From 8h ago
Donald Trump’s indictment may appear imminent, but the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported yesterday that the grand jury handling the charges isn’t meeting today:
That seems to undercut Trump’s claim, made over the weekend, that he’d be arrested today. He had called for protests against the indictment – a worrying prospect, considering he made a similar call that led to the January 6 insurrection.
According to CBS News, law enforcement is picking up more threats from violent extremists who see the case against the former president as a political persecution. A number of police agencies have stepped up their security arrangements ahead of the potential charges, including the New York police department and the US Capitol police in Washington DC, where protesters could also convene.
Donald Trump’s looming indictment had protesters convening outside the Manhattan courthouse where a grand jury is weighing charges against the former president, and police growing nervous about an increase in threats from online extremist groups. An indictment is not expected to happen before Wednesday, but Republicans nonetheless spent today reacting to what are expected to be history making allegations.
Here’s what else happened today:
Ron DeSantis might be Trump’s most prominent challenger for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but he’s way down in the polls.
Older Americans are holding protests across the country against banks that finance fossil fuel projects.
The defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News is having a major hearing in a Delaware court.
Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell signaled opposition to repealing the authorizations behind the invasion of Iraq and America’s involvement in the Gulf war.
A former lawyer for the January 6 committee said Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg needs to take steps to ensure his expected indictment of Trump is not viewed as politically motivated.
On the Senate floor, Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer is sounding optimistic about repealing the legal authorizations for America’s involvement in the Gulf war and invasion of Iraq, according to C-SPAN:
Eric Columbus was an attorney for the January 6 committee, which – among other things – wrapped up its investigation last year by recommending that Donald Trump face criminal charges.
Now Trump appeared poised to be indicted by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for misconduct that’s completely separate from the attack on the Capitol. But on Twitter, Columbus warned Bragg’s case runs the risk of being seen as politicized. Here’s more from Columbus:
The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has just released a memo outlining reasons not to repeal the legal authorizations for America’s invasion of Iraq and involvement in the 1991 Gulf war.
The Senate last week took the first vote in the effort to repeal the two authorizations for use of military force, which was supported by all Democrats and enough Republicans for it to overcome a filibuster. Earlier today, the Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled he was willing to bring it up for a vote in the House.
However, the release of the memo suggests McConnell, who wields great influence among the Senate GOP, is opposed to the repeal effort. Titled “Congress Should Not Tie The Hands Of American Commanders In The Middle East,” the memo includes comments the Republican leader made in 2021:
Do supporters of this repeal fully understand the ways it might limit counterterrorism missions? Cyber ops? Support for Kurdish and Arab forces in Syria? How do they propose we respond to growing attacks against our forces and interests in Iraq? … We’re learning a lesson in real time about withdrawing from Afghanistan without a plan. We shouldn’t make the same mistake here.”
Reuters surveyed a political scientist and a Republican operative about how Donald Trump’s looming indictment will affect his 2024 chances.
While the indictment would mark the first time in American history charges have been leveled against a former president, Trump has faced plenty of legal trouble in the past. Will the indictment expected from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg be any different? Probably not, Reuters finds.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell sees it as a rally-around-the-flag moment, saying in the piece, “I think this will strengthen the resolve of his supporters.”
Larry Sabato, a politics guru at the University of Virginia, believes the affair will be bad for Trump – but not crippling.
“It’s not good for Trump, the question is how bad for Trump it is,” Sabato told Reuters. “There could be multiple indictments … it begins to add up to a major problem.”
The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports that new lawsuits have raised more troubling allegations against Fox News and its most popular commentator:
A Fox News producer who worked on Tucker Carlson’s flagship show has claimed in a pair of lawsuits that network lawyers “coached” and “intimidated” her into giving misleading testimony in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit.
Abby Grossberg, a senior producer and head of booking for Tucker Carlson who has also worked on Maria Bartiromo’s show, alleged that the network attempted to pin the blame for Fox News’s airing of voting conspiracies on her and Bartiromo – an effort that Grossberg says was part of a broader culture of sexism and misogyny at Fox News.
The lawsuit was first revealed by Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter, which reported that Fox News filed a counter lawsuit on Monday, seeking a restraining order to prevent Grossberg from revealing conversations she had with network lawyers.
Donald Trump’s looming indictment has protesters convening outside the Manhattan courthouse where a grand jury is weighing charges against him, and police growing nervous about an increase in threats from online extremist groups. An indictment is not expected to happen before Wednesday, but Republicans have nonetheless spent today reacting to what are expected to be history making allegations.
Here’s what else has happened today:
Ron DeSantis might be Trump’s most prominent challenger for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but he’s way down in the polls.
Older Americans are holding protests across the country against banks that finance fossil fuel projects.
The defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News is having a major hearing in a Delaware court.
The right wing of the Republican party is continuing its campaign to defund the police, with the introduction of legislation to block the construction of a new headquarters for the FBI.
Matt Gaetz, a prominent conservative House Republican, has introduced a bill to stop the government from spending the $375m allocated last year for the new building, the Daily Caller reports. The FBI is looking to move out of its ageing offices in downtown Washington DC and into a newly built site, either in Maryland or Virginia (a hotly contested issue between the two states, which border the capital).
In a statement to the Daily Caller, Gaetz cited conservatives’ belief about being targeted by the FBI as the reason to cut off its funding:
The cancer at the Washington Field Office has metastasized so large that the entire body is in critical condition. Gifting the FBI a new headquarters larger than the Pentagon would condone, reinforce, and enable their nefarious behavior to levels we have never seen before.”
Ron DeSantis is having a tricky time responding to the looming indictment of Donald Trump, to whom he is the only remotely close challenger for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. A poll out today shows just how tricky.
The Morning Consult poll puts the Florida governor at 26% support to 54% for Trump, tying DeSantis’s lowest mark in the survey since it began in December.
Under pressure from Trump allies, DeSantis addressed the New York situation on Monday. He chose to focus his fire on Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney expected to indict Trump over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, while slipping in a barbed remark about the payment and Daniels’ chosen profession.
Trump responded with mockery and an insinuation about DeSantis’s sexuality. Classy, it wasn’t. Indicative of ferocious political warfare to come, if or when DeSantis jumps into the primary proper, it was.
So today’s Morning Consult poll will make happy reading for the Trump camp, as it ramps up attempts to use the looming indictment for fundraising and to strengthen the former president’s hold on the Republican base.
In other findings, the poll put the former vice-president Mike Pence, like DeSantis not yet a declared candidate, at 7% and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has declared, on 4%.
Liz Cheney, the anti-Trump party pariah, took 3%. No one else made it above a single percentage point: a potential embarrassment for possible contenders including the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott.
In Washington, the Guardian’s Joan E Greve is attending a protest against banks that fund oil and gas companies:
The demonstration today is part of a wider campaign happening in about 90 locations across the country:
Here’s more from Lindsey Graham on the ongoing rivalry between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis:
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
