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‘That says it all’: Democrats rejoice as poll shows most think Biden should keep running



President Joe Biden has faced calls to drop from the 2024 race, but a recent poll showing most Democrats want him to stay put is being celebrated on social media.

Recently, reports have suggested that Biden, who has been criticized for running for a second term despite being in his 80s, has been speaking with family members about whether to bow out. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Biden's family encouraged him to keep running at the gathering.

The YouGov poll showed that, of registered Democrats, 55% think Biden should keep running, while 45% say he should "step aside."

ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters

Former MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann said, "Today's YouGov/CBS Poll: Should Biden stay in the race? YES, 55%-45% Should TRUMP stay in the race? NO, 54-46% That says it all."

He asked, "Any effing questions?"

Journalist Rachel Janfaza added that, "Compared to all other age groups - young voters are the most supportive of a Biden run and the least supportive of a Trump run."

@PrezLives2022 chimed in, "YouGov/CBS poll says Biden should stay in 55/45 while same poll says Trump should drop out 54/46. I’d say Biden is in better shape than Trump at this point. 33 million raised since Thursday….stay strong Team Biden"

@BernBoomer had this interpretation: "YouGov/CBS Poll: Biden should stay in. Trump should drop out."

Others pointed out that the Trump bow out question was asked to registered voters, while the Biden question was posed to Democrats.

The same poll found that 72% of respondents do not believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as U.S. President for another term, which also prompted celebration from skeptics of Biden.

Conservative Charlie Sykes said, "Dem Xitter is assuring me that this won't be a problem and that we should stop talking about it."

"CBS POLL: ****72 Percent ***** Say Biden doesn't have cognitive health to serve as president," he added.

Nigeria bombings plunge residents back to past violence



Sitting at a hospital bedside in northeast Nigeria, Aishatu Usman watches over her son, still unconscious after her family were caught in a rare suicide attack on a weekend wedding.

At least 18 people were killed in Saturday’s attack by three female suicide bombers in Gwoza, Borno State, the heart of a conflict in northeast Nigeria that has killed 40,000 people and displaced 2 million since 2009.

The conflict has ebbed since armed forces pushed jihadists back from territory they held at the height of the fighting. But militants still carry out sporadic attacks and ambushes in remote areas. Saturday was a rare urban assault.

“What can I say? My son is unconscious,” she said, talking of the victims. “I pray that God grant them speedy recovery and to the perpetrators of this heinous act, may God guide them to the right path.”

Gwoza was the scene of four almost simultaneous suicide attacks on Saturday, including at least three perpetrated by female bombers, leaving at least 18 dead, according to local emergency services. Dozens more were injured.

No group has claimed the attacks, but they were a painful reminder of the threat posed by the Boko Haram jihadist group and its rival Islamic State West Africa Province in the region.

Suicide attacks have always been part of their armed struggle to establish a caliphate in the northeast of Africa’s most populous country.

Militants still carry out ambushes, roadside bombings and kidnappings from their rural hideouts, but suicide bombings, especially with multiple attackers, have become rarer.

Boko Haram seized Gwoza in 2014 after taking over parts of Borno State.

The town was retaken by the Nigerian army with the help of Chadian forces in 2015, but jihadists still launch attacks from the mountains overlooking the town on the border with Cameroon.

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu “strongly condemned the bomb attacks” in a statement on Sunday, saying the assault was “a clear manifestation of pressure mounted against terrorists and the success in degrading their capacity.”

“These cowardly attacks are only but an isolated episode,” Tinubu said.

Jihadists in the northeast are one of several security threats facing Nigeria’s armed forces, including heavily armed criminal gangs who carry out mass kidnappings for ransom in the northwest and separatist movements in the southeast.

When he came to power a year ago, Tinubu made the fight against insecurity a priority of his mandate.

Back to 2014

Saturday’s first attack took place during a wedding ceremony, around 3 pm, when a suicide bomber set off explosives among the guests, officials said.

As funeral prayers for the victims of the wedding attack were ongoing, another female suicide bomber detonated her device, according to Barkindo Saidu, head of the local emergency services (SEMA), in a report seen by AFP.

A few minutes later, an explosion of another device by a teenage girl detonated around the city’s general hospital, the report said.

A member of the anti-jihadist militia who work with the army in the city, told AFP that a fourth suicide attack had targeted a security post, killing three people including a soldier.

That has not yet been confirmed by officials.

“This has taken me back to memory lane of 2014 when Gwoza was raided by these terrorists group,” Baba Shehu Saidu, a relative of some of the victims said.

SEMA’s Saidu gave a provisional toll of 18 dead and around forty injured to AFP on Saturday evening.

Fatima Musa, secretary of the Gwoza local government, said she could not quantify the number of victims because “a bomb blast is something that spreads dead bodies.” Bodies were still being found, she said.

Officials in Borno State, the epicenter of the conflict, have said they will close all camps for displaced people by 2026, to encourage people to return to work in the fields to help end chronic food insecurity. But many rural areas in Borno are still insecure with armed groups active.

Jack Smith has ‘one more card to play’ in D.C. election subversion case: former prosecutor



Jack Smith has had a tough time prosecuting Donald Trump, especially considering his D.C. election subversion prosecution has been frozen pending Supreme Court action, but a former prosecutor said on Sunday that the special counsel has one more trick up his sleeve.

Trump faces charges in that case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, as well as related efforts to allegedly undermine the presidential election in 2020 when Joe Biden beat the former president. With the case tied up, however, analysts have suggested that it won't reach trial before the election.

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to discuss the pending case.

ALSO READ: Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters

The host asked McQuade, "Which way are you expecting them to rule tomorrow? Who then gets to decide which of Trump's actions on January 6 can be subject to criminal prosecution?"

McQuade responds, saying, "Well, that is a line drawing I think we are going to see."

"I don't think it's going to be -- everything is immune or nothing is immune. I think that we will engage in some line drawing. It could be, one argument is, anything that Donald Trump did in his capacity as president is immune, and that which he did in his capacity as a candidate is not immune," she said. "If, for example, that is where they decide to draw the line, they need to have a hearing to go through all of the allegations in the indictment and decide, was Donald Trump acting in his capacity as president when he did this, or is candidate?"

She continues:

"I think much of it is no question as candidate. To me, in my mind, the one area of question is directions to the Justice Department, which, although they may have been abuse of his power, may arguably have been within his power."

Then, she says, the prosecutor could still make one more move:

"Jack Smith has one more card to play, which is to dismiss any allegations that are arguably within the scope of presidential power and proceeding with what is left, which would be a bulk of the indictment," she said. "I think ultimately, this case is going to go to trial and the allegations are going to stay, the indictment is going to be there. The question is, when will that be there?"

Watch below or click here.

‘Total anti-Trump lib’: Amy Coney Barrett’s surprise J6 dissent has MAGA fuming



Former President Donald Trump's MAGA supporters are despairing over a surprising voice of dissent in the Supreme Court's Jan. 6 ruling — a move that legal experts believe means she will rule against Trump's presidential immunity claim.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett's decision to oppose the court's ruling — which raises the bar for prosecutors to prove Jan. 6-related cases — spurred several legal experts to suggest she may rule against absolute immunity for the former president.

"One more data point for immunity," wrote Lee Kovarsky, a law professor at the University of Texas. "Justice Barrett does NOT sound like someone who has changed her mind in Trump's direction since oral argument."

Trump in April presented arguments to the Supreme Court that his public office protected him from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith's federal election interference case.

READ MORE: ‘This was awful’: Congressional Dems deflated after Biden debate disaster

Smith argued Trump acted as a private citizen when he roused a mob of followers to attack the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to prevent President Joe Biden from taking office.

On Friday, Patrick Amoresano, a retired attorney and Republican, said Barrett, one of three justices appointed by the former president, was proving a surprise to those who believed she'd walk the conservative party line.

On Thursday, Barrett ruled in favor of a Biden administration policy and against conservative states that tried to block it.

"Barrett has become a real wildcard on the Court," wrote Amoresano. "One has to wonder how she'll vote on the issue of Trump's alleged immunity for election interference."

ALSO READ: The stunning reason Donald Trump thinks he’s going to win

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor of Law at Stetson University, highlighted a specific passage from Barrett's dissent that she argues speaks volumes.

"By atextually narrowing §1512(c)(2)," Barrett wrote, "the Court has failed to respect the prerogatives of the political branches."

Torres-Spelliscy responded with a "wow" and added, "This could mean strange bedfellows for presidential immunity on Monday."

ALSO READ: ‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’

Several MAGA supporters took to X Friday morning to complain of a lack of loyalty to Trump and make a similar prediction.

"Barrett is going to rule against Pres. Immunity," declared @bucksdeplorable. "Complete and total anti-Trump lib."

"Amy Coney Barrett has been awful," added @MiddleMAGA.com. "I bet she dissents in the Trump immunity ruling."

Christian Vanderbrouk, a contributor to the Bulwark and onetime administration official of former President George W. Bush, echoed the prediction but not the sentiment.

"Barrett's dissent gives me hope for Trump's presidential immunity case," Vanderbrouk wrote.

‘Head out of the sand’: Here’s who Democrats might consider if Biden steps aside



Democrats were jolted out of complacency about president Joe Biden's age with his alarming performance during his first debate against Donald Trump, and many party members are wondering what other options there might be.

The 81-year-old president and his supporters have brushed off concerns about his age by citing his accomplishments and pointing out that Trump is only three years younger, but the weaknesses cited by Biden's detractors were on clear display from the moment he first opened his mouth, reported Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake.

"The Democratic Party has spent much of the 2024 campaign burying its head in the sand over Americans’ concerns about President Biden’s age and mental sharpness," Blake wrote. "Rather than reckon with the problem, its most influential voices have cast it as an overblown media construct."

"But the party abruptly jerked its head out of that sand Thursday night, after a meandering, occasionally incoherent and almost universally panned first-debate performance from Biden," he added. "At its most pronounced, this has led to calls for Biden to step aside, including from those loyal to him."

ALSO READ: ‘This was awful’: Congressional Dems deflated after Biden debate disaster

Biden has insisted he's staying in the race, but many Democrats who had been eager supporters and apologists for the octogenarian chief executive until he took the debate stage are suddenly looking past him for a new standard bearer.

"That instantaneous reaction is hugely significant, in and of itself," Blake wrote. "It’s the kind of conversation you avoid — and the party has strained to avoid — until you view it as absolutely necessary. Going there and then having Biden stay would only damage him further, because a bunch of allies would have said either implicitly or explicitly that he is not up to the task."

Blake listed 10 potential options starting, of course, with vice president Kamala Harris, who's about as unpopular as the president, but then moving on to a crop of likely contenders for 2028 whose timelines may be bumped forward by an election cycle.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tops most lists as a female governor from a crucial state who already enjoys a national profile, while other governors like Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania are all likely to run for president in four years – if not sooner.

Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg nearly won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in 2020 as the mayor of a midsize Midwestern city and can skillfully debate Fox News hosts and Republican lawmakers, and senators Rafael Warnock of Georgia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota could make sense.

Michelle Obama "is the fantasy option for Democrats," Blake wrote, but she has expressed no interest in running for office at all.

"It’s truly a desperate plan and one that features many hurdles," Blake wrote. "It would almost surely require Biden’s assent to step aside — he holds almost all of the pledged delegates to August’s Democratic National Convention — and even then the process for replacing him is fraught. It’s not even clear that an alternative would render the party better off."

‘Vast majority’ of J6 cases won’t be affected by Supreme Court ruling: Merrick Garland



Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on how "obstruction of an official proceeding" can be used in Jan. 6 charges won't have much of an impact.

MSNBC contributor and Just Security fellow Adam Klasfeld quoted Garland saying, "The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on Jan. 6 will not be affected by this decision."

A pie chart from Just Security shows that of the 1,417 people charged, 71 defendants still awaiting trial have the law in question. This is approximately 5 percent of the charges. Most of those currently in prison are still facing charges and have other charges involved in their cases.

Read Also: Five unresolved questions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack

Donald Trump is also among those charged in the Jan. 6 cases, but the cases have not yet gone to trial.

"There are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer. For the cases affected by today’s decision, the Department will take appropriate steps to comply with the Court’s ruling," Garland also said.

Of the defendants who face misdemeanors, just 2.3 percent, or 33 people, face charges using Section 1512(c)(2), the law the Court decided on Friday. Those defendants also face other crimes, but are also only misdemeanors.

“January 6 was an unprecedented attack on the cornerstone of our system of government — the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next," Garland said in the Justice Department statement. "I am disappointed by today’s decision, which limits an important federal statute that the Department has sought to use to ensure that those most responsible for that attack face appropriate consequences."

Garland also promised, "We will continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”

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