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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Today is a busy day for election watchers, as five states — Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota — hold primaries.
* For the first time since Donald Trump’s conviction last week, President Joe Biden told supporters in Connecticut last night that the presumptive Republican nominee is a “convicted felon” who has launched an “all-out assault ... on the American system of justice.”
* Republican Voters Against Trump is making a six-figure investment into a billboard campaign featuring GOP voters who won’t vote for Trump in the wake of his felony conviction. The billboards will appear in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
* As expected, indicted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez filed to run for re-election as an independent in New Jersey this week. A report in The New Jersey Globe added that the longtime senator will apparently be his own campaign manager.
* Thanks in large part to GOP support for his felony conviction, Trump and the Republican National Committee raised a combined $141 million in May. President Joe Biden and his party haven’t yet announced their monthly total, but it’s very likely to be far less.
* Late last week, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that voting is not a fundamental right protected by the state constitution. The conservative justices instead concluded that voting is a “political” right.
* And on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Vince Fong of California was sworn into office yesterday afternoon, in the wake of his recent special-election victory. Now that he’s filled former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s vacancy, the House GOP majority has a two-vote margin in the chamber, up from a one-vote margin.