Evelyn Reynolds

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    Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

    In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.” More

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    Is there humour left in the White House? – podcast

    The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns this Saturday for a night of comedy ‘roasting’ – where the great and the good are ruthlessly mocked in celebration of the freedom of the press.
    In recent years, however, the night has taken on a different tone, with the atmosphere of warm self-deprecation and bipartisan bonhomie replaced by something more scathing and serious.
    This week Jonathan Freedland is joined by Jeff Nussbaum, a former senior speech writer to Joe Biden, to discuss the art of writing gags for presidents and whether there is still space for humour in US politics.

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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    Trump the elephant in the room as supreme court hearing strays into the surreal

    It took two hours and 24 minutes for the elephant in the room to be mentioned at Thursday’s US supreme court hearing. “The special counsel has expressed some concern for speed, and wanting to move forward,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.That was shorthand for the gargantuan stakes at play in Trump v United States. The court was being asked to consider one of the most consequential prosecutions in US history – the four federal charges brought against former president Donald Trump accusing him of attempting to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election – and whether the case can conceivably go to trial.The supreme court has already moved at such a snail’s pace that the chances of the case coming to trial before November’s presidential election – in which the accused is once again standing for the most powerful job on Earth – are growing slim. The charges were filed by special counsel Jack Smith on 1 August, almost nine months ago.With the clock ticking down, the most conservative of the nine supreme court justices appeared determined to talk about anything but the case at hand. “I’m not concerned about this case, so much as future ones,” said Neil Gorsuch, one of the three justices appointed to the supreme court by Trump.“I’m not focused on the here and now in this case,” parroted another Trump appointee, Brett Kavanaugh. “I’m very concerned about the future.”Samuel Alito repeated the mantra. “I’m going to talk about this in the abstract because what we decide is going to apply to all future presidents,” he said.What the justices appeared to be overlooking in the rush towards abstraction was that the actual substance of the case – the here and now – is of monumental significance. Trump is charged with having orchestrated a conspiracy to subvert the bedrock of democracy – the outcome of a freely held election – as the first president in US history to resist the peaceful handover of power.As Michael Dreeben, who spoke for the government, put it, Trump’s novel legal theory that he enjoys absolute immunity from criminal liability would immunize any president who commits bribery, treason, sedition and murder. Or in Trump’s case, “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power”.At times the epic debate, which lasted two hours and 40 minutes, strayed into the surreal. Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, argued that a president who ordered the assassination of a political rival or who instigated a military coup could only be prosecuted if he had been impeached and convicted first by Congress.The first question from the bench came from Clarence Thomas, the justice who stubbornly refused to recuse himself despite the inconvenient truth that his wife, Ginni, was profoundly mired in Trump’s conspiracy leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.The award for the most jaw-dropping display of jurisprudential sleight of hand goes to Alito. He invoked the goal of preserving a “stable democratic society” in support of Trump’s claim that he should be immune from prosecution for having attempted to destroy a stable democratic society.“If an incumbent who loses a very close hotly contested election knows that it is a real possibility after leaving office that he may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country?” Alito asked.“I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito,” Dreeben replied, with admirable restraint.It was all clearly too much for Ketanji Brown Jackson. Of the three liberal justices she put up the most impassioned counter-argument for the prosecution to go ahead.“If there’s no threat of criminal prosecution, what prevents the president from just doing whatever he wants,” she said. The justice left it implicit that this particular former president is potentially less than seven months away from returning to the Oval Office.How the court will rule is less than clear. It is a fair bet that four of the conservatives – Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas – will vote for an outcome that in some form spares Trump from facing a jury in DC before he faces the American electorate on 5 November.Barrett was harder to read. She appeared to be open to allowing the prosecution to proceed, albeit through a tighter lens to distinguish between Trump’s actions that were motivated by personal gain from those conducted in his official capacity.The final word may well fall – once again – to John Roberts, the chief justice. The thrust of his questioning (he alluded to one-legged stools and got stuck on the word “tautology”) suggested that he might be tempted to remand the case back to a lower court for further time-consuming deliberation.Which would play exactly into Trump’s hands. From day one, Trump’s strategy has been delay, delay, delay – with the endgame of kicking the prosecutorial can so far down the road that he can win re-election and appoint a manipulable attorney general who will scrap all charges, or even pardon himself.Which is why the elephant in the courtroom cut such a striking presence. Though with the exception of Barrett’s lone comment, it went entirely un-noted. More

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    Prosecutor to appeal against Texas woman’s acquittal over voting error

    A Texas prosecutor will appeal against a court ruling tossing out a five-year prison sentence for a woman who unintentionally tried to vote while ineligible in the 2016 election, an unexpected move that continues one of the most closely watched voting prosecutions in the US.Last month, the second court of appeals, which is based in Fort Worth, threw out the 2018 conviction of Crystal Mason, a Black woman who submitted a provisional ballot in 2016 that ultimately went uncounted. Mason was on supervised release for a federal felony at the time she voted and has said she had no idea she was ineligible. The panel said prosecutors had failed to prove Mason actually knew she was ineligible.But the Tarrant county district attorney, Phil Sorrells, a Republican, announced on Thursday he was appealing to the Texas court of criminal appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas.“The trial court’s guilty verdict should be affirmed. Voting is a cornerstone of our democracy. This office will protect the ballot box from fraudsters who think our laws don’t apply to them,” Sorrells said in a statement. “The second court of appeals’ publication of its opinion creates the very real risk that future sufficiency cases will likewise be wrongly analyzed and decided.”When election workers were unable to find Mason’s name on the voter rolls on election day in 2016, they offered her the chance to cast a provisional ballot. The key piece of evidence used to convict her was testimony from election workers saying they believed she had read an affidavit warning that someone cannot vote until they complete “any term of incarceration, parole, supervision, parole or probation”.Mason says she did not read the affidavit and that no one ever told her she could not vote. It is undisputed that she was never told she could not vote.“It is disappointing that the State has chosen to request further review of Ms Mason’s case, but we are confident that justice will ultimately prevail. The court of appeals’ decision was well reasoned and correct. It is time to give Ms Mason peace with her family,” Thomas Buser-Clancy, an attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an email.Mason has already had to serve an additional 10 months in federal prison while she appeals the state conviction. She remains free on an appeal bond and is living in Fort Worth.“I’m truly saddened at this moment that the state in this upcoming election is still sending a message,” Mason said in a text message. “I just don’t understand. My heart is very very heavy right now.” More

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    Police clash with US students protesting against war in Gaza – video

    Police made arrests after clashing with demonstrators participating in student-led protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The arrests came amid a wave of demonstrations at campuses across the US, which began last week after students at New York’s Columbia University set up encampments calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, jumped into the fray on Wednesday with a visit to Columbia’s campus, where he faced jeers from the pro-Palestinian protesters More

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    Senior Democrat calls for arrests of ‘leftwing fascists’ urging Gaza ceasefire

    Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing “leftwing fascism” or “leftwing totalitarianism”, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are “challenging representative democracy” and should be arrested.“Intimidation is the tactic,” said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. “Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition … I don’t know if there’s such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then that’s what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.”Smith was speaking – before the outbreak this week of mass protests on US college campuses, many producing arrests – to the One Decision Podcast and its guest host Christina Ruffini, a CBS News reporter.Ruffini asked Smith about protests in his district, including vandalism at his home and a town hall meeting disrupted by protesters demanding an end to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza prompted by attacks by Hamas on 7 October.Disruptive, aggressive protests are “illegal … completely wrong … and enormously dangerous”, Smith said, adding: “I really want people to understand – and I put out a statement after they shut down a town hall meeting that I was trying to have [in March] – what’s going on here.“And everyone’s like, ‘Well, you understand their passion and all that. And I do understand that, I do. This is a life-or-death situation. It is certainly not the only life-or-death situation that I and all policymakers deal with. But it is one that is important. But that’s not what [the protesters are] doing.“What they are trying to do is they are trying to silence opposition and intimidate decision-makers. I’ve been doing town hall meetings for 34 years now, in some pretty hotly contested environments … [but] I have never had a town hall that I couldn’t keep under control enough so that people had the chance to say their piece.“But [the protesters’] goal and their objective was not to get their point across. It was to silence anyone who dared to disagree with them, to make sure that only one voice was heard. And their other goal was to intimidate. That’s why they’re showing up at member’s houses.”More than 1,100 people were killed on 7 October when Hamas attacked Israel, also taking hostages. Since then, more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, where the population also faces displacement and starvation.Protesters, Smith said, “would say, ‘Children are dying. This is a huge humanitarian crisis.’ And they’re right about that … and by the way, I do have some sympathy with these people. If there are members of Congress who won’t meet with them, I meet with them. All the time. So they have an opportunity to be heard. They’re not trying to be heard. They’re trying to silence people who disagree with them.”Asked what kind of protest might be appropriate, Smith cited a recent instance in an armed services hearing in which “people came in and they didn’t say anything, they just held up bloody hands. And the chairman noticed that and said, ‘You can’t do that, you’re out, and they got up and left.”But he said: “You go back to the civil rights movement, they expected to be arrested, they knew they were violating the law. And also … you have to enforce the law. You have to make clear … that this is about more than just the issue. You know, they can be heard, but then other people get to be heard.“You come to our town hall meeting, it’s one thing to try to get attention. They got their attention. But literally, they wouldn’t stop screaming insults at me. They wouldn’t … even let me answer the very questions they were raising.“I got two words into it and they started screaming at me again. So this is a different thing than your standard protest. In my view, the solution to it is if they are committing a crime – which by the way, shutting down a freeway, shutting down an airport, intimidating people, there’s a crime – [they] ought to be arrested.”Protesting at public figures’ homes should also be subject to arrest, Smith said.“The point of it is intimidation. And I think it is harassment. It’s a crime, and I think [they should] be arrested for it.“… But you know, when you are shutting down freeways, shutting down airports, frankly putting people’s lives at risk – If you’re an ambulance trying to get through to hospital – then that’s going beyond getting your point across, and you’re trying to intimidate and silence people in a way that I think is troubling.” More

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    Dozens arrested in California and Texas as campus administrators move to shut down protests – as it happened

    Police in Texas have arrested a journalist who was covering the protest at the University of Texas at Austin. A Fox 7 photographer was reportedly arrested after getting caught between protesters and law enforcement.Officers have clashed with students after dozens of local police and state troopers formed a line to stop protesters from marching through campus. They have detained multiple people. Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, said arrests would continue until “the crowd disperses”.“These protesters belong in jail,” he said.Police arrested dozens participating in peaceful student-led protests against the war on Gaza on Wednesday.Students have set up encampments at a number of universities in recent days to protest the war on Gaza and demand the schools divest from companies that are closely linked to Israel’s military operations.Here’s the latest:
    At least 34 protesters, including a member of the media from a local news station, were arrested during demonstrations at University of Texas in Austin on Wednesday.
    Faculty at University of Texas, Austin have announced a strike in response to what they called a “militarized response” to a “peaceful, planned action” on campus.
    At least 50 protesters were detained by Los Angeles police at University of Southern California (USC) during peaceful protests. Earlier in the day, police responding to a demonstration at USC got into a back-and-forth tugging match with protesters over tents.
    Last week at Columbia University, the focal point of national student demonstrations, more than 100 students, faculty members and others were arrested.
    More than 140 additional people were arrested on Monday night at a separate protest at New York University’s Manhattan campus.
    House speaker Mike Johnson appeared at Columbia University on Wednesday where he called for the resignation of the president of the university over her handling of the protests at the school.
    Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assailed authorities for the “reckless and dangerous act” of calling police to non-violent demonstrations.
    US schools where protests have been reported include: University of Minnesota, Harvard University, Ohio State, University of California-Berkeley, University of Southern California, University of Texas-Austin, University of Michigan; Emerson College, MIT, Tufts University, Yale University, the New School, New York University, and Columbia University. Students at Sciences Po in Paris also began a solidarity protest on Wednesday.
    The number of protesters arrested on USC’s campus has surpassed 50, according to a LA Times reporter on the scene.LAPD has arrested at least 15 protesters on the USC campus, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene.The arrests came after law enforcement and university leadership told protesters to disperse. Protesters began to clash with law enforcement, some of whom shoved students, video shows.The number of people arrested as part of the University of Texas protests on Wednesday is at least 54, according to a reporter for local news publication the Austin American-Statesman.The number comes from the Austin Lawyers Guild, a leftist group that provides protest legal defense. The Guardian has reached out to the group for more details.Some USC protesters dispersed after the arrival of LAPD officers on campus, but dozens who remained are now facing off with law enforcement.In a statement posted on X at 5.50pm PST, the university said anyone remaining at the center of campus would be arrested.Los Angeles police officers are moving onto the USC campus to arrest protesters for trespassing, as they believe many demonstrators are not students, they said.In an announcement made via helicopter, LAPD officers told the protesters “Your time is up. Leave the area or you will be arrested for trespassing.”Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel prime minister, said on Wednesday that student protests against the war in Gaza were “horrific”, characterizing protesters as “antisemitic mobs”.While there have been reports of antisemitism on campuses in recent weeks, protest organizers have blamed such incidents on outside agitators, insisting that their movements are peaceful. A group of professors at New York University released an open letter denying that any NYU-affiliated protesters had engaged in antisemitism or intimidation of others.Many Jewish-led groups protesting the war in Gaza have also pushed back against such allegations. As protests aligned with the Jewish Passover holiday this week, encampments at Yale and Columbia held Passover seders on Monday.When asked this week whether he condemned “the antisemitic protests”, President Joe Biden said he did. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” he said.Local news station Fox 7 Austin has confirmed that one of its photographers was arrested on campus during the protests Wednesday.A video shows the photographer being pulled backwards to the ground by Texas Department of Public Safety troopers. The station says he was then detained and taken to jail.Members of the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin have condemned what they call a “militarized response” to pro-Palestine protests on campus Wednesday.The statement said the peaceful, planned action was disrupted by police and state troopers, who responded violently and “made our entire community unsafe”.“We have witnessed police punching a female student, knocking over a legal observer, dragging a student over a chain-link fence, and violently arresting students for simply standing at the front of the crowd,” the statement said.In response, the faculty members stated that on Thursday there would be “no business as usual”, suspending classes, grading and homework. They called for a gathering on campus at 12.15pm on Thursday.Many of the protesters at the University of Texas have dispersed, but others have returned to the south lawn as the large police presence has waned. The department of public safety confirmed in a public statement that there were 20 arrests as a result of protests today.As protests continue at the University of Texas in Austin, police have encouraged occupants to disperse via an audio announcement that could be heard across campus. From local news reporter Ryan Chandler:Here are photos from Austin where police, including some on horses and holding batons, blocked the main lawn at the University of Texas and pulled several students to the ground to stop demonstrators from marching through campus.Police in Texas have arrested a journalist who was covering the protest at the University of Texas at Austin. A Fox 7 photographer was reportedly arrested after getting caught between protesters and law enforcement.Officers have clashed with students after dozens of local police and state troopers formed a line to stop protesters from marching through campus. They have detained multiple people. Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, said arrests would continue until “the crowd disperses”.“These protesters belong in jail,” he said.Cal Poly Humboldt, a public university on the far northern coast of California, where pro-Palestinian students are occupying a campus building, said on Wednesday that it would remain closed through the weekend.Protesters have barricaded themselves in Siemens Hall since Monday evening despite a large showing of local law enforcement who unsuccessfully attempted to force them out. Police have arrested three protesters.Students are reportedly also holding a sit-in in another campus building.The university said it is considering keeping the campus closed beyond the weekend, and accused students of stealing items and breaking “numerous laws”.Aside from the confrontation with police, media outlets report the mood on campus has been festive. Students there told the Sacramento Bee they felt compelled to take action.“I think the solution is to get involved, because at least I can feel like I’m doing my part. Even if it’s not enough, I’m doing the best I can to make something of it. I find peace in that,” one student said.With protests under way at universities across the US, the White House said on Wednesday that Joe Biden supports freedom of expression on college campuses.“The president believes that free speech, debate and nondiscrimination on college campuses are important,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, said at a briefing.At least 10 protesters have been arrested at the University of Texas at Austin, according to the school.Dozens of state troopers and police officers in riot gear were at the scene after hundreds of students walked out of class to protest the war in Gaza and demand the university divest from companies that manufacture machinery used in Israel’s war.“UT Austin does not tolerate disruptions of campus activities or operations like we have seen at other campuses,” a statement by the university’s division of student affairs said.
    This is an important time in our semester with students finishing classes and studying for finals and we will act first and foremost to allow those critical functions to proceed without interruption.
    House speaker Mike Johnson, speaking on the steps outside the Low Library at Columbia University, called for the resignation of the president of the university, Minouche Shafik, over her handling of the protests at the school. Johnson said:
    I am here today, joining my colleagues and calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.
    Johnson’s speech was repeatedly interrupted by a crowd of protesters. “Enjoy your free speech,” the speaker replied.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is giving a news conference surrounded by a group of House Republicans, amid boos and chants of “We can’t hear you” and “Free, free Palestine”.Johnson urged that the “madness has to stop” and said Jewish students had shared with him experiences of “heinous acts of bigotry” because of their faith.Quoting Winston Churchill, Johnson said “it is manifestly right that the Jews should have a National Home where some of them may be reunited.”Johnson claimed Columbia University is being “overtaken by radical extreme ideologies” that “place a target on the backs of Jewish students”, adding:
    Let me say this very simply: no American of any color or creed should ever have to live under those kinds of threats. That is not who we are in this country.
    He said he met briefly with the president of Columbia University and encouraged her to take more action against the protesters. More