US Politics

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story over the coming days.Here’s what else happened today:
The FBI seized electronic devices belonging to New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into his campaign finances, the New York Times reports.
Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if he is elected next year.
Federal judge Aileen Cannon declined a request from Trump to delay his trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, but his lawyers signaled that they are hopeful she will eventually push its start date back.
Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
The New York Times reports that FBI agents seized two phones and an iPad belonging to New York mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into the Democrat’s campaign’s finances.Here’s more from the Times:
F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a federal corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The agents approached the mayor on the street and asked his security detail to step away, one of the people said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said. The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, the people said. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.
It was not immediately clear whether the agents referred to the fund-raising investigation when they took the mayor’s devices.
The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.
In an interview with Spanish-language network Univision yesterday, Donald Trump signaled he would be willing to use the FBI and justice department to go after his political rivals in a second presidential term, without getting into specifics.But behind the scenes, the former president has named the names of those he would like to go after, the Washington Post reported earlier this week:
In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.
To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”
Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about what federal judge Aileen Cannon’s decision today in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tells us about when it may ultimately go to trial:The federal judge overseeing the criminal case charging Donald Trump with retaining classified documents pushed back on Friday several major deadlines for the former president to file pre-trial motions, a move that could have the consequential effect of delaying the start of the trial in Florida.The judge put off until March making the fraught decision about whether to actually delay the trial – currently scheduled for next May – but the new timetable she laid out in a nine-page written order gave little scope for the pre-trial process to finish in time.The order from US district judge Aileen Cannon was positive for Trump, who has made no secret that his overarching legal strategy is to delay beyond the 2024 election in the hopes that winning re-election would allow him to pardon himself or direct the justice department to drop the charges.Trump was indicted this summer with violating the espionage act when he illegally retained classified documents after he left office and conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago club, including defying a grand jury subpoena.But the fact that Trump was charged with retaining national defense information means his case will be tried under the complex rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa, which governs how those documents can be used in court.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:Florida’s Republican state representative Michelle Salzman is facing increasing censure calls and outrage after she said “All of them” in response to her Democratic colleague saying, “How many [dead Palestinians] will be enough?”The Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”For further details, click here:Former president George W Bush said to “stay positive” in response to a question on what advice he would give to the world on Veterans Day.
“Stay positive because if you study world history or US history, we go through cycles of being down and yet Americans ought to realize how blessed we are to live in this country… The images are grim and, yes, there’s violence, but ultimately love overcomes hate,” he told Fox News.
Following reports of letters containing fentanyl being mailed to multiple state election offices, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger said that he has been informed that there is another suspicious letter in transit.Speaking to CNN, Raffensberger said:
“We have been informed by the postal officials that there is a letter in transit so that’s a three to five day transit through their system. Obviously they will try to intercept that when it comes through the Atlanta processing facility but it hasn’t arrived to Georgia yet so we don’t know if it will be intercepted. And that’s why we’ve prepared staff at the Fulton county election office if it does actually make it through the system and it arrives.”
He added that officials are going to make sure that there is Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, available in all election offices that do receive incoming mail and that staff will be trained on how to administer Narcan.Authorities across the country are currently investigation letters sent to several states’ election offices that contained fentanyl.The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:Law enforcement officials in the US are searching for the people responsible for sending letters with suspicious substances sent to election offices in at least five states, acts some election officials described as “terrorism”.Election offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington state all were sent the letters, four of which contained the deadly drug fentanyl, the Associated Press reported. Some of the letters were intercepted before they arrived. The FBI and United States Postal Service are investigating.In Washington, election offices in four counties – Skagit, Spokane, Pierce and King, which includes Seattle – were evacuated as workers counted ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the letters tested positive for fentanyl. Steve Hobbs, Washington’s Democratic secretary of state, said the letters were “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”For further details, click here:Anti-abortion members of the Ohio General Assembly have responded to the state’s passage of Issue 1 during Tuesday’s election.Condemning the language of the proposal which enshrines abortion rights into the state’s constitution, several dozen anti-abortion state representatives said:
“Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion.
This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.
A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story in the coming days.Here’s what else is going on today:
Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if elected next year.
Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is expected to release his short-term government funding proposal over the weekend, setting the chamber up for a vote next week, NBC News reports:The bill’s prospects remain highly uncertain. House Democrats have rejected the “laddered” approach Johnson is reportedly mulling, which would see government funding expire at different times, and the proposal is unlikely to get far in the Senate, where they hold a majority. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans in the House want to use any funding measure as an opportunity to force the government to cut spending, but that may alienate more moderate Republicans and cost the bill support it needs to pass.Nonetheless, expect this to be a big developing story over the weekend and next week, as the 17 November deadline to fund the government draws nearer. More

Outrage continues to grow over a public comment made by a Florida state Republican lawmaker calling for all Palestinians to die.The remarks came during a debate in the state legislature about calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, many of whom are children. The assault came after Hamas fighters attacked Israel from Gaza, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage.In the speech in support of the ceasefire resolution, the Democratic Florida state representative Angie Nixon said: “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough?”“All of them,” Michelle Salzman called in reply.Nixon acknowledged the interruption and said: “One of my colleagues just said, ‘All of them.’ Wow.”The Florida state house later voted 104-2 to reject Nixon’s resolution.Salzman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”Hours before Nixon’s speech, Israel agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.On Thursday, Joe Biden said there was “no possibility” of a ceasefire. More

The West Virginia Democrat senator Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not run for re-election next year has triggered speculation that he might instead launch a bid for the White House as the candidate of No Labels, a third-party group which has attracted significant funding.Manchin has long flirted with such a bid, brushing off warnings that by running he would only help elect Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate who is far ahead in the party’s 2024 nomination race.On Thursday, announcing his decision to quit the Senate, Manchin pointed to a possible presidential run. He said: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia.“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.“But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilise the middle and bring Americans together.”Polling shows that most Americans do not want a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump next year, deeming the former too old, at nearly 81, and the latter, 77, too damaged by his chaotic presidency, assault on democracy and extreme criminal and civil predicament.Nonetheless, a rematch seems all but assured. Accordingly, Manchin’s announcement prompted concern across the political spectrum.Bill Kristol, a Never Trumper on the right, said: “Tuesday night’s results [in Kentucky, Ohio and elsewhere] were good news for Democrats. Manchin’s announcement today was bad news – bad for Democratic prospects for holding the Senate in 2024, bad for No Labels implications in the presidential race.”Olivia Troye, an adviser to Mike Pence when he was vice-president to Donald Trump, said: “The odds of [Manchin] running on the No Labels ticket for president have likely increased exponentially. If he does run, it will split the votes and, in the end, only help Trump in the 2024 election.”Rahna Epting, political action executive director of MoveOn, a progressive political action committee, also issued a stark warning: “Every independent analyst reaches the same conclusion: a No Labels ticket has no chance of winning a single electoral college vote in any state. Instead, their campaign would only ensure Trump’s re-election.”Other third-party candidates have already declared. Most prominent is Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine campaigner whose conspiracy-laced message shows signs of siphoning more votes from Trump than from Joe Biden. Two academics, Cornel West and Jill Stein, offer challenges from the left.But with Trump-Biden polling in swing states on a razor’s edge, any further move or comment from Manchin will now attract most attention.Now 76, Manchin was governor of West Virginia before entering the Senate in 2011. As a Democrat in elected office in the fossil fuels- and Republican-dominated state, he became a rarity or oddity: a political coelacanth, a holdover from an earlier age, drifting on partisan tides.But even fossils must pass on. Having accepted his likely doom as a senator, Manchin seems set to make one last pitch for a place in history.In its own statement, No Labels called him a “great leader … a tireless voice for America’s commonsense majority and a longtime ally of the No Labels movement”.In words that will strike fear into all who fear a second Trump term, it added: “Regarding our No Labels Unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House.“As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Whether he runs or not, Manchin’s decision does seem likely to at least hand Republicans a Senate seat. Greeting Manchin’s announcement that he will not run for re-election in the senate, Steve Daines of Montana, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said simply: “We like our odds in West Virginia.” More

Donald Trump has suggested he would use the FBI and justice department to go after political rivals should he return to the White House next year in a move which will further stoke fears of what a second period of office for Trump could mean.Trump made the comments during an interview with the Spanish-language television network Univision. The host Enrique Acevedo asked him about his flood of legal problems saying: “You say they’ve weaponized the justice department, they weaponized the FBI. Would you do the same if you’re re-elected?”“They’ve already done it, but if they want to follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse,” Trump replied. “They’ve released the genie out of the box.“When you’re president and you’ve done a good job and you’re popular, you don’t go after them so you can win an election. They’ve done indictments in order to win an election. They call it weaponization,” Trump added. “But yeah they have done something that allows the next party, I mean if somebody, if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them, mostly they would be out of business. They’d be out. They’d be out of the election.”Prosecuting political rivals is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes and Trump’s remarks are the most candid public revelations so far of the anti-democratic power he would bring to a second term as president.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is challenging Trump but has lagged in the polls, said the remarks were alarming. “This is outrageous,” he said on CNN on Thursday evening.He also warned that unlike Trump’s first presidential term, there would not be lawyers and other officials around Trump to stop his most authoritarian pushes. Trump allies are already preparing an effort to install far-right attorneys in the federal government who can back up Trump’s fringe ideas.“You had good folks like Bill Barr who were keeping him on the rails and stopping him from doing stuff like this at the justice department,” Christie said. “Nobody as good and decent and honest as Bill Barr is gonna agree to be Donald Trump’s attorney general if he ever becomes president again.”The comments also drew rebuke from a CNN panel on Friday morning, which implored Americans not to shrug off Trump’s remarks.Even before Trump’s Univision interview aired on Thursday, the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Trump was clearly telegraphing an authoritarian agenda if he returns to the White House and compared him to Adolf Hitler.“Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word,” she said on ABC’s The View.“Those aren’t flippant ‘ha-ha funny’ remarks,” Phil Mattingly, CNN’s chief White House correspondent said on air on Friday. “That’s insane.” Elie Honig, the network’s chief legal analyst, agreed and said Americans should “take him at his word”. “If he says he’s gonna do this, I believe him.”Trump is the overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican race for the 2024 nomination and no rival has yet emerged to seriously challenge him. In recent national polls against Joe Biden, Trump has also frequently been shown to be ahead – unnerving many Democrats.He faces a suite of lawsuits in key swing states, including Colorado, Minnesota and Michigan, seeking to bar him from running because of his responsibility for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The suits argue that section 3 of the 14th amendment bars anyone who previously took an oath to the United States from holding office if they have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the US constitution.The Minnesota supreme court ruled this week that the state could not block him from appearing on the primary ballot, but left the door open to future challenges.Part of the reason the challengers are bringing these cases is because of the threat a second Trump presidency poses to the US constitution.“The dangers are not merely theoretical. We saw what happened on January 6 2021 and if he’s allowed back into power that might be child’s play compared to what he’ll do in the future,” Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group behind several of the challenges, told the Guardian last week.The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Trump and his allies were already discussing how to use the justice department to prosecute and exact revenge against people who have spoken out against Trump, including former attorney general Bill Barr and his former chief of staff John Kelly.He is also reportedly considering invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, should he win, which would allow him to deploy the military against domestic protesters.Trump faces four separate criminal cases, including two different federal ones dealing with his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the election. Both of those cases were brought by Jack Smith, a justice department special counsel appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to insulate the cases from political pressure.If Trump wins the election, he would almost certainly fire Smith if the investigation is still ongoing, or pardon himself if he has been convicted. More

Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and sunk millions more into underperforming Maga candidates in subsequent election cycles, has confirmed rumors that he is stepping away from 2024 political funding.In an interview with the Atlantic, Thiel said voting for Trump “was like a not very articulate scream for help” and that things had not turned out the way he had hoped when he donated $1.25m to Trump and Trump-affiliated political funds eight years ago.“There are a lot of things I got wrong,” he said. “It was crazier than I thought. It was more dangerous than I thought. They couldn’t get the most basic pieces of the government to work. So that was – I think that part was maybe worse than even my low expectations.”Thiel told the magazine that Trump had called him earlier this year to solicit $10m – the same amount that he had donated to Blake Masters, a former protege who campaigned and lost a Senate bid in Arizona last year, and JD Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy who won an Ohio Senate seat.When Thiel turned down Trump’s request, he said the former president told him that “he was very sad, very sad to hear that”. He later heard that Trump had insulted him to Masters, calling him a “fucking scumbag”.Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and the big-data analytics firm Palantir whose fortune is estimated at between $4bn and $9bn, said that while he was not planning to donate in this cycle, “there’s always a chance I might change my mind”. He added that his husband “doesn’t want me to give them any more money, and he’s right”.He also said that he knew political candidates are “going to be pestering me like crazy”.The Atlantic profile sheds light on why Thiel, sometimes described as a techno-libertarian, had become a political donor at all.He explained that in early 2016, when a jury sided with Terry Gene Bollea, AKA Hulk Hogan, in an invasionof privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media – an action Thiel had funded – he read it as a sign that Trump could win.Ten days before Trump’s political coronation at the Republican national convention that year, Trump’s son Don Jr called to ask if Thiel wanted to speak from the platform. He agreed, he told the magazine, in part because he favored candidates with pessimistic slogans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you’re too optimistic, it just shows you’re out of touch,” he said. “‘Make America great again’ was the most pessimistic slogan of any candidate in 100 years, because you were saying that we are no longer a great country. And that was a shocking slogan for a major presidential candidate.”Thiel also sounded off on diversity initiatives – calling them “very evil and it’s very silly” – and his interest in life-extension, a common theme among tech billionaires. “I should be investing way more money into this stuff,” he said. More

In early October, Beverly Sharp addressed a table of poll workers, elections officials and activists gathered in rural Adams Township, Michigan, with a prayer.“Father, we thank you for this opportunity to meet together to discuss things, and to agree if we agree, and if we disagree, [to be] friendly,” said the longtime poll worker.It was a plea lodged in earnest ahead of an unprecedented election year.Hillsdale county – where Adams is located – has been roiled by election conspiracy theories since the 2020 election, and officials say a growing rightwing movement is now stoking fears of political violence ahead of the 2024 election.Across the county, where 73% of voters supported Donald Trump in 2020, questions of election denialism and far-right politics have split the community. A faction of the Hillsdale county GOP, dubbed the “America First Republicans”, split off from more traditional conservatives following the January 6 Capitol riot, when Trump and his allies tried to overturn his election loss.In October, the group appointed a new chair: David Stone, the former leader of the Michigan-based Christian Hutaree Militia.“The [election] next year will be really bad,” said Adams Township clerk Suzy Roberts, who is tasked with running the town’s elections.Roberts took office in May, ousting a conspiracy theory-touting clerk in a recall election that also removed a far-right supervisor from the township board in hopes of bringing stability to the politically fractious community following a series of alarming incidents.A former member of America First Republicans told the Guardian in April that she had faced slurs, harassment, and threats after she left the group – prompting her to file a police report.Sharp, who is 93 and campaigned for the May recall, described a harrowing encounter at a township meeting with a member of the America First Republicans in 2020. “He shouted, ‘You stupid F-ing women,’” said Sharp, and followed her and another longtime poll worker “all the way out into the parking lot”.The chair of the far-right group, Stone, said he opposed harassment and was unaware of threatening behavior by members. When asked about his past involvement with the Hutaree Militia – and community members concerned about militia activity in general – Stone pointed to his acquittal in a federal sedition case in 2012.“Anybody who’s got a problem with Hutaree Militia, why don’t you sit down and look and see what an acquittal means,” said Stone. “We’re 11 years past that, and people are still trying to drag this out.” The case followed an FBI sting which the prosecution claimed had found evidence the Hutaree were planning an armed revolt. Citing insufficient evidence of a concrete plan, a federal judge dismissed the sedition and conspiracy charges, leaving Stone with a weapons violation.The threat to elections in Hillsdale county is now twofold. While tensions in the community devolved into open hostility following the last presidential election, the infrastructure for elections administration has also been crumbling for years.Stephanie Scott, the election clerk who Roberts was elected to replace, spent much of her time in office casting doubts on the results of the 2020 election. She was stripped of her right to administer elections by Michigan’s secretary of state after she refused to submit voting machines for routine maintenance.Scott’s actions in office earned her national attention and support from conspiracy theorists like former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, who was part of Trump’s inner circle and peddled the president’s false claims about the 2020 election. Scott’s attorney, Stefanie Lambert, faces charges in connection with an alleged effort by Trump allies to illegally access voting machines in 2020.Voters in the conservative town – many of whom themselves questioned the 2020 election results – became exasperated with the divisive politics on the township board, and voted by 406-214 to oust Scott in May. In the same election they also removed township supervisor Mark Nichols, who supported Scott’s actions, and replaced him with township supervisor Randy Johnson. (Scott did not agree to an interview and did not answer questions for this story.)Since Roberts took over, things have gotten better.“We have a clerk that we can work with now,” said Abe Dane, the Hillsdale county chief deputy clerk whose office was temporarily tasked with running Adams Township elections after the state stripped Scott of her duties. “From that standpoint, it’s been a great improvement.”But the transition has its own challenges. Roberts is rushing to learn and implement new statewide elections policies ahead of 2024 while continuing to push back against false conspiracy theories. Videos have circulated on a local YouTube channel, alleging fraudsters in state government are sabotaging elections, while voting machines communicate with foreign countries on the internet.To run local elections, new clerks must learn to work with Michigan’s voter rolls and become fluent in policies governing voter registration, overseas voters, and absentee voting. On top of that, Michigan recently passed a constitutional amendment creating an early voting period and allowing people to permanently vote absentee – a move that will expand voting access but has administrators scrambling to implement the new rules.To make matters more complicated, Roberts said that parts of her office’s budget were in disarray when she came onboard. At a 9 October township meeting, Roberts alleged Scott was responsible for the “mess,” saying: “It has caused a lot of turmoil.” (Scott denied that the issues came from her tenure as clerk).Even basic logistical questions such as how to run early voting have become the source of controversy and misinformation, officials said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Adams Township board agreed to have local voters cast their early ballots at a single county-wide location shared with other towns rather than open up a separate voting location to limit extra work. But Scott loudly objected in a speech that a local rightwing group posted to YouTube, claiming the measure would compromise the security of elections.“You guys just sold out Adams Township,” she said.Scott has continued to attend township meetings, and she and her allies have decried “centralized elections”, invoking a conspiracy theory that state officials want to have fewer elections hubs so they can more easily rig the elections and accusing local officials of aiding that scheme.And those meetings have continued to be fraught.Gail McClanahan, who organized the recall campaign, said she was confronted by a handful of rightwing activists after a recent township board meeting. As she tried to leave, McClanahan said the group blocked her path threateningly. “They all four stood there, and I had to go out around,” said McClanahan, adding that they were “mouthing off” at her.McClanahan’s experience prompted Johnson, the new town supervisor, to warn attendees at the next township meeting to stay civil.“I would like to bring up a topic that really should never even have to be spoken,” he said in early October. “This is a public meeting. You should be able to come here, and be able to just listen to what’s said, voice your opinion, and when you leave that door you should be able to go home in peace.”While new policies are a hassle for elections officials and poll worker, the specter of violence is what keeps them up at night.Roberts said that currently the only safety net for her and the female poll workers she’s responsible for is if their husbands show up. She’s hoping the township will make more concrete security arrangements ahead of the 2024 elections.Until then, some officials are taking matters into their own hands.Dane, the Hillsdale county chief deputy clerk, has already developed an ad-hoc system for safety. He keeps a video call with law enforcement open throughout the day and carries an 800 megahertz radio while visiting municipal polling places in case he needs to immediately reach the police while in the field. And he’s sent along an emergency response document to the precincts for local poll workers.But the emergency protocols cover things like “inclement weather and power outages”, said Dane – nothing for if people “come in and unplug tabulators or threaten poll workers”.In May, Johnson told the Guardian he had received an anonymous call from someone who called him “dirty words” and told him he knew where he lived. Since then, Johnson’s wife Kitty says, they regularly receive threats. She didn’t want to get into detail, but called them “weird, crazy, scary calls”.“I said, ‘Randy, you know, you’re out of town a lot, and I’m getting a little bit worried about being here alone,’” she said. The couple installed a fortified fence around their property. More

Tuesday was a big night for the Democrats, with big wins in some unexpected places: Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky. Abortion rights advocates were celebrating, their hopes lifted ahead of next year’s presidential election, despite some gloomy polls for Joe Biden. Republicans, meanwhile, like the presidential candidates who took to the debate stage on Wednesday, are reeling.
So what do the results mean for 2024? Should Republicans rethink their message on abortion? And why is it that despite Donald Trump spending the week in court on trial for fraud, it’s Joe Biden who’s suffering in the polls?
Jonathan Freedland is joined by Tara Setmayer and Simon Rosenberg to discuss it all.

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Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed that multiple political parties approached him last year to see if he would run for US president, after a poll revealed 46% of Americans would support his campaign.Appearing as the first guest on Trevor Noah’s new Spotify podcast What Now?, the actor and former WWE wrestler said a 2021 poll of 30,000 American adults led to “the parties” contacting him to ask if he was interested in running at the end of 2022.“That was an interesting poll that happened and I was really moved by that,” Johnson said. “I was really blown away and I was really honoured. I’ll share this little bit with you: at the end of the year in 2022, I got a visit from the parties asking me if I was going to run, and if I could run.“It was a big deal, and it came out of the blue,” he added. “It was one after the other, and they brought up that poll, and they also brought up their own deep-dive research that would prove that should I ever go down that road [I’d be a real contender]. It was all very surreal because that’s never been my goal. My goal has never been to be in politics. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot about politics that I hate.”However, Johnson, who has described himself as a “centrist” and “political independent” and publicly endorsed US president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, has openly shared his interest in running in the past. In 2016 he told GQ: “I can’t deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring.” A year later he told Variety the 2024 presidential campaign was a “realistic consideration”.His sitcom Young Rock even hinges around him running for US president in 2032, with Johnson playing his future self as he gives interviews about moments in his early life that structure every episode.Responding to the aforementioned poll in 2021, Johnson wrote on Instagram: “I don’t think our Founding Fathers EVER envisioned a six-four, bald, tattooed, half-Black, half-Samoan, tequila drinking, pick up truck driving, fanny pack wearing guy joining their club – but if it ever happens it’d be my honour to serve you, the people.”But last year he seemed to have changed his mind, telling CBS Mornings it was “off the table” because of his duties as a parent of three daughters, who are now aged 22, seven and five.“The most important thing to me is being a daddy, number one, especially during this time, this critical time in my daughters’ lives,” he said.On Noah’s podcast, Johnson said his job as a wrestler often took him away from his eldest daughter, Simone, “and I don’t want that for my little ones now”.“That was one of my primary discussions with the parties, who were ultimately like, ‘Yeah, but the other ones have done it like this’,” he added.Johnson didn’t rule out running in the future, telling Noah: “If that’s ultimately what the people would want, then of course I would consider it.” More