Evelyn Reynolds

A former United States army soldier who was convicted of manslaughter for shooting a handcuffed civilian in Iraq to death was arrested on Monday on charges that he assaulted police officers with a baton during the US Capitol attack.Edward Richmond Jr, 40, of Geismar, Louisiana, was wearing a helmet, shoulder pads, goggles and a Louisiana state flag patch on his chest when he attacked police in a tunnel outside the Capitol on January 6, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.Richmond was arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Tuesday on charges including civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding police with a dangerous weapon.Richmond’s Louisiana-based attorney, John McLindon, said he had not seen the charging documents and therefore could not immediately comment on the case.Aged 20, Richmond faced a court-martial panel which convicted him of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to three years in prison for killing a handcuffed Iraqi civilian near Taal Al Jai in February 2004. Richmond also received a dishonorable discharge from the army.Richmond initially was charged with unpremeditated murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. But the panel of five officers and five enlisted soldiers reduced the charge to voluntary manslaughter.The army said Richmond shot Muhamad Husain Kadir, a cow herder, in the back of the head from about 6ft away after the man stumbled. Richmond testified that he didn’t know Kadir was handcuffed and believed the Iraqi man was going to harm a fellow soldier.During the January 6 riot, body camera footage captured Richmond repeatedly assaulting police officers with a black baton in a tunnel on the Capitol’s lower west terrace, the FBI said. Police struggled for hours to stop the mob of people supporting Donald Trump from entering the Capitol through the same tunnel entrance.A witness helped the FBI identify Richmond as somebody who had traveled to Washington DC with several other people to serve as a “security team” for the witness for rallies planned for January 6, according to the agent’s affidavit.More than 1,200 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials.More than 750 have been sentenced, with nearly 500 receiving a term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by the Associated Press. More

OJ Simpson decided he could make some “blood money”, as he called it, by writing a “hypothetical” book on the murders of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman entitled If I Did It. When it was announced in 2006, the outrage was so overwhelming that the publisher, HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch, fired the editor, Judith Regan, and cancelled a scheduled Fox network special. The OJ book fiasco appeared to be a rare moment of Murdoch sensitivity, but he was concerned that the association besmirched his own reputation.A week after Donald Trump’s attorney argued in the DC district court that he could not be prosecuted for his attempted coup culminating in the January 6 assault on the Capitol and could order the assassination of any opponent, Trump took to his Truth Social account on 18 January to insist that he “MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY” even for “EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’”. If the glove fits, you must still acquit.Trump’s If I Did It moment was followed, not with repulsion, but instead with his former warm embrace by Murdoch’s Fox News, reflexive bended knee by the entire Republican leadership, and Polonius-like advice from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to Democrats to “grow up” and “listen” to Maga.After 6 January 2021, Murdoch swore that Trump was an “asshole”, “a fucking idiot” and a “loser”. Fox News itself agreed to pay $787m to settle a case alleging that Fox News broadcast falsehoods to advance Trump’s lies about the Dominion Voting Systems company. The day after Trump’s OJ-like confession, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said: “He’s gone out of his way not to look back,” and “there’s a sereneness about him.” Fox’s Laura Ingraham urged Ron DeSantis “to step aside and endorse Trump”. Murdoch had touted DeSantis in his New York Post and on Fox, but he is now back to round-the-clock promotion of Trump, whom he appeared to privately wish dead: “This would all be solved if … ” If I Did It …The day after the US Capitol attack in 2021, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase felt morally compelled to issue a formal corporate statement: “This is not who we are as a people or a country.” But at the Davos World Economic Forum last week, Dimon said that Democrats should “grow up”, “listen” to “Maga”, stop “scapegoating” Trump supporters, and “treat other people with respect”. “I think people should be a little more respectful of our fellow citizens.”Wearing a Ukrainian flag pin in his lapel, but seemingly unaware of its meaning, Dimon remarked that Trump was “kind of right about Nato”. Trump, according to his national security adviser John Bolton, pledged to wreck Nato, and bluntly told European leaders that he would not honor the US treaty commitment to defend them if they were attacked.After Trump’s Iowa romp and apparent unobstructed path to the Republican nomination, the corporate statesman, holding forth from the pinnacle of globalism, hedged. His studied ambivalence came a week after his bank reported that in 2023, under Joe Biden, its profits surged to its best year in its history. But Dimon still swiveled. “I have to be prepared for both. I will be prepared for both. We will deal with both.”Dimon’s grave words after 6 January 2021 were from a discarded balance sheet: “Our elected leaders have a responsibility to call for an end to the violence, accept the results, and, as our democracy has for hundreds of years, support the peaceful transition of power.” His condescension against condescension against the Trumpetariat is risk management. But his hypocrisy is more than interest on his capital. His feigned empathy about Maga as an oppressed minority community garbles bits and pieces of the half-digested drivel of table talk of Republican billionaires with whom he breaks bread.While Dimon and others at the Davos aerie considered the annual Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, which identified disinformation and misinformation from artificial intelligence as the greatest short-term threat to democracy, a Manhattan courtroom was hearing the second defamation case of the adjudicated rapist Trump against E Jean Carroll.Carroll testified that she had been inundated with death threats from Trump supporters. Trump’s incitement against the judges and their staff overseeing his various trials has provoked constant death threats against them, and they are surrounded by security details. The jurors’ anonymity is closely guarded to protect their safety. Trump’s antics are deliberate tactics of intimidation and political base mobilization. The shadow of stochastic violence hangs over the justice system. Everyone under threat “listens” to Maga.While Dimon suggested learning from Maga, Trump provided educational lessons in two courtrooms. In his New York trial for financial fraud, he broke the judge’s conditions that he should not to attack the court or use the forum to make a “campaign speech”. After the closing arguments, Trump raged in the court that the judge has an “agenda”, and that the trial is a “political witch hunt” and “a fraud on me”. Judge Arthur Engoron, who would probably have declared another defendant in contempt, told Trump’s attorney: “Control your client.”At the E Jean Carroll trial, Trump interrupted Carroll’s lawyer repeatedly with loud remarks from the defendant’s table. Judge Lewis Kaplan staid that if he continued his disruptions he could be excluded from the courtroom.“I would love it,” Trump replied.“I know you would, because you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently. You just can’t,” Kaplan said.“Neither can you,” Trump countered, using one of his favorite gambits – accusing the person calling him out for his actions of doing the same thing. (“Puppet, puppet, you’re the puppet,” he shouted at Hillary Clinton in a debate, to claim she was Putin’s plaything.)During the lunch break in the trial, Trump posted a series of attacks on the judge, calling him a “seething and hostile Clinton-appointed Judge”. “He is abusive, rude, and obviously not impartial but, that’s the way this crooked system works!” Another defendant would have been held in contempt, subjected to a gag order, or excluded from the proceedings. His Maga followers were listening and watching.Then, at a New Hampshire rally, on 20 January, Trump staged an Orwellian exercise in projection, appearing before a gigantic sign reading: “Biden Attacks Democracy.”The very day of Trump’s cross-the-line If I Did It statement, the Republican congressional leaders en masse affixed their signatures to a document unprecedented in US political history. It was a declaration of unconditional surrender to Trump. In an amicus brief filed before the US supreme court in the case in which the Colorado supreme court ruled to remove Trump from the ballot for engaging in an insurrection under the constitution’s 14th amendment, section 3, they defended him as an innocent victim. To depict the guiltless Trump, they offered a story of alternative facts.During the protests in the summer of 2020, he was the real target of violence: “Violence aimed towards the sitting President was perhaps unsurprising … ” Then, during the election, “both sides could attempt to label the other as having actively opposed the peaceful transfer of power to the rightful winner, or at least being morally complicit in those actions – and thus both Trump and Biden partisans could try to disqualify each other under Section 3, in tit-for-tat … ” But Trump on 6 January 2021 was the voice of peace and reason, telling his supporters to “go home now.”The amicus brief that is the white flag raised by the congressional Republicans has been signed by 44 senators and 135 members of the House, all the leadership in both chambers. The signers are a confederacy of cynics and co-conspirators.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the senators, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee were almost certainly privy to far more of the “stop the steal” movement, the fake electors scheme and the events of January 6 than they have revealed. The Georgia grand jury recommended Graham’s indictment for election fraud, but he was let off the hook when the prosecutor opted not to charge him.Of the House members, speaker Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan, among others, were extensively involved in Trump’s plot. Johnson, among other things, was central to organizing objections to certification of the electoral college count. Jordan refused to honor the subpoena of the January 6 committee.“Leader Mitch McConnell” is listed on the amicus brief. On the day of January 6, McConnell was hustled by the Capitol police to a secure location, where with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer they frantically called for military intervention to end the assault. McConnell was in physical danger. He is frail. He has unstable balance. He cannot run. He had a bad fall the year before, fracturing his shoulder. He has heart trouble.That evening, after the Capitol was cleared of the attackers, McConnell quaked with anger. “The mob was fed lies,” he said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.” He told his staffers that Trump was a “despicable human being”.He thought Trump was done. Now, McConnell has lent his name to a legal document that claims Trump did not “engage” in an insurrection.The brief, prepared by a Federalist Society chop-shop of rightwing lawyers, provides an à la carte menu for the conservative majority on the US supreme court to select an excuse for Trump. There are the sophistries – the president is not an “officer” of the US; his oath differs by a word from that of a senator; Trump didn’t “engage in” an insurrection.There is whataboutism – as in, what about antifa in Portland and Maxine Waters. There is twisted illogic – the falsehood that a state lacks power to disqualify a candidate because it “interferes” with the congressional authority to remove a “disability” through an amnesty.There is constitutional nonsense – that the 14th amendment is not self-executing; that the qualification mentioned in the 20th amendment, the “lame-duck” amendment, that prevented a lame duck Congress from choosing a president and established the line of succession in case of an electoral deadlock or a death, had anything to do with the qualification regarding insurrection provided by the 14th amendment, section 3.In its defense of Trump, the brief winds up conceding the entire case. Invoking the non sequitur of the 20th amendment, the lawyers argue it “confirms that a candidate may be elected President even if he is not qualified to hold the office”. Splitting hairs, they have beheaded Trump.Finally, in an even weirder conclusion, they cite George Orwell’s 1984 to defend Trump as the victim of authoritarian tyranny. “It is hard to imagine an actual insurrectionist quickly asking for peace and encouraging disbandment. But once ‘engage in’ is defined so broadly, even significant countervailing evidence can simply be labeled as a ruse, as insufficient, or even as an implied recognition and praise of ongoing violence. Enterprising state officials, in other words, may conclude that ‘Peace means War.’ Cf. George Orwell, 1984.”But, then, after all that, Trump demands immunity for “EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE” – If I Did It.For McConnell, his fellow signers, and the Republicans racing to endorse Trump, the clock is striking thirteen.
Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

The mainstream media is flabbergasted at Trump’s success in sweeping the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls and destroying all his rivals but Nikki Haley before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.CNN is awestruck, calling Trump’s “landslide victory in Iowa” a “stunning show of strength”.The New York Times is dumbfounded, talking of an “expected Trump coronation” and also the “power of his political machine”.Time magazine marvels at his “commanding position” to secure the Republican nomination, and that “nothing has slowed him down”.The Washington Post’s Dan Balz writes that “the end of any real competition could come very soon”.Headline after headline offers the same breathless, spellbound story: “Trump is dominating.” “Disciplined”. “Ruthless”. “Hugely effective”. “Remarkable”.Earth to the mainstream media: this is dangerous nonsense.Why should Trump’s dominance be surprising? He’s dominated the Republican party since 2016. He dominates by ridiculing opponents, blasting anyone who stands in his way, bullying, browbeating and bellowing. The media eats it up. He’s outrageous and entertaining.Trump’s success in last week’s Iowa caucuses wasn’t a “stunning show of strength”. It was a display of remarkable weakness. He got just 56,260 votes. There are 2,083,979 registered voters in Iowa. Fewer than 3% of Iowans voted for him.According to an entrance poll, only 46% of the Republican caucus-goers considered themselves part of the Maga movement. Nearly 50% said they were not. Three-quarters of these non-Maga Republican voters opposed Trump.Over 30% said they would not consider Trump fit to be president if he were convicted of a crime.His performance in New Hampshire will probably reveal similar weaknesses.What seems to be lost on the media is that Trump was president for four years. In effect, he’s the incumbent Republican president.That’s not because he says he won the 2020 election. It’s because he was in fact president.Former presidents have a huge advantage in their party’s primaries because they control their party apparatus. Presidents who have served just one term and seek the nomination for another are always re-nominated by their party, as was Trump in 2020 – and presumably will be again in 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf course Trump will be the Republican nominee. Trump was the party’s presumptive nominee before he even announced he was running again.What’s remarkable is that he nonetheless attracted so many competitors for the nomination, who raised a lot of money for their primary runs. Tim Scott, Niki Haley, and Ron DeSantis finished September with a total of $26.7m available for use in the primary. That’s no small change.It’s also easy to forget that Trump began his third bid for the White House just days after Republicans took a beating in the midterms. That was the third straight national election in which Trump was a drag on his party. Across the country, his hand-picked candidates, who embraced his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, lost critical races.The danger in the mainstream media’s awestruck coverage of Trump right now – making a big deal out of his winning the Iowa caucuses, dominating the polls, pushing out all rivals except Haley, and almost surely winning today’s New Hampshire primary – is that it creates a false impression that Trump is unstoppable, all the way through the general election.But no one should confuse Trump’s performance in the Republican primaries for success in the presidential election.When Americans actually focus on the presidential election and the stark reality of choosing between Biden and Trump, I expect they will once again choose Biden.Even if Trump is not yet criminally convicted, I doubt that a majority of Americans will want for their president a man who has 91 criminal charges against him, who has been impeached twice, who has orchestrated an attempted coup, who has profited financially while president, who has stolen top-secret documents and who has been judged to be a rapist.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

New Hampshire will hold its first-in-the nation primary on Tuesday in what may be the last chance Republicans have to stop Donald Trump from running away with the nomination, as Nikki Haley chases an upset in the Granite state.Eight days after the former president’s record-setting victory in the Iowa caucuses, he is now locked in an increasingly bitter showdown with Haley, who has staked her candidacy on a strong showing in the more moderate New Hampshire. Ron DeSantis, the former Florida governor, exited the race on Sunday, adding his name to the stack of Republican officials consolidating behind Trump.Trump leads by double-digit margins but is considered more vulnerable in the state, where independent voters make up nearly 40% of the electorate and can choose to vote in either party’s primary.“We always buck the trend in New Hampshire,” the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, told voters as he escorted Haley across the state on the eve of the election.Sununu, one of the few Trump critics left in the party, said a show of support in New Hampshire would vault her into next month’s contest in South Carolina. He has suggested Haley could win the primary outright. More recently, he has moderated expectations, insisting that she has already exceeded expectations as the only candidate still standing in the primary against Trump.Republicans are predicting record turnout – and good weather, seen as a possible boon to Haley who is relying more heavily on voters who don’t typically participate in the party’s primary.The stakes could not be higher for Haley. She is barnstorming the state, from the “suburbs to the seacoast”, trying to persuade anti-Trump independents and open-minded conservatives to back her long-shot bid.Trump by contrast has been in and out of the state, holding raucous evening rallies between appearances in court. New Hampshire propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in 2016 after he came in second in the Iowa caucuses. This year, Trump hopes to notch a victory large enough to effectively extinguish Haley’s campaign.For much of her nearly year-long campaign, Haley carefully avoided Trump, instead drawing implicit contrasts with calls for a “new generation” of leaders in Washington and a proposal to instate cognitive tests for older politicians. But in the final days before New Hampshire’s primary, she went after him more aggressively, questioning his mental fitness and accusing him of cozying up to dictators and autocrats.Trump responded with insults and misrepresentations while accusing her campaign of relying on the support of “globalists” and liberals to win. In an ugly series of social media posts, he revived the birtherism conspiracy that she was ineligible to be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born. This is false; Haley, the South Carolina-born daughter of immigrants from India, is eligible. Trump also appeared to mock her Indian ancestry by referring to – and mispelling – her given name, Nimarata. Haley has always gone by her middle name, Nikki.Haley and her allies insist she has a path forward even if she doesn’t pull off an upset. Improving on her third-place finish in Iowa would be enough. But if she can’t win in New Hampshire, with an electorate seen as far more friendly to her brand of Republicanism, analysts said it will be hard to make the pitch to voters – and donors – that she can win anywhere else.Haley has scheduled a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night. It will be accompanied by the launch of a $4m investment in television, radio and digital advertising to air across South Carolina.Democrats will also hold a primary on Tuesday, but Joe Biden’s name won’t be on the ballot. Though turnout is expected to be low, Democrats will have the choice between voting for Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020. Meanwhile, some of the president’s supporters in the state have urged Democrats to write in Biden’s name on their ballots. More

When Donald Trump won the Iowa caucus last week, he further established his claim to be the Republican party’s presumptive nominee in this year’s US election. What had been a three-horse race is down to just two candidates after the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, dropped out, leaving only Nikki Haley to battle Trump. As the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, tells Michael Safi, New Hampshire could represent the last chance to halt Trump’s procession to the Republican nomination and a rerun of his 2020 showdown with Joe Biden for the White House in November. For Trump, a win in New Hampshire would help him seal up the votes he needs for the nomination before his numerous court appearances can seriously dent his candidacy. More

Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, criticized Donald Trump on Monday but declined to back Joe Biden as he reaffirmed plans to lead a general strike in the US in 2028.Speaking to union members at the UAW national political conference in Washington DC, Fain said it was time for union members to come together.“We have to pay for our sins of the past. Back in 1980 when Reagan at the time fired patco workers, everybody in this country should have stood up and walked the hell out,” Fain said. “We missed the opportunity then, but we’re not going to miss it in 2028. That’s the plan. We want a general strike. We want everybody walking out just like they do in other countries.”He reaffirmed ambitious plans to organize a general strike for 1 May 2028, coinciding with International Solidarity Day or May Day.The UAW rescheduled the expiration of their union contracts with the US’s big three automakers to align on this day in the contracts it reached late last year and has been encouraging other labor unions to schedule contracts to expire on this day to maximize the participation from workers across different industries.A general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions. In the US, they have been virtually non-existent in recent decades given the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 that restricted secondary strikes and the decline of labor unions in the US since the 1970s.After successfully taking on the US auto companies, Fain has emerged as a potent political figure, courted by Trump and Biden.Fain also used his speech to criticize Trump, telling reporters that Trump “is as a person … pretty much contrary to everything we stand for”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the UAW has yet to formally endorse Biden, who was the first president to walk on a picket line with striking workers in September 2023. Fain told reporters the union will be holding formal discussions on an endorsement amid rumors that Biden may address the union in person later this week.
Reuters contributed reporting More

The Biden administration is allowed to cut the razor wire deployed by Texas at the border with Mexico, the US supreme court ruled on Monday.The concertina wire, deployed at the direction of the Republican Texas governor, Greg Abbott, runs roughly 30 miles (48km) along the Rio Grande river, near the border city of Eagle Pass. It is part of Abbott’s broader fight with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement and what he calls “Biden’s reckless open-border policies”.It has also become a symbol of America’s broader political fight over the control of the nation’s border with many Republicans hailing it as tough, but necessary policy, and many Democrats decrying it as inhumane and cruel.Border security and immigration officially fall under the purview of the federal government, as decided in the 2012 supreme court case, Arizona v United States. The court held that federal immigration law preempted Arizona’s immigration laws.In a narrow 5-4 vote, the supreme court has now granted an emergency appeal from the Biden administration.The ruling now means the lone star state must comply with the Biden administration and allow federal authorities access to the border, contrary to recent actions taken by state.Texas officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing. A federal appeals court last month forced federal agents to stop cutting the concertina wire.Texas officials earlier this month refused an order from the Biden administration to allow US border patrol agents access to a part of the US-Mexico border that is now under the state’s control. Last week, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton rejected orders for the state to stop controlling Shelby Park, a public park and entry point into the US.A number of migrants have crossed at Eagle Pass in recent months.“We are not allowing Border Patrol on that property anymore. We’re not going to let this happen anymore,” Abbott said at the time.The refusal to obey federal orders cost lives, the department of homeland security said. The agency reported three migrants, two of whom were two children, drowned near the park federal authorities were restricted from entering.In addition to wire, Abbott has also authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed state troopers to arrest and jail thousands of people suspected of migrating illegally on trespassing charges – initiatives taken under Operation Lone Star, a joint effort between the Texas department of public safety and the Texas military department that began in 2021 to curb illegal immigration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Biden administration is also challenging those actions in federal court.In court papers, the administration said the “fencing further restricts Border Patrol’s ability to reach the river in particular areas”.Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the administration. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas voted with Texas.No explanations for their vote were provided by any of the justices.
The Associated Press contributed to this report More

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
Nikki Haley made the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was unexpectedly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else happened today:
Kamala Harris assailed Trump for his role in overturning Roe v Wade on the 51st anniversary of the supreme court decision that allowed abortion access nationwide.
Nikki Haley has avoided talking much about abortion, even though she has signalled she would be fine with restricting the procedure federally. Some voters who support abortion rights are fine with that.
Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
Someone is making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary, prompting the president’s re-election campaign to call for an investigation.
As she blitzes the state, Nikki Haley talks about keeping taxes low, the military strong and the border secure. One issue she does not mention: abortion.On the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, Joe Biden and Democrats across the country are railing against Republicans, calling them “anti-abortion extremists” who would impose a federal ban on the procedure if they win back power this fall.Haley calls herself “pro-life” but has promised to seek consensus as president. In Iowa, where evangelical Christians dominate the caucuses, Haley signaled her willingness, if elected, to sign any restrictions that reached her desk.But in comparatively moderate New Hampshire, she has mostly shut down inquiries about what kind of federal limit she would support, insisting that any legislation is purely theoretical without 60 votes in the Senate – as she told one curious onlooker at a stop in Epping on Sunday.Across the state, several pro-choice independent voters said the risk of a Trump presidency worried them more than Haley’s views on abortion.“I’ve long ago accepted that I can’t agree with a candidate on everything,” said Carole Alfano, an independent who met Haley at the campaign stop in the town of Epping. “We’ll part ways on that.”Alfano backed Biden in 2020, but plans to support Haley in Tuesday’s primary.In Derry, Marie Mulroy is ecstatic about the prospect of a Haley nomination even though she believes abortion should remain legal.“We’ll agree to disagree on that,” she said.Can Nikki Haley pull a shock win in New Hampshire out of the bag?She’s the last candidate standing against Donald Trump, after Florida governor Ron DeSantis exited the race and endorsed the former president on Sunday. Host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast Jonathan Freedland headed out on the campaign trail in the Granite state to find out the answer:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign marked Roe v Wade’s 51st anniversary by debuting an advertisement in which Texas obstetrician-gynecologist Austin Dennard discusses how she had to leave the state to get an abortion after finding out that her fetus would not survive.Who’s to blame? Donald Trump, as Dennard makes clear. Expect to see tons of this sort of messaging coming from the campaigns of the president and other Democrats over the coming months:On the 51st anniversary of the supreme court’s Roe v Wade decision, Kamala Harris attacked Donald Trump for his role in appointing justices who overturned the precedent and allowed states to ban abortion.The vice-president spoke during a visit today to Wisconsin, a battleground state that will be crucial to deciding the outcome of the November election. Democrats plan to campaign on restoring access to abortion, after the 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that curtailed abortion access in many states.Harris did not hold back from assailing the former president, citing his comments that he was “proud” of his role in getting three justices confirmed to the court, all of whom voted to overturn Roe. Here’s what she had to say:Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has called on New Hampshire authorities to investigate a spate of robocalls to voters in which a voice that sounds like the president encourages them not to participate in Tuesday’s primary.Biden’s name is not appearing on the primary ballot, since Democrats have decided to hold their first nominating contest in South Carolina next month. But some in the party are encouraging their voters to write in the president’s name, both as a show of support and to pressure the Democratic National Committee to give New Hampshire, which has historically been the second state to vote, a more prominent role in the nominating process.In a statement, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
This matter has already been referred to the New Hampshire Attorney General, and the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately. Spreading disinformation to suppress voting and deliberately undermine free and fair elections will not stand, and fighting back against any attempt to undermine our democracy will continue to be a top priority for this campaign.
David Scanlan, the New Hampshire secretary of state, predicted Republican voter participation in the primaries will reach 322,000, eclipsing 2016’s total, when Republicans set a record of 287,652 votes. In 2020, it was Democrats who saw record turnout for their competitive primary, with 300,368 votes cast.Before a deadline in October, as many as 4,000 registered Democrats changed their party affiliation to “undeclared,” suggesting some plan to vote in the Republican primary.A Monmouth University Poll-Washington Post poll released today found that the number of registered New Hampshire independents who plan to vote in the Republican primary increased from 52% in November to 63%.More than a third of these voters said they voted for Biden in 2020, suggesting there could be a “measurable influx of Democratic-leaning independents” who will participate in Tuesday’s primary.In a conversation on Friday, Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and prominent Trump opponent, said he did not see evidence that Haley had “lit a spark” among these voters in the way that might foretell “some kind of surge coming her way.”“People turn out when they are inspired, or they’re pissed off,” said Cullen, who had seen Haley on the campaign trail four times. “What we’re seeing is that people are not inspired, and they’re apathetic. And that means that they don’t show up.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state David Scanlan is predicting record turnout in the Republican primary, while governor Chris Sununu is joking that he is cashing in all of his political capital to ensure balmy weather for voters headed to the polls on Tuesday.That would be a stark contrast from Iowa, where arctic temperatures were blamed for the low turnout last week. Recent polling has shown Trump with a double digit lead in the state. But New Hampshire has a record of unpredictability, thanks to the large number of voters who proudly belong to neither party. They are not a monolith, but analysts believe that the more of them who choose to vote in the Republican primary, the better for Haley.“The only big X factor I see: how big is turnout?” said Dante Scala, a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the University of New Hampshire.According to Scala, Haley is attempting something novel in New Hampshire. Republican presidential candidates who have pulled off wins in New Hampshire – such as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 – managed to appeal to the state’s independents while still pulling in a sizable chunk of the party faithful. (Independents, called “undeclared” voters in New Hampshire, can vote in either party’s primary.)This year, Trump has a lock on Republican base voters. To win, or even to come within striking distance of Trump, Scala said Haley will need to run up the score with these independent voters, some of whom could choose to vote in the sleepy Democratic primary or not at all if they feel the contest is a foregone conclusion.Scala said Haley’s test is whether she “inspired enough people to show up, who don’t normally show up, to get a turnout big enough that it swamps the Trump people and your mainstream Republican in New Hampshire.”Joe Biden spoke to UK prime minister Rishi Sunak on Monday about Gaza, Ukraine, and the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, AFP reported.From White House correspondent for AFP Danny Kemp:Judy Sheindlin, widely known as Judge Judy, told CNN on Monday that she would endorse Nikki Haley if she “were a frog”.During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Judge Judy was asked if the reason she endorsed Haley was because Haley is a woman.“No, I would support her if she were a frog,” said the ever-colorful Sheindlin.“She’s capable. She’s poised,” Sheindlin added.Sheindlin said that neither Trump nor Biden have the “intellectual gravitas” to be US president.According to Sheindlin, she has only endorsed one presidential candidate before –the former New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, during the 2020 presidential election.Sheindlin has campaigned for Haley ahead of the highly watched New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.Nikki Haley is making the most of the hours remaining before tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire, crisscrossing the Granite state alongside governor Chris Sununu in a bid to lure votes away from Donald Trump. But polls continue to show the former president with a big lead, underscoring the difficulty Haley will have in overcoming his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is expected in New Hampshire later today, after appearing this morning in a New York City courtroom for a hearing in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him, where he was set to testify. The session was abruptly adjourned after a juror felt ill, and one of Trump’s lawyers was exposed to Covid-19.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Judge Judy delivered her verdict on the presidential race by stumping for Haley in New Hampshire.
Elise Stefanik, who is seen as potential running mate for Trump, said the adjournment of his defamation trial was “blatant election interference”. In reality, it was requested by the former president’s legal team.
Someone is reportedly making robocalls to New Hampshire voters that sound like Joe Biden and encourage them not to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Supporters of a campaign to write in his name – he is not appearing on the ballot, in line with Democratic National Committee rules – say the calls are meant to undermine them.
Donald Trump is clearly smarting from the ongoing defamation lawsuit against him by author E Jean Carroll, and a jury’s verdict last year that he sexually abused her. As the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports, his campaign yesterday barred a NBC News reporter who had pressed his ally Elise Stefanik for her thoughts on the verdict:Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reportedly blocked an NBC News journalist from covering campaign events in New Hampshire on Sunday.Sunday’s exclusion of NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard came when he was set to serve as a pool reporter. Instead of having a pack of reporters follow a candidate everywhere, campaigns will often allow television, print, and radio news organizations to send a single pool reporter to travel with them – and those reporters in turn then send a readout to other news outlets.But on Sunday, Hillyard wrote in an email to the pool: “Your pooler was told that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”The email, which was subsequently published by several news organizations, added: “After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2.20pm that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today.”Hillyard a day earlier had pressed New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik – said to be a potential Trump running mate – on whether she believed the ex-president had sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll.NBC News and Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, did not immediately return a request for comment.You don’t have to be Joe Biden for someone to make a robot of your likeness. As the Guardian’s Dan Milmo reports, Democratic congressman and presidential candidate Dean Phillips has his own AI impersonator:OpenAI has removed the account of the developer behind an artificial intelligence-powered bot impersonating the US presidential candidate Dean Phillips, saying it violated company policy.Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic party candidacy, was impersonated by a ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot site.The bot was backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers, who have started a Super Pac – a body that funds and supports political candidates – named We Deserve Better, supporting Phillips.San Francisco-based OpenAI said it had removed a developer account that violated its policies on political campaigning and impersonation.“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent,” said the company.The Phillips bot, created by AI firm Delphi, is now disabled. Delphi has been contacted for comment.A factor working against Nikki Haley in her quest to win the New Hampshire Republican primary is Donald Trump’s resounding victory in last week’s Iowa caucus.His triumph in the first state to vote in the GOP’s nomination process confirmed his status as the frontrunner for the nomination. But election turnout was low in the Hawkeye state, a fact Haley was keen to remind voters of in New Hampshire:Nikki Haley is spending the final moments before New Hampshire’s make-or-break primary getting out the vote with the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu by her side.“This is it. Twenty-four hours to go,” Sununu told the crowd at a packed, dimly lit veteran’s hall in Franklin. “All the momentum is at Nikki Haley’s back.”He told the voters not to pay any mind to the polls – unless it’s the ones showing Haley trouncing Joe Biden in a general election – and reminded them of their fiercely guarded reputation as the state that delivers political upsets.“We always buck the trend in New Hampshire,” he said. “It’s going to start tomorrow.”Haley reminded voters of the stakes of tomorrow’s primary – not that they needed any reminding, since some say they’ve received upwards of 10 campaign mailers a day in recent weeks, in addition to the political ads flooding the airwaves.“Don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t play in this primary tomorrow,” she charged. “It matters.” More