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

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked Donald Trump for his thoughts on Wisconsin’s abortion ban , which is being challenged before the state supreme court, where liberal justices recently gained a majority.

The former president declined to comment, and generally avoided the issue in his rally in Waukesha, instead repeating that he thought it should be up to states to regulate the procedure, the Journal Sentinel reports.

Trump is back in Manhattan as his trial resumes with testimony from Keith Davidson , a lawyer for adult film actor Stormy Daniels , who is at the heart of the allegations against the former president. We have a live blog covering everything that goes on in the courtroom.

Police moved in against protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles as colleges nationwide grapple with anti-Israel demonstrations. Follow our live blog for more on this developing story.

Biden is heading to North Carolina to pay his respects to the four law enforcement officers killed while serving a warrant earlier this week, then will speak about his economic policies in the city of Wilmington at 4.30pm ET.

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‘Dog lover’ South Dakota governor said 14-month-old hound was ‘extremely dangerous’ but failed to mention slowly killing a goat

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat , claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.

“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.

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Some say the public bragging of the formerly obscure governor of South Dakota ends her chances. But with Trump, who can say?

There is a familiar moment in Republican electoral politics when an obscure politician thrust into the limelight during election season comes under intense public scrutiny and is found to be not quite as first impressions suggested. This was Sarah Palin in 2008, or Ben Carson in 2016, and the inflection point is the moment at which the supposedly promising new face shades into what Mitch McConnell once delicately referred to as the Republicans’ “candidate quality problem”. Or, as most of us know it colloquially, the moment we realise: oh, this person is unhinged.

So it was last week for Kristi Noem, the formerly obscure governor of South Dakota, propelled into the big time as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, and who at first glance appeared appalling in all the ordinary ways. The 52-year-old, who was elected to the governorship in 2018, echoes the Republican party’s hardline positions on abortion, immigration and offshore drilling in ways indistinguishable from the rest of the VP field. She is telegenic, charismatic, reliably rightwing, and, according to her forthcoming memoir No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, also killed her 14-month-old puppy , Cricket.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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On a day off from his criminal trial, the ex-president hit the campaign trail – and ran through his familiar litany of falsehoods and complaints

At a remote rural airport in Michigan, an outsized plane touched down as music from Tom Cruise’s film Top Gun boomed from loudspeakers. Late afternoon sunshine gleamed off five giant golden letters on the plane’s side – “TRUMP” – and its Rolls Royce engines. A crowd bedecked in red roared as the plane rolled to a standstill behind a blue “TRUMP” lectern.

A door opened and men in dark glasses and dark suits from what Donald Trump would call “central casting” made their way down the stairs. “Trump! Trump!” the audience chanted, raising hundreds of camera phones in eager anticipation. Great Balls of Fire, Macho Man and YMCA blared. Finally, the former and would-be future president emerged, clapping and fist pumping to the sound of whoops and cheers and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.

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Focus of rally went beyond immigration, to fear of authoritarianism, as Trump held campaign event nearby

Led by a mariachi band, hundreds of demonstrators on Wednesday morning marched across Milwaukee to Fiserv Forum – the home of the Milwaukee Bucks and, in July, the venue of the Republican National Convention.

The rally, organized by the immigrant and workers ’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, is an annual event, but in 2024 it holds particular weight. The focus of the rally extended beyond immigration, to fear of authoritarianism under Republican candidate Donald Trump and critique of President Joe Biden’s handling of the US role in Israel and Gaza.

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Fourteen Democrats in state senate hoping to get at least two Republican votes to win final approval for bill repealing ban

Democrats in the Arizona legislature are expected to make a final push on Wednesday to repeal the state’s near-total ban on abortions.

Fourteen Democrats in the state senate are hoping to pick up at least two Republican votes to win final approval for a bill repealing the ban, which narrowly cleared the Arizona house last week and is expected to be signed by the Democratic governor.

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Thousands of students have rallied for Palestine, after hundreds of thousands of Democrats declined to vote for Biden in the primary

The policies of Joe Biden and Democrats towards Israel, which have prompted thousands of students across the country to protest, could affect the youth vote for Biden and hurt his re-election chances, experts have warned, in what is already expected to be a tight election.

Thousands of students at universities across the US have joined with pro-Palestine rallies and, most recently, encampments, as Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people.

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Republican senator says Noem’s story of killing her 14-month-old hunting dog makes her unlikely to be Trump’s running mate

• US politics – latest updates

Mitt Romney may have infamously tied a dog in a kennel to the roof of his car for a cross-country trip but at least he didn’t shoot it, the Utah Republican senator said, as outrage over the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, telling her story of killing a 14-month-old hunting dog continued to ripple through US politics.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Romney said, on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as reported by HuffPost.

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