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    At last, Julian Assange is free. But it may have come at a high price for press freedom | Trevor Timm

    Julian Assange is on the verge of being set free after the WikiLeaks founder and US authorities have agreed to a surprising plea deal. While it should be a relief to anyone who cares about press freedom that Assange will not be coming to the US to face trial, the Biden administration should be ashamed at how this case has played out.Assange is flying from the UK to a US territory in the Pacific Ocean to make a brief court appearance today, and soon after, he may officially be a free man in his native Australia.The deal is undoubtedly good for Assange, who has been holed up in Belmarsh prison suffering from serious medical problems for the past five years, and stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years prior to that. It’s good for the Biden administration, which avoids the embarrassment of potentially losing its extradition case in the UK high court, but more importantly avoids the Assange case becoming a polarising issue in the election.But is the deal good for press freedom? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong: there’s no doubt the worst fate was avoided and every journalist breathed a sigh of relief that this result did not occur via a court decision. A plea deal does not create an official precedent that a conviction and appeals court ruling would – something that could have potentially binded other courts to rule against journalists in future cases.But it’s hard not to be shaken by the charge the US justice department forced Assange to plea to in order to get his freedom: a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, which according to the law, amounts to “receiving and obtaining” secret documents, and “willfully communicating” them “to persons not entitled to receive them”. (In Assange’s case, that means the public). That is a “crime” that journalists at mainstream outlets all over the US commit virtually every day.A court won’t readily be able to cite DoJ v Assange in future rulings, but that doesn’t mean this guilty plea won’t embolden future federal prosecutors with an axe to grind against the press. They will see this case as a success. And it doesn’t mean the legal arms of news outlets won’t now be worried a case can be brought against their own journalists for ordinary journalistic conduct that was once assuredly protected by the first amendment.Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they’ve already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act. Trump, after all, has been out on the campaign trail repeatedly opining about how he would like to see journalists – who he sees as “enemies of the people” – in jail. Why the Biden administration would hand him any ammo is beyond belief.So if the Biden administration is looking for plaudits for ending this case, they should get exactly none. They could have dropped this case three years ago when they took control of the DoJ. Every major civil liberties and human rights group in the country repeatedly implored them to. They could have just dropped the case today, with Assange spending the same amount of time in prison, but they felt the need to again emphasise in court documents that they believe obtaining and publishing secret government documents is a crime.Of course, some will say, “oh, Assange got what he deserved,” or “he’s no journalist, why should I care,” as people do whenever you bring up the inconvenient fact that prosecuting Assange will affect countless other journalists. Assange made himself the permanent enemy of millions of Democratic voters after publishing leaked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign in the run-up to the 2016 election, and many people can’t see past that. But it’s worth repeating that this case had nothing at all to do with 2016. And whether you think Assange is a “journalist” or not, the DoJ wanted him convicted under the Espionage Act for acts of journalism, which would leave many reporters, including at the Guardian, exposed to the same.Now we can only hope this case is an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come.
    Trevor Timm is executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation More

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    Hunter Biden requests new trial after conviction in gun case

    Lawyers for Hunter Biden have filed a motion requesting a new trial, arguing that a Delaware court did not have jurisdiction over the case when it proceeded to trial.Biden, the eldest living son of the US president, was found guilty earlier this month on three felony counts related to a handgun purchase while he was a user of crack cocaine.Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell, in a court filing on Monday, argued that his client’s “convictions should be vacated” because the judge overseeing the case lacked jurisdiction to hold a trial because of pending rulings in his appeals case.A federal appeals court had rejected two attempts by Biden’s lawyers to dismiss the gun charges, but Lowell said that the court had not yet issued a formal mandate denying one of those appeals.“Naturally, any district court action taken after it has been divested of jurisdiction by an appeal must be vacated,” he wrote in the Monday filing. “Mr Biden’s convictions should be vacated because the court lacked jurisdiction to proceed to trial.”In a separate filing, Biden’s lawyers argued that a recent supreme court ruling, which upheld a federal ban on a firearms for people under domestic violence restraining orders, supported their motion for an acquittal in the case, or “at a minimum” a new trial.Biden faces a maximum of 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders are rarely given the maximum penalty. No sentencing date has been set.The president has said he will not use his power to pardon or commute his son’s sentence. More

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    ‘A healthcare crisis’: Harris takes aim at Trump on anniversary of Roe’s fall

    Joe Biden and Kamala Harris marked the second anniversary of the US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade with forceful campaign statements that laid the blame squarely on Donald Trump for ending the national right to abortion.In a video released on Monday, Biden pledged to restore the right to an abortion and “protect American freedom” if he is re-elected.The video, along with a campaign event headlined by the vice-president, came two years to the day since the court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed nearly half a century of guaranteed federal abortion rights, and reflect the centrality of abortion in Biden’s presidential campaign.In College Park, Maryland, Harris took the stage to chants of “four more years”. In her remarks, Harris laid out what she said were the stakes for abortion access if Trump is re-elected.“Understand as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term would be even worse,” she said. “His friends in the United States Congress are trying to pass a national ban that would outlaw abortion in every single state – in states like New York and California, and even right here in Maryland.”Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, Harris called Trump’s attack on women’s reproductive rights “premeditated” and said he has “not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions”.“In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty,” she said.Harris called Republicans who have passed state-level bans Trump’s “accomplices” and warned that he would go even further by curtailing access to contraception and IVF.Pointing to the statistic that one in three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Kate Cox, the Texas woman who was denied an abortion under the state’s near-total ban last year despite a fatal fetal anomaly, introduced Harris in Maryland.“My state chose to drive me out of my home, my community, away from my children and my doctors, rather than to let me access care,” she said. “I will never again miss an opportunity to vote. I will cast my ballot in every election like my life depends on it.”Cox ultimately left Texas to receive care. Growing emotional from the stage on Monday, she shared that she is pregnant again, expecting a child in January. The crowd erupted in applause. “I hope that by then, when we welcome our baby into the world, we will have a world led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” she said.“You are a hero of this movement,” Harris told Cox.In Biden’s video, the president, too, placed the responsibility for reversing abortion rights on Trump, quoting him boasting about the decision and taking credit for putting three conservative justices on the court.“Here’s what Donald Trump says about your freedom: ‘After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v Wade,’” Biden says, quoting a Trump statement last year.“Two years ago, the supreme court justices that Trump handpicked helped overturn Roe v Wade,” Biden continues. “Decades of progress shattered just because the last guy got four years in the White House.”“We’re up against extremism. Send me back to the White House and I’ll fight like hell to restore Roe v Wade and protect American freedom.”The offensive comes amid polling evidence that with consistently weak approval ratings for Biden, concerns over reproductive rights represent Democrats’ best hope of retaining the White House in November.Since Roe v Wade was overthrown in 2022, ballot measures in several states – including ones that tend to vote Republican – have upheld or enshrined abortion rights locally, signalling that the issue has popular resonance particularly among female voters.On Friday, a group of Montana abortion rights supporters became the latest to announce that they had secured enough signatures to hold a November ballot measure asking voters to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. Although that measure has not yet been confirmed by state officials, voters in roughly a dozen states are expected to weigh in directly on abortion rights this year, including in battleground states such as Nevada and Arizona.Democrats are hoping that these measures will boost turnout in their favor.Several groups – including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Freedom for All – announced on Monday a $100m Abortion Access Now campaign across several states.Since Roe fell, Biden has frequently promised to “codify” Roe’s protections into law. Although his administration has issued executive orders aimed at boosting access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception, as well as defended abortion access in two supreme court cases this year, Biden cannot re-establish a federal right to abortion without congressional support. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that blocks states from totally banning abortion before fetal viability, or the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb.In a call with reporters on Monday, White House officials declined to reveal any plans for future abortion-related executive actions. Jennifer Klein, assistant to the president and director of the Gender Policy Council, also acknowledged that, if the supreme court rules against the Biden administration in a highly anticipated case over emergency abortions, “our options on emergency medical care are likely to be limited”.Trump has sought to backpedal on his stance in recent months, telling congressional Republicans in a meeting on Capitol Hill this month that the matter should be left to the states and warning them against pursuing a national ban. More

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    Kamala Harris says Trump ‘guilty’ of ‘stealing’ abortion rights at rally – as it happened

    Harris emphasized the importance of turning out to vote in November to protect abortion access so that places like Maryland remain havens for reproductive healthcare.Pointing to the statistic that one-in-three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Making her case that Trump was “guilty” of stripping abortion access, which was previewed by the campaign before her appearance, Harris said Trump appointed three supreme court justices with the intention of overturning Roe v Wade.“It was premeditated,” Harris said from a stage, where a sign that said “Trust Women” hung behind her.“Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions,” she added.Later this afternoon, Harris will go to battleground state Arizona for a second event marking the Dobbs anniversary.Democrats went on the attack as they marked the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, in which the supreme court’s conservative justices overturned the constitutional protections on abortion guaranteed by Roe v Wade. At a speech near Washington DC, Kamala Harris said Donald Trump was “guilty” of “stealing” reproductive rights from American women with his appointment of three of the justices who supported doing away with the precedent. Joe Biden, who is days away from his Thursday presidential debate with Trump, called his predecessor the “sole person responsible for this nightmare”. Meanwhile, neither Trump nor any top Republicans in Congress said anything about the anniversary of the court’s decision.Here’s what else happened today:
    Trump plans to rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, the day after his debate with Biden. His campaign believes the state is winnable in November, even though it voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020.
    The supreme court will hear a challenge brought by the Biden administration against state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors …
    … but first it will release decisions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, almost certainly on at least some of the high-profile cases the justices have yet to decide.
    The fall of Roe upended life for aspiring doctors who hoped to provide abortions.
    A top White House official signaled that Biden supports an effort by Senate Democrats to repeal the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that a second Trump administration might use to ban abortion nationwide.
    Meanwhile, in Florida, the judge handling Donald Trump’s stalled prosecution over the classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort is in the midst of a major hearing that could determing the case’s trajectory. Here’s the latest on what the two sides are arguing, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell: The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution for retaining classified documents is expected on Monday to consider modifying his conditions of release to include a prohibition on making statements that could endanger the safety of FBI agents involved in the case.The request to the US district judge, Aileen Cannon – the first time prosecutors have sought to limit Trump’ public remarks in this case – raises the stakes for Trump. Unlike in his other cases, where prosecutors sought gag orders, a violation of release conditions carries a risk of jail.The latest dispute over Trump’s inflammatory statements stems from his blatantly false characterization of the FBI’s use-of-deadly force policy when they executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago club in August 2022 and retrieved more than 100 classified documents.The order, which limits FBI agents to use deadly force only if they face extreme danger and became public after the FBI’s operational plan for the search was unsealed, used standard language that is routinely used in hundreds of warrants executed across the country.But Trump and some allies twisted the limiting language to claim the FBI was authorized by the Biden administration to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago, even though Trump was not there during the search and the language is standard US justice department policy.The supreme court has indicated that the justices may release more decisions on Thursday and Friday, as several politically weighty cases await rulings.The justices were already expected to issue decisions on Wednesday, thus bringing to three the number of days this week that we can expect to hear from the court. The conservative-dominated body has a bunch of matters outstanding, which touch on everything from Donald Trump’s legal fate, to the scope of government regulation. Here are a few:
    Trump’s petition for immunity from the federal charges brought against him by special prosecutor Jack Smith for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
    Where the Biden administration can require federally funded hospitals to perform emergency abortions, even in states like Idaho, which the case centers on, that have strict abortion bans.
    A challenge to a longstanding doctrine underpinning many federal regulatory decisions.
    Whether municipalities can make it illegal for people to sleep outside, even when there is insufficient shelter space, in a case that could upend homeless policies nationwide.
    Decisions on some, all, or theoretically none of these cases could come before the end of the week.Donald Trump and Joe Biden will hold the first of two debates they have scheduled on Thursday.The day after, the former president is scheduled to hold a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, a state that Biden won overwhelmingly in 2020, but which Trump’s campaign argues is within his grasp this year.Trump will “speak with the people of Virginia about how he will reverse the devastating effects of Joe Biden’s failed presidency,” his campaign announced.“President Trump will ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in this country! We can Make America Great Again by tackling lawlessness head-on, ceasing the endless flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border, and reversing the detrimental effects of inflation by restoring people’s wealth.”Polls have lately showed a close, perhaps tied, race between Trump and Biden in Virginia, though there have been none released so far showing the former president with the advantage.Democrats are continuing to press their message against Republicans over their support for the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v Wade, and allowed states to ban abortions.“Two years ago, the extreme right-wing Supreme Court majority issued one of the most egregious rulings in our nation’s history,” the Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said.Here’s more:
    The Dobbs decision undermined reproductive freedom for women all across America as part of the extreme MAGA Republican plan to criminalize reproductive health care, outlaw contraception and march us toward a nationwide abortion ban. The decision by the out of control Supreme Court majority to take away the long-held right to an abortion represents an assault on freedom, the Constitution and the values shared by a majority of Americans. House Democrats will continue to fight until reproductive freedom is the law of the land and the extreme MAGA Republican effort to impose a nationwide abortion ban is crushed.
    Still not a peep from Donald Trump and most leading Republicans on the second anniversary of Roe v Wade’s overturning, but that’s not stopping the Biden campaign.Their official account has spent the day tweeting out past instances where Trump has taken credit for orchestrating the downfall of the precedent, which prevented the sorts of abortion restrictions now commonplace in Republican-controlled states.From his town hall in Iowa earlier this year:And what appears to be one of the many videos Trump has posted on his Truth Social account:Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, the GOP nominee for a Senate seat in the state, was one of the few Republicans to mark the second anniversary of the US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade.Hogan, in a statement shared by the Washington Post, said that if elected, he would work on bipartisan legislation to “codify Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.”He noted that as governor, he “reaffirmed my commitment to uphold Maryland law protecting access to abortion,” adding that he was “proud to make Maryland the first state in America to provide over-the-counter birth control covered by insurance.”Hogan, who last week tried to reject Donald Trump’s endorsement in his Senate race, also promised to protect women’s reproductive rights.“A woman’s health care decisions are her own,” he said.
    Whether it be the decision to start a family with the help of IVF, or exercise her reproductive rights, nothing and no one — especially partisan politics — should come between a woman and her doctor.
    Planned Parenthood will spend $40m ahead of November’s elections to bolster Joe Biden and leading congressional Democrats.The group will initially target eight states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, where Biden is seeking to defend 2020 victories, as well as North Carolina, which the Biden campaign to flip, and Montana, New Hampshire and New York, which have races that could help determine control of the Senate and House, it told Associated Press.Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, said:
    Abortion will be the message of this election, and it will be how we energize voters. It will be what enables us to win.
    A six-week abortion ban in Texas was linked to a 13% increase in the number of infants who died in their first year of life, a new study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics suggests.The study, published two years to the day since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and permitted more than a dozen states across the country to outlaw almost all abortions, is one of the first glimpses into how strict abortion bans impact babies’ health.The study also estimated that the ban may have led the number of infants in Texas who died within their first month of life to rise more than 10%.Because Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban in September 2021, months before Roe’s demise, scholars have studied what has happened in Texas for clues about how post-Roe abortion bans are now affecting the rest of the nation. Some of the researchers involved in the Monday study have previously concluded that the Texas ban also led to 10,000 additional births.The study found a 23% jump in infant deaths due to congenital anomalies – the kind of conditions that are often identified in utero and lead to abortions in states where the procedure is legal, since they can be incompatible with life. But that choice is no longer available to pregnant Texans.Two hundred and sixteen more infant deaths occurred due to the Texas six-week abortion ban, the researchers estimated.Kamala Harris has warned that abortion bans in states across the country are cutting women off from essential reproductive care and causing a “health care crisis”,In an interview with MSNBC aired today alongside reproductive rights advocate Hadley Duvall, Harris reflected on her experience visiting a reproductive care clinic in Minnesota in March.
    In those clinics that are trusted in the community, there is — you can get a Pap [smear] … breast cancer screening, HIV screening, the things that where people want to be able to walk into a health care facility and be treated with dignity and without judgment so they can address their health care concerns.
    She continued:
    That’s what these clinics do. And in states where they have passed these Trump abortion bans, these clinics are closing, which means that there is a reduction of very essential health care across the board for a lot of people.
    Democrats are on the attack as they mark the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, in which the supreme court’s conservative justices overturned the constitutional protections on abortion guaranteed by Roe v Wade. At a speech outside Washington DC, Kamala Harris said Donald Trump was “guilty” of “stealing” reproductive rights from American women with his appointment of three of the justices who supported doing away with the precedent. Joe Biden, who is three days away from his Thursday presidential debate with Trump, called his predecessor the “sole person responsible for this nightmare”. Meanwhile, neither Trump nor any top Republicans in Congress have said anything about the anniversary of the court’s decision.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
    The supreme court will hear a challenge brought by the Biden administration against state-level bans on gender-affirming care for minors.
    The fall of Roe upended life for aspiring doctors who hoped to provide abortions.
    A top White House official signaled that Biden supports an effort by Senate Democrats to repeal the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that a second Trump administration might use to ban abortion nationwide.
    Kate Cox, the Texas mother who was denied an abortion under the state’s near-total ban last year, introduced Kamala Harris at her speech in Maryland.“Every minute that I stayed pregnant, the risk to my health and to a future pregnancy were growing,” Cox said.“My state chose to drive me out of my home, my community, away from my children and my doctors, rather than to let me access care,” she said, adding: “I never imagined having to fight for something so basic as a procedure to save my health.”As a young student and mother “just trying to stay afloat,” Cox said she didn’t always make time to vote.“I will never again miss an opportunity to vote. I will cast my ballot in every election like my life depends on it,” Cox said.Growing emotional, Cox then shared that she is pregnant again, expecting a child in January. The crowd erupted in applause, as many stood to cheer for her.“And I hope that by then, when we welcome our baby into the world, we will have a world led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” she said.She then welcomed Harris on to the stage as a “champion of the cause” for reproductive freedom.“You are a hero of this movement,” Harris told Cox.Harris emphasized the importance of turning out to vote in November to protect abortion access so that places like Maryland remain havens for reproductive healthcare.Pointing to the statistic that one-in-three American women live in a state with abortion restrictions, she said: “Today our daughters know fewer rights than their grandmothers. This is a healthcare crisis, and we all know who to blame: Donald Trump.”Making her case that Trump was “guilty” of stripping abortion access, which was previewed by the campaign before her appearance, Harris said Trump appointed three supreme court justices with the intention of overturning Roe v Wade.“It was premeditated,” Harris said from a stage, where a sign that said “Trust Women” hung behind her.“Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse, for his actions,” she added.Later this afternoon, Harris will go to battleground state Arizona for a second event marking the Dobbs anniversary.Harris took the stage to chants of “four more years.”She then said Trump was “guilty” in “the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America”, and went on to lay out what she said are the stakes for abortion access if Trump is re-elected.“Understand as much harm as he has already caused, a second Trump term will be even worse,” she said. “His friends in the United States Congress are trying to pass a national ban that would outlaw abortion in every single state in states like New York and California, and even right here in Maryland.”She called Republicans who have passed state-level bans Trump’s “accomplices”, and said voters shouldn’t be fooled by Trump’s wavering on abortion, but should focus on what he has said. And she warned that he would go even further, curtailing access to contraception and IVF.“If there were a second Trump term, he has admitted that he is ‘looking at restrictions on contraception,’” she said. “And pay close attention to how his friends in the United States Senate obstructed a bill to protect the right to contraception, not once, not twice, but three times.” More

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    Clothes, cookware, floss: Colorado law to ban everyday products with PFAS

    A new law coming into effect in Colorado in July is banning everyday products that intentionally contain toxic “forever chemicals”, including clothes, cookware, menstruation products, dental floss and ski wax – unless they can be made safer.Under the legislation, which takes effect on 1 July, many products using per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances – or PFAS chemicals linked to cancer risk, lower fertility and developmental delays – will be prohibited starting in 2026.By 2028, Colorado will also ban the sale of all PFAS-treated clothes, backpacks and waterproof outdoor apparel. The law will also require companies selling PFAS-coated clothing to attach disclosure labels.The initial draft of state senate bill 81, introduced in 2022, included a full ban on PFAS beginning in 2032. But that measure was written out after facing opposition.Colorado has already passed a measure requiring companies to phase out PFAS in carpets, furniture, cosmetics, juvenile products, some food packaging and those used in oil and gas production.The incoming law’s diluted version illustrates the challenges lawmakers have in regulating chemicals that are used to make products waterproof, nonstick or resistant to staining. Manufacturers say the products, at best, will take time to make with a safer replacement – or at worst, are not yet possible to get made in such fashion.The American Chemistry Council said the bill before its dilution would have created “severe disruption for Coloradoans” as well as undercut “the compromises that were reached in 2022 PFAS legislation”. The council said the original bill would have created “broad, sweeping bans before that law [had] even been implemented”.But the trade group later said that it appreciated “the efforts of Colorado lawmakers to take a more focused approach to the issue”, adding: “Policymakers at both the state and federal levels seem to be recognizing that it is not scientifically accurate to group all fluoro chemistry together and that there are critical, safe uses of this chemistry.”Gretchen Salter – an adviser with Safer States, a group that says Colorado is one of 28 states to adopt policies on PFAS – told the Denver Post in March: “The more we look for PFAS, the more we find. That makes regulating PFAS really tricky because it is in so many things.”But the new law does not account for PFAS that are already in the environment. Colorado recently found that 29 of more than 2,000 water treatment facilities in the state do not meet new federal limits on PFAS levels of four parts per trillion.The ubiquity of “forever chemicals” was illustrated recently by a study that found microplastics in penises for the first time, raising questions about a potential role in erectile dysfunction. The revelation comes after the pollutants were recently found in every human placenta tested in a study, leaving the researchers worried about the potential health impacts on developing foetuses.In Colorado, state senator Lisa Cutter, one of the sponsors of the new law there, has said she still wants a complete ban on PFAS but acknowledges the problems. “As much as I want PFAS to go away forever and forever, there are going to be some difficult pivots,” she told the outlet.They include balancing the potential cost to consumers in making products PFAS-free. Cutter told CBS News that it was “really hard” challenging lobbying groups that “spent a lot of money ensuring that these chemicals can continue being put into our products and make profits”.Cutter said had been accused of stifling innovation and industry. She said she believed companies could be successful while also looking out for the communities they serve.“Certainly, there are cases where it’s not plausible right away to gravitate away from them, but we need to be moving in that direction,” Cutter said. “Our community shouldn’t have to pay the price for their health.” More

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    CNN abruptly ends live interview after Trump spokesperson criticizes network

    CNN abruptly terminated a live interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson on Monday after she criticised the two journalists whom the network chose to moderate the much anticipated upcoming debate between the former president and Joe Biden.Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Kasie Hunt, the presenter of CNN This Morning, after saying Trump would be entering a “hostile environment on this very network” when he debates the incumbent president in Atlanta on Thursday.Asked what strategy Trump would pursue on the debate stage, she said he would be contending “with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known … and their biased coverage of him”.Leavitt’s comments were aimed, without initially naming them, at the moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They triggered an immediate reaction from Hunt, who defended her colleagues.“So I’ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle,” Hunt said. Citing analysts of previous debates, she added: “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.”Hunt then tried to steer Leavitt back on to the topic of the debate, asking what the Trump team expected from Biden.Leavitt, however, refused to be deflected. “Well, first of all, it would take someone five minutes to Google ‘Jake Tapper Donald Trump’ to see Jake Tapper has consistently …” she began, before Hunt cut her off.“Ma’am, we’re going to stop this interview if you’re going to keep attacking my colleagues,” Hunt said.The two then talked over each other, with Leavitt appearing to relish the exchange by grinning broadly. As Hunt repeated her threats to end the interview, Leavitt said: “I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past …”At that point, Hunt ended the exchange, waving her hand in an apparent signal that Leavitt should be taken off air. “OK, I’m sorry, guys – we’re going to come back out to the panel,” Hunt said.Addressing Leavitt, she added: “Karoline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump.”Leavitt’s complaints may have been part of a deliberate strategy to gently lower expectations ahead of Thursday’s debate, which is taking place under conditions seen by many as more likely to favour Biden than Trump.Microphones will be muted when it is the opposing candidate’s turn to speak – a measure adopted to prevent the chorus of interruptions that Trump aimed at Biden during the first presidential debate between the pair in September 2020.The exchange will also take place in a TV studio minus a live audience providing the kind of partisan atmosphere that many analysts believe energises Trump, who lost the 2020 race to Biden four years after he won the presidency.But the questioning of the impartiality of Tapper and Bash may also date back to their comments about the infamous 2020 debate, moderated by the then Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who was widely believed to have lost control.Bash described the event, live on air, as “a shitshow” while Tapper called it “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.He added: “We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate … One thing for sure, the American people lost.”Trump, having for months mocked Biden’s supposed cognitive decline, has suddenly started talking up his debating skills. The former president calling Biden “a worthy debater” in a podcast with a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, adding: “I don’t want to underestimate him.”In a speech in Philadelphia over the weekend, Trump described Biden’s likely debate performance in more colourful – though less complimentary – terms, suggesting that Biden was going to take performance-enhancing drugs after undergoing extensive preparation.“Right now, Crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” he said. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass.” More

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    Judge in classified files case to consider reining in Trump attacks on FBI

    The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution for retaining classified documents is expected on Monday to consider modifying his conditions of release to include a prohibition on making statements that could endanger the safety of FBI agents involved in the case.The request to the US district judge, Aileen Cannon – the first time prosecutors have sought to limit Trump’ public remarks in this case – raises the stakes for Trump. Unlike in his other cases, where prosecutors sought gag orders, a violation of release conditions carries a risk of jail.The latest dispute over Trump’s inflammatory statements stems from his blatantly false characterization of the FBI’s use-of-deadly force policy when they executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago club in August 2022 and retrieved more than 100 classified documents.The order, which limits FBI agents to use deadly force only if they face extreme danger and became public after the FBI’s operational plan for the search was unsealed, used standard language that is routinely used in hundreds of warrants executed across the country.But Trump and some allies twisted the limiting language to claim the FBI was authorized by the Biden administration to shoot him when they searched Mar-a-Lago, even though Trump was not there during the search and the language is standard US justice department policy.“Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!” Trump wrote in a social media post last month.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, last month asked Cannon to revise Trump’s conditions of release to bar him from making any public comments “that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation”.By falsely suggesting that FBI agents were prepared to kill him, prosecutors argued, Trump exposed them to the risk of threats, violence and harassment. “These deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the FBI agents involved in this case,” the motion said.To back up their point, prosecutors reminded Cannon that a man tried to shoot his way into an FBI office in Ohio just days after the Mar-a-Lago search, saying “patriots” should head to Florida to defend Trump and kill FBI agents.But prosecutors did not include an example of Trump’s remarks directly leading to a threat, a point on which Cannon previously criticised prosecutors when they sought in a separate motion to force Trump to redact the identities of people involved in the investigation to ensure their safety.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe question was adopted by Trump’s lawyers in their 20-page response to prosecutors’ motion, arguing they had failed to point to a single example of an agent working on the documents case who has faced threats because of Trump’s inflammatory statements.“President Trump and the defense are similarly unaware of any hostility, harassment or risk of harm directed at any agent involved in this case based on President Trump’s statements,” the Trump lawyers wrote. More

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    in US Politics

    Anger, fear and desperation: people reflect on two years since fall of Roe

    After Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, Daphne did not want to leave anything to chance.Abortion is currently legal until 18 weeks in Utah, where the 38-year-old lives – but the state has a 2020 trigger law banning almost all abortion care that is currently under appeal.Daphne knew she didn’t want children so she decided to undergo surgical sterilization in October 2022, to have “peace of mind that [she] physically cannot become pregnant”.“My husband could have gotten a vasectomy for less money and an easier recovery time. However, that doesn’t change the outcome if I were to be assaulted. Living in Utah, I could not and would not risk having to seek an abortion, likely having to leave the state to do so, after an already traumatic event,” Daphne said.The procedure, which was not fully covered by her health insurance, left her around $1,000 out of pocket.“I’m lucky I was able to take these measures, and most cannot,” she added.Almost two years after the supreme court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, patients have increasingly been forced to travel out of their state in order to access abortion care, while others have carried unwanted pregnancies to term. A study earlier published in January estimated there have been nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape in states with abortion bans.Interstate travel for abortion care in the US doubled between 2020 and 2023, from one in 10 to almost one in five people leaving their state to access treatment, data from the Guttmacher Institute shows.In states where it is possible, many go to neighboring states. Hanz, a 30-year-old who works as a clinical social worker in an abortion clinic in Illinois, but lives in Missouri, found out they were pregnant in late July 2022, they recalled: “As soon as I saw the two lines on the test, I knew I had more rights standing in Illinois than I would when I got home that night. Abortion rights had already got so much worse in recent years – and then Roe was overturned.” (Missouri passed a trigger law in 2019 that banned abortions except in medical emergencies.)Hanz wanted a child, but felt it wasn’t the right time. “I was really weighing what I wanted and what felt like the right decision. It was very hard for me to terminate the pregnancy, but I had a difficult time growing up and didn’t feel I could bring a child into the world and not be able to give them the quality of life I wanted to,” they said.After spending a month carefully weighing their options, they crossed into Illinois to terminate the pregnancy at the beginning of September at nine weeks.“Making the decision was much harder than having the actual abortion,” Hanz said, adding that fears remain about crossing the border to receive care.“I’ve talked to people who thought they may be arrested when they returned to their home state – you’re not breaking the law by crossing the state,” Hanz said.For others, the introduction of abortion restrictions has meant they are not having children they may have had. Over the last few years, Brie, 41, had been considering having another child – but after Dobbs, she felt she could not undergo the risk of a pregnancy at her age in the state of Texas.“My husband and I had dreamt of a third child. Now, I know it’s definitely not going to happen,” Brie said, adding that she felt she could not risk a pregnancy in Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban.Her medical history adds to her fears: she had a complicated first pregnancy, including experiencing pre-eclampsia, and needed an emergency C-section.“It was scary and dangerous,” she said. “With my history, there’s no way I’d trust having this pregnancy in Texas or the south. I’d have to move.”The loss of the constitutional right to abortion has taken the choice out of her hands, she feels. “Our seven-year-old son is asking for a younger sibling,” Brie said. “I know I’m in a privileged position – we have two wonderful, healthy kids – but I don’t appreciate the state making my family planning decisions.”Abortion is an issue that divides her family. “The last two years have been a very volatile time, even having these discussions within my extended family,” she said. The issue is at odds with other values prized in Texas, she believes: “People here are very concerned with freedom. But there’s this huge conflict here between concern with personal freedom, and the approach to women and fertility. The only acceptable carveout is women that are pregnant.”Every month, she feels anxious about the chance of pregnancy. “It’s constantly on my mind and has been since Dobbs: am I going to be thrown under the bus by my state this month?“You play scenarios out, what if, where would I go, who would I tell. It’s a big wall of separation between who could you trust. I think that’s the goal: to isolate and put women in a position of insecurity.”For some, the fall of Roe was a call to action. Paul, in his mid-50s and living in North Carolina, knew little about abortion rights when he heard the news two years ago.“Up until then, it was not something I cared about – it was obvious that women should have the right to choose,” he said. He had thought abortion was a “settled issue”.When he heard the news, he remembers that he and his wife “stared at each other in silence, and thought, what the hell happens next? It doesn’t affect us personally, but it does affect millions of women. I went in completely blind.”Compelled by a need to take action, by November 2022, Paul had begun volunteering with a group that offered logistical assistance to people requiring abortions, often picking up patients who had travelled from states with more restrictive laws and driving them to clinics.“I’ve driven young teens with their parents who are absolutely petrified; women in their 20s who accept it’s something they have to do, and others to whom it’s no big deal. Everyone has a different set of circumstances – you don’t have to explain your reason to me,” he said.After North Carolina reduced the limit from 20 to 12 weeks in May 2023, the number of patients traveling to the state dwindled until the service disbanded. Now, Paul volunteers most weeks as a clinic escort.“More Saturdays than not, I can be found wearing a rainbow-striped vest, shielding women behind umbrellas as I walk them into the clinic. I have been called a murderer, a baby killer … And I’ll happily do it again next weekend as well,” he said. “A lot of men don’t want to acknowledge that men have a role to play in fixing this – it’s not up to just women.”For Jane*, a woman from Texas in her 60s, the writing was on the wall before Dobbs as she watched restrictions chip away at abortion rights year after year. ​Between 1973 and May 2022, 1,380 abortion restrictions were enacted in states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with more than 630 of these enacted since 2011.Jane became involved in direct action in 2018, driving people in need of abortion to appointments: “I became involved because I realised pro-choice is just that – it doesn’t address access. It’s a limited way at looking at reproductive justice. Seeing the impact of restrictions on abortion, I felt that to do nothing is to be complicit.”After Texas passed a bill outlawing abortion following the detection of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks – in 2021, Jane was galvanized to take further action. Toward the end of that year, she reached out to Las Libres, a Mexican network that mails pills for self-managed medical abortion.“The inhumanity of restrictions just raised my temperature and made me increasingly angry and willing to stick my neck out and do something to help,” she said. “Dobbs was the logical next step after increasing regulations permitted under Roe. [Access] was very effectively overturned before Dobbs.”Jane has been packaging and posting pills to states with abortion bans for the last two years.“It is empowering and effective to fight back,” Jane said. “Perhaps I am in denial about my own risk, but I have had a good life, I enjoy relative financial stability in my retirement, and who better than me to be in a position to fight back? Small actions matter, and allow me to maintain hope.”
    *Name has been changed More