In a hotel ballroom in Seattle, at fancy homes in California and at stops in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past week, Biden has been betting that reminding voters about Trump’s presidency and highlighting his Republican opponent’s latest campaign statements will work to the Democrat’s advantage.

At a Seattle fundraiser Friday night, Biden brought up Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which Trump said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

“I really urge you to read it,” Biden said.

Biden, who headlined another Seattle fundraiser Saturday before returning to the East Coast, has plenty of other Trump material to draw from, too.

The president highlights how Trump has promised, if elected, to be “a dictator on Day 1”, how he has suggested the United States would not necessarily defend allies from aggression and how he has pledged to “totally obliterate the deep state” in the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for blocking his first-term agenda.

“And he said a whole lot more,” Biden said during a Chicago appearance. “But the bad news is he means what he says. He means what he says. Unless you think I’m kidding, just think back to the 6th of January. This guy means what he says,” referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Biden wants the 2024 election to be a referendum on Trump’s record and plans, but he also wants voters to look favorably on his own policies and actions.

Biden and his allies think the country needs reminding about Trump’s tenure and his outlandish and often concerning statements, particularly because the Republican is no longer ubiquitous on X, formerly Twitter, nor is he in front of television cameras as often as he once was.

“Chaos is nothing new for Trump,” Biden said in Chicago. “His presidency was chaos. Trump is trying to make the — the country forget about the dark and unsettling things that he did when he was president. Well, we’re going to not let them forget.”

Biden frequently highlights Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and how he stood by when supporters violently stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify his loss to Biden. He also points to Trump separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, tax cuts the Republican pushed through that benefited corporations and the wealthy and his repeated efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s barbs have been getting sharper of late.

He opened his Seattle fundraiser on Friday night by telling donors, “Thank you for the warm welcome. Please keep it down, because Donald Trump is sleeping. Sleepy Don.” That was a riff off of news reports that the former president has dozed off during his criminal trial in a New York courtroom. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges in a hush money scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

Biden also talks about Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his self-described “love letters” with Kim Jong Un, the authoritarian leader of North Korea.

Biden frequently jabs at Trump for wondering aloud during the COVID-19 pandemic whether disinfectants could be injected or ingested to fight the virus. “That bleach he didn’t inject in his body; he just put it in his hair,” Biden says to laughter every time. “But, look, he’s got more hair than I do.”

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that “their records speak for themselves. President Trump created the most secure border in history and peace in the world. President Trump was the first president in modern history not to enter the U.S. in any new wars. Joe Biden’s weakness has led to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, an immigrant invasion of our border, anti-Semitic protests on our college campuses, and crime and chaos in every American city.”

Trump doesn’t hesitate to criticize Biden and his policies. Trump is spending much of his time lately sitting in court. But before and after the proceedings, he often stands in front of cameras outside the courtroom and goes after Biden.

At a recent Wisconsin rally, Trump mentioned Biden within the first 2½ minutes of his speech and referenced the president or his administration more than 60 times during his remarks.

Trump’s criticism often takes a dark turn. Last weekend, he told donors at his Florida resort that Biden was running a “Gestapo administration.”

The Gestapo was the secret police force of the Third Reich that squelched political opposition generally and, specifically, targeted Jewish people for arrest during the Holocaust. Trump’s unfounded comparison to Nazi-era tactics is part of his effort to deny and deflect the charges against him, most notably his effort to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

Biden’s strategy is a gamble. Voters are divided in their views of both men’s presidencies.

An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly half thought Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change. But more than half of U.S. adults thought Biden’s presidency hurt the country on cost of living and immigration.

For all his criticism of Trump, Biden does get around to talking about his agenda and accomplishments. He tells supporters about his work to boost the economy and to bring the country out of the pandemic. He discusses his support for abortion rights even as he highlights how Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in part because of his Supreme Court nominations.

“Folks, the choice is clear,” Biden told supporters recently in the nation’s capital. “Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution.”

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s chances,” he went on. “Not because I’m president, because of the state of the moment. The world needs us.”

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The justices declined a request made by a group of landlords to allow a federal judge’s decision to block the eviction moratorium to go into effect nationwide while litigation in the dispute continues. The moratorium is due to expire on July 31.

The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the court’s three liberal justices to deny the landlords’ request.

The Atlanta-based CDC has said 30 million to 40 million people could be at risk of eviction without the moratorium. Advocacy groups have said low-income renters were particularly vulnerable.

The landlord groups, led by the Alabama Association of Realtors, sued to challenge the moratorium, arguing that the CDC exceeded its authority under a federal law called the Public Health Service Act. They wrote in court papers: “Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it now claims.”

The groups said an eviction ban is no longer needed for public health reasons in light of declining COVID-19 cases and deaths. They also cited the CDC’s May 13 announcement that vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors.

Landlords nationwide have been losing more than $13 billion in unpaid rent every month as a result of the CDC’s ban, the groups said.

The CDC issued a national eviction ban on all residential rental properties last September to facilitate self-isolation, contain the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness. It acted after the expiration of a narrower previous ban enacted by the U.S. Congress. The CDC’s moratorium has been extended three times, once by Congress and twice by the agency itself.

Congress also approved $46.5 billion in rental assistance designed to reach landlords, but aid has been slow to trickle out.

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled in favor of the landlords in May, but put her ruling on hold pending the government’s appeal in the case. The landlords appealed to the Supreme Court after a lower appellate court rejected their request to unfreeze Friedrich’s ruling.

Andrew Chung | Contributed

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge has overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, calling it a “failed experiment” that violates people’s constitutional right to bear arms.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled on Friday that the state’s definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states and by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Under no level of heightened scrutiny can the law survive,” Benitez said. He issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law but stayed it for 30 days to give state Attorney General Rob Bonta time to appeal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the decision, calling it “a direct threat to public safety and the lives of innocent Californians, period.”

In his 94-page ruling, the judge spoke favorably of modern weapons and said they were overwhelmingly used for legal reasons.

“Like the Swiss Army knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle,” the judge said in his ruling’s introduction.

That comparison “completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who’ve lost loved ones to this weapon,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not backing down from this fight, and we’ll continue pushing for common sense gun laws that will save lives.”

Bonta called the ruling flawed and said it will be appealed.

California first restricted assault weapons in 1989, with multiple updates to the law since then.

Assault weapons as defined by the law are more dangerous than other firearms and are disproportionately used in crimes, mass shootings and against law enforcement, with more resulting casualties, the state attorney general’s office argued, and barring them “furthers the state’s important public safety interests.”

A surge in sales of more than 1.16 million other types of pistols, rifles and shotguns in the last year — more than a third of them to likely first-time buyers — show that the assault weapons ban “has not prevented law-abiding citizens in the state from acquiring a range of firearms for lawful purposes, including self-defense,” the state contended in a court filing in March.

Similar assault weapon restrictions have previously been upheld by six other federal district and appeals courts, the state argued. Overturning the ban would allow not only assault rifles, but things like assault shotguns and assault pistols, state officials said.

But Benitez disagreed.

“This case is not about extraordinary weapons lying at the outer limits of Second Amendment protection. The banned ‘assault weapons’ are not bazookas, howitzers, or machine guns. Those arms are dangerous and solely useful for military purposes,” his ruling said. “Instead, the firearms deemed ‘assault weapons’ are fairly ordinary, popular, modern.”

The judge said despite California’s ban, there currently are an estimated 185,569 assault weapons registered with the state.

They were grandfathered in before California’s evolving definition of an assault weapon.

“This is an average case about average guns used in average ways for average purposes,” the ruling said. “One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter.”

“In California, murder by knife occurs seven times more often than murder by rifle,” he added.

He also called the ban “a continuing failed experiment which does not achieve its objectives of preventing mass shootings or attacks on law enforcement officers.”

In a preliminary ruling in September, Benitez said California’s complicated legal definition of assault weapons can ensnare otherwise law-abiding gun owners with criminal penalties that among other things can strip them of their Second Amendment right to own firearms.

“The burden on the core Second Amendment right, if any, is minimal,” the state argued, because the weapons can still be used — just not with the modifications that turn them into assault weapons. Modifications like a shorter barrel or collapsible stock make them more concealable, state officials said, while things like a pistol grip or thumbhole grip make them more lethal by improving their accuracy as they are fired rapidly.

The lawsuit filed by the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee, California Gun Rights Foundation, Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition is among several by gun advocacy groups challenging California’s firearms laws, which are among the strictest in the nation.

It was filed on behalf of gun owners who want to use high-capacity magazines in their legal rifles or pistols, but said they can’t because doing so would turn them into illegal assault weapons under California law. Unlike military weapons, the semi-automatic rifles fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, and the plaintiffs say they are legal in 41 states.

The lawsuit said California is “one of only a small handful states to ban many of the most popular semiautomatic firearms in the nation because they possess one or more common characteristics, such as pistol grips and threaded barrels,” frequently but not exclusively along with detachable ammunition magazines.

Brandon Combs, the president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, said in a statement that the ruling “held what millions of Americans already know to be true: Bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ are unconstitutional and cannot stand.”

A gun control advocacy group called the judge’s ruling alarming and “especially insulting” because it was handed down on National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

“Too many families across the nation have lost loved ones in shootings carried out with assault weapons. They can attest to the reality that these weapons are not like ‘Swiss Army knives’ nor are mass shootings only a ‘very small’ problem,” said Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group led by Gabrielle Giffords, the former congresswoman from Arizona who was shot and wounded in a mass shooting 10 years ago.

The state is appealing Benitez’s 2017 ruling against the state’s nearly two-decade-old ban on the sales and purchases of magazines holding more than 10 bullets. That decision triggered a weeklong buying spree before the judge halted sales during the appeal. It was upheld in August by a three-judge appellate panel, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in March that an 11-member panel will rehear the case.

The state also is appealing Benitez’s decision in April 2020 blocking a 2019 California law requiring background checks for anyone buying ammunition.

Both of those measures were championed by Newsom when he was lieutenant governor, and they were backed by voters in a 2016 ballot measure.

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota’s pardon board decided Tuesday to free a Black man who was sent to prison for life as a teenager in a high-profile murder case that raised questions about the integrity of the criminal justice system that put him away.

Myon Burrell’s case made headlines earlier this year after The Associated Press and American Public Media uncovered new evidence and serious flaws in the police investigation into the 2002 killing of an 11-year-old girl who was hit by a stray bullet while doing homework at her dining room table.

Burrell went before the Minnesota Board of Pardons with a request for a pardon and commutation to time already served. He said the request “is not in any way, shape or form me trying to minimize the tragedy of the loss of” Tysha Edwards. “I come before you, a 34-year-old man who spent more than half of his life incarcerated for a crime I didn’t commit.”

The board commuted his sentence to 20 years, with the remainder to be served on supervised release. He was expected to be released from the state’s Stillwater prison Tuesday night. The board did not pardon Burrell.

A unanimous vote is normally required by the governor, attorney general and the chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Chief Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea has recused herself from the decision.

Gov. Tim Walz recommended the commuted sentence, saying science has found and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teenage minds work differently than those of adults, and that a life sentence for a teenager is too extreme.

“While this board is not a fact finder, it does have the power to determine when justice is served through the power of clemency and mercy,” Walz said, adding: “We cannot turn a blind eye to the developments in science and law as we look at this case.”

Last week, an independent panel of national legal experts also recommended Burrell’s immediate release after reviewing the facts and all of the available evidence.

Burrell was 16 when he was sentenced in the killing of Tyesha, a Black sixth grader who was shot through the heart inside her family’s south Minneapolis home. He always maintained his innocence, and another man has confessed to being the shooter.

Burrell’s petition was accompanied by testimony from community leaders and letters from other young men in prison attesting to his strong character and moral leadership behind bars.

“I just tried to be the best human being that I could be in hopes that one day I would be given the opportunity to go home and live life as a productive member of society,” Burrell told the panel in a Zoom video call from inside the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater.

Walz addressed the Edwards family during the hearing, saying: “We’re not here to relitigate the crime committed against your family that took your daughter away. There is nothing I can do to ease your pain, and it will not be made better. But we must act today to recognize the law in this area has changed. Justice is not served by incarcerating a child for his entire lifetime for a horrible mistake committed many years ago.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was the city’s top prosecutor at the time of the killing, has used Burrell’s conviction throughout her political career to tout her record of being tough on crime. She raised it again last year on the stage of the Democratic presidential primary debate.

The AP’s yearlong investigation, however, showed there was no hard evidence — no gun, DNA or fingerprints — tying Burrell to the shooting. Among other things, police did not collect a corner store’s surveillance video, which Burrell said could have cleared him. And video footage showed the lead homicide detective offering a man in police custody $500 for Burrell’s name, even if it was just hearsay.

Burrell’s co-defendants said the teenager was not at the scene that day.

Klobuchar released a statement saying the board made the right decision.

“Along with others, I had asked for the independent investigation of this case, and as I said when the report was first released, the sentence deserved immediate review. That happened today,” she said. She also urged a conviction review unit to continue investigating the facts.

New questions about Burrell’s case surfaced just before Minneapolis was thrust into the national spotlight after a police officer held his knee against George Floyd’s neck outside a convenience store as Floyd gasped for breath. It was the same Cup Foods store that Burrell said could have provided his alibi if surveillance tapes had been pulled.

Floyd’s death sparked racial injustice protests and put renewed focus on some law enforcement practices from the 1990s and early 2000s, when harsher policing and tougher sentencing led to the highest lock-up rates in the nation’s history. Those incarcerations hit Black and brown communities the hardest.

Under public pressure after the AP report, Klobuchar threw her support behind the creation of the independent panel, saying it was just as important to protect the innocent as punish the guilty. In its report, the panel raised concerns about the police investigation that mirrored many of those uncovered by the AP.

The panel’s report said officers suffered from “tunnel vision” while pursuing Burrell as a suspect, homing in on evidence that supported their theory of guilt and ignoring that which may have helped him. Officers relied heavily on a single eyewitness, who offered conflicting accounts, along with jailhouse informants, who benefited generously for testifying.

Two of the informants have since recanted. One had his 16-year prison sentence cut down to three. Another said he was cooperating with police in 14 other cases.

The panel said it saw no purpose served by keeping Burrell locked up. It pointed to his age at the time of the crime, said he had no prior record and that he behaved well behind bars. It also cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings in recent years that argued against overly harsh sentences for juveniles because their brains and decision-making skills are not fully developed.

“In considering the sentence, we became profoundly aware of how our nation has changed in the way we consider juveniles who become enmeshed in the criminal justice system,” Mark Osler, who chaired the panel, wrote in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this past weekend.

Burrell was jailed during an era “marked by racially charged fearmongering about young ‘super-predators’ who would be violent for the entirety of their lives,” Osler wrote.

In the panel’s report, members of Tyesha Edwards’ family said Burrell’s continued imprisonment was a sensitive topic.

The girl’s biological father, Jimmie Edwards, said before the hearing that he opposed any release and that the process of having the case reexamined has been taxing. He said Tyesha had been doing well in school and was well-liked by classmates and teachers.

Burrell “just wants a free ticket out of prison,” Edwards told AP. “But he took something from us that can never be replaced.” He declined to comment after Tuesday’s decision.

___

Associated Press writers Amy Forliti and Mohamed Ibrahim contributed to this report.

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