US Politics

Ron DeSantis has recently gained a reputation as the GOP’s best hope to keep Donald Trump from the top of the ticket in 2024.The governor reinvigorated the culture wars in Florida, including by taking on Disney World, cracking down on shaky claims of election fraud and going after the state’s higher education institutions for being too “woke”.But that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t have other candidates to choose from. Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley formally launched her presidential campaign this week, and his ex-vice-president Mike Pence is waiting in the wings, along with a host of others. That all could be good news for the former president; a recent poll showed it would be DeSantis’s support – not Trump’s – that would suffer in a contested primary.Sarah Palin, the one-time candidate for vice-president whose hokey, vapid brand of conservatism is seen as a prototype for Trump’s iconic style, thinks DeSantis should hold off. “He should stay governor for a bit longer. He’s young, you know. He has decades ahead of him where he can be our president,” she said this week. That’s the opposite of the advice she gave herself in 2009, when she resigned as Alaska’s governor before completing her term.We still don’t have all the answers about the recent spate of UFO shootdowns, but the US military announced it had recovered all of the Chinese spy balloon destroyed off South Carolina’s coast. As for the three other mysterious objects American warplanes downed over the US and Canada, there’s a compelling theory that one was a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois. Speaking of the midwestern state, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, will head there next week to address a police union – just the type of thing a state politician with national aspirations would do.Here’s what else happened today:
The justice department searched the offices of a group connected to Mike Pence, but found no new classified documents.
Joe Biden spoke out in support of John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator who checked himself into a hospital for treatment of clinical depression.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is claiming vindication after a special grand jury unanimously found there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
Fox News’ biggest names never believed Donald Trump’s election fraud claims but parroted them anyway, newly released court filings show. This story has raised plenty of eyebrows – except for readers of the Wall Street Journal, a publication that shares ownership with the network and has yet to cover it.
On the new Index of Impunity, the US’s ranking is not particularly enviable.
With Roe v Wade overturned, the religious right is now pushing legislation in Republican-led states that would crack down on everything from drag queen performances to the sale of romance novels, Hallie Lieberman reports:A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.Opponents of the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill, said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring one-third or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 or older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue a site if their kids access it. Republicans take aim at risque jokes and romance novels with anti-sex billsRead moreJoe Biden spoke out in support of Senator John Fetterman’s decision to seek hospital treatment for depression:John, Gisele – Jill and I are thinking about your family today.Millions of people struggle with depression every day, often in private.Getting the care you need is brave and important. We’re grateful to you for leading by example. https://t.co/V3rGZSKrM4— President Biden (@POTUS) February 17, 2023
The White House press secretary also talked about the Democratic lawmaker’s decision in her briefing today:01:23Vice-president Kamala Harris along with a host of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are at the annual Munich security conference, where they heard a speech from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Here’s what he had to say, from the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour:The west needs to hurry up its support for Ukraine as Vladimir Putin will gain a military advantage unless arms deliveries and further sanctions arrive soon, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address to world leaders at a security conference in Munich in the face of mounting fears that Russia is planning a new offensive.“We need to hurry up. We need speed – speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery … speed of decisions to limit Russian potential,” the Ukrainian president said. “There is no alternative to speed because it is speed that life depends on.”He added: “Delay has always been and still is a mistake.”His address came just days before the anniversary on 24 February of Moscow sending its forces into the country and unleashing the biggest war in Europe since the 1940s.Zelenskiy warned that Russia was trying to mount an offensive, mainly in the south, partly by attacking civilian and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, he said, neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive, and claimed surveys showed 80% of the country did not wish to join the war.Trying to sound an optimistic note and taking up the theme of the conference, “David on the Dnipro”, Zelenskiy said his country had the courage to defeat Goliath with a slingshot. But for this to succeed, he said, the slingshot had to become stronger and faster. “Goliath has already started to lose. Goliath will definitely fall this year,” he said. Zelenskiy urges west to speed up arms support to head off Russia offensiveRead moreDonald Trump tried to call into Fox News as the January 6 insurrection was occurring, but network executives turned him down, fearing he could make the situation worse, CNN reports.The new details come from the documents containing communications between top Fox News personalities and officials that were made public yesterday as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network:Buried in the Dominion filing: Donald Trump dialed into Lou Dobbs’ show on 1/6 trying to get on air but Fox would not let him. 1/6 committee didn’t know Trump had made this call, according to a source familiar with the panel’s work. pic.twitter.com/vGWl4Lbn5Y— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) February 17, 2023
The justice department searched the offices of a conservative group connected to former vice-president Mike Pence as part of its investigation into his possession of classified documents, but found no additional items, Politico reports:JUST IN: Pence spokesman says”[DOJ] today completed a thorough and unrestricted search of Advancing American Freedom’s office for several hours and found no new documents with classified markings. One binder with approximately three previously redacted documents was taken.”— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 17, 2023
A person familiar with the search says the binder is believed to be related to Pence’s 2020 debate prep. Pence had attorneys present throughout the search.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 17, 2023
The presence of classified documents at Pence’s Indiana home was first revealed last month, and the Republican former vice-president said he would cooperate with government efforts to retrieve any material in his possession. Unlike with the cases involving Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both of whom were discovered to be in possession of secret government material, though in vastly different circumstances – the justice department has not appointed a special counsel to handle the investigation into Pence.Joe Biden’s former executive assistant will sit for an interview with House Republicans investigating the president’s possession of classified documents, CNN reports.Kathy Chung was a staffer who in 2017 helped pack up Biden’s belongings at the end of his eight years as vice-president. Classified material dating to that stint in the White House, and to his time as senator, were among those found in his possession, sparking investigations by the justice department as well as the GOP-led House oversight committee, which will interview Chung.Here’s more from CNN’s report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Chung was one of the staffers who packed Biden’s belongings and documents at the end of his time as vice president, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those boxes eventually ended up at the Penn Biden Center and are now at the center of a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified info. A source close to Chung says she feels partly responsible for the situation.
Chung’s lawyer, Bill Taylor, told CNN … they have been in discussions with the Oversight Committee over the past week and have agreed to provide the committee with much of what it requested in a letter last month.
“She is happy to sit for an interview with the committee,” Taylor told CNN.
The committee made a broad request that asks for materials well beyond the Biden document investigation including all communications with the Biden family dating back to 2009. The panel also demanded all documents and communications “related to then-Vice President Biden’s departure from office in 2017, including communications regarding Penn Biden Center,” the letter notes.
Chung’s lawyer says there are limits on what they are willing to provide: “She is not agreeing to produce everything in the letter but would provide documents related to the movement of documents from the White House to the Penn Biden Center.”
Taylor has proposed several dates for a possible interview, but the final date has not been set.More from Kamala Harris’s NBC interview, on her response to moves by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, targeting the teaching of African American history.DeSantis, 44, is widely expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination and is the only close challenger to Donald Trump in polling.Harris is the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to be vice-president.She said: “Any push to censor America’s teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children … is, I think, wrongheaded.“The people who know our children, are their parents and their teachers … and it should not be some politician saying what should be taught in our classrooms.”Dismissing Washington “chatter” about whether Joe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and whether her own party thinks she would be a suitable replacement if he does not, Kamala Harris said the president “has said he intends to run for re-election … and I intend to run with him as vice-president of the United States”.Harris was speaking to NBC News at the Munich security conference.Biden has not formally declared a run but all signs suggest that he will. On Thursday, the White House physician pronounced him “fit for duty, and [to] fully execute all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations”.Also on Thursday, however, Politico reported concern among Democrats that at 80, and already the oldest president ever, Biden is too old to run for a second term, by the end of which he would be 86.The site also reported that insiders believe Harris would not be a good presidential candidate herself.Speaking to NBC, Harris said: “I think that it is very important to focus on the needs of the American people and not political chatter out of Washington DC.”She was also asked about Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador now running for the Republican presidential nomination, who has called for a “new generation” of leaders and said politicians over the age of 75 should be subject to mandatory mental health tests.Haley’s only declared opponent for the Republican nomination, former president Donald Trump, is younger than Biden but only by four years. Haley has not said that Trump is too old.Harris, 58, said Haley was using “very coded language”, adding: “What I know from traveling our country is that the American people want leaders who will see what’s going on in their lives and create solution.“In Joe Biden, we have a president who is probably one of the boldest and strongest American presidents we have had in his response to the needs of the American people.”The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience a controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Full story…Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreIn California, the Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports lawmakers are considering a proposal that would allow citizens to vote while incarcerated for felonies in state and federal prisons. Advocates for the measure see it as crucial for racial justice, since the state’s prison population is disproportionately non-white:Before having his sentence commuted by Governor Gavin Newsom last year, Thanh Tran served 10 and a half years in prisons and jails across California, a time he described as the “most traumatizing and dehumanizing experience of my life”.Had he been able to vote during that time, he said he would have maintained some hope that his community still cared about him.“The focus of incarceration right now in California is about punishment, but if I had the ability to vote, it would still create that tie to the community,” said Tran, now a policy associate with the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. It would be like the community saying, “Thanh, we still care about you out here,” he said. “We know your sentence will one day end and we want you to return home and be a good neighbor to us.”Could California be the latest state to restore voting rights to felons?Read moreWe still don’t have all the answers about the recent spate of UFO shootdowns, but the US military announced it had recovered all of the Chinese spy balloon destroyed off South Carolina’s coast. As for the three other mysterious objects American warplanes downed over the US and Canada, there’s a compelling theory that one was a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois. Speaking of the midwestern state, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis will head there next week to address a police union – just the type of thing a state politician with national aspirations would do.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is claiming vindication after a special grand jury unanimously found there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.
Fox News’s biggest names never believed Donald Trump’s election fraud claims but parroted them anyway, newly released court filings show. This story has raised plenty of eyebrows – except for readers of the Wall Street Journal, a publication that shares ownership with the network and has yet to cover it.
On the new Index of Impunity, the United States’s ranking is not particularly enviable.
But what of the unidentified objects the US military shot down in the days after it destroyed the Chinese spy balloon? There’s still no official explanation of what those were, but the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports on the convincing evidence that one may have been a hobbyist’s balloon launched from Illinois:A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation.The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory.In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of the pico balloon before its last recorded electronic check-in at 12.48am that day suggests a connection – as well as a fiery demise at the hands of a sidewinder missile on the 124th day of its journey, three days before it was set to complete its seventh circumnavigation.If that is what happened, it would mean the US military expended a missile costing $439,000 to fell an innocuous hobby balloon worth about $12.Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloonRead moreThe Chinese spy balloon has generated plenty of partisan furor in Washington, but there’s more evidence that Beijing has deployed similar craft for surveillance in the past.The Wall Street Journal reports that during Donald Trump’s administration, a small group of Pentagon officials tracked strange objects that are now thought to have been balloons over US airspace – but their observations never made their way to the White House.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Now it appears some intelligence officials at the Pentagon were aware of the incidents and harbored concerns that they were related to China, believing Beijing was using them to test radar-jamming systems over sensitive U.S. military sites. The data collected about the Trump-era incidents was limited to a basic assessment and therefore wasn’t shared more broadly within the government at the time.
Pentagon intelligence analysts reached their assessment about the objects in the summer of 2020, the former officials said.
The assessment “never got to be assertive” in concluding that the objects were linked to Chinese surveillance, said one of the officials familiar with the issue.The Journal’s article notes that Mark Esper, the defense secretary from 2019 to 2020, never heard about these objects, which were smaller and made shorter flights over navy installations in Guam, California and Virginia.Republicans seized on the Chinese’s balloon’s flyover this month to argue the Biden administration wasn’t taking the threat from Beijing seriously, but the White House countered that three objects went undetected over US airspace while Trump was in office, and one earlier in Biden’s presidency. More

Kamala Harris: Biden is not too old for president and I intend to run with himVice-president dismisses ‘Washington chatter’ about whether president should run for a second term in the White House Dismissing Washington “chatter” about whether Joe Biden should run for re-election in 2024 and whether her own party thinks she would be a suitable replacement if he did not, Kamala Harris said the US president “has said he intends to run for re-election … and I intend to run with him as vice-president”.Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Read moreHarris was speaking to NBC News at the Munich Security Conference.Biden has not formally declared a run but all signs suggest that he will. On Thursday, the White House physician pronounced him “fit for duty, and [to] fully execute all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations”.Also on Thursday, however, Politico reported concern among Democrats that at 80, and already the oldest president ever, Biden is too old to run for a second term by the end of which he would be 86.The site also reported that some insiders believe Harris would not be a good presidential candidate herself.Speaking to NBC, Harris said: “I think that it is very important to focus on the needs of the American people and not political chatter out of Washington DC.”She was also asked about Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador now running for the Republican presidential nomination, who has called for a “new generation” of leaders and said politicians over the age of 75 should be subject to mandatory mental health tests.Haley’s only declared opponent for the Republican nomination, former president Donald Trump, is younger than Biden but only by four years. Haley has not said Trump is too old.Harris, 58, said Haley was using “very coded language”, adding: “What I know from traveling our country is that the American people want leaders who will see what’s going on in their lives and create solution.“In Joe Biden, we have a president who is probably one of the oldest and strongest American presidents we have had in his response to the needs of the American people.”Haley made headlines on Thursday by saying she did not think a controversial “don’t say gay” law governing the teaching of sexual orientation and gender issues in elementary schools, signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, went “far enough”.DeSantis, 44, is widely expected to run for the Republican nomination and is the only close challenger to Trump in polling.DeSantis has also targeted the teaching of African American history. Harris, the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to be vice-president, said: “Any push to censor America’s teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children … is, I think, wrongheaded.“The people who know our children, are their parents and their teachers … and it should not be some politician saying what should be taught in our classrooms.”TopicsUS politicsKamala HarrisUS elections 2024Joe BidennewsReuse this content More

Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloonIllinois hobby group says balloon went missing the day military missile costing $439,000 destroyed unidentified entity nearby01:19A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation.The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory.In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of the pico balloon before its last recorded electronic check-in at 12.48am that day suggests a connection – as well as a fiery demise at the hands of a sidewinder missile on the 124th day of its journey, three days before it was set to complete its seventh circumnavigation.Biden says latest objects shot down over US not linked to China spy programRead moreIf that is what happened, it would mean the US military expended a missile costing $439,000 (£365,000) to fell an innocuous hobby balloon worth about $12 (£10).“For now we are calling pico balloon K9YO missing in action,” the group’s website says, noting that its last recorded altitude was 37,928ft (11,560m) while close to Hagemeister island, a 116 sq mile (300 sq km) landmass on the north shore of Bristol Bay.The object above Yukon was the second of three felled on Joe Biden’s orders on successive days last weekend after a Chinese spy balloon – a fourth separate object – was shot down over the Atlantic after it crossed the South Carolina coast on 4 February.US officials said during the week that the three objects shot down after the destruction of the Chinese spy balloon were probably benign and likely to have been commercial or linked to climate research.On Thursday, after several days of pressure from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and amid an escalating diplomatic row with China, Biden broke his silence. The president said: “Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.”He said they were eliminated because authorities considered they posed a threat to aviation, although some observers say the downings were an overreaction amid political pressure over the discovery of the Chinese balloon.The Illinois brigade’s membership is a “small group of pico balloon enthusiasts” which has been operating since June 2021, according to its website.It says pico balloons have a 32in diameter and 100in circumference, and they have a cruising altitude between 32,000 and 50,000ft, a similar range to commercial aircraft.They contain trackers, solar panels and antenna packages lighter than a small bird, and the balloons are filled using less than a cubic foot of gas. According to Aviation Week, they are small hobby balloons starting at about $12 that allow enthusiasts to combine their interests in high-altitude ballooning and ham radio in an affordable way.Scientific Balloon Solutions founder Ron Meadows, whose Silicon Valley company makes purpose-built pico balloons for hobbyists, educators and scientists, told the publication that he attempted to alert authorities but was knocked back.“I tried contacting our military and the FBI, and just got the runaround, to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are,” he said. “They’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down.”National security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that efforts were being made to locate and identify the remains of the objects that were shot down, but the process was hampered by their remote locations and freezing weather.Kirby also said there was “no evidence” that extraterrestrial activity was at play in any of the downed objects, but the president had ordered the formation of an interagency team “to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks”.TopicsUS militaryUS politicsChinaJoe BidenReuse this content More

Nikki Haley says Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ law does not go ‘far enough’Republican presidential candidate makes comments in New Hampshire on controversial law signed by governor Ron DeSantis02:41Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told a New Hampshire audience the controversial “don’t say gay” education law signed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, does not go “far enough”.DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warRead more“Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley said. “I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.”DeSantis’s law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity through third grade, in which children are eight or nine years old. The law has proved hugely controversial, stoking confrontation with progressives but also corporations key to the Florida economy, Disney prominent among them.Some pediatric psychologists say the law could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth already more likely to face bullying and attempt suicide than other children.Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, this week became the second declared major candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, after Donald Trump.Widely expected to run, DeSantis is the only candidate who challenges Trump in polling. Surveys have shown Haley in third place, with the potential to split the anti-Trump vote and hand the nomination to the former president.New Hampshire will stage the first primary of the Republican race. In Exeter on Thursday, Haley said: “There was all this talk about the Florida bill – the ‘don’t Say gay bill’. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade. I’m sorry. I don’t think that goes far enough.“When I was in school you didn’t have sex ed until seventh grade. And even then, your parents had to sign whether you could take the class. That’s a decision for parents to make.”As reported by Fox News, Haley also said Republicans should “focus on new generational leadership” by putting “a badass woman in the White House”.Speaking to Fox News, Haley was asked about DeSantis and the “don’t say gay” law and she doubled down on her comments.She said: “I think Ron’s been a good governor. I just think that third grade’s too young. We should not be talking to kids in elementary school about gender, period.Nikki Haley: video shows Republican candidate saying US states can secedeRead more“And if you are going to talk to kids about it, you need to get the parents’ permission to do that. That is something between a parent and a child. That is not something that schools need to be teaching. Schools need to be teaching reading and math and science. They don’t need to be teaching whether they think you’re a boy or a girl.”Haley also claimed to be focused not on Republican rivals but on “running against Joe Biden”, adding: “I’m not kicking sideways. I’m kicking forward.”Haley, 51, has also attracted attention by controversially proposing mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.She said: “This is not hard. Just like we go and we turn over our tax returns … why can’t you turn over a mental competency test right when you run for office? Why can’t we have that?”Biden is 80. Trump is 76.TopicsNikki HaleyUS politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisFloridaNew HampshireLGBTQ+ rightsnewsReuse this content More

Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings showComments by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham revealed in $1.6bn Dominion defamation lawsuit Hosts at Fox News privately ridiculed Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen while simultaneously peddling the same lies on air, according to court filings in a defamation lawsuit against the network.Rightwing personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are among those named in the $1.6bn action brought by Dominion Voting Systems, the seller of electronic voting hardware and software that is suing Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation for maligning its reputation.From colonialism to Putin: what did Tucker Carlson defend in 2022?Read more“He’s acting like an insane person,” Hannity allegedly wrote of Trump in the weeks following the election as the host continued to push the so-called “big lie” during his top-rated prime time show, aided by a succession of election deniers he had on as guests.Even billionaire Fox owner Rupert Murdoch was dismissive of the former president’s false allegations, the filing alleges, calling them “really crazy stuff” in one memo to a Fox News executive, and criticizing Trump’s scattergun approach of pursuing lawsuits in numerous states to try to overturn his defeat.It was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere”, Murdoch wrote, adding in another note that Trump’s obsession with trying to prove fraud was “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Meanwhile, Carlson, one of the network’s most prominent and controversial stars, was disdainful of Sidney Powell, a senior Trump attorney who repeatedly claimed Dominion’s machines flipped votes cast for Trump to Joe Biden.“Sidney Powell is lying,” he wrote to a producer, the Dominion lawsuit alleges. He referred to Powell in a text as an “unguided missile” and “dangerous as hell”.Trump, Carlson said, was a “demonic force” who was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fellow host Ingraham told Carlson that Powell was “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.Hannity, meanwhile, said in a deposition “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second”, according to Dominion’s filing.Other internal communications revealed that Fox News executives, hosts and researchers used phrases including “mind-blowingly nuts”, “totally off the rails” and “completely BS” to describe the false election theories they were publicly promoting.All were included in a 192-page redacted summary judgment brief filed on Thursday at the Delaware superior court by Dominion’s attorneys. A trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.The company claims multiple Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total BS’,” the brief states.“Not a single Fox witness testified [in depositions] that they believe any of the allegations about Dominion are true. Indeed, Fox witness after Fox witness declined to assert the allegations’ truth or actually stated they do not believe them.”Top US conservatives pushing Russia’s spin on Ukraine war, experts sayRead moreThe brief highlighted an 8 November 2020 interview on Maria Bartiromo’s show in which Powell insisted Dominion voting machines were used to engage in election fraud.Bartiromo knew what Powell intended to say before the interview, according to the filing, in part because Powell had forwarded an email to her revealing her source came from a woman who got her information from “the wind”.The Fox News executive responsible for Bartiromo’s show, David Clark, admitted in a deposition he “would not have allowed that claim to be aired” if he knew about the “crazy” theory from the email.The filing also shows how Hannity and others were critical of their own network for its early call of Arizona for Biden on election night, which enraged Trump. Hannity texted Carlson and Ingraham that the call “destroyed a brand that took 25 years to build and the damage is incalculable”, while Carlson called it an “act of vandalism”.Attorneys for the cable news station argued in a counterclaim that the lawsuit was an assault on the first amendment. They said Dominion had advanced “novel defamation theories” and was seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines and chilling protected speech.“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN [Fox News Network] for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day – allegations by the sitting president of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”Fox responded to the new claims in a statement to ABC News. “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsFox NewsRupert MurdochSean HannityDonald TrumpUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Biden waited long to address the mysterious flying objects. Now we know whyMargaret SullivanThe president’s short address didn’t do anyone – including himself – much good, as it shed little light on what was going on After weeks of speculation about a Chinese spy balloon and other weird things in the skies over North America, President Joe Biden on Thursday did what he had to do.He finally talked about the subject in a formal setting – a brief address to the nation from the White House.With criticism coming from both Democrats and Republicans about the lack of information being shared with the public after four flying objects were shot down over the past two weeks, Biden really didn’t have any other option.Americans have been understandably puzzled and unnerved by what was happening, first as the spy balloon was shot down and then as the second, third and fourth objects appeared and were taken down over Alaska, Canada and Michigan.The president had to say something before another day went by.But Biden’s roughly eight-minute address didn’t do anyone – including himself – much good. Filled with fuzzy talk of parameters and protocols, and devoid of much useful information, the brief speech made it all too obvious why it took Biden so long.“Biden’s announcement was underwhelming, to say the least,” tech writer Matt Novak opined in Forbes. It was hard to argue, although it was helpful to hear the president confirm that the US military has adjusted its radar filters, which has led to being able to spot more objects flying about.Biden didn’t have much more to say, other than that he expected to speak soon with President Xi Jinping of China to object to the original surveillance balloon’s apparent violation of American airspace; it was shot down on 4 February over the Atlantic after being seen over Montana by civilians.As for the others, “we don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing, nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that there were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” Biden said.The other three objects, he added, “were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research”.It sounded plausible but speculative. And that lack of certainty, no doubt, is part of why he hesitated to speak earlier.Making it worse – in terms of transparency with the press and public – the president didn’t answer any reporters’ questions after his prepared remarks. He hesitated, and seemed to consider responding substantively, as he listened to the cacophony of shouts from the press.Then he apparently got annoyed after a question (“Are you compromised by your family’s business relationships?”) got under his skin. He snapped at the reporter with a characteristic phrase: “Give me a break, man.” Not long after, he walked away.It would have been far better to try to identify one or two reasonable questions on the subject at hand and to answer them respectfully – even if it meant saying “we don’t know that yet”.In a less fraught political environment, Biden might have been wise to heed Senator Chris Coons. A few days ago, the Delaware Democrat sounded as if he had beamed, like Michelle Yeoh, into the multiverse and had already experienced Thursday’s non-news event.“If I were advising the president on this, I’d say ‘wait until you’ve got clarity’, Coons told reporters. “I wouldn’t just stand up and give a speech to the nation saying ‘We don’t yet know the answer to all these questions,’ because I don’t think that would reassure anybody.”But that sensible-sounding notion had to be weighed against the predictable nastiness of Republican lawmakers like Josh Hawley of Missouri who said a formal presidential appearance “would at least show me that the president maybe is aware of what’s going on, and is lucid”.And Coons’ thinking had to be weighed, too, against strong urging from some fellow Democrats, including Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut: “The American people should be given more information. They’re ready for it. They can handle it. And they need and deserve to know it.”Given the apparent lack of hard information to be shared, this situation was probably a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Still, it would have been worse to do nothing, and let the criticism continue to mount from all sides.Hearing from the president directly was moderately worthwhile but the address could have been much more valuable if Biden had thoughtfully responded to a few questions from the gathered press.If transparency was the major aim, not doing that was a missed opportunity.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
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Could California be the latest state to restore voting rights to felons?Proposal would allow prisoners to vote in what advocates see as a matter of racial justice – but challenges lie ahead Before having his sentence commuted by Governor Gavin Newsom last year, Thanh Tran served ten and a half years in prisons and jails across California, a time he described as the “most traumatizing and dehumanizing experience of my life”.Had he been able to vote during that time, he said he would have maintained some hope that his community still cared about him.“The focus of incarceration right now in California is about punishment, but if I had the ability to vote, it would still create that tie to the community,” said Tran, now a policy associate with the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. It would be like the community saying, “Thanh, we still care about you out here,” he said. “We know your sentence will one day end and we want you to return home and be a good neighbor to us.”The untold story of how a US woman was sentenced to six years for votingRead moreNow Tran is a leading supporter of ACA 4, a constitutional amendment introduced last week by California assemblymember Isaac Bryan that would restore voting rights to California’s prisoners – a population that is disproportionately non-white.California is one of at least three states where lawmakers this year have introduced proposals to allow citizens to vote while serving time for felonies in state and federal prison. Democratic lawmakers in Massachusetts and New York have also filed bills and amendments to end felony disenfranchisement.If any of the proposals succeed, the states would join Maine, Vermont and Washington DC in allowing people to vote while incarcerated. Along with the states restoring rights to people with felony convictions upon release from prison, this marks a time when states are slowly erasing Jim Crow-era laws that have prevented people with felony convictions from ever fully regaining their rights.But advocates still face steep challenges.While Washington DC successfully ended felony disenfranchisement in July 2020 when the city council passed a bill unanimously, the efforts this year will face uphill battles, and other states that have attempted to do the same in recent years have run into roadblocks. In Oregon, a legislative attempt stalled in early 2022, despite strong support from Democratic lawmakers. And legislation proposed in Illinois also stalled in committee. Similar unsuccessful bills have also been introduced in Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Virginia.Across the country, an estimated 4.6 million Americans are barred from voting due to a felony conviction, according to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group focused on decarceration. The rate at which African Americans are disenfranchised currently is 3.5 times higher than non-African Americans.When Bryan, who chairs the California assembly’s election committee and has a background in criminal justice advocacy, was elected to represent a portion of Los Angeles in the legislature, he started thinking about how policy could better connect incarcerated people with their communities. He said he realized that cutting people off from society by revoking their right to vote doesn’t benefit anyone. “People touch the criminal legal system because they felt disconnected from society,” he said. “Disconnecting them further doesn’t make any of us safer.”“Overall democracy thrives when everyone is included, and that includes people who are currently incarcerated,” he added.Of the more than 95,000 people in the California state prison system, 80% are people of color or people from poor and disadvantaged communities, according to Antoinette Ratcliffe, executive director of California-based non-profit Initiate Justice.‘Stakes are monstrous’: Wisconsin judicial race is 2023’s key electionRead moreFor that reason, Bryan, who represents part of Los Angeles, says ending California’s practice is a matter of racial justice. “We know that our criminal legal system is full of bias and we know that it disproportionately exacerbates the negative conditions of life for Black, brown, poor, indigenous communities.”Bryan noted that the vast majority of California’s prisoners will return home, and allowing them to maintain a connection to their communities lowers recidivism rates and helps their potential for success.To become law, the constitutional amendment would need to pass with a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the legislature and then be approved by a majority of voters on the ballot.If passed, incarcerated people would cast ballots at their last place of residence before being incarcerated. California has eliminated prison gerrymandering, meaning people are counted for purposes of reapportionment where they last resided instead of at their prison location – a practice that can be manipulated to give people living in localities with prisons disproportionate representation.Bryan also pointed out that California currently allows people serving time in jail for offenses other than felonies to vote inside the jail, so “questions about whether you can facilitate an election in a carceral setting have already been answered through that process”.Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican who serves as vice-chair of the election committee, shared his opposition to the proposal, tweeting: “Criminal acts should have consequences. Voting is a sacred privilege, not an absolute right of citizenship.”California’s proposal comes at a time when other states are also considering expanding their electorate to include more people with felony convictions. The number of people disenfranchised due to felony convictions nationally has declined by 24% since 2016, according to the Sentencing Project, as states have changed their policies and state prison populations have declined modestly.A number of states have taken measures in recent years to extend voting rights to people on probation and parole, including California, where voters approved Proposition 17 in 2020, allowing people on parole to vote. California is now one of 21 states where people lose their right to vote while incarcerated but regain the right upon release.Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bidRead moreThis year, the Democratic-controlled Minnesota house of representatives passed a bill that would restore voting rights to individuals on parole, probation or community release, and now the bill heads to the state senate, which is also controlled by Democrats. In Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia, lawmakers have also proposed bills to ease restrictions on voting rights for people with felony convictions.Progress has been stymied in other states, including North Carolina, which restored voting rights to roughly 56,000 people on parole and probation before the 2022 election. But the now Republican-controlled state supreme court heard a challenge to the law in early February and appears poised to roll back that expansion.Bryan said he hopes his proposed constitutional amendment will get more states thinking about restoring voting rights to everyone.“As we lead in California, a lot of the rest of the country follows,” Bryan said. “I think that’s a good thing and it’s an opportunity to show what change can look like and what progress can look like.”TopicsCaliforniaThe fight for democracyUS prisonsVotes for prisonersUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

AnalysisHow big a threat does the hard right pose to US support for Ukraine?Julian Borger in WashingtonA year after the conflict began, the consensus against Russian aggression has held but alarm bells are ringing in Congress Vladimir Putin has proven adept at exploiting the US political divide, so the solid bipartisan consensus behind arming Ukraine over the past year may well have come as a surprise to him. The question one year into the war is: how long can that consensus last?Two weeks before the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion on 24 February, a group of Trump-supporting Republicans led by Matt Gaetz introduced a “Ukraine fatigue” resolution that, if passed, would “express through the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement”.The resolution is sponsored by 11 Republican members of Congress on the far right Freedom Caucus faction, and is highly unlikely to pass. But it marks a shot across the bows of the leadership, which has mostly vowed to stay the course in supporting Ukraine.Justifying the resolution, Gaetz pointed to the risks of escalation of the Ukraine war into a wider global conflict and to the economic cost to the US.“President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III’,” the Florida Republican said. “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to haemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war.”The influence of this faction is heightened by the fact that the Republicans have a slim nine-seat majority in the House, and the new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, only scraped into the job after 15 rounds of voting among Republican members, during which he gave promises to listen to the concerns of hard-right holdouts like Gaetz.“I’ve been sounding the alarms on Republican opposition to Ukraine aid for the last 12 months,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy said. “Right now, there are enough Republicans in the Senate who support Ukraine aid along with all of the Democrats, so we can continue to deliver support, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in the House.”“I think there’s going to be tremendous pressure on Speaker McCarthy to abandon Ukraine … and it’s possible he could wilt under the pressure,” Murphy said. “We know the Russians see this as a real opportunity.”European diplomats have been lobbying Republicans, underlining the importance of maintaining western solidarity in the face of Russian aggression and arguing that support for Ukraine is an extremely inexpensive way to degrade the military of a hostile power seen by the Pentagon as an “acute threat”.The diplomats report reassuring noises from the party leadership, but unwavering resistance from the rightwingers, many of whom follow the lead of the Trump camp, particularly the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, who has railed against western backing for Ukraine, and ridiculed its president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.“The divide in the US is now more tangible than in Europe. The Republican leadership is absolutely adamant that there will be no lessening of support for Ukraine, but it’s just words,” one European diplomat said. “With such a narrow Republican majority in the House, the Freedom Caucus has a lot of influence. And you don’t need to cut off help overnight. You just need to slow it down with procedure. That’s the danger.”Some of Washington’s European allies are less concerned. One noted how upbeat McCarthy was on the issue, and the commitment to Ukraine of the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.Frank Luntz, a Republican political consultant, also argued the pro-Russian lobby in the party had been permanently diminished.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Trump used to call Putin a genius. You don’t hear him saying that anymore,” Luntz said. “Most of these people have backed down because they realise they were completely wrong. Donald Trump blew it in Ukraine and there are people who hold it against him to this day.”“You have a few dozen members who are hostile now and that will increase, and could even double. But I don’t expect our support for Ukraine to ebb,” he added.However, a recent opinion poll has shown support softening for the continued arming of Ukraine as the war approached its one-year milestone. In the survey by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center, 48% of those questioned said they were in favour of providing weapons, with 29% opposed. Last May, 60% of Americans surveyed supported arming Ukraine.It is against that backdrop that Biden will fly to Poland on Monday to mark the approach of the anniversary and to restate the case for western solidarity with Ukraine.Murphy predicted that the House speaker, who has himself warned that there would no longer be a “blank cheque” for Ukraine with a Republican majority, might seek a compromise with the right of the party that could eventually prove devastating.“I worry that McCarthy will try to split the baby and support funding for hard military infrastructure but not support economic and humanitarian aid,” the Democratic senator said. “If that’s the direction that US funding goes, it’s a recipe for the slow death of Ukraine.”TopicsUS politicsA year of war in UkraineUkraineEuropeUS foreign policyRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More