Trump's Assets Could Be Seized In Days As Bond Falls Apart

 

The clock is once again ticking for Donald Trump to come up with the full bond payment for his fraud trial appeal. New York AG Letitia James filed a motion last week that gave the bond company 10 days to adhere to New York state law or else the bond would be rendered void, and so far the company has been unable to do so. The judge has set a hearing with the bond company, and that could be the breaking point for Trump that allows James to seize his assets. Farron Cousins explains what's happening. Link - https://www.rawstory.com/bond-is-with... Listen to our videos in an audio format by subscribing to our podcast: https://farronbalanceddaily.buzzsprou... Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected! Connect with Farron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/farronbalanced

POLITICO Nightly: Putin’s political theater

 

BY GABRIEL GAVIN Presented by the Financial Services Forum According to exit polls, Vladimir Putin was handed a fifth presidential term with around 88 percent of the vote, giving the man who has ruled Russia since the turn of the millennium another six years in office. | Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP FOREGONE CONCLUSION — Russia’s weekend-long presidential election was an act of political theater in every way. Among the long lines of people waiting at polling stations across the country were eager voters dressed up in costumes as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Emperor Nicholas II or even as Barbie. Then there were the fictional results themselves — the outcome was a foregone conclusion. According to exit polls, Vladimir Putin was handed a fifth presidential term with around 88 percent of the vote, giving the man who has ruled Russia since the turn of the millennium another six years in office. The question no longer is whether he can keep his grip on power, but what happens when he finally gives it up. By any measure, this election was neither free nor fair. Serious contenders for the country’s top job were shut out of the contest altogether — like anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin, who was barred from standing for office. Others were jailed or murdered for standing against the regime, like opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was killed in prison a month before the vote. Meanwhile, those living in illegally occupied regions of Ukraine including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea went to cast their ballots in an uncompetitive election effectively at gunpoint under the watchful eye of Russian soldiers. A small number of incredibly brave protesters, who threw dye into ballot boxes or set off fireworks to highlight the absurdity of the spectacle, were immediately detained in cities across Russia. The key figure in the minds of the Kremlin’s inner circle was never how many people would support him — that had been taken care of — but the turnout. Why would anyone bother to get out of bed or cut short their weekend at the dacha to vote in a contest that everybody already knew Putin would win? The illusion of democracy, however, required that large numbers take part to maintain the idea that Russians had made a decision about their future and actively chose the only option made available to them. According to official figures — which are impossible to independently verify — more than 70 percent of eligible voters took part, higher than in any of Putin’s previous elections. Whether that number had been decided in advance or not, monumental efforts were made to give the sham vote an air of legitimacy. To inflate the vote, raffle prizes were on offer by local authorities, state employees were ordered to go to the polling stations and one city in Siberia even promised voters would be able to take a photo with a cardboard cutout of American political commentator Tucker Carlson . The officially sanctioned opposition was unceremoniously knocked down, with none of the procession of Communist politicians and nobodies who had been allowed to stand against the president attracting more than around 4 percent of the vote. Putin’s message was clear: there is no alternative to me. For the world, the implication of his victory seems to be that he will double down on his disastrous invasion of Ukraine, and any hopes that Moscow could take a different course are a very long way off. For Russia, however, the consequences are murkier, aside from the inevitable continued crackdown against domestic dissent. Putin, who has been in power longer than some of the soldiers fighting his war have been alive, has to maintain the appearance that he is there forever. The moment the door opens to the possibility that he might step down, or die in office, it will unleash a wave of infighting and palace intrigue as rivals fight to position themselves to succeed him. Retirement isn’t usually an option for tyrants — but in Putin’s case, it’s unthinkable. The system he has created relies on him to control it; it’s not in place because Russians genuinely want it. This weekend’s election was supposed to paint a picture of Russia as a stable state where politics cannot change. Yet it was just last year that Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin looked set to take the capital in an all-out coup. And the war only deepens the divide between security officials, army chiefs and the billionaire business elites that Putin has so far managed to keep behind him. All that pressure is building, waiting to explode again, whether Putin himself admits it or not. Only now it’s almost certain he won’t be alive to see it. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at ggavin@politico.eu or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @GabrielCSGavin .   A message from the Financial Services Forum: Americans, especially low- and moderate-income consumers, will bear the brunt of Basel III Endgame. The new requirements would make borrowing more expensive, making it harder for Americans to take out a mortgage, buy a car, or secure a small business loan. Learn more.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Trump can’t post $464M bond in New York civil case, lawyers say: Donald Trump told an appellate court here Monday that he can’t obtain a bond for the full amount of the civil fraud judgment against him — more than $450 million, including interest — raising the possibility that the state attorney general’s office could begin to seize his assets unless the court agrees to halt the judgment while the former president appeals the verdict. Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing that “ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is a ‘practical impossibility,’” adding that those efforts “have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers.” — Supreme Court lets ‘insurrectionist’ ban against New Mexico official stand: The Supreme Court has turned away a convicted member of the Jan. 6 mob who was barred from public office in New Mexico under the Constitution’s “insurrection clause” seeking to reverse his disqualification. The justices on Monday denied Couy Griffin’s petition to consider his effort to overturn the rulings of courts in New Mexico that deemed him ineligible from holding office there ever again. Griffin, who was convicted in 2022 of misdemeanor offenses related to his role in the breach of Capitol grounds, was a member of the Otero County board of commissioners until courts ordered him removed later that year. The former Cowboys for Trump founder was an early and vocal advocate of discredited theories about election fraud. — Major Rafah operation would be ‘mistake,’ Biden told Netanyahu: President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Monday for the first time in a month , during which Biden seemingly offered his strongest warnings against an all-out Israeli attack on Rafah. The prospect of fighting in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, was the main focus of the conversation. National security adviser Jake Sullivan, briefing reporters at the White House after the call, said Biden requested Israel send a team to hear the administration’s concerns about Rafah and brief his aides on their planning. Netanyahu agreed, and that discussion is scheduled to happen in the coming days. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 NO TO NO LABELS — Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a leading contender in No Labels’ push to recruit a presidential nominee, has ruled out a 2024 bid , the Associated Press reports. Duncan, a Republican, had been in communication with the centrist group in recent weeks about running for the White House under the No Labels banner this fall. The well-funded organization has already secured ballot access in more than a dozen states. The former Georgia leader becomes the latest would-be candidate to turn down No Labels, a list that includes Republican former presidential candidate Nikki Haley, Republican former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic retiring West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. HE’S BACK — Former president Donald Trump is expected to enlist Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager he pardoned, as a campaign adviser later this year, according to the Washington Post. The job discussions have largely centered around the 2024 Republican convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. While no formal decision has been made, the four people described the hiring as expected and said Trump was determined to bring Manafort back into the fold. Manafort worked for Trump in 2016 before being ousted and later convicted of tax and bank fraud felonies as part of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He served time in prison before receiving a pardon in the final days of Trump’s time in office.   JOIN US ON 3/21 FOR A TALK ON FINANCIAL LITERACY: Americans from all communities should be able to save, build wealth, and escape generational poverty, but doing so requires financial literacy. How can government and industry ensure access to digital financial tools to help all Americans achieve this? Join POLITICO on March 21 as we explore how Congress, regulators, financial institutions and nonprofits are working to improve financial literacy education for all. REGISTER HERE .     AROUND THE WORLD Displaced Palestinians gather to receive food at a donation point in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 7, 2024, after more than four months of ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. | Yasser Qudihe/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images BRINK OF FAMINE   — Half of the population in Gaza is on the brink of famine , an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs said on Monday, reports POLITICO Europe. Under the most likely scenario, in which Israeli forces launch a ground offensive against Rafah, 1.1 million people will face “catastrophic” conditions by mid-July, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in its latest analysis. That represents a 92 percent rise since the last IPC forecast in December. TOWERING INBOX — Wales has a new leader. Now for the towering in-tray. Vaughan Gething will formally become First Minister on Wednesday , after narrowly winning a ballot of Labour Party members, making the 50-year-old Europe’s first Black head of government, write POLITICO Europe. As the plaudits fade, attention will turn to what it means for the three million-strong country’s relationship with the U.K. government based in Westminster — especially Labour Leader Keir Starmer, who polls predict will win a general election later this year. Gething also inherits rows over the lowering of many road speed limits from 30 to 20 mph, the performance of the NHS, and protests against subsidy reforms that will require farmers to hand back some land to nature. Planned reforms would also raise the number of members of the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, from 60 to 90.   A message from the Financial Services Forum:     NIGHTLY NUMBER 70% The percentage of Americans who believe U.S. presidents shouldn't be immune from criminal prosecution . Donald Trump claims that, as a former president, he is immune from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. RADAR SWEEP IPO ANXIETY — Reddit moderators, or mods, play a crucial role on the social media platform and online community. While the company has overarching content policies regarding acceptable content, the volunteer mods are responsible for, and have significant editorial discretion over, the individual subreddits they oversee. With Reddit slated to make its initial public offering (IPO) this week, Wired does a deep dive into whether this army of more than 60,000 unpaid moderators can coexist with Wall Street’s expectations for sales and user growth.   Easily connect with the right N.Y. State influencers and foster the right relationships to champion your policy priorities. POLITICO Pro. Inside New York. Learn more .     On this date in 1983: New York Mayor Edward Koch, wearing a traditional Irish sweater, gives his "thumbs up" at the start of the Saint Patrick's Day parade. Koch did not walk alongside the Grand Marshall, Irish Republican Army supporter Michael Flannery. | Marty Lederhandler/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   A message from the Financial Services Forum: State pension fund management systems like CalPERS have warned that regulators' current proposal is likely to reduce returns for people saving for retirement. With Americans still recovering from steep prices for gas and groceries, now is not the time to raise costs further. It's no wonder a bipartisan group of lawmakers, former policymakers, business groups, academics, and nonprofit leaders have raised concerns over the proposal's potential impacts. See the cost.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   FOLLOW US

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

POLITICO Nightly: A key number to watch in the fight against inflation

 

BY VICTORIA GUIDA President Joe Biden and then-Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) speak with workers at the Metro D Line Extension Transit Project in Los Angeles. | Apu Gomes/Getty Images PRODUCTIVITY POINTS — Prices have gone up a lot over the past couple of years, which, unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve noticed. Wages, too, have surged and are now growing faster than inflation. But the Federal Reserve has kept a wary eye on worker income for fear that it might lead to a resurgence in inflation. If you read that paragraph, you might think, despairingly: do we really have to worry about wages growing too fast? The good news is that the answer is no, not necessarily. But the economy does need a special ingredient: productivity growth. That is, more output from the same inputs. “The absolutely most critical piece of information that we need to glean is, what is happening to the productivity growth rate?” Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told Nightly recently. “The question of, ‘Is this rate of wage inflation consistent with this rate of price inflation?’ That cannot be answered unless you say what the productivity growth rate is.” A reductive but useful way of thinking about wage growth is productivity growth plus inflation. So if you have 4 percent wage growth and 1 percent productivity growth, that implies 3 percent inflation — above the Fed’s 2 percent target. But if productivity growth is higher, you can have higher wages without rapid price increases. And there is more good news. Maybe. The most recent data for the second quarter (April to June) showed productivity grew at an annualized rate of 3.7 percent. That’s gangbusters compared to the rate we saw before the pandemic, which was more like 1 percent. Before we pop the champagne, though, there are caveats. Productivity is output per hours worked. On an individual level, you might have the same productivity on a given day if you’re getting a little bit done each hour or achieving a ton for just a couple hours. On a macroeconomic scale, we measure how much is produced by everyone combined in the aggregate amount of time they’re working. As you might guess, that’s a massive undertaking. Initial data is quite noisy, and it gets significantly revised as more, better data becomes available. But even if 3.7 percent gets revised down, or if it’s just a one-off, there’s reason to be optimistic that productivity growth might be a little higher going forward. “We should hope that the recent second-quarter productivity number is the real deal,” said James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “If the U.S. economy is going to grow anywhere near as fast in the future as it has in the past, productivity growth is going to have to do the heavy lifting.” Productivity last had a sustained surge because of the proliferation of the internet, though it can sometimes spike for bad reasons as well; often it goes up during a recession when there are layoffs because companies are able to sustain the same level of output for a time with fewer people. This happened in 2020. Then in 2022, productivity actually dropped because companies were adding workers so fast, so more hours were being worked but less was being produced. But now, those workers are largely trained up and supply chains have largely healed, opening the floodgates for more production, notes Skanda Amarnath, executive director of the worker advocacy group Employ America. “Output gains tied to the recovery that preceded it are starting to shine through,” he said. Now that the weirdness of the pandemic seems to have been more ironed out in the data, Goolsbee thinks that the second half of the year will be more instructive as to whether we’re returning to our disappointing pre-pandemic trend or whether we’ll see a boost. The biggest thing everyone is watching? If and when artificial intelligence will begin to show up in the productivity data. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at vguida@politico.com on Twitter at @vtg2 .   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO APP: Stay in the know with the POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS  – DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID .     WHAT'D I MISS? — Trump’s bond set at $200,000 in Georgia election-related case: Donald Trump’s attorneys have signed an order setting his bond on racketeering charges in Georgia at $200,000 and binding Trump to a set of rules that explicitly limit his ability to use social media to attack witnesses or co-defendants in the case. The three-page order, signed by Georgia Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, sets the conditions of Trump’s pretrial release in the case, which stems from his effort to subvert the 2020 election. — Tropical Storm Hilary shutters Southern California schools: District leaders fearing safety hazards from Tropical Storm Hilary moved to close schools across much of Southern California today. The nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, announced Sunday it would close to allow staff time to check buildings for damage from the rare West Coast tropical storm — and to avoid potentially dangerous bus rides to school. San Diego Unified pushed the start of its school year to Tuesday, but asked staff to report to work if they could do so safely. Several other school districts in Los Angeles County, including in Pasadena, also announced plans to close, bracing for the storm to swirl northeast and risk flooding throughout the region. — AI cannot hold copyright, federal judge rules: Artificial intelligence cannot hold a copyright for works it creates, a federal judge ruled. Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the U.S. Copyright Office was correct in denying copyright protections to a work that was created entirely without human involvement. The ruling will be a critical component in future legal fights as lawyers and inventors test the limits of intellectual property laws when applied to AI. NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 SECOND IMPRESSIONS — Vice President Kamala Harris’ term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate. They’ve fueled whispers about whether she’ll be a drag on the reelection ticket as the 2024 race heats up, writes POLITICO. Now her political future, and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket in 2024, hinges on a simple question: Is it possible for Harris to make a second impression ? For Harris, it’s a question that fundamentally misunderstands the point. In her mind, she’s the same person she was when the prevailing narrative of her was that of a star prosecutor, ascendant political talent and even the future of the Democratic Party. UNREQUITED BROADSIDES — Chris Christie built his entire presidential candidacy toward a marquee confrontation with Donald Trump, relentlessly goading him and needling him as a coward in a clear effort to tempt the quick-to-anger former president into showing up to the debate on Wednesday in Milwaukee. It appears Trump will not take the bait, other than swiping back at the former New Jersey governor on social media and in speeches, writes the New York Times. Last week, he signaled that he planned to skip the first Republican debate and instead sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson that will be broadcast online at the same time. Trump’s absence could lead to an anticlimactic scene at the debate , with Christie forced to launch unrequited broadsides through the airwaves without the fireworks of a Trump response. TRUMP’S TRIAL DATE — Federal prosecutors objected today to the April 2026 trial date proposed by lawyers for Donald Trump in the case accusing the former president of scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election, reports the Associated Press. Members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team said in a court filing that Trump’s lawyers last week had exaggerated the amount of material that they would need to sift through in order to be ready for trial. In suggesting an April 2026 trial date, defense lawyers said they had been provided by prosecutors with 11.5 million pages of potential evidence to review. But prosecutors said much of that includes duplicate pages or information that is already public, such as documents from the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as copies of Trump’s social media posts. AROUND THE WORLD Presidential candidate Luisa González, of the Citizen's Revolution Political Movement, speaks to supporters after the polls closed in Quito, Ecuador. | Carlos Noriega/AP Photo IT’S A RUNOFF — Ecuadorian voters looking for a new leader to help curb the country’s unprecedented violence will have to head to the polls again in October for a runoff, reports the Associated Press’ Regina Garcia Cano .   The October battle will pit Luisa González, an ally of Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa (who was convicted of corruption in 2020 in absentia, though remains influential in the country), against former lawmaker Daniel Noboa, the son of banana magnate Alvaro Noboa. The younger Noboa was the big surprise of the election, winning 24 percent despite never polling higher than fifth. González, meanwhile, was the frontrunner throughout but only captured 33 percent, well short of the 50 percent she needed to win outright. In third place with 16 percent was Christian Zurita, whose name was not on the ballot but who replaced Fernando Villavicencio, whose killing this month as he left a campaign rally in Quito, the capital, laid bare people’s fears over unprecedented violence in a country they considered peaceful up until three years ago. MOVED IT ALL ONLINE — China wants to define how the metaverse works — and it is pushing proposals that bear an eerie resemblance to the country’s controversial social credit systems, proposals reviewed by POLITICO showed , according to Gian Volpicelli . The proposals, drafted by the state-owned telecoms operator China Mobile, floated a “Digital Identity System” for all users of online virtual worlds, or metaverses. They recommended that the digital ID should work with “natural characteristics” and “social characteristics” that include a range of personal data points like people’s occupation, “identifiable signs” and other attributes. They also suggested this information be “permanently” stored and shared with law enforcement “to keep the order and safety of the virtual world.” The proposals even provide the example of a noxious user called Tom — an ideal stand-in for whoever uses the fledgling technology, for instance for gaming or socializing — who “spreads rumors and makes chaos in the metaverse”; the digital identity system would allow the police to promptly identify and punish him. The proposals are part of discussions between tech experts and officials at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ telecoms agency that sets global rules for how technology works. Chinese public and private actors have sought to set global standards on fledgling technologies at the ITU — a strategy that Western officials have previously warned about as China seeks to promote a government-controlled version of the internet and telecommunications. Western officials already rang the alarm in 2020 over similar attempts by Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to rewrite how internet protocols, a key building block of global internet traffic, work.   Enter the “room where it happens”, where global power players shape policy and politics, with Power Play. POLITICO’s brand-new podcast will host conversations with the leaders and power players shaping the biggest ideas and driving the global conversations, moderated by award-winning journalist Anne McElvoy. Sign up today to be notified of the first episodes in September – click here .     NIGHTLY NUMBER Over 8,500 The number of Mauritanian migrants who crossed the Mexico-U.S. border between March and June , a huge surge up from just 1,000 in the four months prior. The uptick is due to the discovery of a new route through Nicaragua, where relaxed entry requirements allow Mauritanians and some other foreign nationals to purchase a low-cost visa without proof of onward travel. The news of the new route of migration to the U.S. has spread largely through Instagram and TikTok. RADAR SWEEP THE CULT OF LORNE — In today’s media landscape, rarely is there still one singular figure who can define a show or make or break a career. Maybe the last vestige of the true super-producer is Lorne Michaels , the scion of the SNL empire and its products, which include a constellation of stars like Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Tina Fey, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson and so many others. What all of those people have in common is they’ve essentially pledged allegiance to Michaels and his brand, even long after leaving SNL. For Longreads, Seth Simons digs into the cult of Michaels, why he’s managed to stay singularly relevant for decades, and what could be next for him and his empire. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 1940: Doctors and nurses watch over Leon Trotsky as he dies from head wounds suffered in an attack in Mexico City. The exiled Russian revolutionary and co-founder of the Soviet Union, was attacked with a pickax by Ramón Mercader and fatally wounded. While still conscious, Trotsky said that his death was ordered by Joseph Stalin; it was later confirmed Mercader was an agent of the Soviet Union. | AP Photo Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   FOLLOW US

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA