US Politics

Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving office in 2021.What happens next and what do the charges mean for the former president and the 2024 election campaign?What is Trump accused of doing?Trump is being charged with 37 criminal counts, including mishandling classified documents and obstruction of justice, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday afternoon.He had proclaimed his innocence on Thursday evening.According to the indictment, Trump stored classified documents in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.It also added that Trump directed Walt Nauta, his valet and aide, to deliberately move boxes of records to “conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury”. Nauta also faces a count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, said the indictment.In January 2022, Trump agreed to return 15 boxes of records to the US National Archives and Records Administration, and officials discovered in them more than 700 pages of records marked as classified.In August last year, the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, and seized approximately 13,000 more records, about 100 of which were marked as classified, including some marked top secret.What charges does Trump face?The most serious charge is being brought under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized possession of national defense information. It is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.The first world war-era law predates classification of documents but makes it a crime to willfully retain national defense information that could be useful to foreign adversaries.According to the indictment, documents possessed by Trump “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”.Trump is also charged with several counts of obstruction of justice, which criminalizes any “intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” an investigation and is also charged with making false statements to investigators.“The purpose of the conspiracy was for Trump to keep classified documents he has taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury,” the indictment said.What happens next?Trump said he had been summoned to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon in Miami. It was not immediately clear what the procedure would look like. When he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney in the New York Stormy Daniels case (a state case rather than federal), Trump surrendered to authorities, where he was booked behind closed doors and appeared in the courtroom, sitting with his lawyers at the defense table.In the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump is likely to surrender himself to the FBI, which has a field office in Miami some distance from the federal court. Normally, a defendant would be fingerprinted by prosecutors and have a mugshot taken. It is not known yet if Trump will have his picture taken and whether he will be processed in the FBI office or at the courthouse, before appearing before a judge to formally hear the charges against him read for the first time. He is expected to plead not guilty. After that arraignment, he would probably be released pending his next court appearance.Does an indictment prevent a candidate from campaigning or taking office?None of the charges expected to be unsealed would bar Trump from office if he became the Republican party nominee and then won the presidency at the 2024 election, even if convicted.A trial would take place many months from now, and Trump can freely campaign during this time. The US constitution only requires that presidential candidates be natural-born US citizens who are at least 35 years old and have lived in the country for 14 years.Trump said on Thursday on his Truth Social platform that he is innocent. He would be free to campaign even if he is convicted and sent to prison, and legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in as president even if he is incarcerated, though this would pose extraordinary logistical and security questions.What would happen if Trump took office while the Mar-a-Lago case is pending?It is unlikely that the prosecution would proceed if Trump won the November 2024 election.The US Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, and presidents are the top federal law enforcement officers in the country. Federal prosecutors generally serve at their pleasure. The justice department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. The department can deviate from policy in “extraordinary circumstances” with the approval of the US attorney general.Could Joe Biden pardon Trump?Yes.Could Trump, as president, pardon himself?Maybe. Many scholars have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the basic principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case. Others have argued that a self-pardon is constitutional because the pardon power is very broadly worded in the constitution. However, Trump could not pardon himself for a conviction in state court. He is currently under indictment in New York state court for allegedly using falsified records to conceal hush-money payments he paid to Stormy Daniels, and Georgia prosecutors are investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state.Reuters contributed reporting More

Donald Trump is preparing for his second arraignment in two months after learning he would face seven federal charges in connection to his mishandling of classified documents.The former US president and current 2024 candidate is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm ET, although the exact charges he will face are still unclear, as the seven-count indictment remains under seal. On Fox News Digital on Thursday night, he said he would plead not guilty.It also emerged that Trump’s valet and aide Walt Nauta was indicted alongside him. Nauta is a former military valet who worked for Trump at the White House before accompanying him to a job at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.In a typically punchy social media post Trump said: “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about Trump.”After news of the indictment broke, Trump’s allies rallied to his defense as the US braced for the unprecedented spectacle of a former president forced to defend himself against federal criminal charges.The development comes just two months after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an unrelated case over hush-money payments during the 2016 election.The charges filed by the office of special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Miami include the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, false statements and concealment under title 18 of the US criminal code, according to a person familiar with the matter.Smith, appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been investigating for more than a year whether Trump knowingly retained classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort and attempted to conceal those documents from the justice department after authorities issued a subpoena for their return.Trump himself confirmed the indictment in a Thursday evening post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing: “This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America.”In a video posted to the platform shortly afterwards, Trump denied any culpability and lashed out against his political rivals. “I am an innocent man,” Trump said in the video. “I did nothing wrong.”Meanwhile, two lawyers representing Trump, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, said they had quit working for him. In a joint statement the pair said they had “tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation”.They added: “It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system.”Though the exact nature of the charges remained unclear, Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill quickly rallied to his defense, attacking the investigation as a case of political persecution. Many Republicans raced to note that Joe Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel over the alleged mishandling of classified papers, but they neglected to mention that Trump, unlike Biden, received a subpoena for classified documents amid concerns that he had willfully withheld some materials from federal authorities.“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, said on Twitter on Thursday evening. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”Trump’s most competitive rival for the Republican ticket, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, also denounced the justice department’s actions.“The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” he said on Twitter. “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?”But Democrats viewed the news as confirmation that authorities were again seeking to hold Trump accountable for his illegal conduct.“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law,” Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said on Twitter. “For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been.”Later on Friday morning, it emerged that a federal judge appointed by Trump, who last year drew scrutiny for a ruling that was seen as deferential to the former president, may oversee proceedings in the case over his possession of classified documents, a source familiar with the summons told the Guardian.The US district judge Aileen Cannon has been listed on the summons sent to Trump’s lawyers, the source said. The Florida-based jurist last year granted a request from Trump’s attorneys to appoint a special master to review the records federal agents seized from Mar-a-Lago that August, sparking uproar and disapproval among some legal experts.The special master review delayed the justice department’s investigation into the materials and how they ended up at Trump’s south Florida property, but in December, Cannon’s decision was overturned by the unanimous decision of a federal appeals court.Meanwhile, on Friday morning CNN revealed a transcript it had obtained of an audio tape in which Trump admits he had not declassified a military document about Iran he had retained. The existence of the tape in which he boasts about retaining the document emerged last month.“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript reported by CNN. The transcript offers further detail about the tape recording the former president talking at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in July 2021 about his retention of national security papers. Federal prosecutors have the tape.The latest indictment means Trump will face charges in at least two jurisdictions as he seeks to return to the White House next year. Trump continues to lead in polls of the Republican primary field, even after he was indicted in the hush-money case earlier this year.As of now, there is no sign that Republican primary voters are prepared to abandon Trump en masse, despite his many legal liabilities. The country will soon find out if the threat of a federal conviction is enough to rob Trump of his status as the frontrunner in the Republican primary. More

The war for Ukraine gets darker and more terrifying, and now a new front has opened up many miles away – in a US Republican party whose biggest players are itching to abandon Ukraine to its fate.Proof of the conflict’s deepening horror came this week, with the destruction on Tuesday of the Kakhovka dam in Russian-controlled Ukraine, releasing a body of water so massive it’s best imagined not as a reservoir but as a great lake. The result has been the flooding of a vast swath of terrain, forcing thousands to abandon their homes and flee for their lives. But the menaces unleashed by this act go further than the immediate and devastating effect on the people who live close by.For one thing, this calamity has hit a region of rich and fertile farmland, the same soil that long made Ukraine a breadbasket for the world: the fifth-largest exporter of wheat on the planet, the food source on which much of Africa and the Middle East has relied. Now there are warnings that the fields of southern Ukraine could “turn into deserts” by next year, because the water held back by the dam and needed to irrigate those fields is draining away. That will have an impact on food supplies and food prices, with an effect in turn on inflation and the global economy.Not that the international impact can be measured in dollars and cents alone. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned that contaminated floodwaters now carry with them sewage, oil, chemicals and even anthrax from animal burial sites. That toxic material will, said the Ukrainian president, poison rivers and, before long, the water basin of the Black Sea. “So it’s not happening somewhere else. It is all interrelated in the world.”Meanwhile, the Red Cross has sounded an alarm of its own: the bursting of the dam does grievous damage to its ongoing effort to locate and clear landmines in the area. “We knew where the hazards were,” the organisation lamented. “Now we don’t know. All we know is that they are somewhere downstream.” Dislodged by the racing waters, those devices are now floating mines. And that’s before you reckon with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, which relies on water from the now-draining reservoir for the essential process of cooling.Small wonder that Zelenskiy speaks of “an environmental bomb of mass destruction,” while others now mention Kakhovka in the same breath as Chornobyl. Except few believe this was an accident.Naturally, Moscow insists that this was not a Russian act: it says the Ukrainians did this to themselves. Still, and even though investigations are ongoing, it’s worth heeding the advice of the specialist in Ukrainian history Timothy Snyder, and remembering the fundamentals of detective work. “Russia had the means,” Snyder notes, in that Russia was in control of the relevant part of the dam when it appeared to explode. Russia had the motive, in that it fears a Ukrainian counteroffensive aimed at taking back territory – and flooded ground is ground over which tanks cannot advance.And there is the pattern of behaviour, the record of past crimes. Russia has scarcely restrained itself from targeting Ukraine’s civil infrastructure over the last 15 months: Kakhovka would just be the latest and most wanton example. Indeed, the destruction of dams to trigger mass flooding is no more than Russia’s ultra-nationalist talking heads and TV pundit class have been demanding for a while. This week one such voice suggested Moscow give the Kyiv dam the Kakhovka treatment and that it “raze the city to the ground”. As if weighing up the moral implications, he asked, “Why should we be holier than the pope?”The official denials should not be taken too seriously, given the Kremlin’s history of disinformation and outright lies. Better to judge Russia by its deeds than its words. So what did Russia do to help those made desperate by the floods? The answer was swift and it came from Russian artillery units, seemingly firing on Ukrainian rescue workers and evacuees as they tried to flee to safety. It’s a strategy familiar from Moscow’s war in Syria: pile pain upon pain, misery upon misery.Supporters of Ukraine say that this is a sign of Russian weakness, that it is resorting to barbaric methods because it knows that, in key respects, Ukraine has the upper hand – not least because it enjoys the support of a united west. That is true, for now. But there is a threat from within the alliance’s most powerful member.Freshly indicted though he is, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president. And Trump is a well-documented friend of Vladimir Putin and a sceptic on the merits of continued US support for Kyiv. When asked on CNN last month, the former president couldn’t say who he wants to prevail in the contest between Russia and Ukraine, between invader and invaded. Nor would he commit to supplying aid to Kyiv: “We don’t have ammunition for ourselves, we’re giving away so much.” Asked about war crimes charges against Putin – centred on the alleged mass abduction of Ukrainian children and their transfer across the border to be “re-educated” as Russians – Trump again refused to condemn the “smart guy” in the Kremlin.Because Trump has remade the Republican party in his own image, this is not a danger confined to him alone. His nearest current rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, echoed Moscow talking points in March when he referred to the war as a “territorial dispute”, a remark he later sought to undo. But the window into his thinking had been opened.Most Republicans in Congress still back Ukraine, but the right of the party has moved into a different place, one illuminated by Tucker Carlson’s debut Twitter show this week, his first since his firing by Fox News. There he described Zelenskiy, who is Jewish, as “sweaty and rat-like … a persecutor of Christians … shifty, dead-eyed”, suggesting without evidence, and in a perfect echo of Moscow, that the hand of Kyiv lay behind the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.We already knew that much is at stake in the November 2024 presidential election, not least the life expectancy of US democracy. But there is something else, too. Ukraine is engaged in a profound battle for its own survival as an independent nation, and for larger principles essential to the whole world: that freedom must prevail, and that aggression must not. Ukraine cannot win that fight alone. It cannot win only with the backing of its European neighbours, which, though necessary, is not sufficient. It requires the United States, its muscle and its money. The plight of Kherson and the indictment in Miami are linked: the world desperately needs the defeat of Donald Trump.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

On Thursday night, word of the government’s indictment of Donald Trump seeped out. The 45th president is reportedly slated to be arraigned this coming Tuesday on seven separate counts. He stands accused of violating the Espionage Act, false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice.Irony abounds. As a first-time candidate, he led chants of “lock her up”. From the White House, he sought jail for his political opponents. Now on his third bid for the presidency, Trump must contend with an array of pending federal and state prosecutions and investigations.For the first time ever, the leading contender for a major party’s presidential nomination will be running while under the cloud of indictment and possible imprisonment. In October, he faces a civil fraud trial in New York. Then in March 2024, he will be tried as a criminal defendant on charges related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.Imagine Trump on the receiving end of the court’s direction: “Will the defendant please rise.”Still, there is no indication that his Republican rivals will go at him full-bore. The party’s base still belongs to Trump. In that sense, the rest of the Republican field are intruders and would-be usurpers. Already, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, together with broad swaths of the Republican congressional leadership, have fallen into line.On cue, Florida’s mirthless governor blasted the justice department, much as he attacked Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, weeks earlier. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” DeSantis tweeted.To be sure, “free society” and DeSantis in the same sentence is an oxymoron. In office, he has repeatedly sought to muzzle free speech. He also signed a six-week abortion ban, and established an election police force to root out imagined incidents of fraud.This time, however, DeSantis did not couple his attack on the prosecution with a direct defense of Trump. There is only so much swill that DeSantis, now a declared candidate, can be expected to swallow.As for Trump’s hapless vice-president, he remains as wishy-washy as ever. Pence described the reported charges as “unprecedented” and “divisive”, while intoning that “no one’s above the law”. His latest bromides are akin to “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting.A reminder. On January 6, there were people who seemed ready to hang Pence from makeshift gallows. Yet hours later, Pence’s own brother, Greg, a congressman from Indiana, voted against certifying the election. The show must go on, apparently.Indeed, even Chris Christie hesitates to rush in. “Let’s see what the facts are when any possible indictment is released,” the former federal prosecutor and New Jersey governor tweeted. “As I have said before, no one is above the law, no matter how much they wish they were. We will have more to say when the facts are revealed.”Previously, Christie had opined that Trump’s legal woes are “all self-inflicted wounds”.At this juncture, only a precipitous drop in donations stands to upend Trump’s campaign. Faced with mounting legal bills, a never-ending parade of woes and little spare cash, the ex-reality show host feeds on other people’s money to stay in the game. For him, politics is about monetization and avoiding jail. After the Bragg indictment, Trump raised $12m.Looking at the calendar, it is highly unlikely that Trump will be tried on federal charges before the 2024 election. Between his trials in New York, the Republican convention and justice department policy, his figurative dance card is full. If re-elected, Trump would be in the perfect position to force the dismissal of any and all pending federal charges against him.We have already witnessed a variation of this movie. Back in May 2020, Bill Barr’s justice department moved to dismiss the government’s case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. The fact that he had entered a guilty plea in 2017 was not a deal-breaker. Flynn had not yet gone to jail and was fighting to toss his prior plea.“It looks like to me that Michael Flynn would be exonerated based on everything that I see,” Trump said more than three years ago. “I’m not the judge, but I have a different type of power.”We may yet find out how different that power actually is.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

Donald Trump announced his latest indictment last night in front of a painting of a guy literally twirling his moustache. “I am an innocent man,” the former president insisted, next to this cartoon shorthand for villainy. The oil painting in question is not so much an artwork as a lift-music version of an artwork, and seems to hang at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey – which is the same place he buried his former wife Ivana, as all admirers of both exquisite taste and private-cemetery tax breaks may already know. Either way, Ivana’s there, right near the first tee. It’s what she would have wanted.As for her surviving ex-husband, it’s fashionable to say that anything that would represent a catastrophic setback for any other human being is exactly what Trump would have wanted. By this metric, his indictment on federal charges for the first time, including under the Espionage Act, is an absolute gift and a triumph. He’ll use it to pull in fundraising, it’ll rally his base, it’ll make every Republican beta – which is to say, every Republican – feel they have to swear loyalty to him. Furthermore, it’s already got him right where he most loves to be: with everyone talking about him. And these are all reasonable points – or at least reasonable in a through-the-looking-glass way, given that to many outside observers the United States passed reason two or three election cycles ago. If only they could invade themselves to bring democracy.Even so, it must be said the Espionage Act is one of the not-great laws to allegedly break, rather like obstruction of justice, of which Trump also stands accused. Individuals convicted of those felonies can face long stretches in facilities that are often entirely oil painting-free, and have never even been offered the chance to host a golf major. They do, however, have “lively” canteens and communal areas, which could make Mr Clubhouse feel at home.As always with this defendant, however, let’s not run ahead of ourselves. Trump has been indicted by the justice department on seven counts that are still under seal, but relate to his mishandling and retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He is due in court on Tuesday in Miami. Following an incomplete search of his Palm Beach estate and club last year by members of his own legal team, then an FBI raid some months later, the documents saga constitutes something Trump keeps calling the “boxes hoax”. Quick note on vocab: down the rabbit hole we all descended some years ago now, “hoax” is the antidote to “-gate”: a sort of all-purpose bolt-on Trump can use to dismiss any scandal. Once he’s called it a hoax, the true scandal becomes the fact that anyone is trying to tar him with scandal. Trump himself becomes the poor local innocent who is being persecuted on account of his being mildly unconventional. See also: “witch-hunt”.To Mar-a-Lago, then, where someone saw Goody Trump with a classified document about Iran’s missile programme. And another about US intelligence work in China. And at least a hundred other mildly unconventional classified souvenirs of his time in office. Clearly, these are the sorts of keepsakes that any of us, had we ascended to the presidency, may afterwards wish to retain and transport to our home, which is also a members’ club thronging with hundreds of terrible people at any given time.Anyone now taking the opportunity to chant “Lock him up!” is indulging in pure McCarthyism.Unfortunately, that is not how Jack Smith, special counsel for the documents investigation, seems to have seen it. I am also confused that Mr Smith has not accepted Trump’s earlier suggestion that he could declassify documents merely by thinking about it. Last September, the former president told Fox News: “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it.” Yet according to that old spoilsport “the law”, there apparently does. So here we are.In terms of where Trump himself is, it’s complicated. He’s the hot favourite for the Republican nomination, and also the defendant or potential defendant in a number of ongoing legal actions. There simply isn’t the space to recap all of them, but the standouts are the charges of hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, on which he has already been indicted by Manhattan state prosecutors, and the federal criminal investigation into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, which remains in train and for which Smith is also the special counsel.Speaking of McCarthys, finally, the house speaker, Kevin McCarthy, reacted to news of the Trump indictment in that hyper-partisan, truth-free way that has become so commonplace that it should surely redefine “McCarthyism” for our own era. Having begun with a false claim (that Joe Biden indicted Trump), Kevin sought to delegitimise a legitimate process before kowtowing to Trump in entirely abject style. Even Trump’s not-very-arch rival for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, was too weak to do anything other than obediently defend Trump – while elsewhere, a new poll found that 43% of Republicans believed Trump should be allowed to serve again even if he were convicted of a felony. However positive some may feel about the charges, the whole picture is – how to put this? – no oil painting. Ultimately, Trump will be easier to deal with than the culture he has created.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
On Tuesday 13 June, Marina Hyde will join Gary Younge at a Guardian Live event in Brighton. Readers can join this event in person
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

MondayIn a reversal of the who-would-you-most-like-to-have-a-drink-with test, candidates declaring for the Republican presidential race this week presented as so singularly unappetising as to beg the question who among them would you leave the bar to avoid? Trump is not, weirdly, at the top of this list, since when he cares to use it one knows his charm is considerable. Mike Pence, who declared his candidacy on Monday and remains enduringly weird, would definitely break the top three, although a small part of me would like to take a crack, over a beer, at figuring out what his deal is. The former vice-president and evangelical Christian’s very clenched personality and eagerness to be photographed at the weekend in leathers on a Harley-Davidson, is suggestive of a range of possibilities.Also throwing his hat into the ring this week is Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and, for my money, the least appealing candidate in the current Republican lineup, even taking into account Ron DeSantis. Christie, you may remember, was for a hot minute in 2016 spoken of as a credible centrist Republican before everyone remembered who he was. (My favourite Christie story is the one from 2017 when he was snapped from a news helicopter enjoying a deserted beach with his family during a state-wide shutdown when the beaches were closed.) In the years since, he has flip-flopped between craven appeasement and condemnation of Trump and is now running – hollow laugh – as a moral standard-bearer on the strength of his objection to the events surrounding the storming of the US Capitol on January 6.Other candidates in the race include the requisite comedy multimillionaire who has never held office – in this case, the former pharmaceutical company CEO Vivek Ramaswamy whose manifesto seems to be the single word “anti-woke” – and a lone woman, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. Described by the former CNN host Don Lemon earlier this year as a woman who “isn’t in her prime”, Haley, at 51, is among the youngest of the candidates. There are reasons to dislike Haley (“America is not racist”) as strong as any triggered by the rest of the field, but assuredly, that isn’t one of them.TuesdayAs hot takes continue to fly around in the wake of Hannah Gadsby’s “disastrous” (ARTnews), “silly” (New York Times) curated exhibition about Picasso at the Brooklyn Museum, let’s turn instead to Françoise Gilot, whose death at the age of 101 was announced on Tuesday. Gilot was an artist, an icon in her own right and – there’s no avoiding her connection to the man, although it was the source of career-long irritation to her – the only one of Picasso’s lovers ever to walk out on him. I met her a few years ago in her apartment on the Upper West Side where she presented with the kind of fanatical chic only French women of a certain age can pull off. She wasn’t interested in false modesty. “I was considered astonishingly good,” she said of herself as a young artist. And she wasn’t sentimental about the past. “I have to admit,” she told me, “that I was never so much in love with anyone that I could not consider my own plan as interesting.” When I asked if leaving Picasso had been a liberating experience, she looked at me as if I was mad. “No, because I was not a prisoner. I’d been there of my own will and I left of my own will. That’s what I told him once, before I left. I said watch out, because I came when I wanted to, but I will leave when I want. He said, nobody leaves a man like me.” She smiled and the thrill of that moment, 70 years later, disturbed the air in the room. “I said, we’ll see.”WednesdayThe school field trip to Staten Island is cancelled because of air quality in New York, a decision parents bemoan in the morning and revisit at lunchtime when the sky darkens to a Martian glow. The air is nicotine yellow; the sun is an eery orange disc; the cars have their headlights on at midday. While Californians fold their arms and say to New Yorkers “We told you”, people in the city re-mask and shut the windows. Outside my apartment, it smells as if there is a five-alarm fire a block away.The fires burning in Canada cover an area 10 times larger than is usual for this time of year and Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, describes the smoke across the state as “an emergency crisis”, while New Yorkers describe it, variously, as smelling like “a barbecue”, “cigars”, and “9/11”. It smells to me like cigarette smoke, carried 500 miles down wind by an area of low pressure and bringing a forecast to terrify us all.ThursdayThe spectacle of Harry in court this week makes one wince for the gap between what he might hope his appearance will achieve and how things in reality are likely to play out. I don’t mean in terms of judgment, exactly, but as John Crace wrote this week, the court system is an imprecise mechanism for the deliverance of closure and it is more likely to aggravate than soothe your unease. As ever with Harry, one understands that while the Mirror group is the main target of his ire, there is a family dynamic playing out, too. The 38-year-old prince must know how unbearable his father will find the breach of protocol inherent in his appearance in court, not to mention the implied criticism that while the king did nothing, Harry is the only one in the family with the mettle to take on the tabloids. And the corrupt you-asked-for-it logic of justifying the way he was hounded on the basis that he still seeks publicity seems likely to trail him until he retires to Gloucestershire and is never heard of again.FridayDrew Barrymore on the cover of New York magazine this week exhibits a style of celebrity that seems to date back to Lucille Ball. Barrymore, at 48, has a daytime chatshow in the US in which she giggles and sits on her legs and drops her jaw when someone says something mildly diverting, and empathises so busily with her guests that at times she looks in danger of exploding. (This style is described, by the magazine, as “radically intimate” and involves a lot of “manifesting” of “precepts”.) I urge you to look up her recent interview with the actor Melanie Lynskey, during the course of which Barrymore seizes on the alcoholism of Jason Ritter, Lynskey’s husband, with the avidity of a shark happening upon a seal. I would pay good money to see her apply that unruly energy to the field of Republican candidates for president. More

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the drama unfolding within the chambers of its government.The impeachment of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton came as a shock to many, not just because of the nature of his alleged crimes, but because it is a rare instance of the party holding its own to account.William Flores, a political and social science professor at the University of Houston-Downtown called the situation “absolutely historic.”“This is a Republican-led impeachment against one of the highest Republican leaders in the state. It is absolutely unprecedented, at least in recent times,” Flores said.The Republican-majority Texas congress had largely remained silent on Paxton’s ethically questionable conduct that dates back before his first term in 2014, when the Texas state securities board fined him for violating financial laws.In 2020, things heated up when aides from his own office asked the FBI to investigate him. They alleged Paxton abused his power by accepting bribes in the form of donations from a real estate developer. They also claimed Paxton recommended that a wealthy donor to his campaign hire a woman with whom he was having an affair.When Paxton fired the staff members, they claimed he was unlawfully retaliating.In May, the house general investigating committee, composed of four Republicans and one Democrat, voted unanimously to recommend Paxton’s impeachment. Twenty articles of impeachment were brought against him.It’s not surprising for politicians to be embroiled in a scandal, but it is unusual for Texas Republicans, who usually remain in lockstep, to eat their own.Paxton belongs to the most extreme wing of his party. He is the architect of some of the most severe voting restrictions imposed on the state, such as preventing most mail-in ballots and disbanding drive-through voting, two methods counties have tried to implement to make voting widely accessible. He established an “election integrity” division in his office that dedicates tens of thousands of hours to investigating voter fraud cases, despite no evidence that it is a widespread problem.More recently, Paxton launched an investigation into Austin’s Dell children’s hospital for the gender-affirming care it provided, which led to the swift departure of doctors from its adolescent unit, disrupting treatment not just for transitioning teens, but also those with cancer and eating disorders. He is now pursuing a similar investigation into the Texas children’s hospital, the largest such facility in the country.He also stands in staunch opposition to reproductive choice and federal immigration policy, and in firm support of gun rights despite the string of school mass shootings his state has suffered.In 2022, faced with a subpoena to testify in a lawsuit filed by abortion advocacy organizations at his doorstep, Paxton fled in a truck driven by his state senator wife, Angela Paxton.Animosity towards Paxton culminated when he tried earlier this year to use state funds to pay a legal settlement of over $3m to the former office members who blew the whistle on their boss’s dealings.In order to use taxpayer dollars to pay legal fees for an elected official, the state legislature needs to give approval. But obtaining that approval was not as simple as Paxton might have hoped.If there’s one thing that can be counted on in tax-averse Texas, it’s less spending and limited government. And that extends to the Republicans in charge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHouse members Andrew Murr and Ann Johnson are some of the Republicans who drafted the articles of impeachment against Paxton, but also the two that serve on the far-right Texas Freedom Caucus.David Spiller, a Republican who also serves on the general investigation committee, began a statement with praise for the attorney general’s “brilliant legal mind” but said: “I have a duty and obligation to protect the citizens of Texas from elected officials who abuse their office and their powers for personal gain. I cannot be complicit in condoning the improper actions of Attorney General Paxton. I cannot ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen.”Even more atypical is the infighting now seen among party members. Hours before the investigation into Paxton was announced, Paxton called for the resignation of Republican house speaker Dade Phelan, whom he accused of drunken behavior while serving in office. Phelan’s retort was presented through his spokesperson, who called Paxton’s move “a last-ditch effort to save face”.Abbott remains silent on the impeachment of his attorney general and the fault lines emerging within his party. The state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, offered a milquetoast statement which was neither informative nor indicative of where he stood.However, Donald Trump weighed in on the drama on the Truth Social social media platform in defense of Paxton.Trump wrote: “The Rino Speaker of the House of Texas, Dade Phelan, who is barely a Republican at all and failed the test on voter integrity, wants to impeach one of the most hard working and effective Attorney Generals in the United States, Ken Paxton, who just won re-election with a large number of American Patriots strongly voting for him.”Although the spectacle has shaken up the party, Flores said not much will change within the state’s Republican party regardless of if Paxton gets ousted or not.“The red meat kind of issues that go to the core and are very popular not only in the state of Texas, but with conservatives – it’s a national playbook,” Flores said. “Texas is filled with with contradictions, but the conservatives are pretty unified around conservative issues.”Now, a senate trial will be held no later than 28 August. A two-thirds majority is needed to remove Paxton from office, including possibly one vote from his wife who has yet to recuse herself due to an unethical conflict of interest.In the event that happens, Abbott will be forced to appoint his permanent replacement and Texas will see the historic toppling of a leader not seen before in the state. More

Support The Guardian
The Guardian is editorially independent.
And we want to keep our journalism open and accessible to all.
But we increasingly need our readers to fund our work.

Support The Guardian More