own pet. This is no time to double down

When Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor being vetted as a candidate for Donald Trump’s vice-president , admitted in her memoir to having shot and killed her 14-month-old puppy, I have to admit I thought it was a play. She was just testing the waters: how much could she insult human decency without making a dent in her numbers? As the battle rages on, I’m coming to accept that the benighted wire-haired pointer did, for a short time, exist, and was executed for a real crime: chicken killing. It seems a tiny bit unfair, given the two centuries of wire-haired pointer breeding that have gone into creating exactly this fixation with upland (which is to say, non-waterfowl) bird work. But that’s exactly what you’d expect a liberal to say. Next I’ll be on about the death penalty.

Digging in, Noem has gone on to say that not only was she right to execute her pointer, but also that Joe Biden has been remiss in pardoning Major and Commander, both German shepherds inveterately hostile to secret service agents. Commander, with a charge sheet of 24 biting incidents, should have been put down ages ago, according to Noem. He is no longer at the White House, though history doesn’t relate his new address. Major, meanwhile, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after a biting incident involving a National Park employee. No excuses for that – public servants ought to be able to go about their duties bite-free – but to have a thing for guys in parks is less bad, I would contend, than having an aversive fear response to armed secret service agents when you’re the dog of the US president. It’s possible, of course, that both dogs have been destroyed – and “gone to live with friends in Delaware” is what they say to Joe Biden when they mean “gone to live on a farm”.

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Though Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort against the House speaker is likely to fail, she plans to use the vote to show that Mike Johnson relies on Democrats to keep his job

• House set to vote on Marjorie Taylor Greene effort to remove Mike Johnson

Juan Merchan , the judge in Trump’s hush money criminal trial, has again held the former president in contempt of court, fining him another $1,000 for violating the terms of his gag order and threatening him with the possibility of jail time for future violations.

“ As much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction ... I want you to understand that I will, if necessary, and appropriate ,” Merchan warned Trump.

Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, warned that comments by Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte running for the state’s other Senate seat, could incite violence. Last month Lake told voters to “ strap on a Glock ” ahead of the 2024 elections. “It’s dangerous,” he told NBC News during an interview on “Meet the Press.” “What Kari Lake said could result in people getting hurt or killed.”

In an interview on CBS, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem would not say whether she met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un even though it appears she fabricated the encounter in her book. “I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. … This anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book and as soon as it was brought to my attention I made sure that was adjusted.”

Noem also doubled down on her decision to kill her 14-month old dog Cricket, despite widespread blowback. “The reason that this story is in the book — because people need to understand who I am and some of those difficult decisions,” she told CBS.

California congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat who has been visiting colleges around the country during student protests, said the president should join him.

“I think the president should and will get out there on campuses,” he told CBS, adding: “This is a defining moment for this generation, similar to anti-Vietnam protests, anti-apartheid protests, anti-Iraq war protests and they’re telling us that over 30,000 people have died. It’s time for this war to end.”

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Authorities characterized the wreck as ‘only … a traffic crash’ rather than an intentional, politically motivated act

For the second time since January, a motorist crashed into the gates of the White House on Saturday.

The driver in Saturday’s case was pronounced dead at the scene after smashing a speeding car into an outer gate of the US president ’s home and workplace. Authorities characterized the wreck as “only … a traffic crash” rather than an intentional, politically motivated act.

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Depending on the expert, either Biden or Trump is likely to pull ahead, but nothing about this election – especially events – is predictable

“You know what I hate?” Donald Trump asked in Freeland, Michigan , on Wednesday night. “When these guys get on television, they say – pundits, you know, the great pundits that never did a thing in their whole lives – ‘You know, we have two very unpopular candidates. We have Biden or we have Trump. These are very unpopular.’”

Watched by a crowd of adoring fans in Make America Great Again (Maga) regalia, against the backdrop of a plane marked “Trump” in giant gold letters, the former US president protested a little too much: “I’m not unpopular!”

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Actor brings force of Hollywood to trumpet Biden’s legislative record in briefing that both delighted and bemused journalists

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But enough about Washington. The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill , who once saw off gangsters at a fictional spaceport, came to the US capital on Friday for a meeting with Joe Biden.

Quite why he was in the Oval Office, and what was talked about, remained something of a mystery. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Biden was riding high in the opinion polls but now, perhaps, he is in need of added star power.

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His youth support declining, the president needs ‘to be where the people are’. His account regularly mocks Trump – but remains silent on Gaza

In Joe Biden’s TikTok debut , timed to the Super Bowl in February, the president answered rapid-fire questions like “Chiefs or Niners?” (neither, he picked the Eagles because his wife’s a “Philly girl”) and flashed the Dark Brandon meme. He got over 10m views, so by pure metrics, the video was no flop. But to use one of TikTok’s favorite disses, for many gen Z viewers it felt “cringe” – even pandering. Worse still, the TikTok, captioned “lol hey guys”, made the rounds after Israel struck Rafah , a city in the southern Gaza strip. Biden’s jokes infuriated users who flooded the post with the comment “WHAT ABOUT RAFAH?”

“I don’t want my president to be a TikTok influencer,” read the headline of one USA Today editorial . One (actual) influencer told CNN the president’s attempt at meme-ing felt “performative”. A warm welcome to the app, it was not. But Biden’s team kept posting.

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Ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki describes telling president of anger that he spoke so much of his own dead son, Beau

Joe Biden was stunned into silence when he was told families of US service members killed in Kabul in August 2021 said that when the bodies were returned and the president met grieving relatives, he spent too much time talking about the death of his own son, Beau.

“I paused for the president to respond,” Jen Psaki, then White House press secretary, writes in a new book.

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US president says ‘immigrants are what makes us strong’ and criticizes countries, plus China and Russia, over migration policy

Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the US on immigration.

The remarks, at a campaign fundraising event Wednesday evening, came just three weeks after the White House hosted Fumio Kishida , the Japanese prime minister, for a lavish official visit , during which the two leaders celebrated what Biden called an “unbreakable alliance,” particularly on global security matters.

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Former president repeats lies about 2020 election loss in interview after Wisconsin rally

Joe Biden spoke for just three minutes before wrapping up.

Just after he finished, a reporter asked if the protests would make him reconsider any of his Middle East policies.

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