US Politics

The rapper Eminem has demanded that Vivek Ramaswamy cease using his music.In a letter reported by the Daily Mail, a representative for the rapper’s publisher told counsel for the Republican presidential hopeful that Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, objected to Ramaswamy’s use of his compositions and was revoking a license to use them.The letter, dated 23 August, became public weeks after Ramaswamy, 38, a financial investor and politics newcomer, mounted an impromptu performance of Lose Yourself by Eminem at the Iowa State Fair, bemusing many Republicans but securing a measure of internet renown.Ramaswamy also grabbed the spotlight last Wednesday, at the first Republican debate in Wisconsin. His angry and blustering performance, including clashes with other candidates and a claim that “the climate change agenda is a hoax”, harvested significant media coverage.The Guardian has reported on how Ramaswamy’s claims to be a political outsider stand in contrast to deep links to rightwing donors and influencers, including Peter Thiel and Leonard Leo.Ramaswamy’s love for rap, and for Eminem in particular, has been widely reported. When he was a Harvard undergraduate, the future biotech entrepreneur rapped under the name “Da Vek”. He also told the Crimson, the Harvard campus newspaper, Lose Yourself by Eminem was his personal theme.“I consider myself a contrarian,” Ramaswamy said then. “I like to argue.”In its letter to the Ramaswamy campaign, Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) said it “will consider any performance of the Eminem works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach of the agreement for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies”.In a statement to the Mail, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy referred to another Eminem song: “Vivek just got on the stage and cut loose. To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to The Real Slim Shady.” More

From 2h agoDonald Trump, whose attorneys proposed holding his trial on federal charges related to overturning the 2020 election in 2026, today vowed to appeal a federal judge’s decision to start the proceedings on 4 March of next year.“Today a biased, Trump Hating Judge gave me only a two month extension, just what our corrupt government wanted, SUPER TUESDAY. I will APPEAL!” the former president wrote on his Truth social account, referencing the multi-state Republican primary that will take place the day after his trial begins.Citing legal experts, Reuters reports that trial dates are typically not subject to appeal.An elected Democratic prosecutor whose removal Ron DeSantis boasted about during the first Republican presidential debate said the hard-right Florida governor and his allies ousted her because she was “prosecuting their cops”.Law enforcement agencies in central Florida were “all working against me”, Monique Worrell told the Daily Beast, “because I was prosecuting their cops, the ones who used to do things and get away with them”. She added:
They thought that I was overly critical of law enforcement and didn’t do anything against ‘real criminals’. Apparently there’s a difference between citizens who commit crimes and cops who commit crimes.
In Florida, DeSantis has removed two elected Democratic prosecutors: Andrew Warren of Hillsborough county in August 2022 and Worrell earlier this month.Warren said he would not enforce an abortion ban signed by the governor. The prosecutor sued to regain his job but has so far failed, even though a judge found DeSantis to be in the wrong.Worrell previously responded to her removal by calling DeSantis a “weak dictator” seeking to create a “smokescreen for [a] failing and disastrous presidential campaign”.Former Trump campaign lawyer Ray Smith, one of the 19 defendants charged in Georgia as part of the sweeping indictment in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, has waived his arraignment and entered a plea of not guilty, according to a court filing.The filing states:
It is counsel’s understanding that by filing this waiver of arraignment, prior to the arraignment date, that Mr. Smith and the undersigned counsel are excused from appearing at the arraignment calendar on September 6, 2023.
From Atlanta’s 11Alive News’ Faith Jessie:The anti-Trump group, the Republican Accountability Project, is launching a six-figure ad campaign targeting Donald Trump over his indictment in Georgia.The group announced that it will run 60-second ads on Fox News in Phoenix, Milwaukee and Atlanta, focusing on the former president’s four indictment, in which he was charged with 13 counts over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.As part of the campaign the group will be putting up a billboard in Times Square featuring Trump’s mug shot with the 91 charges facing Trump scrolling by next to him.The House Appropriations Committee could consider amendments to a bill that would strip federal funding from prosecutors who are pursuing charges against Donald Trump.House Freedom Caucus member Andrew Clyde, a member of the committee, announced plans for two amendments to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) fiscal 2024 appropriations bill that would “prohibit the use of federal funding for the prosecution of any major presidential candidate prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 5th, 2024”, a press release said.Clyde said he intends to “defund” the efforts by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump in relation to hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, special counsel Jack Smith, who led dcharges against Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump in relation to his 2020 election subversion efforts in Georgia.In a statement, the congressman from Georgia said:
Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars have no place funding the radical Left’s nefarious election interference efforts.
Bryan Hughes’ support of HB 3058 signals a new strategy by Republicans to insulate abortion bans from scrutiny by creating narrow exceptions for medical emergencies.Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said:
There’s a feeling that abortion rights supporters are using those medical cases to delegitimize abortion bans altogether.
HB 3058 was first introduced in the aftermath of an explosive lawsuit in which five women denied abortions in Texas, along with two doctors, sued the state after they were refused care despite suffering severe complicationswith their pregnancies.The horror stories that emerged from that lawsuit threatened public support of the Texas abortion ban.Ziegler said:
Republicans can now point to these new exceptions and say, ‘Look, that kind of thing doesn’t happen any more’.
State representative Ann Johnson said that Texas Republicans genuinely wanted to address the problems raised by the lawsuit – even staunch abortion opponents do not want the state’s ban linked to dangerous delays in medical treatment. She said:
That’s hard for people to politically justify.
A Texas law about to take effect on Friday carves out exceptions to the state’s abortion ban.In June, the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, quietly signed HB 3058, allowing doctors to provide abortion care when a patient’s water breaks too early for the fetus to survive, or when a patient is suffering from an ectopic pregnancy.Crafted by state representative Ann Johnson, HB 3058 appeared to be a rare bipartisan victory in a fiercely conservative state legislature. Johnson, a Democrat who supports abortion access, found an unlikely ally in state senator Bryan Hughes, the Republican who crafted Texas’s infamous “bounty hunter” law, which allows citizens to sue abortion providers as well as anyone who “aids or abets” abortion care.Johnson and her fellow Texas Democrats welcomed the bill’s passage as a small but important compromise to improve reproductive health in the state.But abortion rights advocates across the country said HB 3058 offers little help to Texas doctors treating high-risk pregnancies.Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said:
The exceptions in the bill are so narrow, and the penalties for violating the Texas ban are so high, that invariably, a lot of doctors are going to continue not to offer abortion in those situations because they don’t want to get in trouble.
The hearing that will determine whether the trial of Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in the Georgia election subversion case takes place in federal court is continuing today, with no decision yet made public. Here’s a recap from the Guardian’s Mary Yang on today’s events and why they’re important, including the significance of Meadow’s surprise decision to take the witness stand:Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, has testified for nearly three hours in a hearing to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court on Monday.Meadows was charged alongside Trump and 17 other defendants for conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in a Georgia superior court. He faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer.But Meadows is arguing that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.According to the indictment, Meadows arranged the infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, where the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to block Biden’s victory.He also at one point instructed a White House aide to draft a strategy memo for “disrupting and delaying” the electoral certification process on 6 January 2021, according to the indictment. Yet Meadows denied doing that on Monday, calling it the “biggest surprise”.Meadows testified for about three hours on Monday, surprising legal experts who widely expected him to keep mum.Donald Trump, whose attorneys proposed holding his trial on federal charges related to overturning the 2020 election in 2026, today vowed to appeal a federal judge’s decision to start the proceedings on 4 March of next year.“Today a biased, Trump Hating Judge gave me only a two month extension, just what our corrupt government wanted, SUPER TUESDAY. I will APPEAL!” the former president wrote on his Truth social account, referencing the multi-state Republican primary that will take place the day after his trial begins.Citing legal experts, Reuters reports that trial dates are typically not subject to appeal.Ron DeSantis has canceled some presidential campaign events and returned to Florida to deal with a racist shooting in Jacksonville and an approaching tropical storm that is expected to turn into a hurricane, Politico reports.The Florida governor traveled to Jacksonville on Sunday, a day after a gunman who left behind manifestos peppered with racial slurs opened fire at a Dollar General store, killing three people. During an event in which DeSantis was booed, the governor pledge $1m to help a historically Black college improve security, and $100,000 to a charity on behalf of the victim’s families.Politico reports that DeSantis plans to stay in the state as Idalia, a tropical storm that is expected to become a hurricane, moves closer to the Gulf coast:Joe Biden said earlier today he has spoken to DeSantis, both to offer support for the expected storm damage, and condolences for the shooting victims. The two men are political rivals, but have in the past made appearances together in the Sunshine state in the aftermath of disasters:Meanwhile, Politico has obtained the schedule of Donald Trump’s federal trial in Washington DC on charges related to overturning the 2020 election:The trial itself begins on 4 March 2024, per judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling today.Atlanta’s 11Alive News has published sketches from inside the courtroom as Mark Meadows testifies in his bid to be tried in federal court:No electronic devices are permitted inside the courtroom, hence the employment of sketch artists.In an ongoing hearing where a judge will determine whether to move his trial in the election subversion case to federal court, Mark Meadows has argued that he became involved in Georgia’s 2020 polls in his capacity as White House chief of staff, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.In order to succeed in his bid to have the charges brought against him by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, tried in federal rather than state court, Meadows will need to convince a judge that he was acting in his capacity as a White House official when he traveled to Georgia and spoke with its leaders. Citing legal experts, the Journal-Constitution reports that is “a fairly low threshold to clear if valid arguments can be made”.“I don’t know that I did anything that was outside my scope as chief of staff,” Meadows testified in an unexpected appearance on the witness stand during what has been called a “mini-trial” in Judge Steve Jones’s court today, who will decide whether to grant his request.Cross examined by special prosecutor Anna Cross, the Journal-Constitution reports Meadows defended his conduct as part of his role as chief of staff, saying he wanted “to make sure elections are accurate. I would assume that has a federal nexus.”Jones has not yet ruled.Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who has been testifying at his hearing to move his trial to federal court, described his time serving under Donald Trump as “challenging”.At the federal courthouse in Atlanta, Meadows described his duties as the former president’s chief of staff, which included meeting with state officials. Meadows is arguing that his case should be moved and subsequently dismissed because he has immunity from prosecution for carrying out what he says were his duties as a federal official.Speaking about his time at the White House, Meadows said:
Those were challenging times, bluntly.
“I don’t know if anyone was fully prepared for that type of job,” he added.On Sunday, Ron DeSantis was jeered while speaking at a memorial that drew a crowd of nearly 200 to remember the victims of the Dollar General shooting.“He don’t care,” an attendee shouted as DeSantis was being introduced, the Hill reported.At one point, a council member came to DeSantis’s defense and attempted to quiet the crowd, but the booing continued.“It ain’t about parties today,” said Jacksonville city councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman. “A bullet don’t know a party.”DeSantis referred to the shooter as a “major-league scumbag” in his remarks, adding that Florida opposed racist violence.“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”Florida governor Ron DeSantis has announced $1m for heightened security at a historically Black college, a day after he was booed at a memorial gathering for victims of a deadly racist shooting in his state.DeSantis said his administration would give $1m to Edward Waters University to enhance its security after the gunman in this weekend’s racist killings at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville tried to enter the historically Black college but was denied entry.DeSantis said that an additional $100,000 would be given to a charity for the victims’ families. “As I’ve said for the last couple of days, we are not going to allow our HBCUs to be targeted by these people,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to provide security help with them.”DeSantis’s funding measure comes as he faces criticism for limiting Black history education in Florida, a move that many have condemned as racist.DeSantis has also come under renewed scrutiny for his support of expanded gun access in his state. The Florida governor signed legislation in April that allows resident to carry concealed guns without a permit.Donald Trump saw a slight drop in support among Republican primary voters after skipping the first GOP debate last week, according to a new poll.The poll by Emerson College, which was conducted 25-26 August, found that 50% of GOP primary voters said they plan to vote for the former president, down from 56% in a pre-debate survey. Trump still maintains a huge 38% lead over his closest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis.Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley had the biggest post-debate gain, jumping from 2% to 7%. DeSantis gained two points to 12%.Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement:
While Trump saw a slight dip in support, the question from this poll is whether this is a blip for Trump or if the other Republican candidates will be able to rally enough support to be competitive for the caucus and primary season.
After four arrests in as many months, Donald Trump has now been charged with 91 felony counts across criminal cases in New York, Florida, Washington and Georgia. The former president and current frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary faces the threat of prison time if he is convicted.As Trump attempts to delay his criminal trials, civil lawsuits endanger the former president’s financial and business prospects. A New York jury has already found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E Jean Carroll, awarding her $5m in damages. A separate civil inquiry, led by New York attorney general Letitia James, seeks $250 million that the Trump Organization allegedly obtained through fraud.Here’s where each case against Trump stands. More

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, who shot to brief fame during the 2008 US presidential election as “Joe the Plumber”, has died aged 49. Cause of death was pancreatic cancer, his wife, Katie Wurzelbacher, told news outlets.Fifteen years ago, Wurzelbacher became famous after arguing with the then Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, on the campaign trail in Toledo, Ohio. Wurzelbacher asked Obama if he would pay more taxes if the Democrat won. Obama, then a US senator from Illinois, conceded that he might.Wurzelbacher then told Family Security Matters, a rightwing group: “Initially, I started off asking him if he believed in the American dream and he said yes, he does – and then I proceeded to ask him, then, why he’s penalising me for trying to fulfill it.”Defining his own American dream as “a house, a dog, a couple rifles, a bass boat”, Wurzelbacher said he told Obama he wanted to buy his own business but feared the Democrat wanted “to redistribute [his money] to other people”.Fame followed. As the Guardian put it: “The 2008 US presidential election belongs to just one man: Joe the Plumber. On Saturday Joe Wurzelbacher was, well, an ordinary Joe. Or to use a Sarah Palinism [McCain’s running mate, then Alaska governor], a Joe Six Pack. Yesterday he woke to find himself transformed into an international phenomenon.”In the final debate, the Republican candidate, Arizona senator John McCain, repeatedly invoked “Joe the Plumber” as an everyman who stood to suffer under Obama. Looking into the camera, McCain said: “Joe, I want to tell ya. I’ll keep your taxes low.”Obama won – and Wurzelbacher’s brush with fame soured with revelations that he was both not a fully licensed plumber and owed more than $1,000 in taxes.He did not say which way he voted in 2008 but he did run for Congress as a Republican in 2010, the year of the far-right Tea Party wave. Wurzelbacher won the GOP nomination to contest Ohio’s ninth US House district but lost heavily in November.On Monday, Tom LoBianco, a reporter and biographer of current Republican presidential hopeful Mike Pence, said: “Every time I hear about Ivy League folks running as ‘populists’, it’d make me wonder about Joe the Plumber and why you don’t get more actual blue-collar candidates.”LoBianco also linked Wurzelbacher’s brush with fame to current arguments over the song Rich Men North of Richmond and its author, the factory worker turned singer Oliver Anthony.News of Wurzelbacher’s death, LoBianco said, “meshes with … Oliver Anthony asking politicos to stop stealing his tune for their benefit. When I’m on the trail talking with ‘normies’ outside the political bubble … the anger and frustration tends to be broad-based, not cleanly targeted.” More

An elected Democratic prosecutor whose removal Ron DeSantis boasted about during the first Republican presidential debate said the hard-right Florida governor and his allies ousted her because she was “prosecuting their cops”.Law enforcement agencies in central Florida were “all working against me”, Monique Worrell told the Daily Beast, “because I was prosecuting their cops, the ones who used to do things and get away with them”.She added: “They thought that I was overly critical of law enforcement and didn’t do anything against ‘real criminals’. Apparently there’s a difference between citizens who commit crimes and cops who commit crimes.”DeSantis has long polled second to Donald Trump in national and key state surveys of the Republican primary but he remains far behind, most observers saying his campaign is stalling.In Florida, he has removed two elected Democratic prosecutors: Andrew Warren of Hillsborough county in August 2022 and Worrell earlier this month.Warren said he would not enforce an abortion ban signed by the governor. The prosecutor sued to regain his job but has so far failed, even though a judge found DeSantis to be in the wrong.Worrell previously responded to her removal by calling DeSantis a “weak dictator” seeking to create a “smokescreen for [a] failing and disastrous presidential campaign”.In his debate-stage boast in Wisconsin last week, DeSantis blamed “hollowed-out cities … a symptom of America’s decline” on “radical leftwing district attorneys [who] say they’re not going to prosecute crimes they disagree with”.“There’s one guy in this entire country that’s ever done anything about that,” he said. “Me, when we had two of these district attorneys in Florida … who said they wouldn’t do their job, I removed them from their post. They are gone and as president we are going to go after all of these people.”Speaking to the Beast, in a report published on Monday, Worrell said an “ambush” by the governor’s law enforcement allies preceded the decision to fire her, including a recorded call in which the Orlando county sheriff complained about a failure to jail a known gang member who was caught with a gun.Worrell told the site: “They took him into custody – without a warrant. Went into his pants pocket – without a warrant. Clicked key fob – without warrant. Went in [to his car] – without warrant.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There’s this little thing called ‘unreasonable search and seizure’ and you can’t get evidence without a warrant. We were unable to go forward with charges because it was an illegal search and seizure. And we had lots of communication with the sheriff’s office about this case, trying to salvage the case.“As the state attorney, we’re not here to rubber-stamp what the sheriff’s office does. We can’t condone that.”Worrell also told the Beast that at the time she was fired, for what DeSantis called “neglect of duty and incompetence”, her team was uncovering “all sorts of illegal activity” in an investigation of the Osceola county sheriff.Saying she would soon decide whether to sue to get her job back, Worrell also said she was planning to run for re-election next year – a race which would likely pit her against DeSantis’s hand-picked replacement. More

Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff under Donald Trump, has testified for nearly three hours in a hearing to move his Georgia election interference case from state to federal court on Monday.Meadows was charged alongside Trump and 17 other defendants for conspiring to subvert the 2020 election in a Georgia superior court. He faces two felony charges, including racketeering and solicitation of a violation of oath by a public officer.But Meadows is arguing that he acted in his capacity as a federal officer and thus is entitled to immunity – and that his case should be heard before a federal judge.Meadows swiftly filed a motion to move his case to the federal US district court of northern Georgia after Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, handed down her indictment.According to the indictment, Meadows arranged the infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, where the former president asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to block Biden’s victory.He also at one point instructed a White House aide to draft a strategy memo for “disrupting and delaying” the electoral certification process on 6 January 2021, according to the indictment. Yet Meadows denied doing that on Monday, calling it the “biggest surprise”.Meadows testified for about three hours on Monday, surprising legal experts who widely expected him to keep mum.“Those were challenging times, bluntly,” said Meadows, testifying about his time as Trump’s chief of staff during the pandemic and through the 2020 election, according to CNN. “I don’t know if anyone was fully prepared for that type of job.”He also testified that his duties involved sitting in on nearly all of Trump’s meetings, which he would help arrange with various states and agencies, according to ABC News. “There was a political component to everything that we did,” said Meadows, referring to his actions during the final weeks of the Trump administration.Willis subpoenaed Raffensperger, along with his office’s chief investigator Frances Watson, to testify during the Monday hearing.According to the indictment, Meadows asked Watson if there was “a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially”. He claimed on Monday that he was not trying to offer federal funds but rather asking if there was a financial constraint.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeadows was booked at the Fulton county jail after voluntarily surrendering last Thursday. He filed an emergency motion to block his arrest but a judge denied his request. Meadows was released shortly after arriving at the jail, earlier entering a $100,000 bail agreement.Moments before Meadows’ federal court hearing, Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the Fulton county election interference case, said all 19 defendants would be arraigned on 6 September in 15-minute increments. Meadows is set to be arraigned at 10.30am local time, following Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.Three other defendants have filed motions to remove their cases from Fulton county. Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official, along with Georgia fake electors David Shafer, Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, are each seeking to move their cases to federal court.Trump is expected to file a similar request in the coming weeks. More

Donald Trump’s legal headaches have drawn one step closer to colliding with the Republican nomination calendar.On Monday, the US district judge Tanya Chutkan set 4 March 2024 as the first day of jury selection in the Washington DC election interference and civil rights case. Super Tuesday is one day later. Republican nominating contests in California, Texas, and 14 other jurisdictions will be immediately set against the backdrop of the 45th president’s woes. In the weeks that follow, Ohio, Illinois and New York will be hosting primaries of their own.Talk about split-screen moments. Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley will receive a non-stop barrage of questions about the former guy as they struggle to unfurl their own separate closing messages, assuming they’re still in the hunt.Just hours before the hearing, Trump unloaded on the prosecutors, branding them “fascist thugs”. The contrast between his professed commitment to law and order and his relentless attack on law enforcement grows starker as the possibility of his own conviction is no longer theoretical.Trump’s own lawyers made sure to bring their client’s grievances into court. Twice during their presentation, the judge directed them to “take the temperature down”. Even without TV cameras present, the former guy must be reminded of his legal team’s commitment to his cause.Like Commodus, the deranged Roman emperor, Trump’s wrath needs to be sated. Loyalty is part of survival.In setting an early March date, the court made clear that it was unimpressed by Trump’s efforts to delay. As the hearing began, the judge indicated that his political calendar would not be a factor. Likewise, Judge Chutkan rejected the defendant’s contention that the case posed novel difficulties. “Why is this case complex, other than the historic aspect of it?” she asked.Trump’s team probably shot their client in the foot when they referred to the government’s case as “a regurgitation of the [January 6th] committee report”. In that moment, they tacitly acknowledged that the DC indictment did not cover new ground. Trial preparation was manageable. Key information and documents were already out there.Beyond that, prosecutors pointed to Trump’s daily social media dumps as potentially tainting the jury pool. His need to rile his own political base may have served to hasten his own trial. For the record, this would not be the first time that Trump’s impulses were self-injurious. In its ruling, the court advised that it was “watching carefully” for anything that might affect or “poison” the jury pool.By the numbers, Trump has converted the blizzard of indictments into fundraising gold. His campaign raised $7m on the Fulton county booking late last week. His mugshot now graces coffee mugs and sweatshirts.In that same spirit, since his March 2023 indictment in Manhattan on state charges, Trump has managed to lap the Republican field. DeSantis has lost whatever traction he had hoped for. He remains in retrograde as his likability quotient shrinks.Yet little is unalloyed. Even as doubts grow about Joe Biden and his age, the Trump indictments have left three in five Americans believing that the one-time reality show host ought to be tried. In other words, outside of the Republican party, Democrats and independents refuse to buy that this is simply an endless witch-hunt. Where there is smoke, fire is frequently nearby.Monday’s ruling by Judge Chutkan is also likely to cast a shadow over the other cases that Trump faces. In early October, the lawsuit against Trump and the Trump Organization is due to begin in Manhattan. When and what comes after that grows iffy.The constitutional imperative of due process and a criminal defendant’s right to help prepare his own defense will probably cause delays in the other Trump trials presently set for next year.For starters, don’t bet on the E Jean Carroll defamation case proceeding as scheduled in mid-January. Even if Trump doesn’t need to be there, his lawyers will seek to convince Judge Lewis Kaplan that a delay is required in favor of the proceedings in Washington.Similarly, the Stormy Daniels hush-money case set for next spring in Manhattan is another candidate for delay. Already, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has signaled his willingness to yield to the feds. In the hierarchy of public interest, it is the dog’s tail, hardly the main event.The 20 May 2024 trial in the special counsel’s documents case, too, is likely to be re-set to sometime during the summer or fall of 2024 at the earliest. To what degree Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed trial judge, again defers to his wishes remains to be seen.Last, when and where the charges brought by Fani Willis, the Fulton county prosecutor, will be heard is an open question. It is possible that they will ultimately be heard in federal court, not a Georgia state court. Already, Mark Meadows and others seek removal. With Trump joined by a posse of co-defendants, don’t count on a quick trial.Rather, bet on Judge Chutkan and Washington DC hosting the Main Event. By extension, if he is acquitted there, expect Trump to be nominated by acclamation. And if convicted, he will still be the Republican presidential nominee. Either way, and for better or worse, he will make history.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has announced $1m for heightened security at a historically Black college, a day after he was booed at a memorial gathering for victims of a deadly racist shooting in his state.DeSantis said his administration would give $1m to Edward Waters University to enhance its security after the gunman in this weekend’s racist killings at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville tried to enter the historically Black college but was denied entry.DeSantis said that an additional $100,000 would be given to a charity for the victims’ families.“As I’ve said for the last couple of days, we are not going to allow our HBCUs to be targeted by these people,” DeSantis said. “We’re going to provide security help with them.”DeSantis’s funding measure comes as he faces criticism for limiting Black history education in Florida, a move that many have condemned as racist.DeSantis has also come under renewed scrutiny for his support of expanded gun access in his state. The Florida governor signed legislation in April that allows resident to carry concealed guns without a permit.On Sunday, he was jeered while speaking at a memorial that drew a crowd of nearly 200 to remember the victims of the Dollar General shooting.“He don’t care,” an attendee shouted as DeSantis was being introduced, the Hill reported.At one point, a council member came to DeSantis’s defense and attempted to quiet the crowd, but the booing continued.“It ain’t about parties today,” said Jacksonville city councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman. “A bullet don’t know a party.”DeSantis referred to the shooter as a “major-league scumbag” in his remarks, adding that Florida opposed racist violence.“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”The 21-year-old gunman left behind several manifestos that invoked racist slurs, police confirmed. The rifle used in the attacks also had Nazi symbols painted on, police added.The US justice department announced Sunday that the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime.Police have confirmed that the gunman bought the weapons legally, despite being involuntarily held for a previous mental health crisis and being involved in a domestic violence case that provoked a law enforcement response, the Washington Post reported.Because neither case resulted in criminal convictions, the gunman was legally able to buy the weapons this year, sometime between April and July.“There was no criminal arrest history. There is nothing we could have done to stop him from owning a rifle or a handgun,” Jacksonville’s sheriff, TK Waters, said during a Sunday news conference.“There were no red flags.”The Jacksonville shooting is the latest act of public, racist violence against Black people after 10 were killed in a shooting at a Buffalo grocery store last year.The killer in the Buffalo case has since been given a sentence of life imprisonment. More

Donald Trump’s criminal trial for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results will take place on 4 March 2024, the federal judge presiding over the case in Washington ruled on Monday, marking a sharp repudiation of the former president who had sought to delay the case for years.The schedule set by US district court judge Tanya Chutkan means Trump’s first trial defending himself against prosecutors and the special counsel Jack Smith will be the election subversion case – and it will come during the height of the 2024 Republican primary season.“The events giving rise to this case occurred at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. To propose trying this case over five years later risks the real danger that witnesses become unavailable or their memories may fade,” Chutkan said. “My primary concern here, as it is, in every case, is the interest of justice and that I’ve balanced the defendant’s right to adequately prepare.”Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.The former president had asked ahead of the hearing for the trial to take place in April 2026, citing the supposed “median time” of 29.2 months that it took to convict defendants in cases that involved the charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.But prosecutors had argued in response that using the median time as a benchmark was misleading because it included the time it takes for jury selection, trial, verdict and several months of sentencing deliberation, rather than just the duration of pre-trial proceedings.The judge set a trial for 4 March 2024 – hewing to the government’s January 2024 trial date request – explaining that she agreed that the Trump legal team’s statistics were “misleading” adding that one of the cited cases was one she is currently overseeing and delayed because of Covid-19 issues which didn’t apply to Trump.The date means Trump will be in the federal courthouse in Washington starting the day before Super Tuesday of the Republican primaries. Chutkan reiterated that Trump, like any other criminal defendant, would have to “make the trial date work regardless of his schedule”.At the hearing, Chutkan said that to make her determination she would instead consider the volume of discovery materials prosecutors were turning over to the defense and what a reasonable time would be for Trump’s lawyers to review the 12m pages of evidence.The judge also explained that the Speedy Trial Act, which requires criminal cases to go to trial within 70 days of indictment, exists to protect not just Trump but the public interest in ensuring the timely administration of justice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe theme of Chutkan’s questioning of Trump’s lead lawyer, John Lauro, repeatedly returned to her contention that he did not have to read every one of the 12m pages anew because many of the documents were duplicative and the key facts were made public by the House January 6 select committee.The judge said that she considered the government as having made a considerable effort to produce the discovery in an organized and keyword-searchable manner that should expedite their review. “You are not going to get two years,” she said.Lauro objected to the judge’s characterization that the facts and legal theories were not new and emphasized that the Trump legal team needed extended time to review each of the pages, though he did not address his comments that the indictment was a regurgitation of the committee’s report.The prosecutors seized on Lauro’s prior public comments to argue that the Trump legal team were not looking at the material for the first time. “When Mr Lauro appeared on multiple news programs and podcasts following the indictment, he described a number of defenses he plans to raise.” More