US judge orders Trump Mar-a-Lago affidavit to be unsealed with redactions – as it happened

Tomorrow may bring more details of just what the FBI was looking for when it searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month, after a federal judge ordered the affidavit for the search made public by Friday at noon eastern time. However, the justice department will redact the document first and could appeal the decision entirely, meaning it’s unclear how many new details will be released, if any.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Barack Obama is set to appear at Democratic fundraisers ahead of the midterm elections, as the party aims to maintain its majority in the Senate.

• Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr said the ex-president controls the Republican party through “extortion”.

• A brass band appeared before the White House to thank Joe Biden for relieving student debt, though some Democrats aren’t comfortable with the plan.

• The Biden administration plans to unveil a federal rule to protect “dreamers”, as undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children are known, but it could still face a court challenge.

• Texas, Tennessee and Idaho became the latest US states to ban abortion.

• Biden pledged continued support for Ukraine in a phone call with its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that a federal judge has ordered a redacted version of the affidavit for the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago unsealed:

Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge handling the case, gave the government until noon eastern time tomorrow to make the redacted document public.

“I find that the Government has met its burden of showing a compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the Affidavit,” Reinhart wrote in the filing. The portions that will be excluded include identifying information of witnesses, grand jury material and details of the investigation’s strategy and direction, he said.

“I further find that the Government has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.”

In Alabama, The Guardian’s Sam Levine has the story of how one resident’s lawsuit opened the door for a majority Black city to finally have a city council representative of its racial makeup:

A few years ago, Eric Calhoun felt out of touch with his city council in Pleasant Grove, a small Alabama city of just under 10,000 people outside of Birmingham.

Calhoun, who is 71 and has lived in the city for nearly three decades, couldn’t find contact information for any of the five council members online. During the 2016 election, none of the white candidates running asked him for his vote. Voters in the city had never elected a Black person to the city council. Calhoun, like 61% of the city, is Black.

In 2018, Calhoun became a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that argued the racial makeup of the city council in Pleasant Grove was not an accident. The way the city was choosing its city council candidates made nearly impossible for a Black candidate to get elected. Essentially, the city allowed city council candidates to run citywide, instead of in districts, allowing blocs of white voters in the city to come together and defeat candidates preferred by Black voters.

In yet another sign that the two men are no longer friends, Bill Barr, Donald Trump’s attorney general from 2019 until just before the end of his time in the White House, accused the former president of using “extortion” to control Republicans.

The comments came during an interview with Barr on podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss:

The Associated Press reports that guilty pleas have been entered in the bizarre case of two people in Florida who tried to sell possessions belonging to Joe Biden’s daughter to conservative activists:

Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty in a scheme to sell a diary and other items belonging to Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, the office of the Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams said.

“Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result,” Williams said.

Requests for comment were sent to lawyers for Harris, 40, of Palm Beach, and Kurlander, 58, and to Project Veritas.

US president Joe Biden called Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy today, and reaffirmed his support for the country against Russia’s invasion.

Here’s the full readout from the White House:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. He congratulated Ukraine on its Independence Day and expressed his admiration for the people of Ukraine, who have inspired the world as they defended their country’s sovereignty over the past six months. He reaffirmed the United States’ continued support for Ukraine and provided an update on the ongoing provision of security assistance, including yesterday’s announcement of nearly $3 billion to support Ukraine’s defense capabilities for the long term. The two leaders also called for Russia to return full control of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant to Ukraine and for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to the plant.

And here’s Zelenskiy’s take:

A federal grand jury found a Florida man guilty on hate crime charges for a “racially motivated” attack on a Black man traveling with his family in Seminole, 24 miles west of Tampa, the US justice department announced on Thursday.

The Black man, identified only by as “JT”, was driving with his daughter and girlfriend last August when Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, spewed racial slurs and attempted to run him off the road for nearly a mile.

The two drivers then encountered each other at a light, where Leahy got out of his car and “tried to assault” the Black man as he continued to yell racist invective, prosecutors said.

Hate crimes, especially against Black, Asian and Jewish Americans, climbed across the US throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is in touch about Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation plan, and unsurprisingly it is not happy.

The nonpartisan Washington think tank says: “President Biden yesterday announced a set of changes to student loans – including cancellation of up to $20,000 for some borrowers – that will cost between $440bn and $600bn over the next ten years, with a central estimate of roughly $500bn.

“Combined with today’s announcement, the federal government’s actions on student loans since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic have cost roughly $800bn. Of that amount, roughly $750bn is due to executive action and regulatory changes.”

The CRFB adds: “It is extremely troubling to see the administration reverse the legislative progress made on deficit reduction.

“It is long past time that student debt repayments resume, and now it is even more important for policymakers to enact changes that reduce deficits through spending reductions and revenue increases in order to put the national debt on a downward sustainable path.”

Here’s more on Biden’s plan, from Edwin Rios:

The Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, Beto O’Rourke, has released his first general election ads targeting his opponent, the incumbent Republican, Greg Abbott – and the subject is abortion.

The ads on an issue proving electorally productive for Democrats across the US as the midterm elections approach, come on the day Texas’s stringent post-Roe v Wade abortion ban goes into effect.

One says: “From this day forward, 25 August, women all across Texas are no longer free to make decisions about our own body, no longer free to choose if a pregnancy is right for us or our families, not even in cases of rape or incest.

“And women will die because of it. Because of Greg Abbott’s abortion law. It’s too extreme. So I’m voting for Beto, who will give women are freedom back.”

Another features a couple, the woman described as a “lifelong Democrat”, the man a “lifelong Republican”.

“Of course people are going to disagree on the big issues,” the woman says. “But Greg Abbott signed the most extreme abortion ban in the United States.

The man says: “No exception for rape? No exception for incest? $100,000 fines and jail time?”

The woman: “Only 11% of Texans agree with it.”

The man: “I mean, this is a free country. We need a governor that gets that. That’s Beto.”

Polling gives Abbott nearly nine points up on O’Rourke. But here’s Lauren Gambino with a look about how focusing on the supreme court ruling which removed the right to an abortion has paid off so far for Democrats:

Three US states saw abortion trigger bans kick-in on Thursday, Tennessee, Texas and Idaho joining eight other states that have formally outlawed the procedure since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June.

Depending on the state, trigger laws are designed to take effect either immediately following the overturn of Roe or 30 days after the supreme court’s transmission of its judgement, which happened on 26 July.

Nearly one in three women between the ages of 15 to 44 live in states where abortion has been banned or mostly banned. According to US census data, that is nearly 21 million women.

“More people will lose abortion access across the nation as bans take effect in Texas, Tennessee and Idaho. Vast swaths of the nation, especially in the south and midwest, will become abortion deserts that, for many, will be impossible to escape,” Nancy Northup, chief executive of the Center of Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

“Evidence is already mounting of women being turned away despite needing urgent, and in some cases life-saving, medical care. This unfolding public health crisis will only continue to get worse. We will see more and more of these harrowing situations, and once state legislatures reconvene in January, we will see even more states implement abortion bans and novel laws criminalizing abortion providers, pregnant people, and those who help them.”

More:

Taiwan has a new American visitor: Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

She elaborated on her reasons for visiting the island in a statement:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Taiwan is our strongest partner in the Indo-Pacific Region. Regular high-level visits to Taipei are long-standing U.S. policy. I will not be bullied by Communist China into turning my back on the island. During my visit to Taiwan, I look forward to hearing directly from the nation’s leadership about their needs and how we can support freedom for the Taiwanese people. I look forward to meeting with leaders in Taipei to advance and strengthen our partnerships.

Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island enraged China, which launched military exercises in response. But since then, more American lawmakers have visited what Beijing considers to be a breakaway province.

The wheels of justice have ground forward ever so slowly in Donald Trump’s various court battles today. The justice department appears to have submitted the redactions it proposes should a judge decide to release the affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search. Meanwhile, the ex-president’s lawyers are due to respond to another judge’s questions about their own lawsuit over the case.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Barack Obama is set to appear at Democratic fundraisers ahead of the midterm elections, as the party aims to maintain its majority in the Senate.

• A brass band appeared before the White House to thanks Joe Biden for relieving some student debt, though some Democrats aren’t comfortable with the plan.

• The Biden administration plans to unveil a federal rule to protect “dreamers”, as undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children are known, but it could still face a court challenge.

It appears the justice department has filed its proposed redactions to the affidavit in the Mar-a-Lago search, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:

Another lawyer for Donald Trump who assisted in his attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election has filed a court motion resisting a subpoena for his appearance before a special grand jury in Georgia, Politico reports.

The panel in Fulton county is looking into election meddling in the state two years ago, and has already heard from testimony Rudy Giuliani, who was informed he is a target of its investigation.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham has also been subpoenaed by the grand jury, but is currently fighting it in court.