Donald Trump tried to turn his criminal conviction to his advantage today, delivering a 33-minute speech laden with baseless attacks on the prosecution team and the presiding judge, along with other falsehoods and misleading claims.
He also said he would appeal his conviction, a process that could take months or even years to resolve. Trump’s campaign announced that it had raised a record-breaking $34.8 million in the hours after the jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Republicans used the first criminal conviction of a former president as a rallying cry — for campaign cash, for congressional hearings and for motivation to vote in November.
President Biden broke his long silence on Trump’s legal troubles, calling the former president’s remarks reckless, dangerous and irresponsible.
How will the conviction influence the election? No one knows. But, as my colleagues Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher explain, it will create an unprecedented stress test of America’s legal institutions and the country’s ability to hold an election under some of the greatest partisan strains in decades.
Biden endorsed an Israeli cease-fire proposal
President Biden said today it was time for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza: “It’s time for this war to end, for the day after to begin.”
Biden said Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out a major terrorist attack on Israel, and endorsed a new Israeli proposal that he said would begin with a temporary six-week cease-fire in exchange for the release of the hostages. The plan, Biden added, would pave the way for negotiations to eventually end the war and rebuild Gaza.
“This is truly a decisive moment,” Biden said. “Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it.”
The Israeli government has not talked about the plan in public, and it was not immediately clear how it differed from past proposals — or whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has declared that Israel’s objective is the complete destruction of Hamas, would describe it in similar terms.
Permission to fire into Russia boost spirits in Ukraine
Along Ukraine’s northeast border, commanders fending off a barrage of Russian attacks were in a buoyant mood today. They had just received word that they could fire American-made weapons into Russia, after a major policy shift by the Biden administration.
Ukraine’s troops are still restricted from firing U.S. weapons deep into Russia, and U.S. officials said the weapons should be used only in self-defense in the border region around Kharkiv, where Russia has been launching missiles and gathering forces from the safety of its own territory.
The peril to civilians near the border was underscored on Friday when a Russian missile tore into an apartment block in Kharkiv in the early morning, killing three and wounding two dozen more, regional officials said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also suggested today that the U.S. could eventually allow Ukraine to use American weapons across a broader area.
More top news
Google’s A.I. is not great for medical advice
Do you have a headache or a sinus infection? Is the pressure in your chest just heartburn, or something more serious? If you Google those kinds of important health questions these days, the first answer is often written by artificial intelligence, and it might not be accurate.
This month, Google rolled out a new feature that uses generative A.I., a machine learning technology trained on information from across the internet. But it can produce bad answers by drawing on untrustworthy sources. When asked “how many rocks should I eat,” for example, Google told some users to eat at least one a day for vitamins and minerals. (The advice was scraped from the satirical news site The Onion.)
On a related note, my colleague tried out the new version of ChatGPT. It mostly failed to deliver on the hype.
Have you ever seen a corgi race?
Corgis are known for their tiny legs and photogenic looks, so you might not expect them to be all that speedy. But that didn’t stop Captain, the dog who took first place in the big race at this year’s Summer Corgi Nationals.
The event, which draws hundreds of corgi aficionados to California’s Santa Anita Park, is more an exercise in cuteness than a display of peak athletic prowess. Some of the corgis get distracted and never reach the finish line.
Have an adorable weekend.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back on Monday. — Matthew
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