US Politics

Indictments of Donald Trump regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified information are “exquisite … beautiful and intricate”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said.“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi, 83 and a regular antagonist of the 77-year-old former president, told New York magazine in an interview published on Monday.“They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”Pelosi’s words to New York magazine seemed likely to prompt a response from Trump, with whom she frequently clashed when she was speaker and he was in the Oval Office. In one high-profile incident, in February 2020, Pelosi famously tore up a Trump speech, after his State of the Union address.Pelosi also told the magazine that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination and the 2024 election against Joe Biden, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House”.“Don’t even think of that,” she said. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”Despite 78 criminal indictments in total, including 34 over his hush-money payments to a porn star, and the likelihood of more over his election subversion in Georgia, Trump is the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary.Denying wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he enjoys a 30-plus point lead in national averages and clear advantages in early voting states.In general election polling, he generally leads Biden.Pelosi also oversaw two impeachments of Trump and the House committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.Stepping down as speaker but remaining in Congress, she has not let up on Trump.Last week, the California congresswoman told MSNBC that Trump looked like a “scared puppy” when he arrived in court in Washington to face four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Trump, who has called Pelosi “crazy” and an “animal”, denied being scared.In a characteristically extreme response, he also called the former speaker “really quite vicious … a Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”Speaking to New York magazine, Pelosi called Trump’s Washington arraignment a “triumph for the truth”.She would not predict if Trump would be convicted. But she also said: “When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime … I know he committed a crime that day.” More

US congressional hearings can be dry affairs but not of late. First there was Robert Kennedy Jr, purveyor of disinformation about vaccines and much else, testifying about big tech censorship. Then David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, claiming that the government knows more than it admits about UFOs: “Non-human biologics had been recovered at crash sites.”The fact that both captured the public imagination is not so surprising. In a new book, Under the Eye of Power, cultural historian Colin Dickey argues that our hunger for conspiracy theories is less fringe and more mainstream than we like to admit. Fearmongering about secret groups pulling levers of power behind the scenes, “conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law”, is older than America itself.From the 1692 Salem witch trials to the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organised by the French), from the satanic panic to the Illuminati and QAnon, it has been tempting to dismiss conspiracy theories as an aberration, resonating with a small and marginal segment of the population. But Dickey, 45, came to understand them as hardwired into how many people process democracy.He says via Zoom from a book-lined room in Brooklyn, New York: “When I was a child I was taught that the Salem witch trials and McCarthy hearings – which I think were taught primarily because Arthur Miller’s The Crucible yokes these two instances together – were the outliers, the standouts in American history when things just got out of hand but we’re mostly very sane and rational, the rest of the justice system works and you don’t have to worry too much.“But what I found is that those in fact aren’t outliers. I began to see a pattern emerge whereby there’s almost a template for fears of secret societies, of this invisible, undetectable group that is nonetheless doing terrible things behind the scenes.“It happens again and again; the names change. Sometimes it’s the Catholics, sometimes it’s the Jews, sometimes it’s the satanists, sometimes it’s the socialists or the anarchists. But it recurs with enough frequency that I began to see it as something that gets deployed almost on cue when certain moments arise in American history.”An early example was Freemasonry, the leading fraternal organisation of the 18th century with members including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Otis and Paul Revere. What began as a teacher of moral, intellectual and spiritual values came to be regarded with hostility and suspicion.Dickey explains: “Freemasonry went from being a positive social philanthropic fraternal organisation that people like Ben Franklin and Washington were proud to be associated with to increasingly being seen as this parallel shadow government that had infiltrated the country and that people were less and less sanguine about having in their midst. They began to fear this idea of a secret society that didn’t seem beholden to the democratic lawmakers of the country.”The author also sheds light on attacks on Catholics in the 19th century, driven by a prejudice among Protestants that they were beholden only to a foreign pope and could not act as fully enlightened American citizens.“Outside Boston, a convent in 1834 was burned to the ground by people who assumed that the priests were using the confessional as some sort of half blackmail, half mind control device to imprison and sexually enslave women against their will, that there were babies being produced that were then being murdered and buried in the catacombs beneath the ground,” he says.“It’s basically very structurally similar to the contemporary conspiracy theory around Pizzagate or the movie that just came out, Sound of Freedom [popular with QAnon followers]. This idea of the cabal of sexual abusers, which was being used against Catholics in the 1830s, with just a few of the key details changed but more or less the same narrative.”But something important did shift in the 20th century. Until then most conspiracy theories posited foreign infiltrators trying to harm the American government. If you believed that the US has perfected democracy, it was easier to blame outside saboteurs for anything that went wrong.“After world war two and the sixties, that gradually but irrevocably changes to the point where now most Americans take it on an article of faith that the government is out to do them harm on some level or another. Conspiracy theories are often marshalled around this idea that people in the government know more and what’s happening here is the result of government actors,” Dickey says.“You see that with 9/11 conspiracy theories and you see it with the JFK assassination. The idea that the head of state was assassinated and yet, for a large part of the population, the only explanation was that the government itself in some form or another was responsible for this is representative of that sea change.”There is no doubt that the internet is an important part of the story. Human rights groups blamed anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook for inciting a genocide in Myanmar. But the author resists any attempt to shift moral responsibility to social media. It exacerbates some of our latent tendencies, he argues, but those tendencies are there no matter what.Dickey sees in QAnon both classic strains of conspiracy theory and some new mutations. “There’s this idea of the government insider who is leaking secret information, which we’ve had historically with something like Watergate and Deep Throat, but also the figure who claims that he has been shown classified information and is sharing them is something you hear in UFO conspiracies time and time again. So that felt very classical.“What does seem new is that QAnon is this weird hybrid of a very dangerous, quite racist and homo- and transphobic conspiracy theory mixed with an online multilevel marketing scheme and also a community forum for puzzle solvers,” he says.“It is a real blend and synthesis of a bunch of different things that all appeal to slightly different personalities. It’s spread a little wider because it’s able to bring in people who might be otherwise disparate and unconnected and yokes them all under this banner by being vague and nebulous and not attached to too many specific beliefs or practices.”Then there is the “great replacement” theory, pushed by rightwing figures such as Tucker Carlson, which describes a supposed elite conspiracy to change the demographics of the US by replacing white people with people of colour, immigrants and Muslims. Dickey notes that such conspiracy theories tend to flare up most predictably when there is significant demographic change or previously marginalised groups push for visibility and equality.“Both with the increased visibility of the LGBTQ community and trans men and women demanding rights and equality, alongside the racial and ethnic identity of America changing, as it always has, these things are combining to create a terror among some people who see this change as too rapid, too inexplicable, too destabilising. Rather than admit that America is constantly in flux, they are seizing upon the idea that this is in fact an artificial change brought about by secret elites who are working behind the scenes to undermine what ‘America’ actually is.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe phrase “conspiracy theory” was coined by philosopher Karl Popper. In his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, he discusses the “conspiracy theory of society”: the idea that major events are the “result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups”.Dickey explains: “The conspiracy theory of society happens when you get rid of God and ask what’s in his place. What I found in writing the book and thinking through my other research in conspiracy theories is what they do is offer an explanatory mechanism for chaos and disorder and randomness, almost to the point of a quasi-theological explanation.“Anything that is happening today can be, if you so choose, understood to be part of the incredibly byzantine and hidden plan of the Illuminati that may seem confusing to us on the surface but you can trust as an article of faith that is part of their grand plan. They are both omniscient and omnipotent (unlike God they’re not benevolent) but they are working behind the scenes and that explains the world.“Even though that’s a malicious and terrible view of the world, for a segment of the population that is more reassuring than a world of pure chaos and disorder. People will cling to this idea that, yes, well, at least we know that this is part of this malevolent world order, even if it’s evil and out to get us.”What makes an enduring conspiracy theory? One element is that they start with a kernel of truth and grounds for doubt. Dickey acknowledges that scepticism is healthy and the impulse that leads to a conspiracy theory is a fine one. Citizens are not obliged to accept everything they are told at face value.He says: “Almost any conspiracy theory starts with a legitimate question that I would agree: yeah, let’s look into that, let’s see what we can find. It’s the refusal to accept evidence when the evidence doesn’t pan out in the way that you want it to that leads to problems because then what you have to do is construct an increasingly elaborate conspiratorial framework to explain why you’re not finding the evidence you were hoping for. That’s where you get completely lost in the weeds.”From MMR to Covid-19, vaccines have been a prime example of how initially reasonable concerns over possible side-effects can career into an insidious irrationality.“I understand that people might be hesitant and have questions, and yet from a legitimate curiosity or understandable hesitation people then spin out to wildly improbable, indefensible and dangerous conspiracy theories. Time and time again the most virulent conspiracy theories often have some kernel of truth which is then being spun in dramatic and horrible directions,” Dickey says.Secondly, there is humans’ notoriously short attention span. Dickey writes that conspiracy theories feed on historical amnesia and depend on the belief that what is happening now has never happened before. Many people have therefore been taken aback by former president Donald Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election and by QAnon, whose followers perceive Democrats are a cabal of Satan worshippers and sex traffickers.Dickey says: “A lot of Americans were sort of, ‘Well, how could people possibly believe this nonsense? No one has ever thought something this absurd.’ As a result a lot of us were caught flat-footed and didn’t take these things seriously, didn’t respond fast enough until things were already out of control.“What I wanted to do with this book is to lay out that this is almost like a playbook that gets run and that one step to defeating it is being aware that it’s used like this. When the next one comes along – because there will be a next one – maybe we’ll be able to get out ahead of it a little bit faster.”Yet acolytes of Trump and QAnon seem impervious to reason. Facts and evidence that contradict their view are attributed to the conspiracy and seen as cause to dig in heels further. Dickey hopes readers of his book will come away with a better understanding of what causes normal, rational and educated people to embrace certain conspiracy theories – and start to think about what they can do to push back on them.“What almost never works is barking facts and truth at them because people subscribe to these things because they fulfil an existential or emotional need,” he says. “If I was given the keys to the kingdom and asked what to do about it, I would want to start with addressing people’s emotional concerns there.“What is the underlying existential conflict, the cognitive dissonance? What is the thing that is freaking them out, that is leading them to be susceptible to conspiracy theories, and what can we do as a culture and as a nation to address those existential concerns? You don’t debunk the theories unless you first lay the groundwork for an off-ramp for whatever that emotional need is that led them to embrace the theory in the first place.”
Under the Eye of Power is out now More

At Donald Trump’s arraignment last Thursday for trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, the magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya warned him that he could be taken into custody if he violated the conditions of his release, including attempting to influence jurors or intimidate future witnesses.Calling him “Mr Trump” rather than President Trump – thereby emphasizing that he was being treated as any criminal defendant would be treated – she said:“I want to remind you that it is a crime to try to influence a juror or to threaten or attempt to bribe a witness or any other person who may have information about your case, or to retaliate against anyone for providing information about your case to the prosecution, or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice.”The judge then warned Trump: “You have heard your conditions of release. It is important you comply. You may be held pending trial in this case if you violate the conditions of release.”She asked Trump: “Do you understand these warnings and consequence, sir? Are you prepared to comply?”Trump responded: “Yes.”But not 24 hours later, Trump posted on social media a message that could be understood as an attempt to influence potential jurors or retaliate against any witness prepared to testify against him: He wrote: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”On Friday evening, prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith asked the court for a protective order to stop Trump from making public any of the information they were about to deliver to his lawyers under the discovery phase of the upcoming criminal trial, such as the names of witnesses who will testify against him.They noted that such protection was “particularly important” because Trump “has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys and others associated with legal matters pending against him”.Citing his social media message from earlier in the day, they argued that publishing such information “could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses”. The prosecutors included a screenshot of Trump’s threatening post from that same evening.On Saturday, the presiding judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, ordered that Trump’s lawyers respond to the prosecutor’s request for a protective order by 5pm Monday.All through the weekend, Trump continued to threaten potential witnesses.“WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him VP, has gone to the Dark Side,” he posted on Saturday.And Trump hasn’t stopped attempting to obstruct justice.On Sunday he called Jack Smith “deranged”, and in another all-caps message he accused Smith of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign.In another post he asserted that he would never get a “fair trial” with Chutkan and jurors from Washington DC.These statements directly violate the conditions of Trump’s release pending trial.They also could inflame Trump supporters, thereby endangering those who are trying to administer justice, such as Smith and Chutkan, as well as potential witnesses like Pence.It’s going to get a lot worse unless Chutkan – on her own initiative or at the urging of prosecutors – orders Trump’s lawyers to show cause why his release pending trial should not be revoked, in light of his repeated violation of the conditions of his release.This would at least put Trump on notice that he will be treated like any other criminal defendant who violates conditions of release pending trial.That’s what the rule of law is all about.At this moment, about 400,000 criminal defendants are in jail in the United States awaiting trial because they didn’t meet a condition of their release.Trump is now under the supervision of the court, as would be any criminal defendant after an arraignment.But he will continue to test the willingness and ability of the court to treat him like any other criminal defendant unless he’s reined in.The court must fully assert the rule of law during these proceedings, even if that requires threatening Trump with jail pending his trial. And if he continues to refuse to abide by the conditions of his release, it might be time to actually jail him.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

Included in the indictment last week against Donald Trump for his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a count of obstructing an official proceeding – the attempt to stop the vote certification in Congress on the day his supporters mounted the January 6 Capitol attack.The count is notable, because – based on a review of previous judicial rulings in other cases where the charge has been brought – it may be one where prosecutors will not need to prove Trump knew he lost the election, as the former president’s legal team has repeatedly claimed.The obstruction of an official proceeding statute has four parts, but in Trump’s case what is at issue is the final element: whether the defendant acted corruptly.The definition of “corruptly” is currently under review by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit in the case titled United States v Robertson. Yet previous rulings by district court judges and a different three-judge panel in the DC circuit in an earlier case suggest how it will apply to Trump.In short: even with the most conservative interpretation, prosecutors at trial may not need to show that Trump knew his lies about 2020 election fraud to be false, or that the ex-president knew he had lost to Joe Biden.“There’s no need to prove that Trump knew he lost the election to establish corrupt intent,” said Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House judiciary committee in the first Trump impeachment.“The benefit under the statute is the presidency itself – and Trump clearly knew that without his unlawful actions, Congress was going to certify Biden as the winner of the election. That’s all the corrupt intent you need,” Eisen said.According to the 45-page indictment, prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith have evidence that Trump knew of the significance of impeding the vote certification when he pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to interfere, saying he otherwise could not remain president.Trump plainly attempted to obstruct the vote certification that would have affirmed Biden’s election win, the indictment shows, as he implored Pence to accept the fake slates of Trump electors from battleground states and delay proceedings, or reject the Biden slates entirely.Trump also took steps he knew would impede proceedings, the indictment shows, when he called senators seeking further delay after the certification was interrupted by the riot, and when he later refused a plea from the White House counsel to “allow the certification”.Trump and his allies have suggested he tried to stop the vote certification because he genuinely believed the 2020 election was stolen, and that prosecutors would have to prove Trump did not believe the claims. But that may not be necessary.Last month, US district court judge Royce Lamberth wrote an opinion in the conviction of January 6 riot defendant Alan Hostetter in which he made it clear that Hostetter’s belief about a stolen 2020 election was not a defense to the “corruptly” element to the obstruction charge.“Even if Mr Hostetter genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing,” Lamberth wrote. “Belief in the greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLamberth took into account the fact that Hostetter was “actively cheering on rioters” as the Capitol attack unfolded. The Trump indictment had a parallel, when prosecutors described the former president as having “exploited the disruption” when violence ensued.Those reasonings could be applied to Trump, legal experts said, especially because Lamberth also found that Hostetter had satisfied the stricter interpretation of “corruptly” to mean “unlawful benefit”, as suggested in April in an opinion from DC circuit judge Justin Walker.The interpretation by Walker would not be a material difference to Lamberth’s opinion, the experts said, because prosecutors could simply argue Trump gained a benefit he was not otherwise entitled to: still being president because Congress had not announced Biden as the next president.Coming in the same case as Walker’s opinion was a dissent from DC circuit judge Gregory Katsas, another Trump appointee, who thought the “corruptly” element should mean a defendant sought “an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage”.The interpretation by Katsas should not discourage prosecutors, the experts said, because Trump could still be argued to have gained a professional advantage through the obstruction, namely he would have remained president.It was not clear when the three-judge panel in the Robertson case – composed of Bush-appointed Karen Henderson, Obama-appointed Cornelia Pillard and Biden-appointed Florence Pan – will issue a ruling on the definition of “corruptly”, after it heard arguments in the case on 11 May. More

Immigrant rights advocates and asylum seekers filed a lawsuit against Customs and Border Protection last week, claiming federal officials have created a new, unlawful hurdle for people seeking asylum in the United States.Migrants fleeing violence in their home countries are now required to book an appointment with border officials through CBP One, a smartphone app designed by the US government.“It is unfathomable that a refugee who just traveled across nine different countries with only the clothes on their back would somehow have access to a very expensive smartphone,” said Angelo Guisado, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, part of the legal team behind the lawsuit.Many asylum seekers cannot schedule appointments on the app because they do not have “up-to-date smartphones, wifi, a cellular data plan, or reliable electricity, all of which are necessary to use CBP One”, according to the new lawsuit.The lucky few who managed to download CBP One said the app is riddled with technical glitches, indecipherable error messages, and mistranslations of English words.“People are scraping together whatever money they have to buy smartphones, all for an app that does not work,” Guisado told the Guardian.Though the app is available to view in Spanish and Haitian Creole, the error messages are often written in English. One migrant showed Guisado an error message that appeared to just be a line of computer code.“We know the Republicans intend on making life harder for every single poor, Black, or brown person who wants to immigrate here, but Democrats are doing the same exact thing while putting forth these statements that adhere to higher ideals,” Guisado said.The Biden administration first announced the CBP One requirement for asylum seekers in May, when the US prepared to lift a pandemic-era restriction on immigration called Title 42. As the government braced for a sudden uptick in migrants along the US-Mexico border, the app was billed as a tool to more quickly process asylum requests.Despite widespread warnings, the so-called “migrant surge” never materialized. In May, Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN that border agents saw a “50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week before Title 42 ended”.Still, the Biden administration continued to use CBP One to process people seeking asylum. Even after officials touted record-low border crossings, the app remains a primary arbiter of who gets to be considered for asylum.A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told the Guardian that, thanks to the app’s new usage, the agency “is processing on average 4-5 times as many migrants per day at south-west border ports of entry than it did a decade ago, significantly expanding access to our ports of entry.”The agency spokesperson also said “CBP continues to process individuals who walk up to a port of entry without an appointment”.Under the Department of Homeland Security’s own guidelines, migrants who face exceptional danger, like threats of murder or kidnapping, are eligible for asylum without a pre-scheduled appointment.But when a Nicaraguan woman – identified in the lawsuit as Michelle Doe – approached the border with her newborn baby, officers turned her away. She explained that her abusive ex-partner, a member of the Mexican cartel, had broken her phone before he threatened to kill her.The border officers told Michelle that she still needed to book an appointment through CBP One.Many of the would-be asylees in the lawsuit are single mothers who fled their homes after experiencing domestic abuse, threats of gang violence, or in Michelle’s case – both.“After getting turned away by CBP, they come to us to hide them,” said Nicole Ramos, director of the border rights project at Al Otro Lado, a legal nonprofit and a plaintiff in the new lawsuit.Since May, Ramos and her team have scrambled to find safe shelter and medical care for asylum seekers who were turned away because of the new app policy.It’s dangerous work that requires extreme discretion – Ramos is in constant fear that migrants like Melissa will be discovered by cartel members while waiting to land an appointment with US border officials.“While they’re waiting to get this app to work, these people are being hunted,” Ramos said. “The only time it seems possible for us to get around this app, to get an exception, is when people have very, very grave and urgent medical conditions.”Even then, Ramos said she and her colleagues need to show Customs and Border Protection “extensive medical documentation” to prove that a migrant qualifies for an exception. Because the process of getting an exception is so cumbersome, Ramos said she has been forced to triage asylum cases, prioritizing the migrants who cannot receive medical care in Mexico.“The whole process requires us as advocates to participate in vulnerability Olympics, we have to decide who is most likely to die sooner, so we push to prioritize their cases,” she said. More

The US dispatched four navy warships as well as a reconnaissance airplane after multiple Chinese and Russian military vessels carried out a joint naval patrol near Alaska last week.The combined naval patrol, which the Wall Street Journal first reported, appeared to be the largest such flotilla to approach US territory, according to experts that spoke to the outlet.“It’s a historical first,” Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Journal.He also said the flotilla’s proximity to Alaska was a “highly provocative” maneuver given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and political tensions between the US and China over Taiwan. The flotilla has since left.The US Northern Command confirmed the combined Chinese and Russian naval patrol, telling the Journal: “Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.”The command did not specify the number of vessels which made up the patrol or their exact location. But US senators from Alaska said the flotilla in question was made up of 11 Chinese and Russian warships working in concert near the Aleutian Islands.Four destroyers and a Poseidon P-8 patrol airplane made up the US response to the Chinese and Russian flotilla.In a statement to the Journal, the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, Liu Pengyu, said that the patrol “is not targeted at any third party”.“According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, naval vessels of the two countries have recently conducted joint maritime patrols in relevant waters in the western and northern Pacific ocean,” Pengyu said. “This action is not targeted at any third party and has nothing to do with the current international and regional situation.”The Journal reported that the US destroyers sent to track the flotilla were the USS John S McCain, the USS Benfold, the USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon.Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan have since responded to the joint Chinese and Russian patrol that came close to the Aleutian Islands by saying they are monitoring the situation closely for their constituents.Murkowski said: “We have been in close contact with leadership … for several days now and received detailed classified briefings about the foreign vessels that are transiting US waters in the Aleutians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a stark reminder of Alaska’s proximity to both China and Russia, as well as the essential role our state plays in our national defense and territorial sovereignty.”Sullivan echoed the sentiments of his fellow Republican Murkowski, saying: “The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow.”He went on to compare the situation to one last September, when a single US coast guard cutter spotted a total of seven Chinese and Russian naval ships near Alaska.“Last summer the Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar operation off the coast of Alaska,” Sullivan said. “Given that our response was tepid, I strongly encouraged senior military leaders to be ready with a much more robust response should such another joint Chinese-Russian naval operation occur off our coast.“For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four US Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message … that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska.” More

Donald Trump’s attorney has suggested that Mike Pence could help his former boss fight off the 2020 election-related criminal conspiracy charges against Trump, claiming that the former vice-president would be the “best witness” for the defence.In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, attorney John Lauro played down differences between the former president and Pence’s accounts of what happened in the run up to the January 6 2021 certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, whose supporters attacked the US Capitol that day.Asked on Face the Nation whether he feared that Pence would be called as a prosecution witness in the case, Lauro said: “No, no in fact, the vice-president will be our best witness.“There was a constitutional disagreement between the vice-president [Pence] and president Trump, but the bottom line is never, never in our country’s history, as those kinds of disagreements have been prosecuted criminally. It’s unheard of.”Earlier on Sunday, Pence – who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – told CBS that he had “no plans” to testify for the prosecution. But he did not rule it out. In response to Lauro’s assertion last week that all Trump did was ask him to pause the certification, Pence said: “That’s not what happened.”Trump, the leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race, last week pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election by conspiring to block Congress from confirming Biden victory over him. He also pleaded not guilty to charges that he obstructed the certification by directing his supporters to descend on the Capitol on the day of the January 6th attack.He is also accused of – and has pleaded not guilty to – scheming to disrupt the election process and deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted.Lauro slammed the indictment as politically motivated and full of holes.“This is what’s called a Swiss cheese indictment – so many holes that we’re going to be identifying,” Lauro said.Lauro suggested that his side would argue that Trump’s actions were protected by his constitutional right to free speech as well as presidential immunity.Taking aim at Biden, the Democratic incumbent, Lauro added: “This is the first time in history that a sitting president has used his justice department to go after a political opponent to knock him out of a race that creates grave constitutional problems.”Lauro confirmed that he planned to file a motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges, as well as another to transfer the case from Washington DC’s federal courthouse to one in West Virginia, a state where Trump won 69% of the votes in 2020, his second largest margin of victory in a state after Wyoming.“We would like a diverse venue and diverse jury to have an expectation that will reflect the characteristics of the American people,” he said. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Trump took to the rightwing social media platform Truth Social to claim – again and without evidence – that he would not get a fair trial in Washington DC. He has repeatedly insulted the nation’s capital by calling it a swamp of radical liberals.Lauro was brought on to Trump’s legal team in mid-July. He has defended a string of controversial clients who include Dewayne Allen Levesque – manager of the Pink Pony nightclub in Florida who was acquitted of charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting prostitution – and the disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to taking payoffs from bookies in exchange for a one-year, three-month prison sentence.Trump will not accept a plea deal in the criminal conspiracy charges, Lauro told CBS.The charges which Lauro discussed Sunday are contained in one of three criminal indictments pending against the former president.He is also facing New York state charges related to hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels. And he also faces a separate federal indictment pertaining to his allegedly illegal hoarding of government secrets at his Florida resort after his presidency.Trump has pleaded not guilty in the two other cases against him as well.Shortly after Lauro made his remarks Sunday to CBS, the news network released a poll showing that a little more than half of Americans believe Trump tried to stay in office after losing to Biden through illegal and unconstitutional means. And most Americans see the charges pursued against Trump as attempts to defend democracy and uphold the rule of law, despite the former president’s insistence that he is being politically persecuted. More

An under-the-radar election in Ohio on Tuesday has quietly emerged as one of the most high-stakes stress tests for American democracy in recent years.The question Ohio voters will decide on 8 August is simple: how easy should it be to amend the state constitution? Like 17other states, Ohio allows citizens to place constitutional amendments on the statewide ballot if they get a certain number of signatures and more than 50% of the statewide vote. The process has been in place for more than a century in Ohio, and in November, voters will use it to decide whether to protect abortion rights.In May, Republicans who control the state legislature abruptly sent a proposal to the ballot called Issue 1 that would make it much harder to change the constitution. If approved, a constitutional amendment would need 60% of the vote to pass instead of a simple majority. It would also make it significantly harder for citizens to even propose a constitutional amendment, requiring signatures from 5% of the voters in all of Ohio’s 88 counties (the state currently requires organizers to get signatures in 44).“It absolutely is minority rule,” Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who served on the Ohio supreme court for nearly two decades and stepped down as chief justice at the end of last year, and opposes Issue 1, said in a telephone interview. “If you get 59.9% of a vote that says yes, 40.1% can say no. This is the way it’s gonna be. We can thwart the effort of the majority of Ohioans that vote. And that’s not American.”The change in signature gathering would make it nearly impossible to get something on the ballot, which is already difficult, and only allow deep-pocketed groups to do so, said Jen Miller, the president of the Ohio chapter of the League of Women Voters, which opposes the amendment.The campaign to raise the threshold has been largely funded by Richard Uihlein, an Illinois billionaire and GOP mega-donor who has spent more than $5m on the effort so far. A conservative non-profit backed by Uihlein, the Foundation for Government Accountability, has been involved in efforts to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments across the country.Republicans have made little secret of why they’re in a rush to change the rules: this fall, Ohioans are set to vote on an amendment that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution. The left wants to jam it in there this coming November,” the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican running for the US Senate and one of the most prominent supporters of the amendment, said last month.Similar measures to protect abortion access have been extremely popular in other states and passed by wide margins after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.Beyond reproductive rights, the August election has far-reaching implications for democracy in Ohio. Republicans hold a supermajority in the Ohio legislature after they manipulated district lines to their advantage last year, brazenly ignoring several rebukes from the state supreme court. Activists are already working to draft a constitutional amendment that would strip lawmakers of their redistricting authority entirely. But making it harder to change the constitution would essentially allow Republicans to keep their distorted advantage.“Ohioans would no longer have a tool accessible to them to keep the Ohio government accountable when they are not acting in the interest of our communities and our families,” said Jen Miller, the president of the Ohio chapter of the League of Women Voters, which opposes Issue 1.“What we’re talking about is that a small minority would be able to block the will of the majority of Ohioans.”‘A very dirty trick’Opponents of Issue 1 have assembled a wide-ranging coalition that includes civic action groups, unions, and environmental groups. The campaign, One Person One Vote, has received considerable funding from out-of-state progressive groups, and have aggressively canvassed across the state, sent mailings to voters, and held weekly community meetings throughout the summer.One hot evening in July, Sarah Strinka, a 26-year-old canvasser with Ohio Citizen Action, one of the main groups opposing Issue 1, crisscrossed lawns in Westlake, a Cleveland suburb, in tie-dye sandals, making sure that people knew the election was happening on 8 August and trying to persuade them to vote against it. Nearly all of the voters who came to their doors that evening said they planned to vote against the change.“It seems like a very dirty trick to try and not get a major issue like this pushed through in an August election,” said Matt Jackson-McCabe, one of the voters who Strinka talked to. “I was like, ‘This is bullshit.’”“It’s like pulling the wool over the people’s eyes,” said Daniel Hayden, 76, another voter in Westlake. “Republicans – they want to take away the control, to control everything. They want to take control away from the people.”Not everyone Strinka spoke with was entirely convinced. “It’s my understanding, because I’m Republican, that this is a Democratic-led issue. Correct?” one man said in his driveway. Strinka pointed out that there was actually bipartisan opposition to the amendment. “It impacts every single issue moving forward. I know a lot of people are talking about issues for November, but this could impact everything,” she said.The man said he would do more research.Republicans ‘can kind of do what they want’Ohioans have voted on hundreds of constitutional amendments over the last century, but they haven’t been asked to vote on one in an August election since 1926. Last year, the turnout in August was so anaemic, just 8%, that Republicans decided to cancel August elections altogether.But in May, they abruptly reversed that decision, saying that the cost of the election was worth it ahead of the abortion measure. “If we save 30,000 lives as a result of spending $20 million, I think that’s a great thing,” Matt Huffman, an anti-abortion Republican who serves as the senate president, told reporters earlier this year.The rush seems to be a cynical calculation that the election will have low turnout and those who do cast a ballot will be highly motivated ‘yes’ voters.“I think it’s a mistake to revive August elections for the sole purpose of passing an issue of such consequence,” said Robert Taft, a Republican who served as governor of Ohio from 1999 to 2007 and opposes Issue 1. “If it were to pass, it’d either have, possibly have 11 or 12% of eligible voters in Ohio deciding that the constitution shouldn’t be amended unless 60% agree.”And that calculation may be backfiring. Turnout during early voting has been strong – more than 533,000 people have cast their ballots so far. That far exceeds the 288,700 votes cast early in the May 2022 primaries. “This is gubernatorial-level turnout,” an election official told the Associated Press, which also reported some offices throughout the state were struggling to staff the massive turnout.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolling has been limited and it’s difficult to predict the results of a ballot referendum. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll in July showed 57% of voters opposed Issue 1, while 26% supported it. A different July poll by Ohio Northern University showed voters were more evenly divided.Those who support Issue 1 argue that it’s already too easy for citizens to amend the constitution. That isn’t supported by data; since 1912 citizens have sent 71 constitutional amendments to the ballot and just 19 have passed, according to Steven Steinglass, a professor emeritus at the College of Law of Cleveland State University, who has studied the constitution.“I think there should be that high of a threshold,” said Heidi M, a lawyer in Cleveland who declined to give her full name. “Is it going to be a higher burden to go out and get signatures for an initiative? Yes, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”“The constitution is supposed to be hard to change. But the constitution is not for making laws,” said Tomie Patton, the president of the Republican club in Avon Lake, just west of Cleveland. “If you don’t like the legislation then change the legislators like we have to everywhere else.”But in Ohio, changing the legislature isn’t so easy. In 2015, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment that required lawmakers to draw legislative districts that reflected the political balance of Ohio over the prior decade. When it came time to draw new districts in 2021, they should have drawn ones that reflected the 54-46 percent advantage Republicans have had in the state.Instead, lawmakers drew maps that enabled them to keep a supermajority. The Ohio supreme court rejected the maps five different times, but Republicans were able to run out the clock and eventually adopt a map in their favor. Republicans used that supermajority to refer the measure to the ballot this year.Republicans are well-aware of how critical that supermajority is. “We can kind of do what we want,” Matt Huffman, the Republican senate president, said last year.O’Connor served as the key swing vote in each of the Ohio supreme court’s decisions until she stepped down from the court last year because she had reached the mandatory retirement age.Now, she said, she and other activists are drafting a constitutional amendment that would take redistricting power away from the legislature entirely, putting it in the hands of a panel of citizens.“We’ll have a constitutional amendment, hopefully, and that will change the entire playing field,” she said. “And it’s nothing but a good thing unless you’re a member of the Republican supermajority.”‘Vote no’ campaign presses onWith the election edging closer, the “vote no” campaign has been emphasizing what they say is the fundamental unfairness of what it would mean to raise the threshold to 60%.The same evening that Strinka knocked on doors in Westlake, a group of volunteers with the League of Women Voters sat under the pavilion at the local library and, over pizza, wrote postcards to voters urging them to cast their ballots against the amendment. One of them was Donna McGreal, 68, who said she hadn’t really been politically active since the Vietnam war. Each of the postcards she wrote essentially had some version of the same message.“It’s simple,” she wrote in neat cursive on the postcards. “Issue 1 tries to change it so 59% of the vote will lose to 41%. Keep majority rule in Ohio.”They’re hoping that message will resonate with voters like Sue Kuderca, 66, a retired nurse in Youngstown, who said she was leaning towards supporting the amendment because of her views on abortion.“My mind is not 100% made up. It took me a while to even understand what yes or not meant. But the abortion thing, I’m pretty adamant about that. An abortion when ready to deliver at 9 months. That’s murder,” she told Ron Gay, a canvasser with the Communications Workers of America who approached her in her driveway and urged her to vote now. (The proposed amendment in November would allow the state to continue to prohibit abortion after fetal viability, generally at 22-23 weeks. Many states, even while Roe v Wade was fully intact, did not allow abortions at nine months.)“I totally understand. People feel that way about that. But that’s in November. They’re going to take away our right to change anything by majority vote in August,” Gay replied.Kuderca said she would think about it. More