US Politics

The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz spent time last weekend hobnobbing with Liz Truss, the shortest-serving British prime minister – but news closer to home suggested he might have reason to fear for his own job security.As reported by the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune, the Democratic congressman Colin Allred, Cruz’s most likely opponent for re-election next year, reported $10.9m raised since declaring his candidacy in May.That was nearly 20 times as much as Allred’s closest Democratic rival, but it was also, the papers said, almost $2m more than fundraising reported by Cruz in the same period.The hard-right Republican – who was elected to the Senate in 2012, prompted a government shutdown in 2013 and ran for president in 2016 – reportedly raised $8.8m in the same period.In an email to the Guardian, a spokesperson for Cruz contested the reported figures, pointing to a Fox News report earlier in October which said the senator “brought in $5.4m during the July-September third quarter of 2023 fundraising … up from the $4.4m he raised during the April-June second quarter of fundraising and the $1.8m he brought in during the first three months of 2023.“… The Cruz campaign says they entered October with over $6.7m cash on hand.”Either way, Allred, a former Tennessee Titans NFL linebacker elected to Congress from his native Dallas in 2018, presents a formidable figure.Revelling in the show of fundraising muscle, Allred’s campaign manager, Paige Hutchinson, told the Texas Tribune: “Texans’ enthusiasm to retire Ted Cruz – and to elect Colin Allred to the Senate – is reflected in this quarter’s amazing outpouring of grassroots support.”Allred does seem set to breeze to victory in the Democratic primary and therefore advance to challenge Cruz. His party, however, has had its hopes dashed in Texas before.In 2018, Beto O’Rourke, then a congressman, mounted a strong challenge to Cruz but fell short. O’Rourke parlayed resulting prominence in national progressive circles into a campaign for president in 2020 but that and a run for governor of Texas two years later also ended in disappointment.On Saturday, meanwhile, Cruz tweeted a photograph of himself with his wife, Heidi Cruz, and Truss.“We are so grateful for our British friends and for strong leaders on the global stage who will champion conservative principles and defend liberty,” Cruz said.Truss thanked the Cruzes for their “warm welcome in Houston” and said: “It’s vital that conservatives win the battle of ideas both in the US and UK. The time is now.”Truss was prime minister for 49 days last September and October. Historically speaking, that made her the shortest-serving PM of all. In terms of pop culture, as promoted by the Daily Star, a tabloid newspaper, she lasted less time than a lettuce. More

Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign has joined Truth Social, a rightwing social media platform created by the Republican former president Donald Trump.Using the handle @BidenHQ, the account says it is a “project of Biden-Harris 2024” and includes a banner image that says “the malarkey ends here”, referencing the president’s signature colloquialism.The campaign wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it joined Truth Social “mostly because we thought it would be very funny”.For its profile image, the campaign chose a depiction of Biden as “Dark Brandon”, a meme that shows Biden with laser eyes and stems from the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant rightwing circles used to stand in for saltier language against the president. The stunt is the latest in a line of quips and memes from the president’s digital team.While the new account is meant to be in jest, it’s clear the Biden campaign is also using it to reach conservatives. The first few posts today shared conservatives either giving Biden credit or criticizing Trump.“Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!” Biden’s campaign wrote in its first post on the platform.Biden’s camp told Fox News Digital that using Truth Social would “meet voters where they are” while also combatting misinformation about Biden that spreads on the platform.As mainstream social media platforms have attempted to clamp down on misinformation and hateful conduct on their sites, places like Truth Social have cropped up with missions to minimally moderate the content people post, allowing misinformation to spread more easily.The platform is not widely used. Estimates show that Truth Social has about 2 million users; Facebook has nearly 3 billion, while X has about a half-billion. More

A prominent professor at Louisiana’s largest public university has said he is resigning after an extremist Republican candidate won the state’s gubernatorial election – a victory some fear could accelerate the already conservative-dominated state’s march into unfettered rightwing governance.Robert Mann, a journalism professor at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication and a well-known political commentator, said he will step down at the end of the academic year in response to Jeff Landry’s victory in the election to become governor.Landry had previously called for Mann to be disciplined by LSU after the academic criticized him online.“I have this morning informed my dean that I will step down from my position at LSU at the end of the school year,” Mann posted on X.“My reasons are simple: the person who will be governor in January has already asked LSU to fire me. And I have no confidence the leadership of this university would protect the Manship School against a governor’s efforts to punish me and other faculty members.“I’ve seen too much cowardice and appeasement from top LSU officials already. That being the case, it’s clearly best to remove myself from the equation to avoid any harm to the school I love.“I’ll add that I’ve suspected for the past two years it would come to this, so I’ve been making plans for some time. The minute that I knew Landry wanted me fired and was willing to call the [university] president to demand it, I knew there would be dark days for LSU if he won.”Landry won a multi-party – or “jungle” – primary in Louisiana on Saturday with little meaningful resistance from the state’s Democratic party. He is preparing to be sworn in as governor in January after capturing a majority of the votes cast in Saturday’s race.As attorney general, Landry railed against coronavirus vaccine and masking requirements, and measures to address the climate crisis, which he has called “a hoax”.In 2020, he joined with other Republican attorneys general in a lawsuit which attempted to overturn the results of the election that saw Donald Trump lose the presidency to Joe Biden. Landry was endorsed by Trump in the gubernatorial race.Mann – once the communications director for late former Democratic Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco – became the subject of Landry’s ire in 2021 after criticizing the attorney general’s opposition to vaccine mandates.Landry, who sued the Biden administration after it mandated Covid vaccinations for federal contractors, had been opposed to stricter vaccine requirements at LSU. And he sent a representative to a university meeting where vaccines were discussed.In response, Mann tweeted: “Louisiana AG Jeff Landry sending some flunkie to the LSU Faculty Senate meeting today to read a letter attacking Covid vaccines is quite the move from a guy who considers himself ‘pro-life’.”Landry was unhappy with the characterization. He said he had spoken with the LSU president “and expressed my disdain and expectation for accountability”.He added: “This type of disrespect and dishonesty has no place in our society – especially at our flagship university by a professor. I hope LSU takes appropriate action soon.”Neither Landry nor LSU immediately responded to requests for comment.The outgoing Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, a centrist Democrat, has used his veto power to prevent some of the most extreme Republican legislation from passing in the state.Edwards issued 319 vetoes in his first seven and a half years as governor, including against a law which would have dropped compulsory school Covid vaccinations and a “don’t say gay” bill similar to the one in Florida, which would have banned teachers from mentioning sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.Landry’s victory means Louisiana will have a Republican governor and legislature, which will be eager to revisit efforts to enact those laws. More

Donald Trump has been issued a limited gag order by the federal judge overseeing the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, prohibiting him from making public statements attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential trial witnesses.The former president was not prohibited from generally disparaging the Biden administration, the US justice department and the trial venue of Washington DC, and will continue to be allowed to allege that the case was politically motivated.Those were the contours of a tailored protective order handed down on Monday by Tanya Chutkan, the US district judge who said she would enter a written ruling at a later date but warned Trump’s lawyers that any violation of the order could lead to immediate punitive sanctions.The ruling was the culmination of a two-hour hearing in federal district court after prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith had asked the judge to impose restrictions on Trump’s attacks that they felt could intimidate witnesses – and Chutkan agreed.“There is a real risk that witnesses may be intimidated,” Chutkan said as she explained her decision from the bench, adding that just because Trump was a 2024 presidential candidate and the GOP nomination frontrunner did not give him free rein to “launch a pre-trial smear campaign”.At issue were dozens of public remarks by Trump and Truth Social posts from him disparaging the case since he was indicted in August on charges he conspired to reverse his 2020 election defeat and obstructed the transfer of power, including the January 6 congressional certification.The judge separated into five categories Trump’s inflammatory comments about: the trial venire of Washington DC, the Biden administration and the justice department, Smith and his staff, Chutkan and her staff, as well as people who might be called to testify at trial.Chutkan appeared to have decided that she would not restrict Trump from disparaging the trial venue because biased jurors could be filtered out before trial. She also indicated she would not restrict Trump from attacking the government because it would be within the scope of political speech.But the judge took issue with Trump’s attacks on the special counsel. Chutkan repeatedly asked Trump’s lead lawyer John Lauro why the former president needed to call Smith a “thug” in order to suggest that the criminal case against him was politically motivated.In a contentious moment, Lauro asked rhetorically what Trump was supposed to do “in the face of oppression”. Chutkan sharply raised her finger and instructed him: “Let’s tone this down.”An aggrieved Lauro retorted: “If your honor wants to censor my speech.”The judge also took issue with Trump’s track record of attacking court staff. Chutkan suggested she was less concerned by Trump’s personal attacks on her as an “Obama-appointed hack” but was disturbed by his recent post in his New York civil fraud trial where he disparaged the judge’s clerk.Lauro tried to insist that the New York case was the New York case, and he repeated his assertion that nothing like that happened in this case. Chutkan disputed that claim with an exasperated laugh earlier in the hearing.The judge appeared most unconvinced by the Trump legal team’s contention that the former’s president’s statements against certain potential trial witnesses were not intimidating or might chill other witnesses from testifying against him at trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProsecutors had flagged, among others, attacks on Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff. “In times gone by,” one post said, “the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!”The Trump legal team had argued that prosecutors had no evidence that people like Milley or Trump’s former attorney general William Barr had felt intimidated by the former president’s criticisms of them, adding that they were high-profile public figures who were used to political rhetoric.But Chutkan remained skeptical. She told the Trump legal team that the ex-president, as a criminal defendant, did not have unfettered first amendment rights and did not get to respond to every criticism levelled by Milley or Barr or others.The point was buttressed by the assistant special counsel Molly Gaston who argued to the judge about Trump: “He isn’t campaigning – he’s using his campaign to intimidate witnesses and pollute the jury pool.”Before Chutkan finally made her decision, she ran through a list of four hypothetical Trump statements that she had drawn up. She asked Lauro to say whether he thought the statements violated the conditions of Trump’s release conditions about intimidation or should be permissible generally.The hypotheticals included one about if “Barr was a slimy liar”. Lauro responded half-jokingly he did not want to say that the truth was a defense but insisted that it was not intimidating.Chutkan appeared to disagree and suggested it impermissibly cast doubt on Barr’s testimony. More

The organization that placed a billboard at Harvard University accusing some students of antisemitism amid the fight between Israel and Hamas is part of a network of rightwing media organizations being funded by a major conservative donor via a shadowy new foundation.The single largest identified donor last year to Accuracy in Media (AIM), which placed the billboard, is the Informing America Foundation (IAF), formed in 2021, which has already dished out at least $8m to rightwing nonprofit and for-profit organizations, according to IRS filings.In turn, the IAF’s biggest donor is the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, a longstanding funder of rightwing causes whose founder and namesake sits on the IAF’s board.Last Wednesday, AIM parked a truck with a billboard affixed to it on Harvard’s campus, and the organization’s president Adam Guillette went on X, formerly Twitter, to brag about the action.The billboard featured photographs of students who are members of student groups that had signed a statement after Hamas’s attacks on Israel with a caption describing them as “Harvard’s biggest antisemites”. The organization also set up a page at a special URL, harvardhatesjews.com, to fundraise off the action.The statement drew criticism for saying it held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”. University leadership then came under fire from a former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, for not denouncing the student statement and for failing to make a stronger condemnation of Hamas.The billboard action was just the latest billboard stunt from AIM under Guillette, who has taken the 55-year old organization in a more confrontational direction.In recent months the organization has also mounted billboard campaigns against pro-Democrat social media influencer, Harry Sisson, and targeted lawmakers in Loudon, Virginia, who subsequently accused the group of harassment.AIM also publishes media criticism of outlets it considers progressive, and its columnists exhibit a preoccupation with outlets such as video news outlet Now This, Vice News and Teen Vogue.According to AIM and IAF tax filings, IAF donated $166,666 in contributions to AIM in 2022, more than 18% of the $908,474 in contributions and grants AIM declared for that year. Tax filings from the Vanguard Charitable Foundation indicate a separate contribution of $300,000 to AIM but the contributor is not identified, leaving IAF as the most significant identified donor. (Donor-advised funds are not required to disclose the identity of donors in tax filings and have thus been criticized as vectors of “dark money” to political nonprofits).But the Guardian can reveal that AIM is just one node in a network of rightwing media and activist organizations IAF is bankrolling, according to its filings.According to the publicly available tax returns, the organization has submitted since its founding in 2021, IAF has handed out more than $8m to rightwing for-profit and nonprofit organizations.In 2022, according to its tax documents, IAF donated $900,000 to Empower Oversight (formerly Empower Whistleblower Center), a nonprofit founded in 2021 to assist whistleblowers and run by three former staffers of Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. That organization’s mission statement says it is a “nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to enhancing independent oversight of government and corporate wrongdoing”.The Guardian emailed Empower Oversight for comment. In response, a spokesperson wrote that the organization was “a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization” that “works with whistleblowers regardless of their political affiliations” and holds accountable “officials from both major political parties”, pointing out that the Biden administration had appointed Empower president Tristan Leavitt to the Merit Systems Protection Board before he joined the organization in 2023.Other organizations on IAF’s donor list have a far more ideological edge, however. They include Star News Digital Media, a for-profit company that operates a network of so-called “pink slime” news sites that present themselves as local media outlets, but mostly recycle slanted stories and rightwing talking points across the network.The network was founded by three former Tea Party activists in 2017, and its outlets across 15 states have been called “Baby Breitbarts”.Real Clear Foundation, a news nonprofit, received $250,000 from the IAF in 2022. Like Empower Oversight, the 501(c)(3) organization presents itself as a nonprofit, but most of the aggregated news and original investigations on the foundation’s site at the time of reporting were directed at Democrats and specifically Joe Biden.A New York Times investigation in 2020 detailed how coverage in sites run by the Real Clear Foundation swung right during the Trump era, fueled by donations from rightwing foundations and dark money.The Guardian emailed a Real Clear Foundation spokesperson for comment but received no response.The IAF’s largest donation was to Bentley Media Group, which operates a rightwing media site called Just The News. According to Washington DC company records, Bentley Media Group’s directors include John Beck, also listed as chief operating officer of Just The News, and John Solomon, a former Washington Times, the Hill and AP reporter who is also listed as Just The News’s editor-in-chief.Beyond funding Bentley Media and Just The News, IAF’s otherwise bare-bones website highlights years-old stories from the website, and lists the two organizations together in the footer of the site.The precise relationship between the for-profit Bentley Media Group and the IAF was not clear on the site or in filings from the organizations.The IAF supported 12 rightwing media and activist organizations in 2022 according to its filings; the average donation was around $425,000.IAF chief executive Debbie Myers has a long history in the entertainment industry, with stints at a CBS affiliate and the Discovery Channel. More recently, according to her LinkedIn and contemporaneous reporting, Myers was president and chief executive of Gingrich 360, a media company founded by the Republican former House speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista.The IAF itself has benefited from remarkable donor largesse in the short time since it was founded, receiving $14.3m in just two years, per its tax filings.Those filings indicate that its largest single donor is the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation (DDSF), whose founder, executive chairman and namesake Diana Davis Spencer also sits on the IAF’s board.The DDSF gave the IAF $1.5m in 2021, according to its tax filing for that year, the most recent one that is publicly available.The DDSF was reportedly instrumental in funding a network of voter suppression groups in the wake of the 2020 election and is a successor organization to foundations founded by Spencer’s parents, who were also sponsors of rightwing organizations.Spencer’s father, Shelby Cullom Davis, was an investment banker who served as the US ambassador to Switzerland under the Ford and Nixon administrations and was later chairman of the board of the rightwing Heritage Foundation from 1985 to 1992. More

Will Hurd wanted to be the most powerful man in the world. Like so many candidates before him, he knew the loneliness of the long distance runner criss-crossing Iowa and New Hampshire in a quest for votes that might make him president of the United States. But it was not be.This week Hurd called it a day after a campaign that failed to make much of a splash. Indeed, arguably his biggest headline came in July when he declared, “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison,” and was roundly booed at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner. Unrepentant, Hurd told them: “Listen, I know the truth is hard.”It was a telling moment that said much about the Republican party in 2023, cult-like in its devotion to Trump – he remains the runaway favourite for the nomination – and blocking its ears to dissenters making the case that it is time to move on from a doubly impeached, quadruply indicted septuagenarian.Still, in a phone interview from his home in San Antonio, Texas, Hurd – who got married last New Year’s Eve – insists that he has no regrets. “Look, running for president in my first year of marriage was incredibly difficult and it goes back to: why are you doing it?” he says. “For me, it was always very clear.“I’ve been lucky to have some amazing experiences and America is at an inflection point: if we want to make sure we leave this country better off for our kids, we’ve got to start making better decisions now. For me, that was always in my mind, that’s everything that I focused on when I woke up. It was never like, why the hell am I doing this? I knew exactly why I was doing this.”Hurd, 46, is no stranger to the campaign trail. He served three terms in the House of Representatives and was the chamber’s sole Black Republican during his final two years in office. He represented Texas’s then most competitive district, which was heavily Hispanic and stretched from the outskirts of San Antonio to El Paso, spanning more than 800 miles of US-Mexico border.But with the Republican party still in thrall to Trump, Hurd, a trenchant critic of the then president, chose not to seek re-election in 2020, saying he would instead focus his energies on technology companies in the national security domain. Last year he travelled the country promoting his book American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done.Hurd was the last major candidate to join the already crowded Republican presidential primary field when he announced his run in late July. He campaigned as a pragmatic, pro-business moderate with strong national security credentials who was unafraid to seek bipartisan consensus. He took on the grind of countless hours on planes, in hotels and away from family with good grace.“What is it like to run for president?” he muses. “It’s a lot of travel. It’s a lot of interviews. I have the experience of running for Congress before but running for president, because you’re doing so much, is more raw and authentic. It’s not as staged as some of the other experiences I’ve had. To be in a position to run for president and be taken seriously was an honour. I’m going to always look at this experience fondly.”Hurd’s 14-week foray delivered moments he won’t soon forget. On 11 September he joined first responders and people from Iowa on a 21-mile walking salute to those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. At campaign stops, the crowds were often bigger than he expected or had experienced when hustling as a relative unknown in west Texas.“You’d meet some great people. I met this seven-year-old kid in New Hampshire who was super space and the fact that he asked his dad to travel like 90 minutes to come see me talk because he read something I wrote about space. That’s pretty big and cool.”Nine in 10 people in Iowa and New Hampshire are white. Democrats, for their part, have revised their 2024 presidential primary schedule, replacing Iowa with the more racially diverse South Carolina as the leadoff voting state. Hurd, the son of a Black father and white mother, has written about the racism he endured as a teenager and entitled the first part of his book: “The GOP needs to look like America.”But he denies encountering racial prejudice on the trail. “I did not experience any of that. The folks in Iowa and New Hampshire recognise and understand the important role they play in setting the tone of the country and part of that is why a dark horse candidate like me even had a chance to potentially try to catch fire.”Even so, it has been hard for anyone to find a divine spark when confronting the Trump forest fire that has consumed the Republican party for eight years. Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s challenge faded in recent months while other candidates struggled to transcend the quixotic.Asked if there was a moment when they all realised just how formidable Trump still is, notwithstanding his electoral setbacks and legal woes, Hurd replies: “I went in with that clear-minded. I knew that Donald Trump was starting with the largest base and in a place like New Hampshire I think that’s a third of the electorate, a third of the Republican primary voter.“But there’s more people that are considering somebody other than Donald Trump. There are other people that are frustrated with the direction both parties are going that want to be inspired. I also evaluate that in 2020 his support in the Republican primary electorate was 98% so he is without doubt damaged goods. People that voted for Donald Trump twice that still like him recognise his baggage is going to be more harmful than helpful.”What were Hurd’s conversations with Trump supporters like on the campaign trail – did he try to change their minds? “It’s funny, a couple times, especially in New Hampshire, you show up somewhere and someone’s wearing a Trump hat and then after you speak they’re like, ‘Can we get a picture?’ and they take the Trump hat off.“Supporters of other candidates – that’s their right and they should be proud of that. But the opportunity to articulate my positions was great and so I did that everywhere and people were open to having a conversation and I always engage people regardless of who they ultimately supported.“What makes this country great is to be able to have that competition of ideas and this experience proved to me, especially on the ground, we can disagree without being disagreeable and I saw that with the actual voters. I’m optimistic about the future of the country because of the people that I met.”But Hurd and his fellow candidates have faced their share of criticism for, at best, embarking on vanity projects with a view to becoming a TV pundit or Trump’s vice-president and, at worst, splitting the anti-Trump vote and effectively handing him the nomination. He rejects the charge.“The Republican party is supposed to be the party of the competition of ideas. We’re meant to have a diversity of thought and I’ve always said that having a number of people to put their message out there and offer different perspectives is valuable. Donald Trump as the GOP nominee is not inevitable but we put ourselves in a better position by starting to consolidate if there’s not a clear path to victory.”For all his efforts, Hurd barely registered in opinion polls of Republican voters. When he failed to qualify for the first two presidential primary debates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Simi Valley, California, the writing was on the wall. This week he followed the Miami mayor, Francis Suarez, who became the first presidential hopeful to suspend his campaign shortly after failing to make the first debate stage.He explains: “I’ve always been honest, and so when I knew that our pathway to victory was going to be incredibly tough, I had to be honest with supporters and event planners and people that were hosting things, and so that’s why the timeline is what it is.”Hurd is throwing his weight behind Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ex-US ambassador to the UN, who has been steadily gaining ground as the leading Trump alternative. Her campaign reported that she raised more than $11m between July and September and this week George Will, an influential Washington Post columnist, called on South Carolina senator Tim Scott and other contenders to drop out and rally around the “experienced, polished, steely and unintimidated” Haley.Hurd says: “Running for president is as much about organisation as it is ideas and she has been able to do that. When it comes to areas like how do you create a strong economy, how you deal with our foreign policy, those are things that I’m aligned with her and she has the best chance. There’s a lot of great people in this race and a lot of them are my friends but Nikki has the momentum to win.”Hurd joined the CIA in 2000 and, after 9/11, spent eight years on the frontlines of the “war on terror” including Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Now the world again appears to be catching fire with unpredictable consequences. While Trump and others preach “America First” isolationism, Hurd believes that Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN, is most able to meet the moment.“People are nervous, especially with what’s happening now in Israel, two wars going on, the threat that the Chinese government poses to the US and our allies,” he adds. “People want a leader who understands these issues, who’s going to have a steady hand, and right now that’s Ambassador Haley.”Hurd sounds upbeat for a man who has just joined all those other White House hopefuls on the boulevard of broken dreams. His bio on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, still describes him as “Candidate for President. Common sense Republican. Husband.”Anyone seeking Hurd 2024 merchandise on his campaign website, however, might be out of luck. “No products were found matching your selection,” it says. More

A federal judge is expected to consider on Monday whether to impose a limited gag order on Donald Trump in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, potentially restricting what he can say about potential trial witnesses and prosecutors.The decision for US district judge Tanya Chutkan at the hearing, scheduled for 10am in Washington, comes with unique challenges given the potential for Trump to test the limits of a protective order or even flout it outright – opening the explosive sanctions question of whether to jail him in response.Since Trump was charged in August with conspiring to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power, prosecutors have complained in court filings that Trump has made dozens of prejudicial statements that could intimidate people from testifying against him at trial and poison the jury pool.The filings cited, in particular, Trump’s posts attacking his former vice-president, Mike Pence, for testifying during the criminal investigation, and posts suggesting the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff Gen Mark Milley, another potential trial witness, should be executed.“In times gone by,” Trump wrote in one post of Milley and his move to insulate the US defense department at the end of the Trump administration, “the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!”The proposed gag order drafted by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, would limit Trump and his lawyers from making public statements about the identity or testimony of prospective witnesses, and allow Trump to say only he denied the charges “without further comment”.Trump’s lawyers have responded by saying prosecutors were absurd to argue high-profile public officials would be intimidated by his social media posts, and characterized the gag order request as infringing on Trump’s first amendment rights as he makes another bid for the White House.The motion for a protective order against Trump marks a tricky situation for the judge, because ruling in favor of prosecutors could also inadvertently play into Trump’s hands.There is little precedent for how Chutkan should approach the issue of a gag order, balancing the strong constitutional protections for political speech in a case that could affect the outcome of the presidential election against ensuring the proper administration of the judicial process.Trump and his lawyers have made clear for months that they want the public to falsely think the 2020 election case is about whether he had a first amendment right to say it was stolen, even though the charges are actually concerned with obstruction and defrauding the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf Chutkan grants the gag order, and directly restricts what Trump can say, that could be used by the Trump campaign as additional fodder to malign the case as politically-motivated or unfair – which could have the same prejudicial effect on the case prosecutors were trying to prevent.There is also the question of what Chutkan would do if Trump decided to skirt the edges of the order or defy it completely. Even if Trump was fined for contempt, Trump could decide it was just a price of doing business, and Chutkan might be confronted with the prospect of jail to enforce it.That step would be legally and politically explosive and, rather than risking such a course, Chutkan could decide to cycle through other options to limit Trump from attacking prosecutors or potential trial witnesses; for instance, she has previously said she might move up the trial date.The trial in this case is currently set to start on 4 March 2024, a day before the busiest date on the presidential primary election calendar, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses. More

Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries confirmed Sunday that “informal conversations have been underway” for a bipartisan solution to the leadership crisis in the US House of Representatives.The legislative chamber has been without a speaker since 5 October when Republican right-wingers voted to remove California’s Kevin McCarthy from his position and Democrats did not step in with votes to secure him, effectively paralyzing the body.Since then, Steve Scalise of Louisiana has failed to get enough support from his own party to win a vote to get the role. Next up is set to be Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan of Ohio, but it remains doubtful whether he too can garner enough votes to succeed.New York Democrat Jeffries, the House minority leader, told NBC’s Meet the Press that he is anticipating discussions next week when lawmakers return to Washington on Monday. “It’s important to begin to formalize those discussions,” he said, but warned that Democrats want to ensure that “extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda”.“The current rules of the House have facilitated a handful of Republicans being able to determine what gets voted on,” he added. “We want to ensure that votes are taken on bills that have substantial Democratic support and substantial Republican support so that the extremists aren’t able to dictate the agenda.”But what exactly the nature of any solution to the paralyzing chaos might be remains unclear.Jeffries declined to say if he would allow Democrat representatives to vote for a Republican speaker as a way of ushering one into power, given the apparent inability of any Republican to unite their members.“We have not identified any candidate on the other side of the aisle because our focus is not on the individual. It’s on the institution of Congress,” he said.He added that Republicans had a simple choice. “They can either double or triple down on the chaos, dysfunction, and extremism. Or, let’s have a real conversation about changing the rules of the House so it can work in the best interests of the American people.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe election of a new speaker has important implications: lawmakers have until the middle of November to pass a new bill ensuring the funding of the US government, which runs to approximately $6.3tn a year, after securing a 45-day funding package extension in late September.Asked if Democrats will stall any intervention until the imminent approach of a shutdown, Jeffries said that his party was “not the party of government shutdowns” and Democrats are prepared to enter into an agreement to avoid a debt default as it had in May.“More than 300 members of Congress supported that agreement, which included top-line spending numbers, so that we would avert a government shutdown and could lean in to providing for the health, the safety and the economic well-being of the American people.” More