Evelyn Reynolds

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    Former Republican legislative candidate pleads guilty to January 6 role

    A former Republican legislative candidate has pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers during the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in the final days of his one-term presidency.Officials said that Matthew Brackley, 40, of Waldoboro, Maine, traveled to Washington DC, Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on January 6, prior to him encouraging the crowd to go to the Capitol.Brackley was among thousands who then stormed the building as part of an effort to stop the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory for the Democratic party in the 2020 presidential election.He entered the Capitol building as the mob broke in and asked for the location of then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office before shouting “Let’s go!” and using his elbows to push past police officers, according to prosecutors.His group was stopped by police before chemical spray was used to break up the demonstrators, prosecutors said.Brackley will be sentenced 14 May in Washington DC, after reaching an agreement in which he pleaded guilty on Thursday to assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers. The crime carries a maximum penalty of eight years in prison.The defense lawyer Steven Levin said his client has accepted full responsibility for his actions.“His aberrant conduct, which lasted less than an hour and for which he is extremely remorseful, stands in stark contrast to his otherwise lifelong law-abiding character,” Levin said on Friday in an email.Brackley tried unsuccessfully to unseat the Maine Democratic state senator and majority leader, Eloise Vitelli of Arrowsic, last year. His campaign website described him as a Maine Maritime Academy graduate whose approach would be to have “respectful, thoughtful conversations on the issues”.The violent storming of the US Capitol, which caused injuries and led to several deaths among police, delayed the official certification of Biden’s winning the White House until the early hours of 7 January after the Capitol was cleared and lawmakers returned to the floor.Trump was impeached over the insurrection and acquitted in the Senate but now faces a related federal criminal case, amid other legal troubles. More

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    Digested week: regular-sounding folk suspend disbelief over Trump | Emma Brockes

    MondayThere wasn’t much to laugh to about when the Iowa caucus results came in on Monday, although the New York Post, erstwhile endorser of second place candidate, Ron DeSantis, raised a smile with the evidently vein-popping effort it had to put into finding a normal-sounding quote from Donald Trump. “Trump easily wins Iowa caucus in historic landslide, urges unity to ‘straighten out death and destruction’,” was the best they could eke from slim pickings.Results from Iowa famously don’t predict presidential election outcomes; since 1972, when the first caucuses were held, only three winners in Iowa have gone on to become president, and only one of them – George W Bush – on the Republican side. In previous years, this observation might have been useful, but in the case of Trump, of course, citing precedent doesn’t get us anywhere. The same week of his landslide in Iowa, Trump appeared, once again, in a court in downtown Manhattan, to face E Jean Carroll in her second defamation suit against him. The first suit last year ended when a judge found Trump guilty of libel and sexual abuse and awarded Carroll $5m (£3.95m) in damages, a fact that has, apparently, had no impact whatsoever on the 42% of Americans who recently gave him a favourable rating.Accounting for this disconnect gets harder. Reporters in Iowa on the day of the caucus threw up the now familiar conundrum of otherwise regular-sounding folk – people working in the ethanol industry, small business owners, retired farmers and insurance agents – expressing if not full-throated support for Trump, then at least a willingness to suspend disbelief. On the subject of the January 6 storming of the Capitol, an otherwise measured sounding man told the New Yorker: “It’s confusing, because the media tells one narrative, and then if you get on to any social-media platform that gives you a different narrative.” He added that he believed the last election had some voting “irregularities”. The default assumption – that Trump succeeds by making dumb people feel good about themselves – becomes a less and less credible explanation.TuesdayHere’s a man who never disappoints. Brooklyn Beckham, whether he’s unveiling his recipe for a bacon sandwich (bacon, bread) on US morning TV, or a gin and tonic (gin, tonic, lime) in a video on Bustle, or simply charming us with his cheerful rotation through those professions people tend to imagine – if they gave it a good crack – they would probably be brilliant at (photography, cooking). Many of Beckham’s recipes emanate from “Nanny Peggy”, his great-grandmother on his dad’s side, or from English folk history passed down through the generations and stored, in modern times, in a sacred archive on the internet accessible by Googling: “English people + favourite food”.In partnership with Uber Eats, some of these dishes of Beckham’s will be available to the British public for two days at the end of January, as part of a “pop-up restaurant” the delivery app is offering to users in London. These include his tikka masala, his spag bol and his pork and prawn dumplings, plus of course his signature dish, Nanny Peggy’s English breakfast sandwich. How Beckham will render open source recipes for beans on toast, bangers and mash, and a cup of tea – one lump or two! – we will have to wait for the inevitable cookbook to find out.View image in fullscreenWednesdayIf Beckham’s life in the glare of public attention is hard, it has nothing on that of the modern prince, held to uxorial standards to which his forefathers were not. At least this week Prince William knows the Daily Mail has his back. With the Princess of Wales in hospital for scheduled surgery, the loyal newspaper praised the heir to the throne for participating in his own family, observing: “The Prince of Wales will likely have a busy couple of months juggling childcare and aiding his wife”. Well, it’s all relative.ThursdayGambino, Genevese, Lucchese and … members of the New Conservatives and the European Research Groups, including Lee Anderson and Miriam Cates. This week the “five families” of the Tory party, self-styled like the unloved boy at school who gives himself a nickname, re-emerged after forming in December to challenge Rishi Sunak over his Rwanda immigration policy.The organised crime families of 1960s New York had a certain murderous dash, while the five families of Westminster have the veteran Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash and something called the Common Sense Group, better known for battling “wokeness” by supporting a campaign aimed at “cancelling cancel culture”. It’s not exactly Serpico. But as the Rwanda bill came back to face a second round of votes, so the Tory dons rose, pressuring Sunak to tighten the bill’s language that it may survive any European or international legal challenges.And while it’s true that this group of Tory MPs has grown trigger-happy, it’s mainly with nicknames; so that as well as the five families thing, the legal committee organised by Mark Francois, the Tory MP who countered German critics of Brexit by evoking the second world war, has been pompously named the “Star Chamber”. Whether Francois sees himself in this scenario as Cardinal Wolsey, or more of a John Gotti figure, is something about which I’m happy to remain in the dark.View image in fullscreenFridayNobody cares about the Baftas in the US, making the concept of the annual “Bafta snub”, in which a popular US film is snubbed by Bafta, somehow even more poignant for participants. A corker this year, the Bafta Barbie snub comes hard on the heels of the Golden Globes Barbie snub, and ahead of what we imagine will, in March, be the crowning snub of the year towards Barbie, the Oscars Barbie snub.The $1bn movie was this week only nominated for five Baftas and not in the director or best movie category, although Greta Gerwig (oh, sure, and Noah Baumbach) was nominated for best original screenplay. The endless tedium of Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was rewarded with 13 Bafta nominations, including one for Emily Blunt, which is the least the film can do for her, frankly, given that scene in the committee room with Florence Pugh – and which if you haven’t seen it, trust me, falls into a category all of its own: rank misuse of a national treasure. More

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    As the election looms, we must be alert to Trump’s threats of vigilante justice | Robert Reich

    Donald Trump has galvanized an army of vigilantes who are casting a fearsome shadow over the 2024 election.It’s impossible to know how large this potential army is, but last October 41% of pro-Trump Americans agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” (That view was shared by 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats.)We’re seeing the consequences. The day after the Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, barred Trump from the primary ballot there in late December, her home was “swatted”. As Bellows explained, “That’s when someone calls in a fake emergency to evoke a strong law enforcement response to scare the target. Swatting incidents have resulted in casualties although thankfully this one did not.”Along with the swatting, Bellows discussed “extraordinarily dehumanizing fake images” of her online:“I know from my previous work that dehumanizing a person is the first step in paving the way for attacks and violence against them. These dehumanizing images and threatening communications directed at me and people I love are dangerous. We should be able to agree to disagree on important issues without threats and violence.”The Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has also faced mounting threats since the Colorado supreme court in December disqualified Trump from the state’s primary ballot.“Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats,” Griswold has said. “I stopped counting after that. I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence.”Jack Smith, the special counsel in charge of two federal prosecutions of Trump, has received a number of death threats. Between April and September of last year, the justice department spent more than $4.4m providing increased security for Smith and his team. On Christmas Day he was swatted.On 4 August, Trump posted, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The following day, a Texas woman left a voicemail for Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over the case charging Trump with seeking to overturn the 2020 election, threatening that, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”Security has been increased for Judge Chutkan, as well. On 7 January, she was swatted.On 6 August, two days after Trump’s post, a man left a voicemail threatening the lives of the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Sheriff Patrick Labat for their roles in the Georgia criminal election interference case against Trump.Trump has also encouraged people to “go after” the New York attorney general, Letitia James.In addition, the far-right group the Proud Boys, according to the justice department, “played a central role in setting the January 6 attack on our Capitol into motion”. The House select committee investigating the attack found that in the months leading up to it, then-Trump operative Roger Stone regularly communicated with Proud Boys members, including their leader, Enrique Tarrio.In September, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on charges related to the attack. (In 2020, Trump issued Stone a blanket pardon.)As of December, roughly 1,240 people have been arrested in connection with the US Capitol attack. Some 170 have been convicted at trial, and 710 have pleaded guilty. So far, more than 720 have received prison sentences, ranging from a handful of days to more than 20 years.Many have sought to defend themselves by saying they were doing what Trump asked them to do. On that fateful day, Trump told the crowd he had summoned to Washington that:
    We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more … We will stop the steal … Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back … You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.
    Afterward, the crowd stormed the Capitol.There is a direct and alarming connection between Trump’s political rise and the increase in political violence and threats of such violence in America.In 2016, the Capitol police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol police.The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers declined to a still-high 7,500. (The 2023 data is not yet available.)Data also shows extraordinarily high levels of threats against mayors, federal judges, election workers and administrators, public health officials, and even school board members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe threats have clearly intimidated some Republican lawmakers.The retiring senator Mitt Romney recounted (in McKay Coppins’s biography of him) that during Trump’s 23 January 2021 impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit.Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” She cited how “members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”Just before the House vote on impeachment, the Democratic representative Jason Crow of Colorado said he heard firsthand from Republicans that fear was holding at least two of them back. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears – saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment,” Crow said on MSNBC.Former representative Peter Meijer, a Republican from Michigan, recalls one of his House colleagues voting to overturn the election results on the evening of January 6, hours after the assault: “My colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in.” After voting to impeach Trump, Meijer himself faced so many threats that he felt the need to purchase body armor and make changes to his daily schedule.Meijer also noted that his colleagues who voted not to certify the 2020 election “knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.”When announcing his retirement, former Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez cited threats to him and his family after his vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. In September 2021, Gonzalez announced he would not seek another term.The Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania state senate explained why she signed a letter backing Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in that state: “If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight.”Political violence is an inherent part of fascism. Hitler’s SA – the letters stood for Sturmabteilung or “Storm Section”, also known as the Stormtroopers or Brownshirts – were vigilantes who did the Nazis’ dirty work before the Nazis took total power.During the German presidential elections in March and April 1932, Brownshirts assembled Alarmbereitschaften, or “emergency squads”, to intimidate voters.On the night of the Reichstag election of 31 July 1932, Brownshirts launched a wave of violence across much of northern and eastern Germany with murders and attempted murders of local officials and communist politicians and arson attacks on local Social Democratic headquarters and the offices of liberal newspapers.When five Brownshirts were sentenced to death for the murders, Hitler called the sentences “a most outrageous blood verdict” and publicly promised the prisoners that “from now on, your freedom is a question of honor for all of us, and to fight against the government which made possible such a verdict is our duty.”A chilling echo of these words can be found in one of Trump’s recent speeches in Iowa, in which he claimed that his supporters had acted “peacefully and patriotically” on 6 January 2021. “Some people call them prisoners,” he said of those who were serving sentences for their violence. “I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”America is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933, and Trump is not Hitler. But it is important to understand the parallels.That Donald Trump still has not been held accountable for encouraging the attack on the US Capitol, or for provoking his followers with his blatant lie that the 2020 election was stolen, continues to galvanize an army of potentially violent Americans.
    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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    US insists it’s trying to get aid into Gaza as UN warns millions ‘at risk of famine’

    The US claims it is working “relentlessly” to get humanitarian aid into Gaza amid UN warnings that the territory’s 2.2 million people are “highly food insecure and at risk of famine”.Antony Blinken, speaking at Davos this week, called the situation in Gaza “gut-wrenching”. But the US secretary of state was unable to secure any major new gains on increasing the amount of assistance entering the territory during his recent visit to Israel, even as leaders of international organizations advocate for urgent access.United Nations special rapporteurs said this week that “every single person in Gaza is hungry” and that “Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people”. Israeli inspections have slowed the aid entering the territory, which is receiving just a tiny fraction of what experts say is needed.After months of backroom advocacy with Israel to increase the flow of food and humanitarian items through the south of Gaza, the US is “focused on trying to see what we can do to increase the volume and the speed with which those trucks are getting in”, according to the White House spokesperson John Kirby.Israel has allowed just under 8,500 trucks to enter Gaza through the two southern crossings over the past 85 days, according to the UN’s monitoring – an average of 100 trucks a day. Aid groups say 500 trucks a day are needed at minimum. “Everyone understands the need for inspections, but things like antibiotics or tent poles or sleeping bags with zippers are causing delay and rejection, and then the whole trucks – not just the items in question – are turned away,” Tom Hart, the CEO of the humanitarian group InterAction, said.“We need approval and inspection processes for aid to be faster and more efficient and more predictable,” Ricardo Pires, a communications manager with Unicef, said.The Biden administration credited its pressure on Israel for what has got into Gaza so far. “Despite the fact that what’s getting in isn’t sufficient to the needs right now, it is the United States that got anything in, in the first place,” Matt Miller, the state department spokesperson, has said.Some aid groups see things differently. “We know that they are doing a lot behind the scenes, but at the moment we are not seeing the results of what they are doing in the access and distribution of assistance on the ground,” Hart said.David Satterfield, the retired ambassador working as a state department humanitarian envoy focused on Gaza, has faced criticism for his effectiveness in the role. He joined Blinken on part of his recent Israel trip, though Satterfield had previously been on vacation and working remotely in Hawaii, where he owns property, over the holidays. “This was a long-planned vacation that was coordinated, and he immediately went back to Israel after that,” a state department spokesperson told the Guardian.“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the WFP, said in a statement. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. We can keep famine at bay but only if we can deliver sufficient supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are.”Some legislators have called on the Biden administration to do more, though a Senate vote which would require additional safeguards on aid to Israel only garnered 11 votes on Tuesday night, nowhere near the simple majority needed in the 100-person chamber to pass.Senator Chris Van Hollen voted in favor of the resolution, which was introduced by Bernie Sanders, after visiting the Rafah crossing that borders Egypt earlier in the month. Van Hollen called the Israeli government’s delays in inspecting trucks “purely arbitrary” in an interview with the New Yorker.An Israeli military spokesperson recently denied outright that there is hunger in Gaza, even as Human Rights Watch said last month that “the Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.In the absence of a ceasefire, it’s not clear whether a large influx of humanitarian aid could even be distributed effectively. The issue is not just getting into Gaza, but the safety and logistics once inside the territory. Electricity and communications blackouts, along with Israeli bombardments, make distribution dangerous and at times impossible. It’s likely in part for these reasons that the heads of the World Food Programme and Unicef, both of which were appointed to those roles by Joe Biden, have called for a ceasefire.But experts say that the US is more focused on the humanitarian crisis than the underlying political and military roots of the conflict. “They are in the weeds on humanitarian access issues, which is still uncomfortable for the Israelis, but far preferable to questions of ceasefire and future political arrangements, and it allows Israel to nickel-and-dime the US to death on the minutiae,” Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, says.Tania Hary, executive director of the Israeli non-profit Gisha focused on movement and access for Palestinians, says that Israel is facing more pressure to let more goods into Gaza in part because of South Africa’s international court of justice case at the Hague. But she added, “I don’t think that they’re doing enough or that they’re moving fast enough, and they’re not even skimming the surface of their obligations to Gaza residents.”The US has found some creative pathways in its humanitarian efforts, including getting Israel to reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing on the southern Israel-Gaza border in mid-December. But in Hary’s assessment, those actions remain wholly insufficient. “We’re never going to see these needs being addressed without there being a ceasefire, and the US is of course not calling for that. So whatever it is trying to do on access for aid is undermined by support for the continued military operation,” she said.Kirby, the White House spokesperson, acknowledged that “a big hindrance” to getting more humanitarian items into Gaza “is the fighting itself”.Though the US Senate failed to pass the measure to condition military aid to Israel based on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, advocates say there are other means available to the US within that law. For example, it contains a clause that bars security assistance when the recipient country “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”, a point that a consortium of NGOs highlighted in a recent letter to the US defense secretary.“Israel as the occupying power and a side to the hostilities has obligations, not just to facilitate entry of goods but even to supply them,” Hary says. “And almost no one is talking about Israel supplying the food that Gaza needs, but that is its obligation.” More

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    What is the future of the New Hampshire primary? – podcast

    Residents say the New Hampshire primary was once like a festival coming to town, where voters got to come face to face in their living rooms, barns and school gymnasiums. Things are different in 2024. Joe Biden isn’t even on the ballot and there are only three remaining Republican candidates – Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley – who are doing fewer events than ever.
    Jonathan Freedland talks to Dante Scala of the University of New Hampshire, and James Pindell of the Boston Globe, as well as some longtime voters to try and figure out when it all changed for the Granite state, and whether the festival of civic duty will ever truly come back.

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

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    Hunter Biden to appear before House Republicans for private deposition

    Hunter Biden has agreed to appear before House Republicans for a private deposition next month, ending months of defiance from the president’s son, who had insisted on testifying publicly.The House oversight committee announced on Thursday that the two parties have come to an agreement for Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition on 28 February.“His deposition will come after several interviews with Biden family members and associates,” Representative James Comer, the chairman of the oversight committee, and Representative Jim Jordan, the chairman of the jJudiciary panel, said in a statement. “We look forward to Hunter Biden’s testimony.”Republicans had been set to advance a contempt resolution against him to the House floor this week but called it off on Tuesday to give the attorneys additional time to reach an agreement. More

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    Ohio trans candidate threatened with disqualification cleared to run in house race

    A transgender candidate vying for a seat in the Republican-majority Ohio house was cleared to run on Thursday after her certification had been called into question for omitting her former name on qualifying petitions as required by a little-used state elections law.The Mercer county board of elections chose not to take up a vote on disqualifying Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from Auglaize county who is one of four trans individuals campaigning for the legislature, for not disclosing her previous name on petition paperwork.Childrey, who legally changed her name in 2020, has said she would have provided her deadname – the name a trans person was assigned at birth but does not align with their gender identity – if she had known about the law.“I would have filled out whatever was necessary, because at the end of the day, while it would have been a hit to my pride, there is something much more important than my pride, and that’s fighting for this community,” Childrey said.The Ohio law, unfamiliar even to many state elections officials, mandates that candidates disclose any name changes in the past five years on their petition paperwork, with exemptions for changes caused by marriage. But the law isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide and there is no space on the petition paperwork to list any former names.All four trans candidates for the legislature this year have run into issues with the name-change law, which has been in place in some form for decades but is rarely used – typically in the context of candidates wishing to use a nickname.The complications in Ohio come at a time when Republican-controlled state governments nationwide have moved to limit trans rights. Last year, legislatures passed dozens of bills restricting medical care for trans youth, governing pronoun and bathroom usage at schools and dictating which sports teams trans athletes can join.Earlier this month, Ohio’s Mercer county board of elections received a protest to Childrey’s ballot certification from the county Republican party chairman, Robert J Hibner. Because the ballot is for the upcoming 19 March primary, the board ruled Hibner’s protest invalid, as Hibner is from the opposing political party.The board did not immediately respond to questions regarding the elections law itself and what role it played in Thursday’s decision to keep Childrey on the ballot.If Childrey were to win the Democratic primary, she would probably face representative Angie King, a Republican lawmaker who has sponsored anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and voted for bans on gender-affirming care for minors in November’s general election.Childrey told the Associated Press on Thursday that it’s “nice to take a deep breath” as she and her team now plunge into campaigning.“Hopefully people will see that this is a marginalized community in Ohio, and yet we’re still standing,” she said.Last week, the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, said his office was open to putting the rule on the candidate guide but not to tweaking the law, and that it was up to candidates to ensure they comply with Ohio election law.But the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said on Tuesday that the law should be amended and county boards should stop disqualifying trans candidates on these grounds. DeWine did not say how it might be amended.“We shouldn’t be denying ballot access for that reason,” the governor told Cleveland.com’s editorial board. “It certainly should be fixed.”DeWine recently vetoed a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, but the state house overrode that veto. The senate is expected to do the same next week.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Stark county running for the Ohio house who legally changed her name in 2022, was disqualified earlier this month for omitting her deadname from petition paperwork. She appealed her disqualification but was denied. Joy, who said the current law was a barrier to trans individuals who want to seek office but do not want to disclose their deadname, is now working with legal counsel and the Ohio Democratic party to try to change the law.Ari Faber, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio state senate from Athens, was cleared to run but must use his deadname, since he has not legally changed it.Bobbie Arnold, a contractor from West Alexandria running as a Democrat for the Ohio house, had her possible disqualification dismissed on Tuesday by the Montgomery county board of elections and will be on the ballot in the March primary.However, under the state law, if Arnold or Childrey were to win their elections, they could still be removed from office for not disclosing their deadname and both are consulting with legal counsel about that part of the law.Arnold hopes that between Joy’s work with her own team to change the law and DeWine’s call for candidates to stay on the ballot, that will not be an issue come November.For now, like Childrey, she is excited to start campaigning.“It’s important for the overall wellbeing of our society that every voice has an opportunity to be heard,” said Arnold, who went to Childrey’s hearing to support her. “And that’s something that we’re not experiencing right now in Ohio.”In light of the outcomes of Childrey and Arnold’s cases, Joy appealed again on Thursday to the Stark county board of elections. More

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    Trump lawyer: Ex-president not responsible for E Jean Carroll backlash because supporters were likely to believe him – live

    On cross-examination, Donald Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway.Madaio asked whether people most likely receptive to Trump’s denials were most likely Trump supporters? Were Trump supporters more likely to believe him?“Wouldn’t you think that Trump supporters would have already thought Ms. Carroll a liar in her accusations?” he asked. “If they already had an opinion formed on this subject, and they already had an opinion of Ms Carroll, would President Trump have any affect on their opinion?”“Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he added.“I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.Pressed on this, Humphreys said people are “more likely” receptive to information that easily “conforms to their views.”Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events at E J Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump:
    Trump’s lead attorney Alina Habba tried to cast doubt on the threats E J Carroll faced as a result of Trump’s public remarks about her. Citing derogatory tweets directed towards Carroll, Habba asked whether Carroll agrees that the tweets are “not necessarily tied” to Trump’s statements. Carroll said, “Some of the tweets are definitely tied to the president’s statement.”
    Cross-examination also took a turn for the absurd when Habba pointed to a 2013 tweet in which Carroll referred to penile functions. “You left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct” asked Habba, to which Carroll answered in the affirmative.
    Habba also appeared to suggest that Carroll had not suffered as a result of Trump’s comments, pointing to TV appearances as an example. “So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba. “No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.
    Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor, also took to the witness stand today. She said that to restore E J Carroll’s reputation by putting out corrective messaging in relation to Donald Trump’s 2019 statements, Humphreys estimated, it could cost from $7.2m to $12.1m.
    On cross-examination, Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway. “Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he said. “I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.– Maya Yang
    Meanwhile, the defamation trial has concluded for the day.Judge Lewis Kaplan has not spoken about plans for Monday.Here’s an update on another Trump case, from the AP: The judge overseeing the former president’s 2020 election interference case rjected his lawyers bid to hold special counsel Jack Smith’s team in contempt, after prosecutors turned over thousands of pages of evidence and filing a motion after the judge put the case on hold.US district judge Tanya Chutkan said in her rulingthat her pausing the case did not “clearly and unambiguously” prohibit the prosecutor’s those actions, but she said no further substantive filings should be submitted until the hold is lifted.A trial in that case is currently scheduled for 4 March, but will likely be delayed because Trump has appealed a ruling that rejected claims that he was immune to prosectution.Following the Senate’s passage of a stopgap funding bill shortly before a shutdown deadline on Thursday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer released the following statement in which he hailed the bill’s passage:
    “It’s good news for every American, especially our veterans, parents and children, farmers and small businesses, all of whom would have felt the sting of a shutdown.”
    With court currently on a break, here is another update in US politics: third-party centrists across the country have filed a formal complaint over an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” surrounding the 2024 presidential election.The Guardian’s David Smith reports:The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election.No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.For the full story, click here:On cross-examination, Donald Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway.Madaio asked whether people most likely receptive to Trump’s denials were most likely Trump supporters? Were Trump supporters more likely to believe him?“Wouldn’t you think that Trump supporters would have already thought Ms. Carroll a liar in her accusations?” he asked. “If they already had an opinion formed on this subject, and they already had an opinion of Ms Carroll, would President Trump have any affect on their opinion?”“Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he added.“I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.Pressed on this, Humphreys said people are “more likely” receptive to information that easily “conforms to their views.”Court has resumed.Ashlee Humphreys is now under cross-examination.Joe Biden has released the following statement in response to a justice department report which found that the police response to the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in which 21 people were killed “was a failure”:
    Today’s report makes clear several things: that there was a failure to establish a clear command and control structure, that law enforcement should have quickly deemed this incident an active shooter situation and responded accordingly, and that clearer and more detailed plans in the school district were required to prepare for the possibility that this could occur.
    There were multiple points of failure that hold lessons for the future, and my team will work with the Justice Department and Department of Education to implement policy changes necessary to help communities respond more effectively in the future.
    Congress must now pass commonsense gun safety laws to ensure that mass shootings like this one don’t happen in the first place. We need universal background checks, we need a national red flag law, and we must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The families of Uvalde – and all American communities — deserve nothing less.
    Jerry Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York, is in contact with the FBI and Capitol police about a reported death threat from Roger Stone, a staunch far-right Donald Trump ally.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:“It was a surprise to me. I just found out a few days ago … I saw it on Mediaite,” Nadler told reporters, naming the website which said it obtained audio of the threat and saying he had been in touch with authorities.The reported threat also mentioned Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who on Wednesday told CNN he also learned of the threat from the Mediaite report.Speaking before the 2020 presidential election to an associate who was then a serving New York police officer, Stone reportedly said: “It’s time to do it.“Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit any more.”For the full story, click here:Court is currently on break and will resume at around 1.50pm.We will bring you the latest updates once court is back in session.Ashlee Humphreys calculated that up to 24.7m of these impressions were associated with likely belief in Donald Trump’s statements.To restore Carroll’s reputation by putting out corrective messaging in relation to the 2019 statements, Humphreys estimated, it could cost from $7.2m to $12.1m.Attorney Shawn Crowley, who was questioning Humphreys, asked how a person’s reputation is impacted when the same negative claim is repeated – especially by a prominent source.Ashlee Humphreys said that she studied how many people Donald Trump’s June 2019 statements reached.She studied 47 online news articles that cited his 21 June and 22 June 2019 denials.Humphreys determined that these publications’ websites had 13.2m impressions – that is, unique visitors on a particular day – related to these articles.As for social media impressions, Humphreys said that her low estimate was just over 7 million and her high estimate was more than 25m. With television, Humphreys calculated that Trump’s statements reached 63.1m; print newspapers reached more than 2.83m.Humphreys estimated that the total number of times Trump’s statements were viewed ranged from some 85.8m to 104.1m.Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor, has taken the witness stand. Humphreys’ testimony could help put a dollar amount on the reputational harm Carroll endured because of Donald Trump’s comments. Humphreys provided testimony in Carroll’s first trial against Trump, but her presence in this trial could be quite perilous to him.She testified in two Georgia ex-election workers’ defamation trial against Trump’s crony, Rudy Giuliani.Those former election workers won $148m in the suit. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy protection following the conclusion of that case.Here are some court sketches coming through the newswires of E J Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump:E J Carroll is now on redirect examination.Carroll’s lawyer is now asking her questions again.Cross-examination in E J Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump is now over. Here are the key developments from this morning:
    Trump’s lead attorney Alina Habba tried to cast doubt on the threats Carroll faced as a result of Trump’s public remarks about her. Citing derogatory tweets directed towards Carroll, Habba asked whether Carroll agrees that the tweets are “not necessarily tied” to Trump’s statements. Carroll said, “Some of the tweets are definitely tied to the president’s statement.”
    Cross-examination also took a turn for the absurd when Habba pointed to a 2013 tweet in which Carroll referred to penile functions. “You left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct” asked Habba, to which Carroll answered in the affirmative.
    Habba also appeared to suggest that Carroll had not suffered as a result of Trump’s comments, pointing to TV appearances as an example. “So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba. “No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.
    Alina Habba concluded her cross-examination by suggesting that E J Carroll had not suffered because of Donald Trump’s comments – didn’t she have opportunities like having a Substack and TV appearances? Was she making more money? Was she better known?“So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba.“No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.“So, you sued Donald Trump to bring your old reputation back?” said Habba.“Yeah,” replied Carroll. More