Bowman (D-Westchester, Bronx) accused the United Democracy Project, which is tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), of spending lavishly to unseat him and silence his harsh criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

“New Yorkers know that if George Latimer is willing to sell out to Donald Trump’s biggest donors, he will sell you out, too,” Bowman said.

Bowman is locked in what is thought to be a tight battle with Westchester County Executive Latimer in June 25’s 16th Congressional District Democratic primary. Latimer is trumpeting his strong support for Israel.

Bowman says the AIPAC-affiliated group is bankrolled by conservative megadonors who usually back pro-Trump Republicans.

“Voters — not GOP billionaires — should be the ones who decide Democratic primaries,” said Jasmine Gripper of the Working Families Party, which is backing Bowman.

“Now he’s complaining … it’s not fair,” said a spokesman for Latimer’s campaign. “He needs to grow up.”

The two candidates traded barbs over Israel during their first debate Monday night.

Bowman accused Latimer of being “bought and paid for” by pro-Israel donors, while Latimer said the former Bronx middle school principal should focus more on legislating and less on grabbing media attention.

The 16th Congressional District covers most of the southern half of Westchester, including the majority minority cities of Mount Vernon, Yonkers and New Rochelle, along with some of the nation’s most affluent suburbs. It also includes slivers of the Bronx.

The district is strongly Democratic, and the winner of the primary will be an overwhelming favorite to win in November.

Political pundits say the pro-Israel group’s spending is likely just the start of a $10 million spending spree aimed at toppling Bowman, who is one of their top targets among the so-called squad of pro-Palestinian progressive lawmakers.

“It’s likely the tip of the iceberg,” said Jacob Rubashkin, an analyst with Inside Elections. “[AIPAC] thinks they can boost Latimer’s chances by spending a bunch of money.”

Although the AIPAC-affiliated group is funded by pro-Israel donors, its ads typically focus on other issues of more general interest to voters.

In the 16th Congressional District, Rubashkin predicted, the ads may echo Latimer’s attacks on Bowman for voting against President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure plan or emphasize an embarrassing episode in which Bowman pulled a fire alarm during a congressional vote.

The congressional ad wars are unfolding as Israel continues to be a key issue on Capitol Hill.

The Republican-led House of Representatives is pushing a measure that would pressure Biden to end a pause on delivering huge bombs to Israel that have been dropped on Palestinian civilian targets in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the White House announced a new $1 billion arms sale to the Jewish state, a move that Bowman called “disappointing.”

Bowman says the U.S. should be pushing much harder to get Israel to end the war in Gaza, negotiate an end to its 57-year occupation of Palestinian lands and establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

“I’ll be there,” Trump told Fox News. “Look forward to being in beautiful Atlanta.”

Both candidates also accepted invitations for a second debate hosted by ABC News on Sept. 10.

The two rivals quickly agreed to debate after a feisty Biden issued a challenge to square off against Trump next month in an early morning video posted on social media.

“[Trump’s] acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice,” Biden said.

The president even included a dig at Trump over his ongoing Manhattan criminal trial, which is dark on Wednesdays.

“Let’s pick a date,” Biden said. “I hear you’re free on Wednesdays.”

Trump, who has said he is also eager to debate, wasted no time responding to his rival’s challenge.

“I am ready and willing to debate [Biden],” he wrote on his Truth Social site. “Let’s get ready to rumble.”

It remains to be seen if the two campaigns can reach a final agreement on formats, although there seemed to be no major immediate disputes.

Biden’s campaign wants the debates to be held with a moderator in a television studio, without a live crowd and with the microphones only turned on for the candidate who is speaking. That tweak is designed to prevent a repeat of the chaotic 2020 debates when Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden.

Trump initially countered by calling for them to be held in a “very large” venue, citing “excitement purposes.” His campaign also called for a total of four debates, including additional faceoffs in July and August.

But Trump’s campaign accepted the offer from CNN for a debate to be held in the network’s Atlanta studio without a live audience.

Neither candidate mentioned the possibility of independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being included.

“They are trying to exclude me from the debate because they are afraid I would win,” Kennedy said in a statement.

The campaigns have apparently both decided not to work with the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan group that has organized debates for the past several elections.

Neither Biden nor Trump even mentioned the commission, which had planned a slate of three presidential debates starting in mid-September in San Marcos, Texas. The group also planned one vice presidential debate.

Presidential debates have never been held before Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall campaign season, much less prior to the two parties’ summer conventions.

The Republican National Convention is set for mid-July in Milwaukee while Democrats will gather in August in Chicago.

The earlier debates would reflect the major changes to how and when Americans vote for president. Tens of millions of people are expected to cast ballots before Election Day on Nov. 5, either by mail or early in-person voting, with some states sending ballots to voters in early September.

The conservative congressional leader trashed the trial as a partisan stunt to hurt Trump’s campaign in a brief statement to reporters in a park across the street from the 100 Centre St. courthouse in lower Manhattan.

“They are doing this intentionally to keep him here [and] off the campaign trail,” Johnson said. “I am disgusted by what is happening here, by what is being done to our system of justice.

“I am one of hundreds of millions … I am a citizen who is very concerned about this,” Johnson said.

Johnson attacked Judge Juan Merchan as a “Biden-donor judge” and accused prosecutors of secretly taking orders from President Biden’s Justice Department.

He helped the former president skirt his gag order by repeating his attacks on Merchan’s daughter.

“Among the atrocities here: the judge’s daughter is making millions of dollars doing online fundraising for Democrats,” Johnson declared.

Johnson’s appearance came as Trump vice presidential hopefuls and a parade of other GOP leaders continued to make pilgrimages to the courtroom to show their undivided loyalty to the party’s leader.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, all of whom are vying to be Trump’s No. 2, sat in the courtroom behind Trump’s defense table.

A day earlier, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who is also said to be on Trump’s veepstakes short list, showed his face along with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a MAGA stalwart.

Ex-Rep. Liz Cheney, who broke with the GOP over Trump’s support for the Jan. 6 attack, derided Johnson, an avowed evangelical Christian conservative, for backing Trump over the lurid accusations that he paid hush money to cover up having sex with a porn star.

“I guess he’s not that concerned with teaching morality to our young people after all,” Cheney tweeted.

With his Manhattan criminal trial nearing a climax, Trump leads by healthy margins outside the margin of error in three Sun Belt swing states while Biden is virtually tied in three Rust Belt states that are also up for grabs, according to the survey carried out by Siena College, The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Trump has forged a solid 6-point lead among likely voters in Arizona, and is ahead by 9 points in Georgia and 13 points in Nevada, the poll said. Biden is effectively deadlocked with Trump in Wisconsin and Michigan and Trump leads by a slim 3-point margin in Pennsylvania.

Biden won all six states by narrow margins in 2020, thus ousting Trump from the White House.

Winning the three Rust Belt states would likely be enough for Biden to score reelection for four more years by the slimmest of margins in the Electoral College.

Other recent polls have painted a more optimistic picture for Biden, although he remains weighed down by poor approval ratings, concerns about his age and dismal views of the state of the economy.

Some political analysts warned against reading too much into any single poll, noting that it represents a snapshot in voter opinions.

“Polls will bounce around a good deal until they finally begin to mean something after the conventions,” University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato posted.

Aside from the numbers in the six states, the poll underlined Biden’s overall weakness with young voters, Latinos and Blacks, all traditionally strong Democratic voting blocs.

It also represents underwhelming showings in big cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Phoenix that would normally contribute massive margins to the Democratic presidential candidate.

The poll showed Trump running roughly even with Biden among voters younger than 35 and Latinos in the six swing states, a result that would be catastrophic for the sitting president if it came to pass in November.

The polls also showed Biden dramatically underperforming longstanding historic benchmarks with Black voters, and especially Black men in big cities.

For example, in Philadelphia, the poll showed Biden ahead of Trump by an anemic 50%-24% margin, which would represent a virtual collapse from his 81%-18% win in the heavily Democratic city four years ago.

Democratic strategists note that the good news from such dire numbers lies in the fact that Biden can close the gap easily by bringing traditional left-leaning voters back into the fold by November.

“This is becoming a very important part of our emerging understanding of the 2024 election, and a dynamic that [is] very ominous for Trump,” said Simon Rosenberg, a relentlessly optimistic Biden backer.

GOP-leaning analysts say Trump is extending Republican gains among working-class voters from white voters to racial minorities in what could be a historic political realignment.

“Data continues to show serious cracks in Biden’s foundation,” posted Shermichael Singleton.

Biden gets poor marks from those surveyed on several key issues, notably including the economy and immigration. Young voters are especially sour on the president. Voters who care about abortion rights strongly back the Democratic president.

Supporters of Biden point out that Trump is generally doing much better among voters who are less than certain to vote, while the president performs better among voters who are almost sure to cast a ballot in November.

Recent special elections have painted a similar brighter picture with Democratic candidates generally outperforming expectations when it comes to actual elections, instead of polling questions.

Trump has also struggled to unite Republican primary voters, with Nikki Haley regularly racking up 30% of the GOP vote in affluent and well-educated suburbs that will be key battlegrounds in November.

After winning the seat in 2022, first-term Rep. Rob Menendez Jr. faces a powerful Democratic primary challenge from Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla in the NJ-08 district once held by his powerful father.

The younger Menendez portrays himself as a hard-working progressive with no ties to his father’s alleged corruption.

Bhalla counters that Rep. Rob Menendez Jr. owes his position to his famous family name and the powerful Democratic machine that has a particularly strong grip on the north Jersey district, which includes Jersey City and most of Hudson County.

Polls show a potentially tight race in the June 4 election. A survey commissioned by Bhalla shows him just 3% behind Menendez, although the incumbent’s own poll showed him with a much wider lead.

Bhalla boasts overwhelmingly positive approval numbers while voters are split over Menendez, with a potentially large number of people associating him with his scandal-tarred father.

“The Menendez name remains a significant liability,” pollster Anna Greenberg said in a memo obtained by the New Jersey Globe.

Sen. Robert Menendez Sr. is set to go on trial on charges he accepted bribes, including cash and gold bars, in exchange for using his position to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

The elder Menendez has pulled out of the state’s Democratic Senate primary. Rep. Andy Kim is expected to win that race by a lopsided margin after First Lady Tammy Murphy pulled the plug on her campaign.

It also reflects a changing face of New Jersey Democratic politics and the waning power of the once omnipotent party machine, which once boasted an iron grip on strongholds of Hudson County, Newark and Camden in south Jersey.

The race is the first New Jersey primary in decades to be carried out without the so-called county line ballot system, which gave candidates backed by Democratic organization a huge advantage. A federal judge recently ruled the county line is unconstitutional and ordered its abolition.

The single biggest chunk of votes in the district are in Jersey City, which is close to Hoboken in demographics and would be expected to be a stronghold for Bhalla.

But Menendez will be hoping to run up the score in heavily-Latino Union City and North Bergen, along with slivers of machine-friendly Newark and Elizabeth where Bhalla is not well known.

NJ-08 is a deep blue district and the winner of the Democratic primary will be an overwhelming favorite to win over token Republican opposition in the November election.

The ex-president told a conservative radio show that he would reverse an order recently enacted by President Biden that would prohibit discrimination in education on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Don’t forget, that was done as an order from the president. That came down as an executive order,” Trump said. “And we’re gonna change it. On Day One, it’s gonna be changed.”

Trump’s remarks refer to Title IX, the federal civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding.

Each administration has the power to enforce the law as it sees fit, giving the next president the power to either extend or roll back the protections for LGBTQ people.

“Tell your people not to worry about it,” Trump told Nick Kayal and Dawn Stensland, hosts of Kayal and Company, a Philadelphia talk show. “It’ll be signed on Day One. It’ll be terminated.”

Trump and his Republican allies have been stressing opposition to transgender rights, saying that transgender women should not be permitted to compete in women’s sports or use women’s bathrooms.

GOP-led states have also pushed to ban gender-affirming care for minors who identify themselves as transgender.

Biden and Democrats, on the other hand, underline their determination to expand and strengthen anti-discrimination laws. They point to ample evidence that transgender students are subject to bullying and open discrimination.

Last month, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona rolled out a series of new rules designed to extend the protections to transgender students, effective Aug. 1.

“These final regulations build on the legacy of Title IX by clarifying that all our nation’s students can access schools that are safe, welcoming and respect their rights,” Cardona said at the time.

Americans hold complicated and sometimes contradictory views on transgender people with young people being notably more accepting and tolerant.

About 60% of people surveyed support laws barring discrimination against transgender people. But 60% also say students should compete in sports based on the gender they were assigned at birth.

The hardline supporter of former President Donald Trump is on the hook for a four-month stint behind bars after a three-judge panel of the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals unanimously rejected his effort to overturn his conviction on a contempt of Congress charge.

“We have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm (the conviction of Bannon),” the panel ruled in a 20-page opinion.

Bannon’s lawyers did not immediately say if he plans to file a long-shot appeal to the full D.C. appeals court or to the Supreme Court.

The onetime Trump White House chief strategist now hosts a podcast that is extremely popular with supporters of Trump.

He was convicted in a 2022 federal trial in which a jury rejected his claims that he didn’t cooperate with the probe because he believed Trump had invoked executive privilege.

In the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6, Bannon played a key role in riling up MAGA extremists to attend Trump’s rally in which he demanded that his supporters should “fight like hell” to keep him in power despite losing the 2020 election to Biden.

He participated in meetings with fellow pro-Trump leaders at a “war room” in the Willard Hotel where congressional investigators say the plans were hatched to storm the Capitol in a failed effort to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election.

Many Trump insiders cooperated with the House committee that investigated Jan. 6. But a handful of them, including Bannon, balked at its demands for documents and testimony about their role in planning and carrying out the attack.

The House committee referred Bannon for prosecution along with White House economic adviser Peter Navarro and chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Navarro was convicted of contempt of Congress and is serving a four-month sentence in a Miami federal prison after his appeals were rejected.

Prosecutors declined to charge Meadows, possibly because he did hand over some text messages and interacted with the committee before pulling the plug on his cooperation.

Citing procedural grounds, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Hunter Biden’s appeal to have his felony gun case in Delaware tossed before a trial that is set to start on June 3.

“The defendant has not shown the District Court’s orders are appealable before final judgment,” the three-judge appellate panel wrote in a terse four-page ruling.

The judges stressed that they were not ruling on the merits of the challenge and said Hunter Biden is free to make the same arguments after trial if he is convicted.

The decision means President Biden’s only surviving son will likely face a high-stakes criminal trial just as former President Donald Trump faces the judgment of a Manhattan jury in his criminal trial on charges tied to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers hinted they may appeal the decision to the full Third Circuit before the expected trial.

The case is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee who was confirmed with wide bipartisan support in the Senate.

Noreika Thursday also rejected an unrelated appeal that claimed the charges violate Hunter Biden’s rights under the Second Amendment.

Hunter Biden is charged with illegally buying and possessing a handgun in 2018, during a time that he admits using illegal drugs.

He has pleaded not guilty to all three felony counts, claiming that he only possessed the weapon for 11 days and posed no threat to anyone.

Defense lawyers say gun-buyers like Hunter Biden are almost never prosecuted unless they use the weapon in some other crime.

Hunter Biden was hit with the gun charge after a plea deal with prosecutors, which was expected to cover both the gun charges and unrelated tax-evasion counts, collapsed in spectacular fashion last year.

The plea deal blew up after special counsel David Weiss, a holdover from the Trump administration whom President Biden appointed to stay in his post, said the deal did not preclude prosecutors from bringing more charges against Hunter Biden.

Hunter Biden is expected to face trial in late June on nine tax charges stemming from millions of dollars he made in overseas business deals in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

Republicans have spent years accusing Joe Biden of being involved in Hunter Biden’s international dealmaking. But they have presented no hard evidence of any wrongdoing, and an impeachment effort in the House of Representatives has mostly fizzled out.

The 18-year-old high school senior, who is former President Donald Trump’s youngest child, will join half-siblings Eric, Don Jr. and Tiffany in the Sunshine State’s delegation to the Milwaukee convention in mid-July.

“We have a great delegation of grassroots leaders, elected officials and even Trump family members,” Florida GOP chairman Evan Power said. “Florida is continuing to have a great convention team, but more importantly we are preparing to win Florida and win it big.”

Barron Trump had up to now been kept completely out of the political spotlight and his parents sought to shield him from scrutiny in the past.

The scion of what could be a budding Trump political dynasty has recently been in the news because Donald Trump angrily demanded that Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan allow him to attend his son’s high school graduation next week during a day he would normally be required to be in court for his trial on charges tied to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

The judge eventually relented and gave the proud dad permission to attend the ceremony at Oxbridge Academy in suburban West Palm Beach.

Donald Trump is now scheduled to speak at a GOP fundraiser in Minnesota that day, raising questions about whether he will actually attend his son’s graduation.

Barron Trump has not said what he plans to do after graduating or if he plans to attend college.

Biden traveled to suburban Racine, Wisconsin, where he cheered a decision by Microsoft to build a $3.3 billion data center there that is expected to create roughly 2,000 jobs.

He also mocked former President Trump for holding a ribbon cutting in 2018 for a Foxconn facility on the same site that he promised would create 10,000 jobs. It wound up never being built.

“My predecessor made promises which he broke more than kept, and left a lot of people behind in communities like Racine,” Biden said. “Under my watch, we make promises and we keep promises.”

A new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Biden opening up a 6% lead over Trump in Wisconsin, a better showing for the Democratic president than most recent swing state polls.

Biden won the Badger State by just 20,000 votes in 2020 and both campaigns expect another close contest this year.

The Biden campaign swing came a day after Trump logged another underwhelming electoral performance in the Indiana Republican presidential primary.

Trump won 78% of the GOP vote compared to 22% for Nikki Haley, even though the former UN envoy left the race two months ago and Trump is the presumptive nominee.

In Indianapolis’ Marion County and suburban vote-rich Hamilton County, Haley won an impressive 34% of the vote as affluent and well-educated Republican areas continued to show signs of disquiet with Trump.

Some analysts see the stubbornly strong support for Haley as a sign Trump has still failed to fully unite the Republican electorate behind him as he faces an epic rematch with Biden in the fall.

“It can’t be good news for Trump,” tweeted Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist.

Trump has bitterly complained that his campaign is being hampered by his Manhattan trial on charges related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

But the former president held no public campaign events on Wednesday even though there were no court proceedings scheduled.