US Politics

US military shoots down fourth flying object over North American airspaceIncident involved third unidentified object downed by US and Canadian jets in recent days, and follows shooting of large balloon claimed by China The US military shot down a fourth flying object over North American airspace in a week on Sunday over Lake Huron in Michigan, confirmed the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer.The high-altitude unidentified object was the third to be downed by US and Canadian fighter jets in as many days, starting with a vessel about the size of a small car off the coast of Alaska on Friday, followed by a similar flying object over Yukon in Canada on Saturday. On 4 February, a large balloon which has been claimed by China was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.Shortly before news broke of the Lake Huron intervention, a Democratic Congress member from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, revealed that she had heard from the US department of defense that the US military was keeping “an extremely close eye” on movements in that area. “Just got a call from [the defense department],” she posted on Twitter. “Be assured that all parties have been laser-focused on it from the moment it traversed our waters.”Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said on Twitter that federal officials were “tracking an object near [the state’s] airspace”.“I’m glad to report it has been swiftly, safely and securely taken down,” Whitmer’s tweet added.Earlier in the day the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had restricted civilian air traffic over Lake Michigan, as there were local reports of military jets in the area, but lifted them after a brief time. The FAA didn’t immediately say why it put the restrictions in place.More details soon …TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS militaryCanadaMichigannewsReuse this content More

Schumer says Chinese ‘humiliated’ after three flying objects shot down‘Chinese were caught lying’,’ says Senate majority leader as US and Canadian military scramble to recover pieces US and Canadian military are continuing to search by sea and land amid hostile weather conditions in a scramble to recover portions of three flying objects shot down over North American airspace in the past week.The Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that he had been briefed by the White House and that officials were now convinced that all three of the flying objects brought down by air-to-air missiles this week were balloons. He put the finger of blame firmly on China.“The Chinese were humiliated – I think the Chinese were caught lying,” he said. “It’s a real setback for them.”Hours later a spokesperson for the White House national security council tried to tamp down some of Schumer’s rhetoric, saying it was too early to characterise the two latest flying objects shot down over Alaska and Canada. Definitive answers would have to wait for the debris to be recovered, the official said.Schumer said that US military and intelligence agencies were “focused like a laser” on gathering information on the flying objects and then analysing what steps needed to be taken to protect American interests in future. He called it “wild” that the US government had no idea about the balloon spying program until just “a few months ago”.US and Canadian personnel are now scrambling to retrieve elements of the balloons from all three crash sites. In the most recent case, an unidentified flying object was taken down within Canadian airspace on Saturday by F-22 fighter planes with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad.Canadian military on Sunday were attempting to reach pieces of the vessel in a remote, rugged area of Yukon. The object, described as cylindrical, had been flying at 40,000ft in Canadian territory and was considered a risk to civilian air traffic.Searches by US military are also continuing in difficult circumstances off the coasts of South Carolina and Alaska in the wake of the two previous interceptions. Some debris from the first balloon to be destroyed, the largest of the three objects, was shot down on 4 February about six miles off the South Carolina coast.Underwater survey and recovery teams have already retrieved pieces from the ocean floor 50ft down. The fragments are now being taken to military laboratories for analysis.US officials have told reporters that stormy seas are slowing the mission. The Chinese government has admitted that this balloon was its own, insisting though that it was used only for weather research.The Pentagon has disputed the characterization, saying that early indications suggest that the balloon was carrying powerful equipment that could intercept communications. The balloon, flying at 60,000ft, was tracked by US military for several days as it traversed the national airspace, having initially been spotted off the coast of Alaska on 28 January.The air force decided to wait until it was over the Atlantic before shooting it down out of concern for civilians on the ground, the Pentagon said.Schumer defended that decision on Sunday against mounting criticism from Republicans who have castigated the Joe Biden White House for failing to act immediately. By following the balloon across the country, the US had gained “enormous intelligence” on what the Chinese were doing, he said.Schumer predicted that the entire object would be pieced back together in coming days. “That’s a huge coup for the United States,” he told ABC’s This Week.A third search is being carried out in treacherous conditions off the coast of Alaska near Prudhoe Bay, a major oil drilling community. A flying object described by US officials as being roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car was shot down by F-22 fighter jets using a Sidewinder air-to-air missle on Friday afternoon.Bits of the vessel have landed in frozen sea in an area of snow and ice which is very hard to navigate amid sub-zero temperatures. Retrieval teams are using helicopters and HC-130 search-and-rescue planes because naval boats are unable to reach the location.The confluence of three downed flying objects in a week has raised tension and jangled nerves on both sides of the US and Canadian border. As a sign of the jitters, late on Saturday night, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) closed parts of Montana’s airspace to air traffic after a “radar anomaly” was reported.Norad fighter jets were sent to scour the skies but reportedly found nothing. However, on Sunday, a Montana congressional representative, Matt Rosendale, tweeted slightly different information, saying military officials had advised him that they were confident an object was there and that it was not an anomaly.Additionally, on Sunday, the FAA similarly restricted civilian air traffic over Lake Michigan as there were local reports of military jets in the area but lifted them after a brief time. The FAA didn’t immediately say why it put the restrictions in place.The trio of flying objects has also generated political stresses internationally and domestically. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, postponed the first visit to Beijing by a senior American diplomat since 2018 in response to the high-altitude intrusion of the Chinese balloon.US officials have told news outlets that they have tracked the balloon program to a number of locations inside China.On the Chinese end of the billowing dispute, local news outlets cited by Bloomberg News reported on Sunday that China’s government was preparing to bring down an unidentified flying object said to have been spotted over the port of Qingdao. Fishermen in the surrounding area had been told to be alert, according to the reports.At home, the US congress has also seen rising tension between the new Republican leadership of the House and the Biden administration over the handling of the spy objects. Republicans were critical of the Pentagon’s decision to allow the Chinese balloon to fly across the heartlands of America before bringing it down, though they have been less forthright about explaining how it was that at least three suspected Chinese spying vessels entered US airspace under Donald Trump’s previous presidential administration apparently undetected.The Republican chair of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, on Sunday called on the Biden administration to be aggressive in its stance on the flying objects. “I would prefer them to be trigger happy than to be permissive,” he told CNN’s State of the Union.“This administration now needs to declare that it will defend its airspace.”Turner said that the three aerial objects in short succession exposed the gaps in US defenses. “What’s become clear in the public discussion is that we don’t really have adequate radar systems, we certainly don’t have an integrated missile defense system,” he said.TopicsUS militaryJoe BidenChinaUS politicsCanadaAlaskaEspionagenewsReuse this content More

Biden appeals to governors for ‘less partisanship’ to help rebuild economy President says at White House dinner that passage of infrastructure laws is evidence of ‘some bipartisan progress’ Joe Biden appealed to Republican and Democratic governors on Saturday to continue working across political divides to improve Americans’ lives and rebuild the economy after the hardships brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.Speaking at a black-tie dinner at the White House, the president told 31 governors that the passage of laws on investing in infrastructure and domestic manufacture of semiconductors was evidence of “some bipartisan progress” among Republicans and Democrats. Vice-President Kamala Harris was also in attendance.“I hope we’re going to get a little bit – I’m going to try – a little bit less partisan and work on things that we can really get done to change people’s lives,” Biden said after governor meetings in Washington this week.Biden said he was still “ready to fight, as you all are”, and though Republicans and Democrats would not always agree, it made a difference when they worked together.Republican governor Spencer Cox of Utah, vice-chairperson of the National Governors Association, said it was “very symbolic” to have Republicans and Democrats “breaking bread together” at the White House.Cox added that he believed the majority of Americans wanted to see more collaboration across the political aisle.“This is what is missing in our country,” he said, adding that “it’s hard to hate up close”.Notably absent from the dinner was Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has challenged Biden’s agenda on a wide range of fronts, from gun safety to LGBTQ+ rights.Country music singer Brad Paisley played guitar and performed his song “American Saturday Night” after the dinner, telling the crowd he had swapped out the second line of the song “because it mentioned Russia and I don’t do that any more”. Russia’s military invaded Ukraine last year, and Biden’s administration has provided more than $30bn in security aid to Ukraine’s defenders.Instead, Paisley sang: “She’s got Brazilian leather boots on the pedal of a German car. There’s a Ukrainian flag hanging up behind the bar.”Biden’s remarks echoed his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, when he challenged Republicans to help to unite the country.The bipartisan laws passed last year were game-changers for the US economy, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday after the series of governor meetings at the White House.Murphy, who is chairperson of the National Governors Association, said states’ ability to work together on other issues, such as mental health, disproved the “narrative that politics has gotten completely divisive” and called the group a “beacon of bipartisan reality”.He said the association had appealed to lawmakers and the White House to end a dispute over raising the $31.4tn statutory debt ceiling before the Treasury department runs out of funds to pay US debts.Republicans want spending concessions from Biden, who has said he will not negotiate over raising the limit.Murphy said he left the meetings “more optimistic” about both sides’ willingness to negotiate while preserving social security, medicare and defense spending.TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsBiden administrationDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

ReviewUntouchable review: Trump as ‘lawless Houdini’ above US justice Elie Honig offers a powerful indictment of the former president and those who have failed to bring him downThis book by a former federal prosecutor is subtitled “How Powerful People Get Away With It” but its overwhelming focus is Donald Trump and Merrick Garland, the most famous unindicted miscreant of modern times and the attorney general most responsible for the failure, so far, to prosecute any of his offences.People vs Donald Trump review: Mark Pomerantz pummels Manhattan DARead moreElie Honig writes that a “staggering parade” of Trump’s henchmen have been indicted, convicted, imprisoned or all three: Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, Thomas Barrack, Elliott Broidy, Sam Patten, George Nader, Allen Weisselberg and – last but not least – the Trump Organization itself.And yet, somehow, “a lawless Houdini … stands at the epicenter of the carnage, untouched, undeterred, and, if anything, emboldened”.Honig thinks the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is still “the most likely to indict Trump” for his efforts to tamper with election results. But Honig makes a powerful case that “the prime opportunities to hold Trump criminally accountable for his actions have passed”, as federal and state prosecutors, especially Garland, “have fumbled away their best chances and inexcusably allowed years to lapse without meaningful action”.In the last four years, justice department leaders have zigzagged between extremes. First there was the wildly political and persistently dishonest William Barr, whose efforts to keep Trump safe ranged from keeping his name out of the indictment of Cohen for illegal hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, to Barr’s flatly false assertion that evidence developed by the special counsel Robert Mueller was “not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense”.Then came Garland, who is the opposite of Barr but who so far has managed to be nearly as helpful to Trump as his predecessor.“The problem,” Honig writes, “is in seeking to … restore political independence [for the justice department], Garland has gone too far …“It’s one thing to do the job without regard to politics. But it’s another to contort ordinary prosecutorial judgement to avoid doing anything that might even be perceived as political or controversial.”Honig prosecuted more than a hundred members of the mafia. He recounts several such cases, highlighting the similarities between the chiefs of famous families like the Luccheses and Gambinos and the man at the top of the Trump Organization.One way in which they operate the same way is to make sure subordinates lie to protect their boss, without being directly ordered to do so. For example, Cohen perjured himself when he said Trump’s efforts to build a tower in Moscow ended before the Iowa caucuses in 2016. They actually continued for months, into the “heart of the presidential campaign”.Honig writes: “Trump never said to Cohen, ‘I need you to lie for me.’ Instead, Trump openly lied in public about the timing of the Russia deal ‘for all to see’ – including Cohen.“Therein lies the beauty of being a boss. Trump never said the magic words that would have obviously given rise to criminal liability.”Honig also focuses on the dubious ethics of the former Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, who bungled a chance to indict two of Trump’s children over the Trump Soho project, then did the same with an investigation of Trump himself.The lawyer for Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump was Marc Kasowitz. As the New Yorker, ProPublica and WNYC reported, Kasowitz gave Vance a $25,000 campaign contribution in January 2012 – just five months before meeting with Vance about the Trump kids’ case.Vance returned Kasowitz’s contribution just before his meeting with Kasowitz. Three months after the meeting, Vance dropped the case against the Trumps. Incredibly, just a few weeks after that, “Vance accepted a brand new, even larger campaign contribution from Kasowitz, who personally donated almost $32,000 and raised at least $18,000 more.” Five years later – only after the New Yorker had reported those additional contributions – Vance returned Kasowitz’s contribution again!“This much is beyond dispute,” Honig writes. “The sequence here looked terrible.”But no one comes out looking worse than Garland. Trump was protected while he was in the White House by a decades-old justice department memoranda which concluded it was impossible to indict a sitting president. After 21 January 2021, Trump lost that protection. But for many months, Garland did nothing concrete to take advantage.Honig offers the seven-count indictment he says he would have brought against Trump if he were the prosecutor in charge. It would include:
Count 1: obstruction of justice. The Mueller report’s description of Trump’s firing of the FBI director James Comey and his attempts to fire special counsel Mueller provides overwhelming evident that “Trump obstructed justice”.
Count 2: campaign finance violations connected to hush money paid to two of Trump’s alleged former girlfriends.
Count 3: bribery, extortion, foreign election aid and witness retaliating and tampering, all of which were the subject of Trump’s first impeachment.
Count 4: conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding and election interference – the subject of the second impeachment.
Myth America review: superb group history of the lies that built a nationRead moreHonig’s final conclusion: while “Garland plays by Marquess of Queensbury rules”, Trump is “a remorseless street brawler”. Garland could have brought criminal charges “but he didn’t, at least not in a timely manor … As many advantages as the system gave to Trump, and as aggressive and effective as he has been in explaining them, Garland still could have achieved some measure of justice, if he had just done his job.”This week brought the news that Jack Smith, the special counsel belatedly appointed by Garland to investigate Trump, had subpoenaed Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, as part of his investigation of the former president’s post-election activities.Perhaps the justice department will manage to defy expectations and return an indictment against Donald Trump. This powerful book, however, offers very little hope for that most desirable outcome.
Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away With It is published in the US by Harper
TopicsBooksLaw (US)US crimeUS politicsPolitics booksDonald TrumpJeffrey EpsteinreviewsReuse this content More

Biden’s on a winning streak and up for a fight: so why are voters so negative? The president sparred with Republicans at the State of the Union and has won legislative victories but polls show little enthusiasm for a re-election bidIt was the moment that America’s State of the Union address, once a staid affair punctured only by applause, turned into a verbal brawl more akin to Britain’s House of Commons.Joe Biden accused some Republicans of wanting to “take the economy hostage” and slash social welfare entitlements. “Booo!”, “No!” and “Liar!” came the response. US presidents typically ignore hecklers but Biden chose to take them on.Feisty Biden offers bipartisan vision while still triggering RepublicansRead more“So, folks, as we all apparently agree, social security and Medicare is off the books now, right?” he sparred. “They’re not to be touched? All right. All right. We got unanimity!” He gave Republicans an offer they could not refuse: to rise from their seats and stand in support of the elderly.At a stroke, the combative Biden had bested his opponents and at least partially assuaged doubts that, at the age of 80, he has the fight and fortitude for a gruelling re-election campaign next year. It was an important victory at a moment when opinion polls show that even most fellow Democrats hunger for a new generation of leaders.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “Like Muhammad Ali, he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.”Even so, one speech will not be enough to solve the continuing political puzzle of the two Joe Bidens. One is the Biden visibly energised by Republican jeers who found a way to squash them without smugness; the Biden who rallied the west to support Ukraine and helped Democrats defy history in the midterm elections; the Biden who reeled off the most consequential list of legislative accomplishments since President Lyndon Johnson more than half a century ago.But the other Biden has not gone away. He is the one who began his lengthy State of the Union address – which drew the second smallest audience TV audience in at least 30 years – somewhat lethargically, describing Chuck Schumer as Senate minority leader when he should have said majority and saying relatively little about abortion rights. This is the Biden who presided over soaring food and petrol prices, bungled America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and left classified documents in his garage.A survey in late January by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 37% of Democrats say they want Biden to seek a second term, down from 52% in the weeks before last year’s midterm elections. Overall, 41% approve of how Biden is handling his job as president and only 22% say he should run again.Among Democrats aged 45 and over, 49% say Biden should run for re-election, nearly as many as the 58% who said that in October. But among those under age 45, just 23% now say he should run for re-election, after 45% said that before the midterms.Interviews with poll respondents suggest that many voters believe the president’s age is a liability, with people focused on his coughing, gait and gaffes and the possibility that the world’s most stressful job would be better suited for someone younger.A separate Washington Post-ABC Newspoll showed that 62% of Americans think Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” during his presidency, while 36% say he has accomplished “a great deal” or “a good amount”. Some 60% say he has not made progress creating more good jobs in their community, even though he has overseen the fastest pace of job growth in US history and unemployment sits at its lowest level since 1969.The disconnect might feel like a kick in the teeth for Biden after notching four big legislative victories with coronavirus relief, a bipartisan infrastructure law, legislation boosting domestic production of computer chips and tax and spending measures that help to address the climate crisis and improve the government’s ability to enforce the tax code.The gap between perception and reality is hard to explain. The chaos of the Donald Trump years, a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans and an ongoing reckoning over racial justice have inevitably left the nation disoriented. But some critics argue that the White House is failing to communicate its achievements.Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “The messaging by the administration has been lacklustre. It has not been well coordinated. It has not been well reinforced by agency heads and cabinet members who can take that work that they’re doing out to the country.”Steele pointed to the $1.2tn infrastructure bill, signed by Biden in late 2021, as an example. “Everybody’s jumping up and down but what they did not explain to the country was, now we’ve got to go put in place the regulations that would correspond to the allocation of those dollars … That part of the conversation never happened so voters are sitting there going, ‘Well, I don’t see any impact from this. They’re not doing anything in my community.”The misstep cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives, Steele added. “I’m now watching commercials of the president delivering on his promises and I would say, yeah, that’s probably about four or five months late.”There have been frustrations for Biden over police reform and votings rights, which could potentially cause disillusionment among Black voters. In his address, he continued to urge reform but did not explicitly call for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to pass.But activists argue that he should call out Republicans and make clear that they are the ones standing in the way.Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, an advocacy group, said: “There’s a reason why we don’t have those pieces of legislation and it’s not President Biden. But if he doesn’t tell a story for people about why we didn’t win those things, who stood in the way of those things, who is profiting from preventing those things, he will be blamed by people.”Biden’s defenders argue that there has been a concerted effort to sell his agenda and accomplishments. A day after his State of the Union address he travelled to Wisconsin, and a day after that he went to Florida, while other top officials are crisscrossing the country to spread the message. It can be effective at a local level but struggles to compete with eye-catching national headlines like the flight of a Chinese spy balloon. Some argue there is no substitute for concrete results that affect people’s everyday lives.Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “You’ve got to see things happening. You have to see the bridges being built. You have to see the tunnels being fixed. You have to see the airports. That’s the reality. The challenge is to make this real. This is a problem of political timing, which in the term of a president is very short but often getting big things done takes a long time.”Kamarck, now a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “He’s got to get something on the books. He’s got to get something going. He can say it till the cows come home but if there’s no reality on the ground it won’t matter.”Biden’s biggest first-term legislative accomplishments are almost certainly behind him. He must now work with an aggressive Republican majority in the House that wants to cut spending in return for lifting the government’s legal borrowing authority, as well as launching myriad investigations into the pandemic response, Afghanistan withdrawal and business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.He also faces nagging doubts within his own party. Having first been elected to the Senate from Delaware in 1972, he has been on the national political stage for more than half a century and is the oldest US president in history. His verbal stumbles – he recently called Congressman Don Beyer by the name “Doug” four times – receive more scrutiny than ever.Biden could face another election against Trump, a twice impeached former president who instigated a violent coup attempt on 6 January 2021. Yet in a hypothetical rematch, 48% of registered voters said they would favor Trump compared with 45% who prefer Biden, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll.Julián Castro, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama, noted that this finding undermines the general consensus that Democrats are content with Biden taking on Trump. “Two years is forever and it’s just one poll, but if he’s faring this poorly after a string of wins, that should be worrisome,” he tweeted.But Biden, who has not yet officially announced he is running, benefits from a lack of obvious successor. His vice-president, Kamala Harris, has endured similarly low approval ratings and is yet to distinguish herself as the automatic choice. The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is still only 41 and a promising generation of Democratic governors are widely perceived as not yet ready.Steele, who served as lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007, said: “The question I ask those Democrats who like to wax poetically about Biden not being their nominee is this: tell me which Democratic governor or former senator or current elected official is going to challenge an incumbent United States president.“Every time we’ve seen that happen – which is in our lifetime has only been twice – it has not ended spectacularly well for the challenger, so I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking. This is the horse that got you through the storm. This is the horse you’re going to need to ride into the sunset and that’s just how it is.”Joe Biden has steadied the nation – why don’t his polling numbers reflect this? | Robert ReichRead moreMany Republicans acknowledge that Biden had a good night at the State of the Union and quelled doubts about his age. But they believe that he could be vulnerable in the 2024 election if he faces a candidate promising generational change and who does not carry Trump’s political and legal baggage. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, the ex-governor of South Carolina, are among potential contenders.Ed Rogers, a political consultant who worked in the administration of Ronald Reagan, the oldest man to serve as president until Trump, said: “There would be all this talk about Reagan’s losing it, Reagan’s out of it, Reagan’s not mentally hitting on all cylinders – and then Reagan would do something and people would observe for themselves and it would clear the bar and calm that talk for a while.“Biden certainly did that. The speech was well delivered … It’s not like people see their lives improving because Biden says it is or people are not fearful of crime, the future, the state of the schools because Biden says they’re OK. That’s part of what’s not good about the Biden administration. The speech was a net plus. It wasn’t transformative for the Biden political condition.”Rogers reckons Biden will win the Democratic nomination for 2024 and is well placed in the general election – but nothing is guaranteed. “We re-elect 75% of our presidents. If you had to bet today, you’d bet on the incumbent. But if it’s not Trump, if somebody showed up as an energetic change candidate, Biden could be beat.”TopicsJoe BidenThe ObserverUS elections 2024US politicsDemocratsState of the Union addressfeaturesReuse this content More

Trump was issued subpoena for folder marked ‘Classified Evening Briefing’ discovered at Mar-a-LagoExclusive: Subpoena was issued last month after the folder was observed in Trump’s private quarters at the property Donald Trump’s lawyers turned over an empty manilla folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing” after the US justice department issued a subpoena for its surrender once prosecutors became aware that it was located inside the private quarters of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, two sources familiar with the matter said.The previously unreported subpoena was issued last month, the sources said, as the recently appointed special counsel escalates the inquiry into Trump’s possible unauthorized retention of national security materials and obstruction of justice.Mike Pence subpoenaed in Trump special counsel investigations – reportsRead moreThe folder was seen in Trump’s residence by a team of investigators he hired to search his properties last year for any remaining documents marked as classified. The team transparently included the observation in an inventory of Mar-a-Lago and Trump properties in Florida, New Jersey and New York.Weeks after the report was sent to the justice department, the sources said, federal prosecutors subpoenaed the folder. The folder is understood to have not been initially returned because the lawyers thought “Classified Evening Briefing” did not make it classified, nor is it a formal classification marking.The backstory the justice department was told about the folder was that Trump would sometimes ask to keep the envelopes, featuring only the “Classified Evening Briefings” in red lettering, as keepsakes after briefings were delivered, one of the sources said.Around the same time that Trump’s lawyers turned over the empty folder – earlier reported by CNN – they also returned in December a box of presidential schedules at Mar-a-Lago of which a couple were marked as classified, and in January, a laptop on to which the contents of the box had been scanned last year by a junior aide.The mishandling of those materials appears to have been inadvertent – in which case, the justice department would be unlikely to include them in the criminal investigation, which has been far more focused on the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago last summer.But the contentious saga reflects the deteriorating relationship between federal prosecutors who have become frustrated at Trump’s resistance towards the inquiry and his lawyers who have complained that the justice department has been unnecessarily heavy-handed at every turn.A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.Late last year, Trump hired a team of two private contractors with security clearances to search his properties after the department told his lawyers that they suspected the former president was still in possession of classified-marked documents even after the FBI search in August.The contractors found and immediately returned two documents, both marked as classified at the “SECRET” level, from boxes that appeared to have been unopened since they were shipped from the White House at the end of the Trump administration, the Guardian previously reported.Then, at Mar-a-Lago in December, the contractors found a box that mainly contained presidential schedules, in which they found a couple of classified-marked documents to also be present and alerted the legal team to return the materials to the justice department, the sources said.The exact nature of the classified-marked documents remains unclear, but a person with knowledge of the search likened their sensitivity to schedules for presidential movements – for instance, presidential travel to Afghanistan – that are considered sensitive until they have taken place.Trump documents: Congress offered briefing on records kept at Mar-a-LagoRead moreAfter the Trump legal team turned over the box of schedules, the sources said, they learned that a junior Trump aide – employed by Trump’s Save America political action committee who acted as an assistant in Trump’s political “45 Office” – last year scanned and uploaded the contents of the box to a laptop.The junior Trump aide, according to what one of the sources said, was apparently instructed to upload the documents by top Trump aide Molly Michael to create a repository of what Trump was doing while in office and was apparently careless in scanning them on to her work laptop.When the Trump legal team told the justice department about the uploads, federal prosecutors demanded the laptop and its password, warning that they would otherwise move to obtain a grand jury subpoena summoning the junior aide to Washington to grant them access to the computer.To avoid a subpoena, the Trump legal team agreed to turn over the laptop in its entirety last month, though they did not allow federal prosecutors to collect it from Mar-a-Lago.ABC News earlier reported the handover.“This is nothing more than a politically-motivated witch-hunt against President Trump,” a spokesman for Trump said in a statement. “The weaponized Department of Injustice has shown no regard for common decency and key rules that govern the legal system.”It was around the same time in January as the justice department retrieved the laptop that federal prosecutors in the office of the Trump special counsel Jack Smith issued a grand jury subpoena for the manilla folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing” observed in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private quarters.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationMar-a-LagoUS CongressUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

Mystery surrounds what exactly was object US jet shot down over AlaskaHigh-altitude object the size of a small car was downed on Friday but its owner and purpose have yet to be identified Questions remain a day after the US government said it shot down a high-altitude object the size of a small car along the north-eastern Alaskan coast on Friday afternoon.Though efforts by the navy, coast guard and FBI are under way to recover the object, officials had yet to identify its owner or purpose on Saturday.China ‘spy balloon’ wakes up world to new era of war at edge of spaceRead moreMeanwhile, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirmed to Canadian news outlet Global News that another “high-altitutde airborne object” has been detected over northern Canada Saturday. NORAD officials said that military aircraft are “currently operating from Alaska and Canada in support of [NORAD] activities”. American officials have not publicly commented on the airborne object seen near Canada.The separate object that was ultimately shot down near Alaska flying at an altitude of 40,000ft, about the same level as commercial planes, and was travelling at about 20 to 40 miles per hour before it was struck down. Officials say the object had flown over parts of Alaska but was heading toward the north pole before it was struck down. American radars first identified the object’s presence around 9pm Alaska time on Thursday evening. A US warplane ultimately shot it down about 1.45pm ET on Friday.Joe Biden briefly told reporters on Friday afternoon that the takedown of the object “was a success”, but the president did not offer any further details.At a White House press briefing on Friday, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US military brought the object down “out of an abundance of caution”. Once spotted, officials quickly deemed the object a threat to civilian air traffic and ordered Alaska airspace to be temporarily closed.Fox News reported Saturday that an unnamed but senior US official confirmed to the network that the object was not detected until it had entered American airspace.The object, shot down in territorial waters, was unmanned, officials said.The object’s destruction in Alaska came after a tumultuous week for the Biden administration, which ordered the military to shoot down a high-altitude balloon from China over the Atlantic Ocean on 4 February.Officials have yet to publicly give further descriptions of the object that was travelling over Alaska besides its size, altitude and speed. Still, officials have been speculating in various reports about the nature of the object.One official told ABC News that the object was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and gave the “balloon-like” appearance of floating without “any sort of propulsion”. Another official from the Department of Defense told the New York Times that the object broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea.After the Chinese balloon was shot down, images showed what appeared to be shreds of materials as it was fished out of the ocean.Brig Gen Pat Ryder of the Pentagon told reporters on Friday that officials “have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities”.From the size comparison given by officials, the object that was flying over Alaska appears to be much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon. The confirmed balloon was described as being as big as two or three buses rather than a small car like the object over Alaska.The Alaska object was also flying at a lower altitude than the Chinese balloon, which had an altitude of 60,000ft – much higher than the level of commercial aircraft.The Republican senator Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska told NBC News on Friday that she was concerned about the threat posed by objects over her state’s airspace.“Quite honestly, the first line of defense is Alaska,” Murkowski said. “If it comes into Alaska airspace, if it comes into Alaska waters, we need to act.“We need to send the message and we need to be clear and unequivocal that we don’t tolerate this.”The appearance of the Chinese balloon over US airspace has caused a rift in the strained and delicate relationship between the Chinese and US governments. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, postponed an upcoming trip to Beijing, which would have been the first visit to the country by a top American diplomat since 2018.Blinken said the spy balloon was “an irresponsible act and a clear violation of US sovereignty and international law that undermined the purpose of this trip”.Chinese officials have apologized and maintain that the balloon was a “civilian airship” used for weather research that went off course due to limited self-steering capabilities and that its entry into US airspace was unintended.Meanwhile, US officials say the balloon was carrying equipment that was capable of intercepting and geolocating communications.It “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard for weather balloons”, a senior state department official said on Thursday. “It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geolocating communications.”US officials say the balloon was part of a fleet that has been used to collect intelligence in more than 40 countries on five continents. They maintain that balloons went into US airspace at least three times during Donald Trump’s presidency and twice so far during Biden’s.Despite the technology carried by the balloon, the Pentagon said the balloons do not give China any intelligence-collecting capacity beyond existing technology, such as satellites.TopicsUS national securityThe ObserverUS politicsAlaskanewsReuse this content More

DeSantis wins new power over Disney World in ‘don’t say gay’ culture warFlorida legislature gives governor right to name members of board supervising theme park, claiming: ‘There’s a new sheriff in town’ Florida’s far-right governor, Ron DeSantis, has won the right to appoint the members of the board that supervises the development of the state’s famous Walt Disney World theme parks after a fight over a law that restricts sexual orientation and gender identity discussions in schools.Disney as a result is set to lose some of the autonomy it has enjoyed in Florida during the last nearly six decades, but the company has held on to some of its key privileges amid the culture war leveled at it by DeSantis.DeSantis ramps up ‘war on woke’ with new attacks on Florida higher educationRead moreNonetheless, with his usual bluster, DeSantis declared victory over the conglomerate whose mascot is Mickey Mouse, saying: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”DeSantis directed his ire at Disney after the media titan decided to suspend political donations in Florida after the state’s legislature last year passed a “don’t say gay” law that limited mention of LGBTQ+ issues in schools.Florida’s Orlando area is home to the 25,000-acre Disney World theme park complex, which first opened in 1971 and reportedly attracted nearly 13 million visitors last year. And to retaliate, DeSantis sought to strip Disney of a special tax district designation that let the company govern them autonomously, including by issuing tax-exempt bonds and advancing building plans without oversight from certain local authorities.The governor’s move against Disney had the full support of the state legislature, which is controlled by his fellow Republicans and voted to strip the company of its tax district status beginning on 1 June 2023. But then the steep cost of following through on DeSantis’s wishes for Disney became apparent.Letting the district dissolve would require taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties – which are adjacent to the theme parks – to begin paying for the firefighting, police and road maintenance services that Disney had been paying. And the counties’ taxpayers would also have to cover the Disney tax district’s debt of $1bn or so.So this week, Florida’s legislators adjusted course. They drafted a measure that would empower the state’s governor to appoint the five members of the tax district’s controlling board. It also would leave Disney vulnerable to possibly being forced to pay taxes to fund road projects outside the theme park complex’s vicinity, and new construction costs might increase because the measure eliminated some of the company’s exemption from certain regulatory processes, the New York Times reported.Nonetheless, the new measure would permit Disney – one of Florida’s largest private employers – to retain its special tax district status. And the board would remain powerless as far as influencing what content the company chooses to present to guests at its theme parks as well as viewers of its movies and shows.Florida’s house of representatives approved the legislation on Thursday, and the state senate did the same on Friday.DeSantis said the legislation definitively buried previously aired concerns that Floridians would end up paying more in taxes because of his differences with Disney.“This puts that to bed,” DeSantis said, while also boasting that he was now the new sheriff in town.The president of Disney World, Jeff Vahle, issued a notably apolitical statement to the Times that described the complex as “focused on the future and … ready to work within this new framework”.Separately last week, DeSantis announced plans to block state colleges from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as on critical race theory – the study of how racism has shaped American history. That plan comes on the heels of his blocking public high schools from teaching a new advanced placement course on African American studies.DeSantis, who has long advocated to keep firearms as accessible to the public as possible, caught some political fire on Friday after the Washington Post reported that he had asked for guns to be banned from a party celebrating his re-election to a second term last year.DeSantis’s campaign staff also asked the Tampa city officials in control of the convention center hosting the party to take responsibility for the gun ban so as not to upset his supporters, the Post’s report added, citing emails obtained by the newspaper.One county-level Republican leader told the Post that such a ban was “a little hypocritical” given how DeSantis has presented himself as a pro-gun rights advocate. A spokesperson for DeSantis told the Post that its reporting was “speculation and hearsay” and that the governor was “strongly in support of individuals’ constitutional right to bear arms”.Many expect DeSantis to pursue the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. As of Saturday, the former president Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate to have declared an intention to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.TopicsRon DeSantisWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsFloridanewsReuse this content More