An airplane (C) that carried Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is pictured on the tarmac at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok on June 25, 2024. (MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Julian Assange pleaded guilty to a felony at a United States federal courthouse in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday and walked out of court a free man.
The Justice Department had reached an agreement for Assange to plead guilty to a single felony count of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information. The judge in the case sentenced Assange to time served.
Speaking outside the court in Saipan following the hearing, Assange’s chief U.S. lawyer, Barry J. Pollack, called the prosecution of Assange “unprecedented.”
“[The Espionage Act] has never been used by the United States to pursue a publisher, a journalist,” Pollack said.
“He has suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech, for freedom of the press, and to ensure that the American public and the world gets truthful and important newsworthy information,” he continued. “We firmly believe that Mr. Assange never should have been charged under the Espionage Act and engaged in exercise that journalists engage in every day, and we are thankful that they do.”
The WikiLeaks founder arrived at the U.S. territory, located in the western Pacific, to “formalize the plea deal,” WikiLeaks said.
He was photographed arriving at the U.S. District Court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, Wednesday morning local time wearing a dark suit and brown tie.
Following the plea hearing, Assange is expected to travel to his native Australia.
Assange was photographed earlier Tuesday boarding a private plane in the United Kingdom after he reached a deal with prosecutors in the U.S. to plead guilty to a single felony count.
Assange had been accused by the United States of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, who, as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, leaked to Assange hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including about 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables. WikiLeaks began publishing those documents in 2010.
“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks said in a statement posted to social media early on Tuesday.
Assange on Monday walked out of London’s Belmarsh High Security Prison after more than five years at the facility, WikiLeaks said. He’d spent 1901 days there, the group said.
“He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said.
“After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars,” WikiLeaks added.
Stella Assange, a longtime partner who married Assange in 2022, released a statement praising the “incredible movement” that had sprung up to protest Assange’s detention and the U.S. charges against him.
“A movement of people from all walks of life, from around the world who support not just Julian, and not just us and our family, but what Julian stands for: Truth and justice,” Stella Assange said. “We still need your help. What starts now with Julian’s freedom is a new chapter.”
(SAGINAW, Mich.) — For many in Saginaw, Michigan, a town less than two hours north of Detroit, the once-thriving hub for the auto industry is now a shell of itself.
After several major factories closed in the county, the local economy has struggled to fully recover.
“Some of the things that have plagued us are the lack of good jobs, the ones that can take care of a family,” Hurley Coleman III, executive director of Saginaw County Community Action Center, told ABC News’ “Nightline.”
Coleman’s organization helps to provide low-income and elderly Saginaw residents with resources like food and housing assistance.
While the U.S. unemployment rate is at 4%, dropping to historic lows during the Biden administration’s first term, Black unemployment in Michigan is roughly 50% higher than the national average, hovering over 6.1%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“My concern personally is our Black community and our men and our women, being able to have the opportunity to go into homes, financial literacy, education, opportunities to advance,” Coleman said.
In this county, which is roughly 45% Black, according to the U.S. Census, voters have looked to both parties in recent elections in hopes of change.
In 2008 and 2012, Saginaw voted for former President Barack Obama. Trump won the county in 2016, but Biden took a close victory in 2020 by just 303 votes.
In a battleground like Michigan, a key state needed to win the Oval Office, Saginaw is a pivotal county.
Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have made stops in Saginaw, focusing on making sharp contrasts to one another in their vision for rebuilding the economy.
“I’m going to turn it around. I’ll bring you the car industry back to Michigan,” Trump said to voters during a campaign stop on May 1.
Biden met with Coleman during his visit to Saginaw on March 14.
“We talked about inflation and what it feels like to go to the grocery store. To pull out $25 and figure out how far that $25 can stretch,” Coleman told “Nightline.”
“I believe in what President Biden is trying to accomplish and I will be standing with him,” Coleman added.
First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff have also made campaign stops in Saginaw, visiting Baldwin’s Smokehouse BBQ, a Black-owned business in East Saginaw.
The owner of the restaurant, Roy Baldwin, 69, told ABC News he voted for Biden in 2020 and plans to do so again in November, but he remains worried about the economy, as he struggles to bounce back from inflation.
“I don’t think either one could make a big difference in the economy. I think things just got to level out. I don’t think a president really has much power to change any of that,” Baldwin said, noting that he thinks division in Congress has stalled policies that would benefit him.
Despite his worries, he says he’s committed to casting a ballot in November.
“My motivation in voting goes back to being a child. When my parents and other Blacks were not allowed to vote, and saw the struggle of at least having a voice,” Baldwin said. “We fought for it. We died to have a right and a voice.”
But not everyone is convinced.
At a gathering hosted by Coleman’s organization, a group of fathers brainstormed ways to improve their community for their children.
Among them was Antonio Brooks, a 47-year-old community organizer who grew up in Saginaw and watched the area transform after multiple factory closures caused a rise in poverty.
Brooks tells ABC News that he has voted Democrat in every election for more than two decades, a political stance he says he was taught to follow in the Black community he was raised in. But this election cycle, for the first time, he is considering not voting at all.
“I have the right to stand firm in my own beliefs and what I believe is they’re [Trump and Biden] not good candidates for the people,” Brooks said.
Brooks voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, hoping to see the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, reform the president and other Democrats advocated for to prevent and remedy racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels.
However, several attempts to pass police reform ultimately have failed in Congress, never making it to Biden’s desk during his first term.
“All we do is go in and just vote for a straight ticket. We don’t really vet the ballots and we don’t really vet the candidates. We just vote Democrat. So we’re not holding them accountable. We’re just giving them our vote,” Brooks said. “I feel like you don’t deserve it, I’m not giving it to you anymore. I keep it to myself.”
While the Black community still overwhelmingly supports Democrats, some of that support could be eroded. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that some Black people may have moved away from President Joe Biden.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Florida, a prominent Black conservative and a vice presidential contender, has been actively courting undecided Black voters in hopes of getting them to vote for Trump. The congressman most recently moderated a roundtable discussion with Trump at a church in Detroit on June 15.
In the last three presidential election cycles, Black men were more likely than Black women to vote Republican, according to ABC News analysis of exit polling data.
“I believe that voters in our country are shifting underneath the feet of the political parties,” Donalds told ABC News Chief National Correspondent and “Nightline” Co-Anchor Byron Pitts.
“I think there’s a frustration with the American people just with politics overall. I think people are somewhat tired of politics being the first, or fifth, topic in every room they walk into. And at the end of the day, I think the American people just want common sense policies that work,” Donalds said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court, nearing the end of its term, is poised to soon deliver rulings in high-profile cases on everything from presidential power to abortion access.
The justices will release opinions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. It will mark the first time in at least a decade the justices have done three opinion days in a row.
The timing means key decisions, some with enormous consequences for the 2024 campaign, could be handed down just before President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump meet on stage in Atlanta for their first debate.
Blockbuster cases still to be resolved include whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution on charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss; whether hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters were improperly charged with obstruction; and whether a federal law protecting emergency care overrides a state abortion ban.
Here is a deeper dive into the some of the dozen cases pending before the nation’s high court.
Presidential immunity
In what is likely the most consequential case before the court this term, the justices will decide whether a former president is shielded from criminal liability for “official acts” taken while in the White House.
In Trump v. United States, Trump is seeking to quash the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith by claiming immunity.
Lower courts flatly rejected Trump’s argument, but the justices appeared open to the idea of some level of immunity for former presidents when they heard arguments in April. Their questioning largely focused on what types of official acts would be protected and which would not.
How the justices make that determination will set a new standard for presidential power, and will affect whether Trump stands trial for his unprecedented actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Jan. 6 obstruction charges
A felony obstruction charge used by federal prosecutors against alleged Jan. 6 rioters is being put to the test in Fischer v. United States.
A former Pennsylvania police officer charged for his alleged participation in the U.S. Capitol attack is challenging the government’s use of a 2002 law enacted to prevent the destruction of evidence in financial crimes. The law includes a sweeping provision for any conduct that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes an official proceeding.”
The Supreme Court appeared divided on whether the government’s broad interpretation of the law should stand or be narrowed, with conservatives on the bench questioning the lack of prosecutions under the law for matters unrelated to financial or documentary crimes.
The court’s decision could upend hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, including Trump’s. Felony obstruction is one of the four charges the former president is facing in his federal election subversion case.
Idaho abortion ban and emergency care
In Moyle v. United States, the question before the court is whether a federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to all patients overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban.
Idaho’s law prohibits nearly all abortions, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.
The Biden administration argues the law is conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires hospitals receiving Medicare funds to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment.”
The case marks the first time the court is evaluating state-level abortion restrictions passed after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Since the court’s conservative majority struck down Roe, 21 states have successfully enacted restrictions or bans on abortion and 14 of those states have total bans with few exceptions.
Homeless encampment ban
In the most significant case on homelessness in decades, the justices are weighing whether a local ordinance to bar anyone without a permanent residency from sleeping outside amounts to “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Officials in Grants Pass, Oregon argue the ordinance is necessary to protect public spaces and encourage a growing tide of unhoused residents to seek shelter. A lower court ruled that punishing homeless people with fines and the possibility of jail time for public camping when they have nowhere else to go is unconstitutional.
A majority of Supreme Court justices seemed to favor the city’s arguments when it heard the case in April.
Social media regulation and free speech
The Supreme Court will determine whether state laws restricting how social media companies moderate content violate the First Amendment.
The measures from Florida and Texas seek to place limits on how the private companies can manage user accounts and feeds on their platforms. Both were passed amid conservative concerns that Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, were censoring viewpoints on their site based on politics.
In another case, Murthy v. Missouri, the justices will decide if the Biden administration went too far in communicating with social media companies about misinformation on their sites about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.
Republican-led states argued the government’s conduct amounted to illegally coercion, while the administration argued their contact with the companies was aimed at protecting national security and public health.
The justices appeared likely to reject the states’ challenge and side with the Biden administration when it heard arguments in March.
(WASHINGTON) — With only days to go until he faces off against President Joe Biden in Thursday’s CNN debate, former President Donald Trump is escalating his demands that Biden take a pre-debate drug test, something the Biden campaign rejected as “desperate.”
That’s in addition to a growing list of complaints Trump and his campaign are making about CNN, accusing the network and its moderators of being biased.
“DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Monday afternoon and later fundraising off his call.
Trump has called for Biden to be drug-tested as early as April, saying he would debate Biden “anytime” and “anywhere” if the president takes a drug test. He has escalated such attacks since he and Biden agreed to debate in May, citing Biden’s strong showing in his State of the Union address in March.
At his recent rally in Philadelphia on Saturday, Trump continued to push the baseless claim that if Biden did well on Thursday night, it would be because he was taking performance-enhancing drugs.
“So, a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass — they want to strengthen him up so he comes out, he’ll come out, okay, I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right? All jacked up,” Trump told the crowd.
The Biden campaign quickly dismissed Trump’s demand, saying he would not submit to a drug test.
“Donald Trump is so scared of being held accountable for his toxic agenda of attacking reproductive freedom and cutting Social Security that he and his allies are resorting to desperate, obviously false lies,” a Biden campaign spokesman said.
“Trump’s going to talk trash like that all the time because that’s what he does. The other day you may remember he was trying to question our president’s mental acuity and he could not remember the name of his own doctor so tell President Trump, bring whatever he’s got — President Biden will be standing there, ready for him,” Biden campaign adviser Mitch Landrieu said on CNN. (Trump had referred to his White House physician Ronny Jackson as Ronny Johnson at a campaign rally.)
Calling for drug tests has been a tactic Trump has used repeatedly for years. He previously called on Biden to take a drug test before their 2020 debates, suggesting without evidence that Biden must have been on “performance-enhancing drugs” during that year’s Democratic primary. In 2016, Trump made similar unsubstantiated claims about Hillary Clinton.
At the same time, Trump and his campaign also are continuing to level accusations that CNN will favor President Biden on Thursday, a charge fueled by Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, during an appearance on CNN that was cut short Monday.
On “CNN This Morning,” anchor Kasie Hunt attempted to get Leavitt to answer questions about the Trump campaign’s debate preparations and expectations.
Leavitt, instead, tried to attack CNN and debate moderator Jake Tapper.
She was quickly cut off twice by Hunt who said she wouldn’t give Leavitt a platform to criticize her colleagues. After Leavitt continued her attacks against the CNN debate moderators, she was dropped from the segment.
“You come on my show, you respect my colleagues. Period. I don’t care what side of the aisle you stand on, as my track record clearly shows,” Hunt posted on X after the show wrapped.
“You cut off my microphone for bringing up the debate moderator’s history of anti-Trump lies,” Leavitt responded on X. “This proved our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly on Thursday. Yet he is still willing to go into this 3-1 fight to bring his winning message to the American people, and he will win.”
In a statement to ABC News, a CNN spokesperson called Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “well respected veteran journalists” with extensive experience moderating major political debates.
“There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”
On the campaign trail, Trump also has complained about the debate being hosted by CNN as well as about the rules he and his campaign agreed to, including not having an audience and the mics being muted when it’s not the candidate’s turn speaking.
“You know, I agreed to the debates. They came up to me and they said, ‘We’re going to do a debate. We’d like to challenge you to a debate.’ But they didn’t want me to accept. So, they gave me something that I couldn’t accept,” said Trump at a rally in Racine, Wisconsin, last week.
“They thought I would say, no, I don’t want to do because CNN is so, you know, it’s fake news. But I think maybe they’ll be honest,” Trump said. “I think fake Tapper would really help himself if it were honest. But you’ll see immediately if it is or not.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump — who has made opposition to immigration a defining message of the GOP — last week pitched what would be one of the most significant expansions of U.S. immigration in decades.
Speaking on a podcast hosted by tech businessmen, Trump announced his support for giving a green card to every noncitizen graduate of a U.S. college (“staple a green card to every diploma,” said the former president).
Hours later, following outrage from some anti-immigration Republicans, he issued a clarification. A statement from a spokesperson given on Friday to ABC News said that the proposed program would involve an “aggressive vetting process,” and that “this would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers.”
Whether or not they become a major part of his messaging, Trump’s recent comments offer a glimpse of what appeared to be a more moderate approach to talking about immigration ahead of a hotly-contested presidential election where immigration will be a top issue — and a high-stakes first debate this Thursday.
ABC News spoke to conservative experts and immigration policy insiders to discuss how a potential shift in tone on immigration could play with voters.
“It runs against type, in many ways,” said Whit Ayres, a long-time Republican political strategist. “In some senses, it’s a ‘Nixon goes to China’ kind of phenomenon, where the guy who has been the most critical of immigration offers an opportunity for immigrants who are most likely to create jobs and grow our economy to stay in America.”
For key independent voters, Ayres believes, more vocal support for high-skill immigration could offer a needed complement to the fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump has long made his calling card.
“It could make swing voters and suburban voters take another look at the way he’s approaching the immigration issue,” Ayres said, “and make it seem more rational than emotional.”
Daniel Di Martino, an economist who studies immigration and a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, also noted that the stance appeals to business leaders looking to hire high-skilled immigrants.
“The audience here is corporations and businesses — not voters, necessarily,” said Di Martino.
Trump announced the position on green cards during an appearance on a podcast hosted by several businessmen from the tech industry, which relies disproportionately on high-skilled worker visas. In recent weeks, Trump has made overtures to Silicon Valley, looking to draw support from a group that has tended to side with Democrats.
As several interviews with conservative immigration advocates and policymakers made clear, though, Trump’s position isn’t without its critics.
“My first-rip reaction was roll-backward shock,” said one senior official who served in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration. “This is so outrageously unthought-through it’s amazing.”
If all foreign students were to receive a green card on graduation, the official objected, “you’re not buying an education — you’re buying citizenship.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” concurred Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an avowed immigration restrictionist. “But it doesn’t surprise me coming from President Trump, because he’s never been a restrictionist.”
“He subscribes to the standard Republican mantra, ‘illegal good, legal bad,'” Krikorian added.
Another former Trump immigration official — former acting director of ICE Tom Homan — was more approving.
“If we’re going to immigrate, let’s immigrate some highly-skilled workers,” Homan said, noting that he believes Trump’s comments on the podcast referred back to proposals from early in his administration.
In 2017, the former president issued an executive order commissioning a review of the H1-B high-skill visa program and backed legislation that would have substantially reduced the number of green cards granted each year, saying that it would “prioritize immigrants based on the skills they bring to our Nation.”
Before his election as president, in 2015, Trump tweeted language similar to his comments on the podcast last week, writing that “When foreigners attend our great colleges & want to stay in the U.S., they should not be thrown out of our country.” But weeks before the 2020 election, the Trump administration would go on to modestly restrict the H1-B program.
Despite opposition from some conservatives, experts interviewed by ABC News agreed that Trump did not risk losing support from opponents of immigration among his base.
“What are those people going to do? Vote for Joe Biden?” asked Ayres. “They’re not going to vote for Donald Trump, because he wants to have high-skilled immigrants in the country? Really?”
“He has got so much credibility on these issues, he can actually take a position that seems slightly at variance with what he said in the past on immigration and get away with it,” Ayres added.
“Nobody’s going to stop voting for him because of what he said,” echoed Di Martino. “If anything, that can only earn him more votes.”
(WASHINGTON) — In an overnight court filing in Donald Trump’s classified documents case, special counsel Jack Smith defended the August 2022 search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate, following Trump’s lawyers’ request to dismiss the case on the basis that some of the documents were shuffled around during the search.
The new filing, which comes as the judge overseeing the case, Aileen Cannon, hears arguments today on defense requests to have the case dismissed, provides perhaps the most detailed account of the search and the state of Trump’s boxes that were seized by the FBI — including never-before-seen photos of some of the boxes to illustrate how Trump stored his materials.
“Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency — newspapers, thank-you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,” the filing says.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back. Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
“At the end of his presidency, he took his cluttered collection of keepsakes to Mar-a-Lago, his personal residence and social club, where the boxes traveled from one readily accessible location to another — a public ballroom, an office space, a bathroom, and a basement storage room,” Tuesday’s filing said.
The boxes’ lack of organization — and Trump’s detailed familiarity with their contents — prompted some of his staff to call them the “Beautiful Mind” boxes, referring to the film of the same title about genius mathematician John Nash, according to prosecutors.
Trump’s lawyers claim the boxes were not preserved in the exact manner in which they were found, and claim the evidence has been tampered with. However, the special counsel argued in the filing that Trump’s “cluttered collection of keepsakes” and “the haphazard manner” in which the items were stored allowed the contents of the boxes to shift anytime they were moved. The special counsel says the contents of the boxes didn’t change at all, despite some items perhaps moving within the boxes.
“Because the boxes were a mix of items and contained many small, loose materials and papers of various sizes and shapes, items within them necessarily shifted around anytime they were moved,” the filing said.
In the filing, the special counsel details the cautious nature of the FBI agents who were tasked with searching the boxes — both for privileged materials and classified documents.
“However, once agents saw the state in which Trump kept his boxes, it became apparent that maintaining the exact order of all documents and items within the boxes was nigh impossible given the variety of document shapes and sizes (newspapers, photographs, magazines, loose cards and notes, envelopes, etc.), and the presence of other non-documentary items like clothing, framed pictures, and other keepsakes,” the filing says.
Prosecutors argue in the filing that the recent defense arguments about the conditions of the boxes are “newly invented explanations” and Trump’s “latest unfounded accusations against law enforcement professionals doing their jobs.”
(WASHINGTON) — With the Republican National Convention less than a month away, former President Donald Trump’s timeline to select a vice president is dwindling. While Trump continues to weigh his options on who he might select for the No. 2 slot, the abortion stances held by prospective shortlist candidates have become an issue of focus.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — a potential veepstakes candidate — backed one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, something the Trump campaign is aware of as they move forward in the selection process.
In April 2023, Burgum banned abortion in his state with very limited exceptions — some of which only apply up to six weeks’ gestation, before many women know they are pregnant.
The exceptions within the first six weeks of pregnancy allow abortion in cases of rape or incest, while exceptions for medical emergencies are allowed throughout pregnancy.
“This bill clarifies and refines existing state law … and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state,” Burgum said in a statement when he signed the law.
Burgum’s signature came almost a year after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that reversed Roe v. Wade. At the time of his signature, there were no abortion clinics in the state of North Dakota.
On the second day of his GOP presidential primary campaign, Burgum shifted his narrative, saying he would not support a similar nationwide law if he was elected to the White House. He advocated that the issue should be decided on a state-by-state basis, a stance that Trump has since adopted on the campaign trail.
Trump has said he supports abortion with three exceptions: in cases of rape, in cases of incest, and in cases where it’s necessary to save the life of the mother. In contrast, Burgum’s ban doesn’t allow for rape and incest exceptions after the first six weeks of pregnancy.
“I think the decision that was made returning the power to the states was the right one. And I think we’re going to have — we have a lot of division on this issue in America. And what’s right for North Dakota may not be right for another state … the best decisions are made locally,” Burgum said on “CNN This Morning” in early June.
Another candidate on the former president’s shortlist, Ohio Gov. JD Vance, has danced carefully around the issue of abortion, applauding the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supporting Texas’ ban on abortion, which does not allow exceptions except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.
Late last year, though, Vance called on Republicans to respond to abortion in a more sensible way, saying on CNN’s State of the Union, “We have to accept people do not want blanket abortion bans, and I say this as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible.”
Last November, in Vance’s home state of Ohio, voters approved a constitutional amendment that protects access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. Vance, who opposed the amendment, called the passing of the initiative a “gut punch” but also spoke to his party on how they must accept the “political reality of abortion,” writing on X last year voters do not trust Republicans on the issue.
“Donald Trump has said, ‘You’ve got to have the exceptions.’ I am as pro-life as anyone, and I want to save as many babies as possible. This is not about moral legitimacy but political reality,” Vance said.
Another VP hopeful, Sen. Marco Rubio, famously said during his 2016 presidential bid that “every one abortion is too many,” and in 2022 he co-sponsored federal legislation that would ban abortion after 15 weeks.
In recent years Rubio has said that he supports any legislation that “protects unborn human life,” but has also acknowledged that not everyone shares his views on abortion.
“I support any bill that protects unborn human life, but I don’t consider other people in the pro-life movement who have a different view to be apostate,” Rubio said during an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press last month when pressed on whether he disagrees with Trump’s opposition to Florida’s six-week ban.
In the past, Trump has criticized Republicans for signing strict abortion bans, publicly slamming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after he signed a six-week abortion ban into law in April of last year.
“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Trump’s comments were indicative of the political approach he has taken on the issue of reproductive rights, arguing that Republicans need to be cognizant of the need to win elections and not alienate voters with extreme policies.
Early in April, he stated that since Roe v. Wade had reversed the nation’s prohibitions against abortion access, the matter should be left to the discretion of the individual states, advocating that they maintain laws allowing abortion access for victims of rape and incest, and to save the life of the pregnant woman.
“You must follow your heart on this issue but remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly, a nation in decline,” Trump said in an abortion policy video released on his social media platform. “Always go by your heart. But we must win. We have to win, we are a failing nation.”
Since then, Trump has reiterated his belief on numerous occasions — including at a religious convention just this past weekend while courting conservative Christians — as he has publicly pushed for Republicans to move away from spotlighting abortion, demonstrating an awareness that voters tend to disagree with Republican abortion bans.
When South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham “respectfully” disagreed with Trump’s state’s rights stance and advocated for a 15-week national ban in April, Trump grew irate, highlighting how comments like Graham’s feed into Democratic narratives of Republican extremism that have cost the party electoral victories.
“Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue, and people like Lindsey Graham, that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even the Presidency,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, in a rare public rebuke of his congressional ally.
Trump similarly lashed out against his former Vice President Mike Pence when he called Trump’s stance on abortion “a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” earlier this year.
“Mike Pence has been doing a lot of talking about Abortion lately … He started at no abortion for any reason, and then allowing abortions for up to 6 weeks, then up to 15 weeks, and then, who knows?” Trump wrote on his social media platform in April.
“But it doesn’t matter because the Radical Left Democrats will never approve anything on this issue, and Republicans don’t have anywhere close to the number of Senators necessary to make it matter,” Trump continued, suggesting that his former running mate was polling at 1%-2% because he was getting bad advice.
And though abortion is a key issue as Trump considers his choices for a running mate, he continues to try to shift the focus of the race away from reproductive rights toward other issues like the economy and immigration that he feels are more likely to generate support among Republicans.
Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — When artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company last week — surpassing household names like Apple and Microsoft — the moment appeared to be a declaration of victory for the AI boom on Wall Street.
Over the next three trading days, however, Nvidia shares plummeted 13%. The company lost more than $500 billion in value and plopped down to third place among the largest firms.
Rather than a rebuke of AI or Nvidia, the extraordinary losses amounted to a routine selloff on a massive scale as traders sought to cash in on some of the gains made by the chipmaker during its meteoric rise, market analysts told ABC News.
Analysts differed on whether the recent slide offers a worthwhile opportunity for investors to buy the stock at a favorable price.
“It’s normal to see stocks take a breath,” Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at trading firm Interactive Broker, told ABC News. “What’s abnormal is that Nvidia went so far and so long without taking a breath.”
It’s difficult to overstate the success that Nvidia enjoyed prior to its recent decline. The California-based company, which sells the majority of computer chips behind new AI products like ChatGPT, saw its stock soar nearly 700% in two years.
Even when accounting for the recent decline, shares of Nvidia have climbed nearly 150% since the outset of 2024.
After a prolonged ascent, stocks often fall victim to a phenomenon called profit-taking, when traders sell off some of their shares to lock in the returns. In this case, analysts said, that routine pullback was larger than one might expect because the preceding rise had been unusually steep.
“It’s not normal to have a stock go up this dramatically,” Sosnick said. “As a result, when it’s due for a little bout of profit taking, that will be abnormal, too.”
Ivan Feinseth, a market analyst at Tigress Financial, agreed. “The stock has had a huge run,” Feinseth told ABC News. “Some people who are more short-term oriented feel it’s time to take a profit.”
While citing a trend tied to market behavior rather than business performance, the analysts dismissed the notion of newfound weakness in the AI sector or Nvidia.
In an earnings release last month, the company reported $26 billion in revenue, which marked a staggering increase of 262% over the previous year. Profits jumped more than 600% over that same period.
In March, the company announced its latest and most powerful chip, Blackwell. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are among a who’s who of major tech firms set to adopt the new technology, Nvidia said in a statement.
“It’s Nvidia’s world — everyone else is paying,” Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at investment firm Wedbush, told ABC News.
Despite their agreement on the cause of the stock decline, analysts differed in their assessment of whether the current moment offers a chance for investors to jump into the stock.
Feinseth encouraged investors to buy into the stock, since he expects the dip to draw renewed interest in the company and send the price higher. “This is a stock that everybody wants to own and everybody is going to react to buying any selloff,” he said.
Early trading on Tuesday appeared to confirm that view. By noon, the stock had risen almost 5%, recovering much of what it had lost in recent days.
“This was just a small bump,” Ives said.
Sosnick, by contrast, cautioned against buying Nvidia shares unless the price falls further. Otherwise, he added, the relatively modest potential gains do not outweigh the risk of continued volatility.
“The stock is not super expensive but nor is it particularly cheap,” Sosnick said.
(LONDON) — When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange sets foot in his native Australia Wednesday, he will be a free man for the first time after 14 years spent in some form of confinement while attempting to avoid U.S. prosecution.
He will also meet his two young sons for the first time ever outside of prison.
Assange is due to appear in federal court in the Northern Marianas Islands, a remote U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, early Wednesday morning local time, where he will plead guilty to one felony count of illegally obtaining and classified information as part of a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. After that, he is expected to fly to his native Australia. There he will be met by his wife, Stella and their two young sons, who have never known him outside of captivity.
“When we met he was under house arrest. It will be the first time that I get to see him as a fully free man,” Stella Assange told Reuters on Tuesday, after news of the plea deal was announced.
Stella first met Assange as his lawyer in 2011 when he was under house arrest in the U.K. fighting extradition to Sweden on potential sexual assault charges. Shortly afterward, Assange fled to Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid the charges. He remained trapped there for seven years, facing arrest if he stepped outside.
Assange and Stella began a relationship while he was confined in the embassy, and they conceived their two sons there.
In 2019, Assange was arrested by U.K. police after Ecuador evicted him from the embassy and a British court sentenced him to 50 weeks in London’s Belmarsh prison for violating his bail conditions related to the Swedish sexual assault charges, even though Swedish prosecutors by then had dropped the charges. Since then, Assange has spent the past five years in Belmarsh, one of the U.K.’s most high-security prisons.
The couple’s sons, Gabriel and Max, aged 7 and 5, have only ever met their father in visitor rooms during twice-a-month visits to Belmarsh. In 2022, Stella and Assange married in a ceremony held at the prison.
Stella Assange described the visits to ABC News last summer, saying each time she and the boys had to endure searches by guards, including in their mouths, and be examined by sniffer dogs.
At the time, Stella said she feared Assange wouldn’t survive being extradited to the U.S.
“If he’s taken to the U.S. I can feel it that he will never come home,” she told ABC outside the prison, following one such visit.
Assange was confined to his cell in Belmarsh 23 hours a day, according to a journalist who wrote in The Nation about visiting him in prison last year. A United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture in 2019 criticized British authorities, saying the handling of Assange’s case put in doubt the U.K.’s commitment to human rights, and saying his treatment in Belmarsh amounted to “psychological torture”.
Stella Assange said the family now plans to spend time recovering in Australia, where the government has pressed the U.S. for years to free Assange. The sensitivity of the plea deal and the need to avoid leaks meant Stella decided not to tell her sons of their father’s release even as they flew to Australia to meet him, she said in an interview with BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday.
“We got on the plane and I told them that we were going to visit our family, their cousin, their grandfather and so on. And they still don’t know,” she told Radio 4. “We’ve been very careful because, obviously, no one can stop a five- and a seven-year-old from shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment.
Stella Assange led the campaign to free Assange over the years, defending him as a journalist being persecuted for his publishing evidence of misconduct by the U.S. government and military.
U.S. prosecutors’ decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act alarmed press freedom advocates and also leading U.S. media organizations, which feared the decision risked setting a precedent that could criminalize the publication of government secrets, something news outlets routinely do. Major news organizations, including The New York Times, had urged the Biden administration to drop the case.
Stella Assange said the plea deal still posed that danger to news organizations in the U.S. because even though it carried no additional prison time, Assange had still been convicted under the Espionage Act. She said Assange’s team intends to seek a full pardon following his release.
“The correct course of action from the U.S. government should have been to drop the case entirely,” she told Reuters. “The fact that there is a guilty plea under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing national defense information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists.”
(NEW YORK) — The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in Manhattan agreed to partially lift a gag order on the former president Tuesday, granting Trump the ability to speak freely about witnesses in the case and the jury that found him guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
“Circumstances have now changed,” Judge Juan Merchan wrote Tuesday. “The trial portion of these proceedings ended when the verdict was rendered, and the jury discharged.”
Trump last month was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
During the trial, Trump and his attorneys repeatedly bemoaned a stipulation in the judge’s limited gag order that prevented him from publicly responding to commentary about the case from witnesses in the proceedings, most notably Daniels and Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen.
Merchan restricted what Trump could say publicly about them and others involved in the case out of concern for the integrity of the trial.
The judge’s ruling Tuesday left in place the portion of the gag order protecting members of the court staff, District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff, and their families.
“Until sentence is imposed, all individuals covered by Paragraph (b)” — referring to members of the court staff, the district attorney’s staff and their families — “must continue to perform their lawful duties free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm,” Merchan wrote in the ruling.
And although he struck the portion of the gag order pertaining to jurors, Merchan wrote that it would be his “strong preference” to extend those protections because there remains “ample evidence to justify continued concern for the jurors.”
An earlier prohibition on releasing personal information about jurors will remain in effect.
Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on July 11.
