With five and a half months to go until the November election, former President Donald Trump enjoys the edge over President Biden in many national polls and surveys in the key battleground states that will likely decide their 2024 rematch.

And in April, for the first time, Trump also enjoyed the lead in monthly fundraising.

The president’s campaign announced on Monday evening that they and the Democratic National Committee hauled in over $51 million in fundraising last month. 

That’s significantly less than the $76 million that the former president and the Republican National Committee raised in April, according to an announcement earlier this month.

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“@TeamTrump and the RNC outraised Biden by $25 MILLION in April!” the RNC touted in a social media post.

The fundraising totals are a switch from March, when Biden and the DNC brought in roughly $90 million compared to $65.6 million for Trump and the RNC.

Biden had regularly been outpacing Trump in monthly fundraising, but Trump’s April haul was boosted by a record-setting $50.5 million that the former president’s campaign raked in at a single event early in the month with top dollar GOP donors that was hosted at the Palm Beach, Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson.

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The Biden campaign, in their announcement, spotlighted that they have hauled in $473 million in the year since the president formally launched his re-election bid. 

They also showcased that they were sitting on a massive $192 million war chest as of the end of April.

They touted that Trump “trails badly in cash on hand” and that they have “the highest total of any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle.”

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and President Joe Biden. (Getty Images)

The Biden campaign also spotlighted their small dollar donations, saying that “a majority of April’s raise came from grassroots donors, and one million more supporters were added to our email list in the month alone.”

They also took aim at Trump, arguing that his campaign “has focused nearly entirely on courting billionaire donors, maxing out early in the cycle instead of building a durable grassroots fundraising program.”

In their announcement earlier this month, Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles pointed to their grassroots fundraising prowess, saying that “with half of funds raised coming from small dollar donors, it is clear that our base is energized.”

And they pledged that “we are raising the resources necessary to deliver a victory in November.”

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon / Curtis Means/DailyMail.com via AP, Pool)

But the Biden campaign said that its fundraising advantage in recent months has allowed it to go up with major ad buys in the key states and to build formidable ground game teams in the battlegrounds.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said their fundraising “is giving us the resources necessary to invest in opening offices, hiring organizers and communicating across our battleground states in order to mobilize the coalition of voters who will decide this election.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

A bill that would allow Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes in California passed the state Assembly Monday afternoon on a 49-4 vote and is headed to the Senate. But even if the Legislature’s upper chamber approves AB 1775, legalization remains far from a sure thing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a prior iteration of the bill in October, citing the state’s long-standing smoke-free workplace protections.

The bill would authorize local jurisdictions to allow licensed cannabis retailers to prepare and sell non-cannabis food and nonalcoholic beverages. The bill would also allow the cafes to host live music and other performances.

Under current state law, consumers can consume cannabis at a dispensary, but dispensaries can’t legally sell non-cannabis products like coffee and food, as is legal in Amsterdam.

California’s symbolic position at the apex of weed culture has long been rivaled by the Dutch capital, where cannabis cafes have been legal since the 1970s.

Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), who introduced the legislation, has framed it as a matter of fairness. He argues that the cafes would level the playing field for the state’s highly taxed and regulated legal weed industry, allowing legitimate businesses to compete with black-market sellers who don’t operate under the same constraints.

“This is a bill that supports our legal small businesses that just want to diversify their businesses and do the right thing,” Haney said Monday on the Assembly floor. “The illicit illegal market is continuing to grow and thrive, while our legal cannabis market is struggling.”

Haney cited the governor’s prior veto, saying he had been working to address Newsom’s concerns through amendments to the bill. The new version would prohibit cannabis smoking or vaping in “back of house” of lounges, where food is being prepared or stored, creating separation between where people are consuming cannabis and other work areas.

Rather than taking a blunt statewide approach, the bill would put the decision to allow cannabis cafes in the hands of local jurisdictions. Should a jurisdiction decide to greenlight the lounges, it would have to hash out its own permitting process and regulations.

West Hollywood put a licensing system in place several years ago, and a handful of cannabis lounges operate within the city’s 1.89 square miles. The West Hollywood businesses operate with workarounds that separate the food businesses, The Times has previously reported.

No such licensing system exists in the city of Los Angeles.

The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Assn. and the American Lung Assn. have all opposed the bill, raising concerns about the health effects of secondhand marijuana smoke. They argue that the bill would undo hard-fought workplace protections “by re-creating the harmful work environments of the past.”

Marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access has argued that patrons and employees would face no health risks because of the highly regulated nature of such establishments.

A Newsom spokesperson declined to comment on pending legislation.

Staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress are preparing to band together to block any hope of a Democrat-backed border bill getting to the finish line. 

In a letter to senators dated Sunday evening, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., revealed his plan to bring an immigration bill to the floor once again after it was rejected primarily by Senate Republicans in February. 

“We are hopeful this bipartisan proposal will bring serious-minded Republicans back to the table to advance this bipartisan solution for our border,” he wrote. 

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He noted that he doesn’t expect to get full support from either party, but described the border measure negotiated by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and James Lankford, R-Okla., as “a tough, serious-minded, and – critically, bipartisan – proposal to secure our border.”

The White House promptly backed Schumer’s plan, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre calling on “every senator to put partisan politics aside and vote to secure the border.”

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Sens. Lankford and Sinema were designated negotiators for the border bill. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Republicans were quick to push back on the majority leader’s characterization of the bill. “The fake border bill will fail, again, because it does nothing to seriously secure the border – just cement outrageous levels of illegal immigration,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

“Ironically, some Democrats will vote against it, because even pretending to limit illegal immigration is a step too far for them,” he added. 

The bill failed a test vote in February, by a vote of 49-50, short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. 

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., slammed Democrats reviving the bill as “political theatre.” 

“He thinks this vote will make you think Republicans are to blame for Biden’s border crisis,” he wrote on X. 

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., similarly labeled Schumer’s plan as “kabuki theater.” 

Republicans were quick to reject the negotiated legislation after hearing some of the elements and seeing the bill text, which many described as weak and even counterproductive. 

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Immigration has become a top issue for voters going into the election. (James Breeden for New York Post/Mega)

Lankford, who notably helped craft the bill, denounced last week the then-speculation of Schumer bringing the measure back to the floor. “Listen, if we’re going to solve the border issues, it’s not going to by doing competing messaging bills. If we’re going to solve this, let’s sit down like adults and let’s figure out how we’re going to actually resolve this together,” he said in floor remarks.

Lankford was one of only four in his party to vote in favor of moving forward with the negotiated bill in February. It’s unclear if he would support it again. 

His fellow negotiator, Murphy, has led the charge to reconsider the bill. “Republicans don’t care about fixing the border,” he wrote Monday on X. “They want the border a mess because it helps them politically.”

It’s unlikely that the measure will be able to get 60 votes in order to move forward, spelling doom for the bill a second time. But if it were to get past the upper chamber, House Republican leadership made it clear it would be “dead on arrival” in its lower counterpart. 

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House leadership preemptively warned that the bill would be “dead on arrival.” (Getty Images)

In a statement, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Republican conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said, “Leader Schumer is trying give his vulnerable members cover by bringing a vote on a bill which has already failed once in the Senate because it would actually codify many of the disastrous Biden open border policies that created this crisis in the first place.”

They further highlighted several tougher illegal immigration and border bills that have been passed by the Republican-majority House. “If Senate Democrats were actually serious about solving the problem and ending the border catastrophe, they would bring up H.R. 2 and pass it this week,” they said. 

H.R.2 includes nearly all Republican priorities and has been disregarded by Democratic leaders. Schumer previously remarked that the bill was full of “hard-right border policies” and said it would never be able to pass through Congress.