Evelyn Reynolds

Scientists recently revealed that they revived a worm that was frozen in the Siberian permafrost 46,000 years ago. This was obviously a totally unnecessary and reckless exercise.Because barely a month later Tucker Carlson would revive the semi-frozen carcass of an ex-president from the Twitter permafrost that is now weirdly known as X. Anyone who has watched a Jeff Goldblum movie knows how badly these experiments can turn out.Cryogenic revivals are a relatively new medical procedure, which might explain Carlson’s sitting in what looked like a pine-lined Swedish sauna at the Trump golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.Then again, Donald Trump did not exactly find himself in a hot seat beside the former primetime star of the Fox “News” Channel.“Why aren’t you at the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee?” probed Carlson.“Well, you know, a lot of people have been asking me that,” began the semi-conscious Siberian worm, “and many people said you shouldn’t do it, but you see the polls have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points, and you know some of [the other candidates] are at one and zero and two, and I’m saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president, should I be doing that, and a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me, frankly …”We can all seem groggy after a long sleep, but this so-called populist was positively Jeb Bushy in his energy levels during the slobbering snoozefest that tried to rival the first Republican debate of the 2024 cycle.In this episode of Good Night America With Tucker and Donald, the only risk he faced was sending the Maga movement to sleep.“It’s interesting because you spent a lot of your career in television,” Tucker the Torquemada continued, “but you don’t feel the need now running for president to do television obviously. Do you think television is declining?”If anything captures the core burning resentment of the Maga mob, it’s surely their hatred of immigrants, the loss of economic security and the decline of television as we know it. Who among us does not hanker for the days of smoke-pumping steel mills, full church pews and endless reruns of Little House on the Prairie?Trump answered with all the gusto he could muster. “Well, according to a poll that I guess we just saw, it just came out, where it’s down like 30, 35% but I think they were talking, referring to cable, I think cable is down because it’s lost credibility. MSNBC, or as they say, MS-DNC, is so bad. It’s so wrong what they write and what they do and what they say. You know, it’s fake news, as I said. I think I came up with that term. I hope I did, because it’s a good one. It’s not tough enough any more. It’s corrupt news.”This was a strange way to rally the rioting crowds that Trump hopes will keep him out of jail for the rest of his living days.But surely a twinge of irony crossed Tucker’s permanently furrowed brow as Donald talked about fake news to the anchor who lost his Fox News gig in part for lying about a stolen election and a voting machine company that led to a $787m settlement.Surely not.“The good old days are long ago,” lamented Trump as he continued to shed fake tears for Fox’s declining ratings. “I will say this. It could come back but they just don’t have a lot of credibility, Tucker, you know that perhaps better than anybody. I think it was a terrible move getting rid of you. You were number one on television and all of a sudden we’re doing this interview, but we’ll get bigger ratings using this crazy forum that you’re using than probably, probably the debate, our competition.”You know your career is circling the drain when your big interview guest spends his time reminiscing about the good old days when you were number one, long before you ended up on this crazy website, whatever it’s called nowadays, where we maybe, possibly, probably will do better than the debate.For what it’s worth, despite all the incoherent blather that spills out of Trump’s mouth like endless rain into a paper cup, his fans believe. They truly, deeply believe every morsel of moronic nonsense that he plucks out of the ether that separates his brain cells.A recent CBS News poll revealed that Trump voters trust the twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted ex-president more than their own friends, family, religious leaders, and even (gulp) conservative media figures like Tucker Carlson.Listening to the two of them talk on Thursday night, you can understand why.Tucker asked Trump not once but twice why his attorney general Bill Barr thought that the notorious rapist Jeffrey Epstein had killed himself in prison. Donald tried to pivot to Barr’s real crime: his failure to “investigate” the 2020 election. But Tucker persisted, like the rottweiler interviewer he is.“I think he probably committed suicide,” said Trump.Tucker asked Donald not once but twice if he thought that after impeachment and indictment, the left was surely going to try to kill him. As in, literally assassinate him.Donald just said they were savage animals and left it there, hanging in the Twitter/X space like the promise of self-driving Teslas.Sure, sure. There was plenty of weird stuff from Donald. He called Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, “Ada”, and described Hutchinson as a seriously nasty thing that was so nasty he couldn’t explain why. He called Chris Christie a lunatic. He said Joe Biden couldn’t walk on grass or sand.He even claimed to have saved the Tokyo Olympics by getting North Korean athletes to take part. Which is the kind of thing that can haunt you, late at night, if you try too hard to understand what he’s saying.But then Tucker said Biden had skinny legs, and Kamala Harris was senile too, and that one of his old Fox News co-workers was a small man. He even claimed that Trump’s indictments weren’t “working” because Trump’s poll numbers were going up. Which isn’t how indictments are supposed to work – at least not in the criminal justice system.Elon Musk likes to say that he is protecting the digital town square by destroying Twitter as we knew it. But the corner of this square that is populated by Tucker and Donald needs a little more protection.Some things are best left unthawed, buried deep in the crevasses of the internet with all the other frozen worms, lamenting the decline of cable television and the death of Jeffrey Epstein.
Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist More

While former president Donald Trump was preparing to surrender at an Atlanta jail on Thursday, he was apparently also reconsidering his legal defense team.Just hours before Trump is supposed to turn himself in, reports broke that he had shaken up his team. Criminal defense lawyer Steve Sadow is reportedly going to replace Trump’s existing lawyer, Drew Findling, according to the New York Times.Notably, Findling, alongside Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg, was key in negotiating Trump’s $200,000 bond.Little will reportedly stay on the team.In a statement to ABC News, Sadow said: “I have been retained to represent President Trump in the Fulton county, Georgia case. The president should never have been indicted. He is innocent of all the charges brought against him. We look forward to the case being dismissed or, if necessary, an unbiased, open minded jury finding the president not guilty. Prosecutions intended to advance or serve the ambitions and careers of political opponents of the president have no place in our justice system.”The Guardian has contacted Sadow for further comment.The latest shake-up with Trump’s legal team comes as the former president is expected to surrender at a Fulton county jail Thursday night, announcing his plans in a post to Truth social.“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis, who is overseeing one of the greatest Murder and Violent Crime DISASTERS in American History,” Trump posted on his social media platform on Monday, referring to the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.Trump will be booked on 13 felony charges in connection with his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Last week, Trump along with 18 co-defendants was charged with 41 indictments that accuse them of attempting to overturn the election results through election fraud and other criminal means.As part of Thursday’s booking, Trump will be fingerprinted, weighed and have his mugshot recorded, which are all standard processing protocol.The former president has attempted to get an exemption from having his photograph taken, but county jail officials have said Trump will be treated no differently than other criminal defendants.Trump is expected to be immediately released after the booking, but must follow strict rules related to witness intimidation, according to court documents. More

The CEOs of the top 100 companies paying the lowest wages made an average of $601 for every $1 earned by the average worker last year as executive compensation continued to climb to record highs.A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies singles out which 100 companies in the S&P 500 pay their workers the least, companies the report dubs the “low-wage 100”. These companies paid their employees – including workers outside the US and part-time workers – a median wage of $31,672 in 2022, while their CEOs took home an average $15.3m.Many of these companies also invest millions each year in stock buybacks – when a company buys shares of its own stock as a way to boost stock prices and give more money to shareholders. Of the “low-wage 100”, 90 companies conducted stock buybacks, spending a collective $341.2bn buying their own shares from January 2020 to May 2023.“This is really hard data that reinforces what is the major story in corporate America: instead of investing in their workforce or investment to be competitive, in the long term, they’ve been putting out huge sums to enrich their CEOs and their shareholders,” said Sarah Anderson, the report’s lead author. “These are sums that workers at these companies could not even wrap their minds around.”The report highlights companies that stood out within the group, including the highest-paid CEOs and the largest stock buybacks.LiveNation CEO Michael Rapino had the largest compensation of the group, raking in $139m in 2022. Meanwhile, the median pay for the company last year was $25,673. Though LiveNation has come under scrutiny for its domination of the US live music industry, its revenue has been soaring over the last year as more Americans attend concerts.Of the companies that had stock buybacks, Lowe’s spent the most, dedicating $34.9bn to its own shares over the last three years. Lowe’s CEO, Marvin Ellison, had a compensation of $17.5m in 2022, while the median worker pay was $29,584 for the year.CEOs of the “low-wage 100” who had been at their company from at least 2019 until 2022 saw their personal stock holdings increase 33% during those three years, growing an average of $184.7m. In comparison, median pay at the companies rose 10%.The Dollar Tree CEO, Michael Witynski, saw the biggest increase in his stock holdings, which went up 2,393% over the last three years to $30.5m as the company grew its retail footprint. The median pay for workers actually decreased in comparison, going down 4.4% to $14,702. The company spent about $2bn on stock buybacks over the last three years.Stock buybacks have become more commonplace over the last few years. Buybacks reached a record high in 2022 and are expected to reach $1tn for the first time in 2023. Proponents argue that they rightfully give a company’s profits to its shareholders and help create activity in the stock market, but the practice is attracting criticism in Washington.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks, making them more expensive for companies to do. In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Joe Biden proposed increasing the excise tax to 4%.The report argues there are more policies the federal government can take on to disincentivize stock buybacks. For example, by prioritizing companies that don’t engage in stock buybacks when picking contractors and companies that receive subsidies. According to the report, 51 out of the “low-wage 100” companies received federal contracts over the last three years worth $24.1bn and spent $160bn on stock buybacks. The report calculated that the average CEO compensation for these 51 companies was $12.7m in 2022. In comparison, a White House cabinet member makes $226,300 a year.“We’re not talking about putting an iron ceiling on how much a CEO can make, but we can use government policy to encourage companies to move in the right direction,” Anderson said. More

Osita Nwanevu: The real winner was Donald TrumpIt’s been ages since the Republican party has had a national debate this bland. But as easily forgotten as this debate will be in a matter of weeks, if not days, it’s notable as perhaps the first glimpse we’ve had in years of what Republican politics might have looked like in an alternate reality where Trump never happened. Much of the top half of the debate seemed to proceed uninterrupted from the policy discourse of 2012, with most of the candidates trading lines about the profligate spending of the Democratic administration. Inflation was part of the complaint, but there’s evidently a real itch, beyond that, to return to the rhetoric of plain old fiscal unsustainability and generational debt.The big man himself did intrude upon the evening, of course. Some of the major exchanges of the debate revolved around whether Mike Pence ⁠— posing grandly as the question was asked ⁠— acted rightly in refusing Trump’s entreaties to help overturn the 2020 election on January 6. Just about everyone agreed that he had. But Vivek Ramaswamy flipped the script with a promise to pardon Trump if he’s elected.Ramaswamy was really the story of the evening all told. He will not be the nominee much less the president. But he’ll be annoying the devil out of the rest of the field for as long as he’s in the race ⁠— these governors and other experienced pols, current and former, who ought to know by now that their records aren’t enough to elevate them over the charlatans and randoms who might find their way to the center of the conservative media ecosystem post-Trump. That’s especially bad news for DeSantis who didn’t seem to manage much more screen time than Doug Burgum all night. The race remains unchanged as best as I can tell. The field remains in a holding pattern. Which means the real winner of the debate was one Donald J Trump.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist
Jill Filipovic: This was a disgraceIt’s hard to pick a single term to describe the first Republican debate, but a few come to mind. Embarrassing spectacle. Utter disgrace. Absolute clown show.And Donald Trump wasn’t even there.Not a single candidate on the stage came across as sufficiently honest, distinguished, or even competent to be put in charge of the circus, let alone a nation. Some were certainly better than others – Chris Christie and Nikki Haley at least answered most of the questions they were asked, unlike Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, who offered direct answers to virtually none – but “that was mediocre, but at least it wasn’t an abject embarrassment” is not exactly high praise.There have been many moments when Trump’s diminishing of the Republican party has become readily apparent, and this debate goes on the list. The party, and the candidates representing it, has become meaner, dumber, and wholly divorced from the issues Americans actually care about.What did the Republican candidates identify as the problems plaguing America? Hunter Biden. Teachers’ unions. George-Soros-funded district attorneys. Critical race theory in schools and trans kids in locker rooms.What did they shrug off? Climate change and the deadly disasters it has caused. Endemic gun violence that is now the leading killer of American children. The man who will likely beat them all for the Republican nomination being indicted for a slew of crimes.This country is worse thanks to today’s Republican party, and today’s Republican party is among the worst aspects of this country.Over and over again, Republican politicians and conservative commentators talk about all of the ways in which life in America has deteriorated, how we are no longer as great as we once were. They often pin the blame on immigrants, feminists, racial justice activists, Democrats, and changing social mores. But if Americans really want to see a striking example of our national nosedive, they needn’t look further than at the ridiculous men (and one woman) on a Fox News stage tonight.
Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
Ben Davis: Ron DeSantis was sidelined. Ramaswamy dominatedTo get this out of the way: this was a debate entirely conducted in the shadow of the missing frontrunner, Donald Trump. The debate was, as expected, defined by his absence. Several of the debate blocks were specifically about him and his conduct: his numerous indictments, the events of January 6, and whether former vice-president and current candidate Mike Pence did the right thing by not attempting to overturn the election and seize power on behalf of Trump. The more serious candidates tried to mold their politics after Trump, act like Trump, and talk like Trump. Based on all evidence, this was a race for second place. These candidates are running for the vice-presidency, a cabinet spot, or a lucrative role on Fox News.The candidates were defined by Trump but seemed to have learned nothing from his victory and appeal to the Republican base. There was a focus on culture war issues (thankfully, they have given up on the grating “wokeness” obsession), but not the ones that powered Trump’s appeal or animate the Republican base. Instead, there was a focus on the cultural preoccupations of the Republican party’s cloistered elite, like astroturfed country songs and transgender participation in women’s sports. The field still hewed to pre-Trump Republican orthodoxy on issues like spending cuts and crushing unions. So much for a “pro-worker” Republican party.The main winner and the candidate who seems like the frontrunner for the coveted second-place spot was not who you would expect. Despite all of the money, media coverage, and second-place polling status, Ron Desantis was sidelined. He dodged every question, refused to take a position on any of the major disagreements on the stage, and had no memorable soundbites. Instead, the most distinctive, most aggressive, most attacked candidate was the least experienced: Vivek Ramaswamy. He stayed strongly and boldly on the very far right on every issue on stage. He was the center of attention. He seems like a potential breakout internal figure for the Republican party in the mold of Andrew Yang or even Peter Buttigieg from the 2020 Democratic primary. He felt like the only candidate who had learned anything from Trump’s success beyond rote recitation of apocalyptic culture war rhetoric and attacks on the “deep state” and other Trumpian catchphrases. If there is anything to remember from this idea-less, Trump-less debate, it’s the floundering DeSantis campaign and Ramaswamy asserting himself as the tone-setter.
Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign
Lloyd Green: Donald Trump’s lead remains intactOn Wednesday night, eight Republicans clashed in Milwaukee. The debate was more than simply an audition to be the former guy’s running mate. Over the course of two hours, real differences emerged within the field. Donald Trump’s impregnable lead remains intact.Ron DeSantis dodged the question of whether Mike Pence did the right thing on January 6. Florida’s governor emerged diminished. Tim Scott won the vice-president wannabe contest. An oleaginous and belligerent Vivek Ramaswamy repeatedly puckered-up to Joe Biden’s predecessor.Nikki Haley, Trump’s UN ambassador, jabbed at the Trump administration’s spending record, called him the “most disliked politician in America”, and defended aid to Ukraine.Chris Christie dinged Trump and Hunter Biden. New Jersey’s former governor also reminded the audience of the Trump-Putin bromance and Russia’s lawlessness.On January 6, a mob prepared makeshift gallows for Mike Pence to his former boss’s delectation. With the cameras rolling, Pence again embraced the “Trump-Pence” label.As the 45th president avoided his competitors, his legal woes mount. His bail in Georgia is set at $200,000, conditioned on not threatening witnesses or co-defendants.On Tuesday night, a filing by the special counsel’s office laid out a failed effort to destroy Mar-a-Lago videos when faced with a federal grand jury subpoena. Trump as mob boss, Goodfellas repeats itself.His interview with Tucker Carlson, where he reveled in the prospect of civil war and bloodshed, did not confer the immunity he so badly craves.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

Unlike in recent election cycles, most Republican presidential hopefuls this time around didn’t flat out deny that the climate crisis is real. But on the Fox News debate stage, they made clear that they’re not interested in dwelling on the issues – or doing much about it.On Tuesday night, the eight candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in the reality of human-caused global heating. They all punted.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, immediately derailed efforts to elicit a clear yes or no response. “Let’s have this debate,” he said, before proceeding not to have it at all, instead criticising Joe Biden’s response to the fires in Maui.Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, was notably the only candidate to full-throatedly deny climate science, making the unsubstantiated claim that “more people are dying due to bad climate change policies than they are due to actual climate change”.There’s no discernible trend of deaths linked to policies encouraging renewable energy. However, extreme heat – fueled by the climate crisis – killed about 1,500 people last year, according to Centers for Disease Control records. Researchers estimate that the true figure is closer to 10,000 people every year.Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, said “climate change is real” but then pushed off all responsibility to take care of it on India and China. Both those countries have lower per-capita carbon emissions than the US. And as of the latest figures, from 2021, no country had emitted more carbon dioxide since 1850 than the US.The South Carolina senator Tim Scott didn’t offer much in terms of solutions earlier, pointing a finger at the continent of Africa, as well as India and China. Africa accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population and produces about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Association, while disproportionately experiencing the consequences of climate chaos. The US is responsible for about 14% of global emissions.Nobody meaningfully addressed the question posed by Alexander Diaz of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organisation: “How will you as both president of the United States and leader of the Republican party calm their fears that the Republican party doesn’t care about climate change?”In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think climate change is a major factor in the extreme heat that the US has experienced recently, compared with 85% of those who lean Democratic. Overall, nearly two-thirds of Americans who experienced extremely hot days said climate change was a major factor.Young Republican voters, however, seem increasingly concerned about the climate crisis. A 2022 Pew poll found that 73% of Republicans aged 18-39 thought climate change was an extremely/very or somewhat serious issue.Meanwhile, the rightwing groups have been working to boost the fossil fuel industry while undermining the energy transition. Project 2025, a $22m endeavor by the climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, has developed a presidential proposal that lays out how a Republican president could dismantle US climate policy within their first 180 days in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe GOP candidates who have held public office have already given voters a glimpse of how they might approach the climate crisis. Governor DeSantis has supported projects to build seawalls and improve drainage systems as Florida faces increasingly powerful hurricanes and storm surges, as well as threats from sea level rise. But he has refused to acknowledge the role of global heating on these disasters, scoffing at the “politicization of the weather” and pushing bills banning Florida cities from adopting 100% clean energy goals. He also barred the state’s pension fund from considering the climate crisis when making investment decisions.Donald Trump, who did not attend the debate, has done even more to impede climate action. As president, he rolled back nearly 100 climate regulations, according a New York Times tally.Among the candidates who do support doing anything about the climate crisis, most think that thing should be carbon capture. Haley, who as US ambassador to the United Nations helped orchestrate the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement, has presented carbon capture technologies and tree planting as a way to keep burning fossil fuels while slowing the climate crisis.The consensus among climate scientists is that while such technologies could be a tool in fighting global heating, an overreliance on them could cause the world to surpass climate tipping points. More

During the first Republican debate on Wednesday, eight candidates attempted to cast themselves as viable alternatives to Donald Trump while, for the most part, studiously ignoring the shadow of the doggedly popular former president who declined to appear on stage.The Republicans alternatively railed on government excesses – promising, for example, to slash funding for federal programs – while debating the merits of a federal abortion ban and calling for an increasingly militarized southern border.The debate was somewhat calmer without belligerent Trump, with the exception of outsider tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who clashed repeatedly with former vice-president Mike Pence, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Other than his increasingly aggressive approach to immigration, Ron DeSantis – meant to be Trump’s most likely challenger – remained relatively passive.The debate opened with a focus on the economy, as Fox News moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum played a clip of the viral conservative folk hit Rich Men North of Richmond, in which country artist Oliver Anthony describes his economic struggles while lamenting poor people “milkin’ welfare”. The candidates launched into a brief discussion of the economy – the first and last point on which they appeared to entirely agree.On the war in Ukraine, the Republicans diverged sharply in their view of the ideal role of US funding for the Ukrainian military. Ramaswamy, who accused supporters of Ukraine of neglecting “people in Maui or the south side of Chicago”, drew sharp rebuke from Christie, who said that “if we don’t stand up to this kind of autocratic killing, we will be next”, describing in vivid detail Russia’s bloody occupation of Ukraine. Pence echoed Christie’s position, calling Vladimir Putin a “dictator”.“I do not want to get to the point where we’re sending our military resources abroad where we could be better using them here at home to protect our own borders,” replied Ramaswamy.The Republicans also used the discussion of the war in Ukraine to pivot to the topic of immigration, articulating a vision of a militarized southern US border. DeSantis, whose floundering campaign has suffered repeated false steps and who largely hung back during the debate, jumped into the fold on that topic.“I’m not gonna send troops to Ukraine, but I am gonna send them to our southern border,” said the Florida governor, adding that he would deploy “lethal force” to slow immigration and proposed sending troops across the border “on day one”.When moderator MacCallum introduced the thorny question of abortion, which has energized Democratic voters since Roe v Wade was overturned, the candidates raced to claim their anti-abortion bona fides while splitting over the question of a federal ban.DeSantis defended his hardline position on abortion in Florida while invoking an odd story about a woman named Penny, who, he said, “survived multiple abortion attempts” and “was left discarded in a pan”. Haley, meanwhile, shied away from endorsing a federal ban, arguing that it would be challenging to find “consensus” on the issue.Pence and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott endorsed a federal ban. “We cannot let states like California, New York and Illinois have abortion on demand,” said Scott.As predicted, the spectre of Trump haunted the GOP debate, even as the frontrunner sat the debate out, opting instead for a prerecorded interview with Tucker Carlson on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. When Fox News moderators asked which candidates would still support Trump if he is convicted in a court of law, Ramaswamy and Christie immediately clashed, with Ramaswamy accusing the government of using “police force to indict its political opponents”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The more time we spend on this the less time they talk about issues you wanna talk about,” Baier admonished the crowd, which erupted in jeers when Christie accused Trump of engaging in “conduct … beneath the office of president of the United States”.In response to the question of whether Pence was justified in certifying the 2020 election, every candidate expressed support for the former vice-president – except DeSantis, who skirted the question, saying: “It’s not about January 6 of 2021, it’s about January 20, of 2025, when the next president is going to take office.” Pressed on the question, DeSantis said he had “no beef” with Pence but declined to directly affirm Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.For his part, Pence put a finer point on the subject: “The American people deserve to know that Trump … asked me to put him over the constitution,” he said.Outside the debate hall, a sweltering day gave way to a muggy night in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold, where voter turnout efforts by grassroots groups like Bloc – Black Leaders Organizing Communities – can determine who wins statewide elections. The critical state has emerged as one of the last true swing states in the country, delivering a narrow win to Biden in 2020 only after Trump won the state by a similarly thin margin in 2016. Underscoring the importance of the state, the Republican National Committee will return to Milwaukee in July 2024.After the debate wrapped, a spirited Donald Trump Jr wandered through a small crowd of reporters, complaining that Fox News had not granted him access to the “spin room”, where candidates gather after the debate, and talking up his father. “I don’t think Trump’s going down after this. I think he’s gonna go up.”Trump is set to reclaim the spotlight on Thursday when he says he will voluntarily surrender himself at the Fulton county jail in Georgia. More

The Republican Nikki Haley criticises fellow presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy during the GOP debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, saying that Ramaswamy has ‘no foreign policy experience, and it shows’ after he suggested the US reduce funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia. ‘You would make America less safe,’ Haley says during the heated exchange More

Republican presidential candidates clashed over Donald Trump’s legal woes during the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign season, underscoring the former president’s absence from the event and casting a spotlight on his potential vulnerabilities in a general election rematch against Joe Biden.Nearly an hour into the debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Fox News hosts Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier asked the eight candidates on the stage whether they would still support Trump as the Republican presidential nominee if he were convicted of the charges he faces. Six candidates – North Carolina’s Governor Doug Burgum, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott – indicated they would still support Trump. Only two candidates – the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – said they would not.Christie, a vocal critic of Trump, called on the fellow debate participants to “stop normalizing this conduct”.“Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States,” Christie said. When his criticism was met with some boos from the debate crowd, Christie added: “Booing is allowed, but it doesn’t change the truth.”Ramaswamy jumped on Christie’s comments, echoing Trump’s complaints about the alleged politicization of federal law enforcement. “We have to end the weaponization of justice in this country,” Ramaswamy said.The debate came one day before Trump was expected to surrender to authorities in Fulton county, Georgia, where he has been charged on 13 felony counts related to his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. The former president faces 91 total felony counts across four criminal cases.But a CBS News/YouGov survey compiled last week found that Trump now holds his largest polling lead to date, as he won the support of 62% of likely Republican primary voters. The survey showed Trump beating his next closest competitor, DeSantis, by 46 points, with every other candidate mired in the single digits.Rather than attending the debate, Trump chose to sit down for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which was available on X, formerly known as Twitter, minutes before the debate began. Trump cited his standing in the polls to justify skipping the debate, mocking his opponents’ struggles to gain momentum in the race.“You see the polls that have come out, and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?” Trump told Carlson. “I just felt it would be more appropriate not to do the debate.”Although Trump’s absence and his criminal charges shaped much of the debate, the candidates also sparred over key policy issues like abortion and climate change. Discussing federal abortion policy in the wake of the reversal of Roe v Wade, Pence praised a 15-week abortion ban as “an idea whose time has come” and DeSantis expressed pride over signing Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law.But Haley was more hesitant to embrace a potential federal ban, a proposal that is widely unpopular with the American people. Describing herself as “unapologetically pro-life”, Haley argued a federal ban would not pass Congress and called on Democrats and Republicans to “find consensus” on abortion access.Discussing the climate crisis, Ramaswamy drew some boos from the debate crowd when he denied the unequivocal truth of human-made climate change. “The climate change agenda is a hoax,” Ramaswamy said.Christie retorted: “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.”It was one of several insults directed at Ramaswamy, who has climbed into a distant third place in national polls. Mocking Ramaswamy’s inexperience, Pence said: “Now is not the time for on-the-job training. We don’t need to bring in a rookie.”Several other presidential candidates – including the rightwing commentator Larry Elder, the former Texas congressman Will Hurd and the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez – failed to meet the Republican National Committee’s qualifications for the debate, leaving them out of the event and further diminishing their primary prospects. Hurd elected to live-tweet his reactions to the debate, and he criticized his opponents who said they would still support Trump in the event of a conviction.“Anyone who raises their hand in support of Donald Trump as our party’s nominee even if convicted in a court of law is unfit to serve as president,” Hurd said.But Trump’s criminal charges appear to have only fortified his position as the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary. According to the CBS poll, 73% of Trump’s voters say they back the former president partly to “show support for his legal troubles”.With such stalwart support for Trump among the Republican base, it remains unclear how any of the participants in the Monday debate could capture the nomination. The electoral threat of nominating a twice-impeached former president, who now faces nearly 100 criminal charges, did not escape the attention of at least one debate participant.“We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America,” Haley said. “We can’t win a general election that way.”The Guardian’s David Smith contributed reporting from Milwaukee More