Eliana Willis

From 2h agoHere’s more from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe on the sentencing of the two Proud Boys militia group members last Friday:Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.Dominic Pezzola, who attacked a police officer and was filmed using the officer’s shield to smash a window, got 10 years from the federal judge Timothy Kelly in Washington DC, following his conviction in May for assault and obstructing an official proceeding.Prosecutors had sought terms of 27 and 20 years, respectively, for Nordean and Pezzola.The pair, described by prosecutors as “foot soldiers of the right [who] aimed to keep their leader in power”, were part of a mob seeking to disrupt the certification by a joint session of Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.With Mark Meadows’s plea, all but one of the defendants in the Georgia election subversion case have pleaded not guilty and opted to skip tomorrow’s arraignment in Atlanta.The lone holdout is Misty Hampton, the former elections supervisor for Coffee county, Georgia, who was present when a Trump-aligned group sought to illegally access voting machines in search of fraud, and directed much of the group’s search.Mark Meadows, who served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff during the period when he lost re-election to Joe Biden, has pleaded not guilty to charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s election result, Reuters reports.Meadows was among the 19 people indicted last month by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis for the campaign to keep Biden from collecting the swing state’s electoral votes three years ago. By entering his plea, Meadows has opted to skip the arraignment scheduled for tomorrow in Atlanta. Trump, along with several other defendants including attorney Rudy Giuliani, have also entered not guilty pleas.Republican lawmakers have been on a losing streak lately, as judges strike down congressional maps drawn by the party that disadvantage Black lawmakers, the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports:A judge in Florida has ruled in favor of voting rights groups that filed a lawsuit against a congressional redistricting map approved by Ron DeSantis in 2022. Voting rights groups had criticized the map for diluting political power in Black communities.In the ruling, Leon county circuit judge J Lee Marsh sent the map back to the Florida legislature to be redrawn in a way that complies with the state’s constitution.“Under the stipulated facts (in the lawsuit), plaintiffs have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida constitution,” Marsh wrote in the ruling.The ruling is expected to be appealed by the state, likely putting the case before the Florida supreme court.The lawsuit focused on a north Florida congressional district previously represented by the Democrat Al Lawson, who is Black. Lawson’s district was carved up into districts represented by white Republicans.DeSantis vetoed a map that initially preserved Lawson’s district in 2022, submitting his own map and calling a special legislative session demanding state legislators accept it. Judge Marsh rejected claims from Florida Republicans that the state’s provision against weakening or eliminating minority-dominant districts violated the US constitution.“This is a significant victory in the fight for fair representation for Black Floridians,” said Olivia Mendoza, director of litigation and policy for the National Redistricting Foundation, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, in a statement.A three-judge federal court panel struck down Alabama’s new congressional map, saying the Republican-dominated state again violated the Voting Rights Act. The judges wrote that they were “deeply troubled” the state’s effort to redraw its map did not fix issues it identified.The supreme court had in June ruled that Alabama must draw a second majority Black congressional district, which would likely give Democrats another seat on the southern state’s congressional delegation. But rather than go along, GOP lawmakers attempted to sidestep the ruling by approving new maps that still included only one district where a majority of voters are Black – an effort the federal judges just rejected.Meanwhile, in Texas, the state senate will today begin considering whether to impeach attorney general Ken Paxton, a staunch conservative who used his office to try to stop Joe Biden’s 2020 election win but has now attracted the ire of his fellow Republicans over corruption allegations.Texas’s house of representatives impeached Paxton in May, and he’s been suspended without pay ever since. If a two-thirds majority of senators convicts him, he will be removed from his position, but they will need to take another vote to decide whether to permanently bar Paxton from office, the Associated Press reports.Here’s more from the AP on what we can expect from his trial, which is expected to last between two and three weeks:
Paxton is only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached. The House vote suspended the 60-year-old from the office he used in 2020 to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump.
Paxton decried the impeachment as a “politically motivated sham” and said he expects to be acquitted. His lawyers have said he won’t testify before the Senate, but the trial remains fraught with political and legal risk.
The attorney general is under federal investigation for the same conduct that prompted his impeachment, and his lawyers say removal from office would open the door to Paxton taking a plea in a long-stalled state fraud case.
Here’s what Paxton is accused of and how the trial will work.
WHY WAS PAXTON IMPEACHED?
At the center of Paxton’s impeachment is his relationship with a wealthy donor that prompted the attorney general’s top deputies to revolt.
In 2020, the group reported their boss to the FBI, saying Paxton broke the law to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul fight a separate federal investigation. Paul allegedly reciprocated, including by employing a woman with whom Paxton had an extramarital affair.
Paul was indicted in June on federal criminal charges that he made false statements to banks to get more than $170 million in loans. He pleaded not guilty.
Paul gave Paxton a $25,000 campaign donation in 2018 and the men bonded over a shared feeling that they were the targets of corrupt law enforcement, according to a memo by one of the staffers who went to the FBI. Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015 but is yet to stand trial.
The eight deputies who reported Paxton — largely staunch conservatives whom he handpicked for their jobs — went to law enforcement after he ignored their warnings to not hire an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s allegations of wrongdoing by the FBI. All eight were subsequently fired or quit and four of them sued under the state whistleblower act.
Paxton is also accused of pressuring his staff to intervene in other of Paul’s legal troubles, including litigation with an Austin-based nonprofit group and property foreclosure sales.
Jury selection has started today in the trial of Peter Navarro, a former aide to Donald Trump who was indicted for contempt of Congress after defying subpoenas from the January 6 committee, Politico reports:Last week, a judge rejected Navarro’s argument that Trump had asserted executive privilege in the case, clearing the way for him to stand trial.Trump confidant Steve Bannon was convicted of similar charges last year, after declining to cooperate with subpoenas from the committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol. He is appealing the verdict.Yesterday, the White House announced that first lady Jill Biden had tested positive for Covid-19, but the president appears to have avoided the virus.“This evening, the first lady tested positive for Covid-19. She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms. She will remain at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware,” her communications director Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement.“Following the first lady’s positive test for Covid-19, President Biden was administered a Covid test this evening. The president tested negative. The President will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said minutes later.Both Joe and Jill Biden came down with Covid-19 in the summer of 2022, and recovered without side effects.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe on the sentencing of the two Proud Boys militia group members last Friday:Two members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol with the intention of keeping Donald Trump in the White House were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on Friday.Ethan Nordean, described by prosecutors as a leader of the extremist group, received an 18-year sentence for crimes that included seditious conspiracy, committed when thousands of Trump supporters overran the Capitol building.Dominic Pezzola, who attacked a police officer and was filmed using the officer’s shield to smash a window, got 10 years from the federal judge Timothy Kelly in Washington DC, following his conviction in May for assault and obstructing an official proceeding.Prosecutors had sought terms of 27 and 20 years, respectively, for Nordean and Pezzola.The pair, described by prosecutors as “foot soldiers of the right [who] aimed to keep their leader in power”, were part of a mob seeking to disrupt the certification by a joint session of Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The comeuppance continues today for the the Proud Boys, a rightwing militia group whose members are blamed for organizing and perpetrating some of the violence on January 6, and have been convicted of serious federal crimes. The Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio will be sentenced today after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy, and prosecutors are asking he receive a 33-year prison term.Last week, a judge handed down an 18-year sentence to Ethan Nordean, a leader of the group, and a 10-year term for Dominic Pezzola – both penalties that were less than prosecutors had requested. We’ll see if that pattern continues when Tarrio goes before a judge in Washington DC.Here’s what else is going on today:
The first big book providing an insider account of Joe Biden’s presidency is out today, and appears to be full of scoops.
The Senate is back to work for the first time since July, and will today consider Philip Jefferson’s nomination as vice-chair of the Federal Reserve
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security adviser Jake Sullivan brief reporters at 1pm eastern time. More

Rudy Giuliani on Friday pleaded not guilty to Georgia charges that accuse him of trying, along with former president Donald Trump and others, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.In filing his not guilty plea with the court, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney also waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing set for 6 September. He joins the former president and at least 10 others in forgoing a trip to Atlanta to appear before a judge in a packed courtroom with a news camera rolling.Trump and Giuliani are among 19 people charged in a sprawling, 41-count indictment that details a wide-ranging conspiracy to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected Democratic nominee Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent.The charges against Giuliani, along with other legal woes, signal a remarkable fall for a man who was celebrated as “America’s mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He now faces 13 charges, including violation of Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, the federal version of which was one of his favorite tools as a prosecutor in the 1980s.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, has said she wants to try all 19 defendants together. But the legal wrangling has already begun in a slew of court filings since the indictment was filed on 14 August.Several of those charged have filed motions to be tried alone or with a small group of other defendants, while others are trying to move their proceedings to federal court. Some are seeking to be tried quickly under a Georgia court rule that would have their trials start by early November, while others are already asking the court to extend deadlines.Due to “the complexity, breadth, and volume of the 98-page indictment”, Giuliani asked the judge in Friday’s filing to give him at least 30 days after he receives information about witnesses and evidence from prosecutors to file motions. Normally, pretrial motions are to be filed within 10 days after arraignment.Also Friday, Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, appointed a three-person panel to consider whether Shawn Still should be suspended from his state senate post while his prosecution is ongoing. Under Georgia law, Kemp is supposed to appoint such a panel within 14 days of receiving a copy of the indictment. The panel, in turn, has 14 days to make a written recommendation to Kemp. The Republican governor named Chris Carr, the attorney general, as required by the law, as well as Republican state senate majority leader Steve Gooch and Republican state house majority leader Chuck Efstration.Still is a swimming pool contractor and former state Republican party finance chair. He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state, declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was one of only three members of that group who was indicted.Still was elected to the Georgia state senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. It’s unclear whether the panel will find grounds to suspend Still, because the constitution specifies that officials should be suspended when a felony indictment “relates to the performance or activities of the office”. The three-person commission can have a hearing for Still including lawyers. More

From 2h agoHere’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
“Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
“Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
Security guards for Ron DeSantis followed and physically blocked 15-year-old politics enthusiast Quinn Mitchell from speaking with the Florida governor during campaign events in New Hampshire, the Daily Beast reports.Since 2019, Mitchell has shown up to presidential events in the Granite State to ask candidates questions, and has often received a positive response from politicians who admire his civic mindedness. But after asking DeSantis whether Donald Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power” – and getting a nonresponse in return from the governor – Mitchell says his security singled him out at campaign events:
Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.
The experience, Mitchell said, was “horrifying” and amounted to “intimidation.”
At a Fourth of July parade DeSantis attended, Mitchell was swarmed by security and physically restrained after a brief interaction with the governor—with his private security contractors even demanding Mitchell stay put until they said so.
With his mother alarmed, the situation escalated to such a degree that the candidate’s wife, Casey, spoke directly with her—but to suggest her son was being dishonest about what happened, according to Mitchell.
Then, at an August 19 event—where Mitchell was tailed closely by two security guards—an attendee told The Daily Beast they saw a staffer for DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down, take a photo of the teenager on Snapchat before typing out an ominous caption: “Got our kid.”
Seven other sources corroborated Mitchell’s version of events, either by sharing contemporaneous communications with the family or recounting what they witnessed in person at DeSantis events, including the Fourth of July parade. The teenager and his family say they have yet to receive any kind of apology from DeSantis.
The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down did not return multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
“Really stupid in a small state like New Hampshire,” Mitchell deadpanned about the guards’ behavior. Indeed, the story has the potential to create an avoidable headache for DeSantis, whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is going far worse than expected. Despite early momentum and strong fundraising, most polls in the state and nationwide show the Florida governor in a very distant second place to Trump among GOP voters.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that former allies are turning their backs on Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate who was last week indicted in Georgia for trying to overturn its 2020 election result:As he attempts to meet mounting legal fees incurred in large part through his work for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani will reportedly not get “a nickel” from one billionaire who backed his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination – or, apparently, much from many other previously big donors.“I wouldn’t give him a nickel,” the investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC. “I’m very negative on Donald Trump. It’s an American tragedy. [Rudy] was ‘America’s mayor’. He did a great job. And like everybody else who gets involved with Trump, it turns to shit.”Brian France, a former Nascar chief executive, was slightly more conciliatory. But he told the same outlet his wallet was staying shut: “I was a major supporter of Rudy in 2008 and at other times. I’m not sure what happen[ed] but I miss the old Rudy. I’m wishing him well.”Donald Trump happened to Rudy.Giuliani, now 79, was once a crusading US attorney who became New York mayor in 1993 and led the city on 9/11 and after. Capitalising on the resultant “America’s mayor” tag, he ran for the Republican nomination to succeed President George W Bush. Briefly leading the polls, he raised $60m but flamed out when the race got serious.When Giuliani struggled with drink and depression, his former wife has said, Trump gave him shelter. When Trump himself entered presidential politics, in 2016, Giuliani became a vociferous surrogate. When Trump entered the White House, Giuliani failed to be named secretary of state but did become the president’s aide and attorney.In that capacity his actions fueled Trump’s first impeachment, over attempts to find dirt on opponents in Ukraine, and he helped drive the hapless attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, which has spawned numerous criminal charges.Republican politicians have a long record of claiming to be the party that supports the police, but as NBC News reports, a man who told officers to “go hang yourself” on January 6 is currently working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.“If you are a police officer and are going to abide by unconstitutional bulls—, I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself, because you’re a piece of s—,” said Dylan Quattrucci, the deputy state director of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, in a video he recorded on January 6 near the Capitol. “Go f— yourself.”Quattrucci’s position makes him the number-two figure in Trump’s campaign in the state, which is the second to vote in the GOP’s nominating process. Trump is currently the frontrunner is most polls of Republican primary voters, both nationwide and in New Hampshire.The video was first posted on Twitter by “Sedition Hunters”, an online group focused on tracking down participants in the January 6 attack. NBC News reports there’s no evidence Quattrucci entered the Capitol itself, though on his Twitter account, he does have a picture of himself posing with Trump at a New Hampshire campaign office.The sentencing hearing for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys militia group convicted of serious charges related to the January 6 insurrection, has begun in Washington DC, Politico reports:Prosecutors are requesting a 20-year prison sentence for Pezzola, which, if granted, would be the longest handed out to any defendant related to the attack on the Capitol.There’s no telling how the state and federal cases against Donald Trump and others for trying to overturn the 2020 polls will end, but as the Associated Press reports, the environment for election workers nationwide has grown much more hostile in recent years:More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a justice department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the justice department to do more to protect election workers.The justice department had created the taskforce in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with the Associated Press the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.“This isn’t going to be taken lightly. It’s not going to be trivialized,” he said. “Federal judges, the courts are taking misconduct seriously and the punishments are going to be commensurate with the seriousness of the conduct.”More people are expected to plead guilty on Thursday to threatening election workers in Arizona and Georgia.Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp yesterday rejected a call from a handful of rightwing lawmakers to convene a special session of the state legislature with the intention of removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn the state’s elections three years ago.But as the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker reports, Willis may not be out of the woods yet:
Republicans at the state and federal levels are calling for multiple tactics to unseat Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, even if their legal standing is murky and they lack the support of Georgia’s Republican governor.
Steve Gooch, the Georgia senate majority leader, and Clint Dixon, a state senator, have said they plan to use a commission designed to discipline and potentially remove rogue prosecutors to investigate Willis following her indictment of Donald Trump for attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
In May, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill, SB92, that makes it easier to remove elected district attorneys. Under the law, a prosecuting attorneys qualifications commission has the power to investigate complaints and discipline or remove district attorneys whom the appointed commissioners believe are not properly enforcing the law.
Kemp on Thursday dismissed talk of using the commission or the legislature to remove Willis from office, but said the decision was not his. “Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis’s actions or lack thereof warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” the governor said.
The commission will begin receiving complaints on 1 October 2023, and earlier this month Burt Jones, the Republican lieutenant governor, announced three appointments to the eight-member group. Jones, who served as one of Georgia’s fake electors when he was a state senator in 2020, recently criticized Willis’s prosecution of Trump and said her treatment of the defendants like criminals is “very disturbing”.
Here’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
“Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
“Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, two more members of the Proud Boys militia group will be sentenced by a federal judge on charges related to the January 6 insurrection. Prosecutors are requesting a 27-year prison sentence for Ethan Nordean, a chapter president in the group, after his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and a 20-year sentence for Dominic Pezzola, who was acquitted of that charge but convicted of other offenses related to the violent attack on the Capitol.Yesterday, a judge sentenced former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs to 17 years behind bars, and handed a 15-year sentence to Zachary Rehl, a leader of the group. Both men were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era offense that is rarely brought. Their sentences were the second- and third-longest handed down from the attack on the Capitol, and two other members of the group, including its former leader, Enrique Tarrio, are scheduled to be sentenced next week.Here’s what else is happening today:
Just-released government data shows better-than-expect hiring in August but the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.8%. Joe Biden will speak about the report at 11.15am eastern time.
More defendants in the Georgia election subversion case may opt to skip next week’s in-person arraignment and enter their pleas in writing. Donald Trump did so yesterday, as did his former lawyer Jenna Ellis.
The White House is asking Congress to allocate an additional $4b to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for the response to recent disasters, including the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in Maui and Hurricane Idalia in Florida and other southeastern states. More

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced two former far-right Proud Boy leaders to prison terms of 17 and 15 years after a jury convicted them of seditious conspiracy for storming the US Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.Joseph Biggs, who helped lead dozens of Proud Boys members and associates in marching to the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, was sentenced to 17 years.Prosecutors had sought a 33-year sentence.Biggs and other Proud Boys joined the mob that broke through police lines and forced lawmakers to flee, disrupting the joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral victory by Joe Biden.“I know that I messed up that day,” Biggs told the judge just before being sentenced, “but I’m not a terrorist.”Later Thursday the judge who sentenced Biggs also sentenced co-defendant former Proud Boys chapter leader Zachary Rehl to 15 years in prison.Two other Proud Boys will also be sentenced after they were convicted by a jury in May after a four-month trial in Washington, that laid bare far-right extremists’ embrace of lies by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him.Enrique Tarrio, a Miami resident who was the Proud Boys’ national chairman and top leader, is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday. His sentencing was moved from Wednesday to next week because the judge, Timothy Kelly, was sick.He picked Biggs and Proud Boys chapter president Ethan Nordean to be the group’s leaders on the ground in his absence, prosecutors said. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. He served in the US army for eight years before being medically discharged in 2013. Biggs later worked as a correspondent for Infowars, the website operated by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.Biggs, Tarrio, Nordean and Rehl were convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy, a rarely brought civil war-era offense. A fifth Proud Boys member, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but was convicted of other serious charges.Prosecutors also recommended prison sentences of 33 years for Tarrio, 30 years for Rehl, 27 years for Nordean and 20 years for Pezzola. Pezzola and Nordean are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.Defense attorneys argued that the justice department was unfairly holding their clients responsible for the violent actions of others in the crowd of Trump supporters at the Capitol.More than 1,100 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 600 of them have been convicted and sentenced. More

From 2h agoDonald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
“There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
And here’s video of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s comments on the approaching Hurricane Idalia:Hurricane Idalia’s ill winds could be blowing some good for Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis as he takes a break from the presidential campaign trail to oversee storm preparations in his state.The Republican, who is sinking in the race for his party’s nomination, has become an almost permanent fixture on national TV during his emergency briefings, drawing far more exposure than had he remained on the stump in Iowa and South Carolina.He was asked about it at his morning press conference in Tallahassee, and replied with a word soup that essentially said it’s no big deal:
With Hurricane Ian [which struck Florida last September] we were in the midst of a governor’s campaign. I had all kinds of stuff scheduled, not just in Florida, around the country. You know, we were doing different things. And do what you need to do.
It’s going to be no different than what we did during Ian. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic… we do what we need to do, because it’s just something that’s important, but it’s no different than what we’ve done in the past.
In his place on the campaign trail, DeSantis has left his wife and chief surrogate Casey DeSantis to speak for him. At South Carolina congressman Jeff Duncan’s Faith and Freedom event in Anderson on Monday night, attendees were treated to a stirring speech about her children’s romp through the governor’s mansion:The ill will towards Donald Trump in Georgia extends even into the Republican party, with the state’s lieutenant governor blaming him for a host of issues and saying voters would be foolish to nominate him again, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump has “the moral compass of an axe murderer”, a Republican opponent in Georgia said, discussing the former president’s legal predicament in the southern US state and elsewhere but also his continuing dominance of the presidential primary.“As Republicans, that dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles, telling us all the warning things we need to know,” Geoff Duncan told CNN on Monday.“Ninety-one indictments,” Duncan said. “Fake Republican, a trillion dollars’ worth of debt [from his time in the White House], everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of a … more like an axe murderer than a president.“We need to do something right here, right now. This is either our pivot point or our last gasp as Republicans.”Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia when Trump tried to overturn his defeat there by Joe Biden in 2020, an effort now the subject of 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.Last week, Atlantans were greeted with the spectacle of Donald Trump’s motorcade heading to the Fulton county jail, where the ex-president was formally arrested and then released after being indicted in the Georgia election subversion case.Most Americans will remember the day for the mugshot it produced, the first ever taken of a former US president, but the Washington Post reports that for residents of the Atlanta neighborhood his lengthy and heavily guarded convoy passed through, it was a unique and emotionally conflicted experience.“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” 39-year-old Lovell Riddle told the Post, referring to the local jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”Here’s more from their report:
The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr, was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
Speaking of courts, conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke at a conference yesterday, where she declined to weigh in on efforts pushed by Democrats to force the judges to adopt a code of ethics. That’s unlike fellow conservative Samuel Alito, who spoke out forcefully against the campaign. Here’s the Associated Press with the full report:The US supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett told attendees at a judicial conference in Wisconsin that she welcomed public scrutiny of the court. But she stopped short of commenting on whether she thinks the court should change how it operates in the face of recent criticism.Barrett did not offer any opinion – or speak directly about – recent calls for the justices to institute an official code of conduct.She took questions from Diane Sykes, chief judge of the seventh US circuit court, at a conference attended by judges, attorneys and court personnel. The event came at a time when public trust in the court is at a 50-year low following a series of polarizing rulings, including the overturning of Roe v Wade and federal abortion protections last year.Barrett did not mention the ethics issues that have dogged some justices – including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the liberal Sonia Sotomayor.“Public scrutiny is welcome,” Barrett said. “Increasing and enhancing civics education is welcome.”Here are some thoughts from former US attorney Barb McQuade on why Mark Meadows wants to be tried in federal court, and whether his motion will succeed:Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent yesterday arguing that he should be tried in federal, rather than state, court, after being accused of attempting to stop Joe Biden’s election win in Georgia three years ago. In a surprise move, Meadows, who was Trump’s top White House deputy during the time of his re-election defeat, took the stand to argue that his phone calls and meetings with state officials were all part of his government job, and not political activities, as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has alleged.Legal experts say a federal court trial could give Meadows’ defense team more options to argue his innocence, and would also expand the jury pool beyond the Democratic-heavy Atlanta area to the counties around it, which lean more Republican.The judge handling the case, Steve Jones, did not rule yesterday, but said he would do so quickly. If he does not before 6 September, Jones said Meadows will have to appear in state court to be arraigned on the charges, as will all the other defendants who have not entered their pleas yet. Should he find in Meadows’s favor, it could benefit other defendants who have made similar requests, including Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official that Trump tried to appoint acting attorney general. Trump, himself, is also expected to request to move his trial to Georgia federal court.For more on yesterday’s hearing, here’s the full report from the Guardian’s Mary Yang:
The sprawling 41-count indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in Fulton county had its first test on Monday as Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, took the stand before a federal judge over his request to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court.
Meadows testified for nearly three hours before the court broke for lunch, defending his actions as Trump’s chief of staff while avoiding questions regarding whether he believed Trump won in 2020.
Meadows faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer. But Meadows argued that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.
Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.
In a response, Willis argued that Meadows’ actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government officials from using their position to influence the results of an election and were therefore outside his capacity as chief of staff.
“There was a political component to everything that we did,” testified Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Last week brought shock and spectacle to the political scene in the form of Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others on charges related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election, resulting in the group traveling to Atlanta to be formally arrested and have their mugshots taken – yes, even Trump. Now the case enters the more mundane territory typical of all legal defenses. Yesterday, the first of Trump’s co-defendant’s, attorney Ray Smith, entered a not guilty plea in the case, waiving an arraignment that is scheduled to take place for Trump and the others on 6 September.Meanwhile, we are awaiting a ruling after Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows spent Monday in court, arguing that he should be tried in the Georgia case at the federal rather than the sate level. The judge’s decision could come at any time (though may not arrive for a few days), and if he rules in Meadows’s favor, it could open him up to new defenses and potentially a more conservative jury pool.Here’s what’s going on today:
The Biden administration just announced 10 drugs that it will seek to negotiate the prices paid under Medicare, in part of a major push to reduce health care costs for older Americans. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold an event to announce the effort at 2pm eastern time.
An excerpt of the first major book about Biden’s presidency has just been released, concerning how the president handled the chaotic and controversial withdrawal of Afghanistan.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes questions from reporters at 1pm ET. More

From 4m agoTwo of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:A social media post viewed nearly six million times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans…and has been widely edited as a meme.”The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words ‘TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED’. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants.Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.In a court filing, Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States.” Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit Fulton county Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Read the full story here.Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
He added:
I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. More

Eight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.The former vice-president Mike Pence, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott all pledged to support a federal 15-week ban.The question from the moderator Martha MacCallum had noted that abortion had consistently been a losing issue for Republicans in state ballots since the Dobbs decision.Nevertheless just one candidate, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, decisively rejected the idea that Congress ought to regulate abortion access.Burgum, who signed North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban in April, said the conservative mission to overturn Roe was predicated on the belief that states should be allowed to set their own rules on the procedure.“What is going to work in New York will never work in North Dakota and vice versa,” Burgum said.For decades, Roe v Wade offered Republican candidates a convenient boogeyman. The supreme court ruling was not just about abortion – swing state conservatives like Burgum could point to Roe as an example of federal overreach.But Wednesday’s debate signaled a schism in the GOP’s position on abortion.In a post-Roe landscape, one year after Senator Lindsey Graham first introduced a federal 15-week ban bill in Congress, Republicans were forced to choose between their purported support for states’ rights and their opposition to abortion access.Burgum was the lone voice that chose states’ rights.Pence and Scott, both evangelical Christians, said they support a 15-week ban because abortion is a “moral” question that necessitates federal intervention.Scott said states like “California, New York and Illinois” should not be allowed to offer broad access to the procedure.Pence said abortion was “not a states only issue, it’s a moral issue”.The former vice-president, who has centered abortion in his bid to court socially conservative voters, condemned his opponents for refusing to back a federal ban.“I’m not new to this cause,” Pence said on Wednesday night. “Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation?”In his opening remarks, Pence lauded the work of the Trump administration, which placed three conservative justices on the US supreme court and “gave the people a new beginning for the right to life”.Pence also criticized the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suggested that it would be difficult to gain the requisite congressional support to pass a federal abortion ban.Haley, the only woman on Wednesday’s debate stage, said Republicans should instead pursue pragmatic legislative goals that could garner bipartisan support in Congress.“Let’s find consensus, can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?” she said.In his response, Pence directly addressed Haley: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a powerful anti-abortion lobbying group, praised Pence, Hutchinson and Scott for offering “a clear, bold case for national protections for the unborn at least by 15 weeks”.“The position taken by candidates like Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable for a nation founded on unalienable rights and for a presidential contender,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, in a statement on Wednesday night.Last month, Dannenfelser issued a similar condemnation of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for his reluctance to back a federal ban.DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida, but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.Dannenfelser said the Republican presidential candidate should “work to gather the votes necessary in Congress” to pass a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding that DeSantis’s failure to support the ban was “unacceptable”.“There are many pressing legislative issues for which Congress does not have the votes at the moment, but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight,” she said in a statement last month.On Wednesday night, Fox News moderators twice asked DeSantis to clarify his position on federal abortion restrictions, but the Florida governor refused to provide a direct answer.“I’m going to stand on the side of life,” DeSantis said. “I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas, I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.”Notably, Donald Trump – the presumed GOP frontrunner – skipped Wednesday night’s debate.Earlier this year, Trump criticized DeSantis’s position on abortion, calling Florida’s six-week ban “too harsh”.But the former president appears to share DeSantis’s hesitations about the federal 15-week ban, dodging questions about the proposed restrictions since launching his re-election campaign in March.The Guardian reported in April that Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposition for Republicans, though his exact vision for the future of US abortion access remains unclear. More

The first two defendants in the Georgia election subversion case against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants have been booked in the Fulton county jail, according to its online database.Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman, was booked at the Rice Street jail on Tuesday. John Eastman, a Trump attorney and one of the main architect’s of Trump’s plan to halt the certification of Biden’s victory, also voluntarily turned himself in later on Tuesday morning.They are expected to undergo fingerprinting, submit personal information and potentially take a mugshot.In a statement, Eastman said: “My legal team and I will vigorously contest every count of the indictment in which I am named, and also every count in which others are named, for which my knowledge of the relevant facts, law, and constitutional provisions may prove helpful. I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated.”In December 2020, Eastman helped orchestrate the plan for Georgia Republican electors to meet and sign a fraudulent certificate that said Trump won the election in what is now known as the fake electors scheme. He also drafted a six-point memo that directed former vice-president Mike Pence to refuse to certify electoral votes on 6 January 2021.Eastman, alongside the Trump attorney and disgraced former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, spoke at a rally near the US Capitol on the day of the insurrection where he spread baseless claims of election fraud. Kenneth Chesebro, another Trump attorney who worked closely with Eastman, Trump and Giuliani to halt the electoral certification and is a named defendant, was also at the Capitol that day.Hall was charged with seven felony counts, including six criminal conspiracy charges and with violating the Rico Act. His bond is set at $10,000, according to a “consent bond order” posted to the Fulton county court’s website on Monday.Eastman was charged with nine felony counts, including criminal conspiracy, solicitation, filing false documents and violating the Rico Act. Eastman’s bond is set at $100,000.After Trump’s 2020 loss, Hall illegally sought access to voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, to search for evidence they were rigged. According to the indictment, he traveled to the Coffee county elections office to copy voter data from Dominion Voting Systems machines, which was a breach of privacy and unlawful.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe was charged alongside the Coffee county officials Misty Hampton and Cathy Latham, as well as Trump-aligned attorney Sidney Powell, for “willfully and unlawfully tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines”, which was an act of conspiracy to commit election fraud.Hall also placed several phone calls to the individuals who were involved with intimidating Georgia poll workers to coerce false testimony about election security, according to the indictment.The district attorney, Fani Willis, who delivered the sweeping indictment last week, has given all 19 defendants until noon this Friday, 25 August, to voluntarily surrender. Trump, whose bond has been set at $200,000 and was charged with 13 felony counts, said he plans to turn himself in on Thursday. More