Evelyn Reynolds

From 3h agoLawyers for former US president Donald Trump are asking Georgia’s highest court to prevent the district attorney who has been investigating his actions in the wake of the 2020 election from prosecuting him and to throw out a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry, the Associated Press reports.AP writes:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested that she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.
Trump’s Georgia legal team on Friday filed similar petitions in the Georgia Supreme Court and Fulton County Superior Court naming Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, as respondents. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. McBurney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Trump’s legal team — Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg — acknowledged that the filings are unusual but necessary given the tight time frame. Willis has indicated she will use the special grand jury report to seek an indictment “within weeks, if not days.” Two new regular grand juries were seated this week, and one is likely to hear the case.
“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the filings say. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are on a collision course after rightwing lawmakers inserted provisions targeting Pentagon policies on abortion access, transgender care and diversity into a must-pass defense spending bill that cleared the House this morning. Democrats are outraged that the GOP used the measure, which usually attracts bipartisan support, to push culture war goals, but there’s no word yet on what will become of the legislation when it arrives in the Senate, where Joe Biden’s allies rule the roost and are unlikely to support attempts to prevent service members from accessing abortions services or gender-affirming care. Expect to hear lots more about this in the days to come.Here’s what else happened today:
Tucker Carlson might be unemployed, but that apparently has not changed his views on US support to Ukraine, as he made clear in an exchange with GOP presidential contender and senator Tim Scott.
Mike Pence tried to explain to a rightwing crowd in Iowa why he did not go along with Donald Trump’s wishes on January 6. It did not go well.
Speaking of Trump, his lawyers are trying to stop Atlanta-area prosecutor Fani Willis’s investigation of his campaign to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia.
A federal appeals court panel blocked a judge’s ruling that prevented some Biden administration officials from holding talks with social media companies intended to fight misinformation.
Four House Democrats from swing districts crossed party lines to support the defense funding bill, while four conservative Republicans opposed it, with one saying it was too expensive.
Former US vice president Mike Pence earlier at the Tucker Carlson-anchored event in Iowa, reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s encouragement on January 6, 2021, of protesters to seek the overturning of the 2020 election results.Having already defended his refusal to block the certification by the US Congress of Joe Biden’s victory, Pence gladly repeated for the highly-pro-Trump crowd his assertions that he’s made before that Trump’s exhortations (and tweets) on January 6 exhorting the crowd to take action to keep him in office were reckless.“Trump’s words that day were reckless…whatever his intentions in that moment, it endangered me, my family and everyone else in the Capitol,” Pence said.He added, as the audience remained eerily quiet: “The law will hold him accountable.”He later added, perhaps in a desperate attempt to win more warmth from the crowd: “And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”The now-stayed federal judge’s ruling restricting how some Biden administration officials may interact with social media companies was evidence of a “weaponization of the court” that benefits pedalers of misinformation, an expert on combating such lies told the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington earlier this month:Restricting the ability of the Biden administration to work with social media companies in countering online conspiracy theories is a “weaponisation of the court system” that could devastate the fight against misinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a leading expert has warned.Nina Jankowicz, a specialist in disinformation campaigns, told the Guardian that an injunction imposed by a federal judge on Tuesday against key federal agencies and officials blocking their communication with tech platforms could unleash false information in critical areas of public life. She said that election denialism and anti-vaccine propaganda could be the beneficiaries.“This is a weaponisation of the court system. It is an intentional and purposeful move to disrupt the work that needs to be done ahead of the 2024 election, and it’s really chilling,” she said.A federal appeals court has stayed a judge’s ruling from earlier this month that put limits on how certain White House officials could interact with social media companies, Reuters reports.The lower court’s ruling in response to a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri complicated efforts by the Biden administration to work with platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to address misinformation around elections and the Covid-19 pandemic.Here’s Reuters reporting from when the lower court’s ruling was first handed down on what it means for the fight against conspiracy theories:
The ruling said US government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the free speech clause of the first amendment to the US constitution.
A White House official said the US justice department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.
The order also mentioned by name officials, including the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.
Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the US district court for the western district of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.
The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.
Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.
US officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about Covid vaccines to curb preventable deaths.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers have plenty to say about the defense spending bill that just passed the House, with one GOP congressman saying his party wanted to use the legislation to align the military’s policies with “traditional America”.Here are Tim Burchett’s comments to CNN:Then there’s the ever-puzzling Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina who does not seemed pleased with the bill’s provisions barring the Pentagon from paying for service members to travel for abortions, but voted for it anyway:Donald Trump’s attorneys are attempting to disrupt Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into the campaign to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia days after she impaneled two grand juries specifically tasked with deciding who should face charges in her inquiry. Here’s coverage from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly of that development, from Tuesday:A grand jury selected in Georgia on Tuesday is expected to say whether Donald Trump and associates should face criminal charges over their attempt to overturn the former president’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.The district attorney of Fulton county, Fani Willis, has indicated she expects to obtain indictments between the end of July and the middle of August. Trump also faces possible federal charges over his election subversion, culminating in his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Trump already faces trials on 71 criminal charges: 34 in New York over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels and 37 in Florida, from federal prosecutors and regarding his retention of classified documents after leaving office.Lawyers for former US president Donald Trump are asking Georgia’s highest court to prevent the district attorney who has been investigating his actions in the wake of the 2020 election from prosecuting him and to throw out a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry, the Associated Press reports.AP writes:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested that she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.
Trump’s Georgia legal team on Friday filed similar petitions in the Georgia Supreme Court and Fulton County Superior Court naming Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, as respondents. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. McBurney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Trump’s legal team — Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg — acknowledged that the filings are unusual but necessary given the tight time frame. Willis has indicated she will use the special grand jury report to seek an indictment “within weeks, if not days.” Two new regular grand juries were seated this week, and one is likely to hear the case.
“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the filings say. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
The sound of silence. Or, to be fair, the whisper of sporadic applause. That’s what just greeted Mike Pence when he again defended his refusal on January 6, 2021, to refuse to block the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.The presidential candidate did not impress the right-wing crowd at Tucker Carlson’s event when he said: “I did my duty” and upheld the US constitution, after thousands of extreme Trump supporters had invaded the US Capitol in a deadly insurrection as they tried to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.A few hands clap. This is hardly surprising, but very interesting to hear live.“It’s important that we hold those accountable that perpetrated acts of violence in our nation’s Capitol,” he said, to almost total silence in the hall. He quickly added that there needed to be more vigor in prosecuting people who ended up rioting during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. That drew cheers.Carlson asked Pence: “Do you think the last election was fair?”In short, Pence indicated he did. He noted that there were some irregularities and that changes made by states to voting procedures as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic undermined public confidence in the system. But he noted that there were recounts and lawsuits and in the end, in terms of the votes “states certified and courts upheld and ultimately we were able to establish that” nothing “would change the outcome of the election in any way,” adding: “I knew I had to do my duty that day” when he endorsed the certification of Biden’s victory, in the early hours of January 7, 2021.Former US vice president Mike Pence has taken the stage at the event in Iowa hosted by Tucker Carlson, as he eyes a comeback after being fired from Fox News, a forum together with Blaze Media feature Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson.Pence begins by slamming Biden economic policy, Biden policies at the US-Mexico border and celebrating the Iowa legislature passing a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many people don’t even know they’re pregnant.Pence noted the bill will be signed into law later today by Iowa governor Kim Reynolds.Now Pence is talking about the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. More in a moment.Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a lively morning and there is more action to come, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.Here’s where things stand:
Tucker Carlson has been one of the most prominent public skeptics of America’s support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and he’s carrying on in this bent at the event he’s hosting today. “Why not force a peace?” he asked GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott today.
The House approved the annual defense bill that rightwing Republicans packed with culture war amendments, including provisions blocking the Pentagon’s policies on abortion, gender-affirming care and diversity.
The White House today announced it had forgiven $39bn in student loan debt held by 804,000 borrowers after making fixes to a program intended to provide relief for certain people who had been paying for 20 years or more.
House Democrats accused GOP of ‘extreme and reckless legislative joyride’ in defense bill. In a joint statement, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar encouraged their members to vote against the NDAA, saying “extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen to hijack” legislation that is typically passed with bipartisan support.
After House conservatives packed it with culture war amendments, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by a party line vote – with a few exceptions.Democrats generally opposed the legislation, while Republicans approved it, except for the following crossover votes, as compiled by CNN:The four Democrats who voted for it all hail from swing districts, while the four Republicans who opposed it are generally seen as belonging to the party’s right wing.Among the Republican opponents was Colorado’s Ken Buck, who in a statement cited the legislation’s price tag as the reason he voted against it: More

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Friday approved a huge defense bill that includes amendments overturning the Pentagon’s policies on covering abortion services for the military, healthcare costs for transgender service members and diversity initiatives – setting up a historic clash with Democrats and the Biden administration that could imperil spending on the armed forces.The amendments, pushed by the GOP’s right flank with the support of the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, represent the latest instance of conservative lawmakers using their influence in Congress’s lower chamber to attempt to change Joe Biden’s policies on a range of issues that chiefly animate the Republican base.They also seems certain to spark a major battle with Democrats who hold control of the Senate, and whose assent will be needed for the defense spending bill, a version of which Congress approves every year, to become law.“House Republicans have made a commitment to America that we fight for a nation that is safe,” McCarthy said shortly after the amended National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) covering the 2024 fiscal year passed on a mostly party-line vote.“Radical programs that are forced [on] our troops at the expense of readiness are now eliminated. Cutting-edge technology that is essential for the future of this country and to keep freedom around the world in the rise of China and Russia, will receive more investment than we’ve watched in the past,” McCarthy said, adding that the legislation costing $886.3bn would also give service members their largest pay increase in two decades.The NDAA is one of the bills Congress must pass every year, and often attracts bipartisan support, with politicians of both parties eager to show they support the United States military. But while it is not unusual for the defense spending measure to include provisions addressing other issues on Congress’s mind, rightwing Republicans this year proposed several amendments dealing with some of the most divisive issues in American society.On Thursday evening, Republicans pushed through an amendment to the bill that reverses a defense department policy covering expenses and leave for troops who must travel out of state to seek an abortion. The policy was implemented after the supreme court last year struck down Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban the procedure.The party also supported amendments banning the Pentagon’s healthcare plans from covering gender-affirming care for transgender individuals, as well as a provisions targeting diversity, equity and inclusions programs and banning any teaching in the defense department’s school system that America is “a fundamentally racist country”.Amendments halting military assistance to Ukraine and ending a policy of renaming military bases bearing monikers inspired by the Confederacy were voted down.While they did not formally tell their members to vote against the NDAA, the House’s top Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar released a joint statement accusing Republicans of corrupting legislation that should be used to support American troops.“Extreme Maga Republicans have chosen to hijack the historically bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to continue attacking reproductive freedom and jamming their rightwing ideology down the throats of the American people. House Republicans have turned what should be a meaningful investment in our men and women in uniform into an extreme and reckless legislative joyride,” the trio wrote, adding that they would vote against the bill.In the end, only four Democrats supported the NDAA, all of whom represent swing districts. The four Republicans who voted against it were conservatives of varying stripes, with Colorado’s Ken Buck releasing a statement saying the legislation is too expensive.“Our country is careening toward fiscal ruin, and Congress continues to turn a blind eye by passing these massive spending packages with no attention to their cost or efficacy,” Buck wrote, noting that he agrees “with several amendments to this bill”. More

Politicians typically enter office with a variety of interests, goals and focuses.A wave of progressive Democrats were elected in 2018 with the stated goal of bringing universal healthcare to the US. Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised to lead the country out of the Great Depression with the New Deal. Donald Trump wanted to build a wall, “drain the swamp”, and force people to say “Merry Christmas”.Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator from Alabama, has taken a different tack.In a series of interviews and statements in recent months, he has invested his political capital in an attempt to defend white nationalism, and white nationalists, in what one anti-racist group called a “deeply disturbing” crusade – one that only appeared to come to an end this week, after condemnation from his Republican colleagues.Tuberville’s dalliance with white nationalism – understood by most in the US and elsewhere as a racist ideology – began in May, when he used a local radio interview to criticize the government’s efforts to “get out the white extremists, the white nationalists” from the military.Asked in that interview if white nationalists should be allowed in the military, Tuberville, an avid supporter of Trump, said, “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans,” before going into a rambling aside about the January 6 insurrection.“Right after that, we, our military and Secretary Austin, put out an order to stand down and all military across the country, saying we’re going to run out the white nationalists, people that don’t believe how we believe,” Tuberville continued. “And that’s not how we do it in this country.”Invited to clarify his remarks a couple of days later, Tuberville did anything but. He said the military “cannot have racists”, but, when asked if white nationalists should serve in the military, said:“You think a white nationalist is a Nazi? I don’t look at it like that,” the senator said.“I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican. That’s what we’re called all the time. A Maga person.”As Tuberville’s comments gained more attention, few have seemed to agree with his sanitized definition.“White nationalism is undoubtedly, nakedly racist,” Dr Cassie Miller, lead senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the Guardian.“To suggest anything otherwise would seem to be an attempt to make white nationalism an acceptable political position. That a senator would try to carry water for a violent, racist political movement is deeply disturbing.”Tuberville, 68, was elected to the Senate in 2020, after spending most of his career as a college football coach. (His website still refers to Tuberville as “coach”, and his official Senate portrait shows him tossing a football in the air.)If a defense of white nationalism seems a strange hill for a new senator to die on, his other main interest also fits in with a far-right cause: abortion. Tuberville, who sits on the Senate armed services committee, has single-handedly held up hundreds of military appointments as part of his opposition to abortion being provided in the armed forces.His continued opposition has left the Marine Corps without a confirmed leader for the first time in 150 years, and on Thursday Joe Biden accused Tuberville of “jeopardising US security”.While the Marine Corps was wondering who was going to be in charge, Tuberville instead kept plugging away about white nationalism at the beginning of the week, in an interview with CNN.After Tuberville suggested that a white nationalist was “just a cover word for the Democrats now where they can use it to try to make people mad across the country”, the CNN host Kaitlan Collins stated that the definition of a white nationalist is someone “who believes that the white race is superior to other races”.“Well, that’s some people’s opinion,” Tuberville said.“My opinion of a white nationalist – if somebody wants to call them a white nationalist – to me, it is an American,” Tuberville reiterated. “Now, if that white nationalist is a racist, I’m totally against anything that they want to do. Because I am 110% against racism.”Rolling Stone seemed to capture the saga best. “Tommy Tuberville Is Either Extremely Dumb or Extremely Racist,” read the magazine’s headline (the article clarified that Tuberville could also be both), and even members of Tuberville’s own party condemned him on Tuesday.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader called white nationalism “unacceptable”, while John Thune, the Republican Senate whip, said: “I mean, I would just say that there is no place for white nationalism in our party, and I think that is kind of full stop.”On the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, was more robust.“For the senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous,” Schumer said. “His words have power and carry weight with the fringe of his constituency, just the fringe, but if that fringe listens to him excuse and defend white nationalism, he is fanning the flames of bigotry and intolerance.”Tuberville’s website lists six different office locations, in Washington and across Alabama.No one answered the phone at any of the offices on Tuesday morning, as it seemed Tuberville was in the middle of a period of reflection: that afternoon the senator seemed to back away from white nationalism.Asked by CBS, on Capitol Hill, to define a white nationalist, Tuberville said: “A white nationalist is somebody that thinks that they should be the only ones in this country.”The CBS reporter followed up: “Racist, all the time?”“Right, right: racist, that’s what I’m saying,” Tuberville said.All it had taken was two months, a series of botched interviews, a slew of negative headlines and a rollicking from his party leaders, for Tuberville to get on board with the most of the rest of the US. More

A teacher in Wisconsin has been fired from her job after she criticized her public school district’s decision to ban the song Rainbowland, which exalts the virtues of inclusivity, from a children’s concert at her campus.The members of the board governing public schools in the solidly Republican community of Waukesha voted unanimously to dismiss Melissa Tempel from her job on Wednesday, saying the teacher’s defense of the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton duet violated district policy because she did not speak to her supervisors first.Tempel and her advocates, meanwhile, have maintained that she was exercising her constitutionally protected right to free speech but was punished because the song in question references rainbows, a key symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, according to reports from local television station WISN as well as other media outlets.Her dismissal comes amid a fresh national wave of anti-LGBTQ+ action and rhetoric from political conservatives, including the US supreme court’s decision in late June to strike down a Colorado law compelling businesses and organizations there to treat same-sex couples equally.The dispute pitting Tempel against the Waukesha district dates back to March, when the teacher expressed her frustration on Twitter that officials had blocked students at her school from singing Rainbowland during an upcoming concert that they were staging.“When will it end?” wrote Tempel, who had taught classes in Spanish and English to students in first grade (the UK equivalent of year 2) at Heyer elementary school.The tweet went viral and caused an uproar in some quarters. Leaders at the school defended the ban by pointing to a district policy which essentially prohibited “controversial issues in the classroom”.But officials have declined to say why they considered Rainbowland to be controversial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – a leading Wisconsin news outlet – reported. The song was reportedly replaced with Kermit the Frog’s differently themed Rainbow Connection.Tempel’s superiors put her on leave in early April. And in May, she received notice that the school district’s superintendent – James Sebert – would recommend that the local education board fire her, setting the stage for a four-hour hearing on Wednesday over Tempel’s future.According to WISN, at the hearing, Sebert asserted that Tempel “deliberately brought negative attention to the school district because she disagreed with the decision as opposed to following protocol and procedure”. He added: “I believe that behavior is intolerable.”WISN reported that Tempel countered, “I thought that the fact that the tweet that I made – that Rainbowland wasn’t going to be allowed – was something that the public would be really concerned about and that they would be interested in knowing about it.”The board’s vote to fire Tempel was 9-0.A former US attorney in Wisconsin, James Santelle, told the Journal Sentinel that he believes the district’s policy which led to Tempel’s firing violates the American constitution’s first amendment, which protects free speech.Tempel has said she intends to file a first amendment lawsuit against the Waukesha school district but has been deliberating which court to pursue her case in, according to the Journal Sentinel.Waukesha is a city with about 71,000 inhabitants. The community also drew national attention in 2021, when a man intentionally drove a car into a crowd at a local Christmas parade, killing six people and wounding more than 60 others. More

Last month we learned that President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, will plead guilty to two counts of misdemeanour tax crimes and accept a deal with prosecutors related to a separate illegal firearm possession charge. Republicans and rightwing media outlets jumped at the chance to discuss the case, but liberals have been much quieter on the issue.
Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan about why many on the left are quick to analyse the legal woes of the former president, but pay much less attention to the current president’s son

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

Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, faced a grueling four hours of questioning during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing on Thursday.Republicans criticized Khan – an outspoken critic of big tech – for “mismanagement” and for “politicizing” legal action against large companies such as Twitter and Google as head of the powerful antitrust agency.In his opening statement, committee chair Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said Khan has given herself and the FTC “unchecked power” by taking aggressive steps to regulate practices at big tech companies such as Twitter, Meta and Google.He said Khan carried out “targeted harassment against Twitter” by asking for all communications related to Elon Musk, including conversations with journalists, following Musk’s acquisition because she does not share his political views.Khan, a former journalist, said the company has “a history of lax security and privacy policies” that did not begin with Musk.Other Democrats agreed. “Protecting user privacy is not political,” said congressman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat of New York, in response to Jordan’s remarks.Republicans also condemned Khan for allegedly wasting government money by pursuing more legal action to prevent mergers than her predecessors – but losing. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled against the FTC’s bid to delay Microsoft from acquiring video game company Activision Blizzard, saying the agency failed to prove it would decrease competition and harm consumers. The FTC is appealing against that ruling.“She has pushed investigations to burden parties with vague and costly demands without any substantive follow-through, or, frankly, logic, for the requests themselves,” said Jordan.Another Republican member, Darrell Issa, of California, called Khan a “bully” for trying to prevent mergers.“I believe you’ve taken the idea that companies should have to be less competitive in order to merge, [and] that every merger has to be somehow bad for the company and good for the consumer – a standard that cannot be met,” Issa said.Khan earlier came under scrutiny from Republicans participating in an FTC case reviewing Meta’s bid to acquire a virtual reality company despite a recommendation from an ethics official to recuse herself. She defended her decision to remain on the case Thursday, saying she consulted with the ethics official. Khan testified she had “not a penny” in the company’s financial stock and thus did not violate ethics laws.But enforcing antitrust laws for big tech companies such as Twitter has traditionally been a bipartisan issue.“It’s a little strange that you have this real antipathy among the Republicans of Lina Khan, who in many ways is doing exactly what the Republicans say needs to be done, which is bringing a lot more antitrust scrutiny of big tech,” said Daniel Crane, a professor on antitrust law and enforcement at the University of Michigan Law School.“There’s a broad consensus that we need to do more, but that’s kind of where the agreement ends,” he said.Republicans distrust big tech companies over issues of censorship, political bias and cultural influence, whereas Democrats come from a traditional scrutiny of corporations and concentration of economic power, said Crane.“I don’t fundamentally think she’s doing something other than what she was put in office to do,” he said.Congress has not yet passed a major antitrust statute that would be favorable to the FTC in these court battles and does not seem to be pursuing one any time soon, said Crane. “They’re just going to lose a lot of cases, and that’s foreseen.”The FTC’s list of battles with big tech companies is growing.Hours earlier on Thursday, Twitter – which now legally goes by X Corp – asked a federal court to terminate a 2011 settlement with the FTC that placed restrictions on its user data and privacy practices. Khan noted Twitter voluntarily entered into that agreement.Also on Thursday, the Washington Post reported the FTC opened an investigation in OpenAI on whether its chatbot, ChatGPT, is harmful to consumers. A spokesperson for the FTC would not comment on the OpenAI investigation but Khan said during the hearing that “it has been publicly reported”.In 2017, Khan, now 34, gained fame for an academic article she wrote as a law student at Yale that used Amazon’s business practices to explain gaps in US antitrust policy. Biden announced he intended to nominate the antitrust researcher to head the FTC in March 2021. She was sworn in that June.“Chair Khan has delivered results for families, consumers, workers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs,” White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa said in a statement. More

From 3h agoArizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.
It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.
Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.
“This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”
The Secret Service announced it closed the investigation into the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.Here’s what else happened today:
Arizona’s attorney general is moving forward with an investigation of Donald Trump and his attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory in the state three years ago, the Washington Post reported.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis remains far below Trump in support among Republicans, but NBC News obtained a memo outlining his campaign’s strategy for success in the presidential primaries.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative supreme court justices.
Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.
Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.
A spat has broken out between Republican former president Mike Pence and a prominent progressive Democrat over Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s plans to address Congress next week during his visit to Washington DC.Ilhan Omar, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, announced she would not attend Herzog’s speech, citing a 2019 episode in which Israel said fellow progressive Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian origin, could visit family in the West Bank, but only if she avoided promoting the boycott campaign against the country:This afternoon, Pence, who is seeking the GOP’s nomination for president, took direct aim at Omar, one of only three Muslims currently serving in Congress and the only Somali-American:Back at the Capitol, Republicans continue to complain about the Secret Service’s conclusion that it can’t identify who left cocaine at the White House.Here’s Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett’s take, as captured by CNN:Ron DeSantis may be considered frontrunner Donald Trump’s biggest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, but polls have consistently shown that it’s not a particularly close race.Take this one from Morning Consult released on Tuesday. It shows Trump with 56% support among potential GOP primary voters, and DeSantis in second with a measly 17%. If there’s any news there, it’s that entrepreneur and first-time candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is in third place with 8%, ahead of more experienced Republicans like former vice-president Mike Pence and senator Tim Scott.NBC News has obtained a confidential memo from the DeSantis campaign laying out their strategy in the GOP’s primary process. The Florida governor plans to aim for success in the first states that vote, particularly New Hampshire, and focus less on “Super Tuesday”, when 14 states will hold primaries on 5 March.Here’s more from their story:
Ron DeSantis is trying to reassure donors and activists that his campaign only looks stalled.
A confidential campaign memo obtained by NBC News lays out what the Florida governor’s presidential campaign sees as its path forward: focusing on the early states, refusing to give up on New Hampshire, not yet investing in “Super Tuesday” battlegrounds, zeroing in on DeSantis’ biography and sowing doubts about his competitors — particularly Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.
“While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum in New Hampshire,” the memo states. “We expect to revisit this investment in the Fall.”
The document, dated July 6, is labeled a “confidential friends and family update” and makes clear that it’s “not for distribution.” Its details about the campaign’s strategy are far more in-depth than what has been shared publicly.
As DeSantis’ ability to surpass Donald Trump as leader of the Republican Party is now an open question among the GOP faithful, the memo is an effort by the governor’s top aides to reach out to donors to provide more clarity on their path forward.
Across the DeSantis political universe there is a heightened awareness of the importance of the early states and the reality that DeSantis will burn out without strong performances there. It means that even as the group has a plan in place now, the strategy is subject to change.
“From my understanding, if we don’t see a bump in the polls, we are basically going to shut down the idea of a national operation,” a DeSantis-aligned operative told NBC News.
Donald Trump’s top opponent for the Republican presidential nomination is governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, which used to be considered a swing state, but lately has trended towards the GOP. The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon report that the DeSantis administration is carrying out a crackdown against groups that are trying to encourage people to vote:Florida Republicans have hit dozens of voter registration groups with thousands of dollars of fines, the latest salvo in an alarming crackdown on voting in the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis.At least 26 groups have cumulatively racked up more than $100,000 in fines since September of last year, according to a list that was provided by Florida officials to the Guardian. The groups include both for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as political parties, including the statewide Republican and Democratic parties of Florida.The fines, which range from $50 to tens of thousands of dollars, were levied by the state’s office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind agency created at the behest of DeSantis in 2022 to investigate voter fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the office has already come under scrutiny for bringing criminal charges against people who appeared to be confused about their voting eligibility.Donald Trump’s legal trouble is both criminal, and civil. As the Associated Press reports, the former president yesterday suffered a setback in his attempt to defend himself against a potent defamation lawsuit:Donald Trump lashed out on social media against the US justice department on Wednesday after it stopped supporting his claim that the presidency shields him from liability against a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually attacked her in the mid-1990s.The former president said in a post on his social media platform that the department’s reversal a day earlier in the lawsuit brought by advice columnist E. Jean Carroll was part of the “political Witch Hunt” he faces while campaigning for the presidency as a Republican.The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes is moving forward with an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the crucial swing state, the Washington Post reports.Mayes’s inquiry is the second known attempt by a state to hold the former president accountable for the effort to disrupt Biden’s win. Fani Willis, a Democratic prosecutor in Fulton county, Georgia, is reportedly close to obtaining indictments in her investigation of Trump’s campaign to overturn Biden’s win in that state. Separately, justice department special counsel Jack Smith is still investigating the former president over the January 6 insurrection, and the broader campaign to prevent Biden from entering the White House.Here’s more from the Post’s report:
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) assigned a team of prosecutors to the case in May, and investigators have contacted many of the pro-Trump electors and their lawyers, according to the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe the probe. Investigators have requested records and other information from local officials who administered the 2020 election, the two people said, and a prosecutor has inquired about evidence collected by the Justice Department and an Atlanta-area prosecutor for similar probes.
It is unclear if the investigation will broaden into other attempts to undermine President Biden’s victory in the state, including a pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to thwart the will of voters and remain in office.
Dan Barr, Mayes’s chief deputy, said the investigation is in the “fact-gathering” phase. He declined to say whether subpoenas have been issued and which state statutes the team thinks might have been broken.
“This is something we’re not going to go into thinking, ‘Maybe we’ll get a conviction,’ or ‘Maybe we have a pretty good chance,’” he said. “This has to be ironclad shut.”
Joe Biden will meet the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, at the White House next week, his spokeswoman has confirmed.Herzog will be in Washington on 18 and 19 July and will deliver a joint address to Congress.The Israeli president’s US visit comes amid protests in Israel at a government push to advance legislation that would weaken the supreme court’s independence.Israel’s parliament recently voted for a bill that would scrap a “reasonableness” standard that allows the supreme court to overrule government decisions.Biden and Herzog are due to discuss deepening Israel’s regional integration, a more peaceful Middle East and Russia’s relationship with Iran.The White House statement on the visit said:
President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis.”
The Secret Service announced it had closed its investigation of the cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month without naming any suspects, but Republicans seem to want to keep the matter alive. Several lawmakers, including House speaker Kevin McCarthy, expressed skepticism at the agency’s conclusion, part of a pattern of attacks on federal law enforcement by the GOP’s right wing. Meanwhile, the Democratic leader of the Senate judiciary committee Dick Durbin outlined plans to continue pressing the supreme court to tighten its ethics, after a series of reports found questionable ties between the justices and parties with interests in its decisions.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, accused Democrats of seeking to retaliate against conservative justices.
Durbin left open the possibility of his committee investigating liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor after a report emerged of her staff asking institutions to buy her book.
Far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was among lawmakers who raised their eyebrows at the Secret Service’s decision to close the investigation into the White House cocaine.
In the latest indication that this is not the last we have heard about the White House cocaine saga, Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling on the Secret Service to continue searching for whomever left the powder at the executive mansion, Fox News reports:Here’s more from the Guardian’s Jenna Amatulli on the cocaine found at the White House, and apparent failure of the Secret Service to discover who brought it there:The investigation into the bag of cocaine found at the White House has concluded, with no suspects identified.In a statement from the Secret Service, the organization emphasized that it implemented safety closures after discovering the cocaine and that it then “field tested and preliminarily determined” the drug “to not be a hazardous compound”.They said the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center later analyzed the cocaine for any biothreats and those tests came back negative.On how the item came to be inside the White House, the Secret Service said it conducted a “methodical review of security systems and protocols” that spanned “several days prior to the discovery of the substance”. They “developed an index of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the substance was found” before ultimately concluding there was “insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons”. More

Florida Republicans have hit dozens of voter registration groups with thousands of dollars of fines, the latest salvo in an alarming crackdown on voting in the state led by Governor Ron DeSantis.At least 26 groups have cumulatively racked up more than $100,000 in fines since September of last year, according to a list that was provided by Florida officials to the Guardian. The groups include both for-profit and nonprofit organizations as well as political parties, including the statewide Republican and Democratic parties of Florida.The fines, which range from $50 to tens of thousands of dollars, were levied by the state’s office of election crimes and security, a first-of-its-kind agency created at the behest of DeSantis in 2022 to investigate voter fraud. Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the office has already come under scrutiny for bringing criminal charges against people who appeared to be confused about their voting eligibility.Election watchdogs worry the new policies could have a chilling effect on engaging voters. There has already been a drop in voter registrations this year compared with 2019 – the last full year leading into a presidential election, according to Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida. Through 1 June of this year, 2,430 new registrations had come from third-party voter registration organizations, he said. That’s on pace to be a sharp decrease from the 63,212 new voter registrations third-party groups submitted by the end of 2019.A crackdown on third-party voter registration groups is also likely to disproportionately affect Floridians of color, who are about five times more likely to register with third-party groups than white voters are.“The message is clear, [third-party voter registration organizations] are an endangered species in Florida. And it affects this population disparately,” said Smith, who has been retained by the plaintiffs challenging the voter registration restrictions in federal court.“When you start to ratchet down the ability for groups and their first amendment rights to petition … government by getting people registered to vote, you are going to affect that overall population of registered voters.”A ‘gross misapplication’ of the lawIn mid-May, the non-profit Hispanic Federation received a letter from the office of election crimes and security notifying it that it was being fined $7,500. Fifteen of the applications it collected were submitted to the wrong county – Polk county, in central Florida, when the voters lived elsewhere. Those 15 applications represented a tiny sliver of the more than 16,500 voter registration applications the group collected in 2022 but still resulted in a fine.Through a public records request, the Guardian reviewed several of the applications the Hispanic Federation submitted that were flagged for fines. In nearly all of them, the voter incorrectly wrote on their own applications that they lived in Polk county. In many cases, the address they listed was just over the county line in Osceola county.One voter lived just 300ft from the county line, which cut through his neighborhood. Another lived just 660ft from the county line. At least 10 voters lived within three miles of the county boundary, according to a Guardian analysis.The Hispanic Federation agreed to pay the fine, but wrote a letter to the state saying it “strongly disagreed” with the penalty and called it a “gross misapplication” of the law. The amount of $7,500 could pay the salary of about a dozen canvassers for a week, who could probably register between 350 and 400 people, the group said. The fine essentially meant that mistakes on 15 applications would make it harder to register hundreds of new voters.“Despite our good faith efforts, professionalism, and due diligence, we cannot eliminate some applications from being processed with errors as we have not been given access to an official mechanism to verify the information of each applicant – which is, in any case, not our role,” the group wrote in June.“There is no claim that we intentionally misrepresented, nor is there a claim that we diverted, such registrations from the correct county or that we held on to the registrations beyond the required period in which they were to be delivered.”The Florida department of state, which oversees the office of election crimes and security, did not return a request for comment.Frederick Vélez III Burgos, the Hispanic Federation’s national director of civic engagement, said in an interview that until the recent change in the law, the group would not have been fined. In 2021, the GOP-controlled legislature tweaked state law to require groups to turn in voter registration forms to the county where the prospective voter lived (they previously could turn them in anywhere). The lawmakers imposed steep fines for non-compliance – $500 for each form that was turned in at the wrong place.The change came after election officials complained that voter registration groups were bombarding them with applications for people outside their counties. Though the election officials could register voters regardless of where they lived, it created extra work around elections. “What would happen is [the groups] would kind of bomb different counties with a whole bunch of them. So the workload wasn’t fairly distributed,” said Lori Edwards, who serves as the supervisor of elections in Polk county.While that could cause a headache for election officials, Edwards said, “it is not among the worst offenses that third-party voter registration organizations can do.” Far worse, she said, is when groups wait too long to turn in voter registration applications until after the registration deadline, thus disfranchising the voters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2022, the state legislature raised the maximum amount a group could be fined from $1,000 to $50,000. Earlier this year, it raised the cap again, to $250,000, and shortened the amount of time groups have to turn in the forms after they are filled out from 14 days to 10. Each late application carries a $50 fine. Republicans also banned non-citizens from collecting applications and barred voter registration groups from collecting contact information from people who they register, making it harder to follow up with them later (a federal judge blocked both of these provisions this month).Two groups have accounted for more than $70,000 of the fines. Hard Knocks Strategies LLC – a for-profit election canvassing organization – has been fined $47,600 since last year for turning in forms late and to the wrong county. And Poder Latinx was fined $26,000 for turning in 52 voter registration applications to the wrong county.“We’re a small voter registration organization with a long history of playing by all the rules. We had to pay the penalties in Florida to avoid even costlier litigation, but paid them without admission of wrongdoing,” Hard Knocks Strategies said in a statement.“Are voter registration organizations on the right being targeted as aggressively and frequently in Florida as those seeking to register voters of color and other underrepresented communities? Given Governor DeSantis’ track record, that question may be rhetorical.”‘I would be allowing the system to win’After getting fined, activists in Florida say they are determined not to let the penalties deter them from continuing to sign up voters.Rosemary McCoy, who runs a small non-profit called Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters, was fined $600 for turning in a dozen applications late. She said her group does quality control on the applications it collects, reviewing the forms to make sure that they are complete and don’t have errors. If there’s a problem it can take a while to track down the applicant.McCoy said she plans to pay the fine, but it’s money that would have otherwise gone to provide stipends or a gas subsidy for volunteers.“That’s a hefty fine,” she said. “The purpose of these fines is to stop us, stop us from registering people … Someone has to get out there and register people and that’s what we do.”Regina Jackson, a Jacksonville pastor, received a notice in May that she was being fined $50 for turning in a voter registration form late. And while she wasn’t fined for it, the letter also said that the application didn’t have a mark noting the group that had collected it and the date printed in triplicate. Jackson said she had inquired about the specific form before she turned it in with the election office and had been advised it was acceptable.Jackson considered stopping registering voters altogether after receiving the letter, but had since reconsidered.“I was like, ‘You know what – I’m not doing this any more,’ she said in May, just after she got the letter. “Then I thought, ‘I would not only be hurting my community but I would be allowing the system to win.’” More