US Politics

NBA to pause on election day to encourage US fans to voteLeague wants to encourage civic engagement in NovemberNBA players have been involved in voter registration in past The NBA will be off on election day. The league’s schedule for the coming season will have all 30 teams playing on 7 November, the night before the US midterm elections. The NBA is hoping teams use that night as an opportunity to encourage fans to vote, as well as amplifying the need for civic engagement.But on 8 November, which is election day in the US, no NBA teams have games scheduled. Teams are being encouraged to share election information – such as registration deadlines – with their fanbases in the weeks leading up to 8 November.’How do we fix this?’: LeBron James takes fight to black voter suppressionRead more“The scheduling decision came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections,” the league said on Tuesday.All 435 US House seats will be up for grabs on 8 November, along with more than 30 US Senate seats and gubernatorial races. The Senate is currently split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. The move is a rarity for the league, which typically plays no games on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and tries to avoid scheduling games on the day of the NCAA men’s basketball championship game. It also has a few days off built around the All-Star Game, which takes place in February.The NBA and its players were openly involved in several election-related pushes in 2020, largely after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor reignited the quest to eliminate racial inequality and police brutality.Many players, including LeBron James, were involved in voting registration drives and other get-out-the-vote initiatives. Some teams turned their arenas into registration or voting centers.The NBA’s full schedule for the season will be released at 3pm ET on Wednesday.TopicsNBABasketballUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022US sportsnewsReuse this content More

Mother of man who shot himself after driving into Capitol barrier speaks outTamara Cunningham says she believes her son who fatally shot himself struggled with brain trauma from playing football The mother of a Delaware man who shot himself to death after driving into a US Capitol barricade over the weekend says she believes he was struggling with brain trauma from growing up playing football.Richard Aaron York III’s mother, Tamara Cunningham, said she suspects his past as a high school football player left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition colloquially known as CTE. Some football players develop CTE because of repeated head blows that are common to the sport, and York had a number of concussions during his playing days, she said.“Something was going on for a while,” Cunningham told the Guardian in an interview Tuesday. “And it was progressively getting worse.”A CTE diagnosis can only be definitively made with a postmortem brain autopsy. Cunningham said she had requested one from a private doctor as well as the local coroner’s office but was sure she would be able to schedule such a procedure.Nonetheless, in prior cases where CTE was ultimately confirmed in late football players and athletes in other violent sports, families suspected their loved ones had the condition beforehand because of behavior they considered erratic or aggressive.Cunningham spoke out on her thoughts about her son as police continued investigating what may have motivated York to aim his car at a barricade outside the Capitol in Washington DC early on Sunday.Because the case unfolded after federal agents searched former president Donald Trump’s home in Florida on 8 August, some wondered whether the 29-year-old York’s actions were politically motivated.After all, an armed man enraged by the FBI’s search of Trump’s home for records being kept there without authorization had tried to break into a bureau field office in Ohio on 11 August. Authorities ultimately shot the would-be intruder to death in a standoff.But, noting that Congress is in the middle of its annual August recess, police have said they do not believe York was specifically targeting anyone who would be working on Capitol Hill.And York’s mother on Tuesday said she didn’t know her son to be that closely attuned to politics or to support the Republican Trump – in fact, she believed his voter registration listed him as a Democrat.“We’re just not that kind of family,” Cunningham said when asked if anything political had motivated her son on Sunday.Instead, investigators appear to be regarding York’s violent death as the last episode of a life marked by legal trouble over the last decade.York, of Dagsboro, Delaware, pleaded guilty to domestic violence charges after police accused him of choking and assaulting his pregnant girlfriend in 2012, according to the news website Lehigh Valley Live.He also allegedly pleaded guilty to assault and property damage charges in early 2020 after a colleague on a roofing job accused York of attacking him at his home, the Pennsylvania news outlet Morning Call reported. The co-worker reportedly suffered injuries to his face and head, and York was sentenced to about seven months of prison as well as two years’ probation.About 4am Sunday, York drove a car into a barricade on the eastern side of the Capitol. His vehicle became engulfed in flames as he exited his car, possibly because he ignited it, and he began firing a gun in the air, Capitol police officers said.The commotion prompted Capitol police officers to approach him, and as they neared, York shot himself dead, according to authorities. No one else was hurt.For many, York’s death brought to mind the April 2021 killing of Capitol police officer Billy Evans. He was killed by a Virginia man who drove his car into a Capitol barricade.Meanwhile, in 2013, Capitol police shot and killed a Connecticut woman near a facility checkpoint after she crashed her car into a White House barricade and fled by speeding down Pennsylvania Avenue.The drivers in each of those cases had mental illness, various media reports said.Cunningham said her son did, too. She said she knew he took medication for it, though she didn’t know the specifics about any diagnoses or treatments he had received.Cunningham made it a point on Tuesday to discuss some of her son’s better days. York would cook breakfast and prepare coffee for his grandmother daily, as well as engage in spirited card games regularly, she recounted.He would visit Cunningham and her fiance most weekends, regularly accompanying them to car races and other festive events. He was the father to a nine-year-old boy whom he didn’t get to see often but doted on whenever he had time with him, Cunningham added.“When he was functioning,” Cunningham said of York, “he was a wonderful, wonderful person.”TopicsWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

In praise of Liz Cheney. May we have more politicians like herRobert ReichWe need more politicians who stand by their principles, even if it costs them everything On Tuesday, Wyoming Republicans determine the fate of Representative Liz Cheney, the putative leader of the anti-Trump forces in the Republican party.Six days after the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol – when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump – Cheney charged on the House floor that “the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”The next day, Cheney joined nine other House Republicans and 222 Democrats in voting to impeach Trump.So far, three of these 10 principled Republican lawmakers have lost their primaries. Two have won them. The remaining four are retiring.As vice-chair of the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigating the causes of that attack, Cheney has ceaselessly and tirelessly helped lay out the case against Trump during eight public hearings held in June and July, with more to come.In response, Trump has done everything possible to end Cheney’s career. He made sure House Republicans revoked her status as the third highest-ranking leader of the Republican caucus, and that Wyoming Republicans censured her.Trump also selected Cheney’s opponent in Tuesday’s Republican primary, Harriet Hageman – who has rallied behind Trump and amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Hageman has a commanding double-digit lead over Cheney. (According to some reports, Cheney has been reluctant even to venture into Wyoming to campaign, due to death threats.)If Liz Cheney loses her House seat, as seems likely, I hope she doesn’t disappear from public life. Although her views on countless substantive issues are the opposite of mine, I salute her.She has displayed more courage and integrity than almost any other member of her party – indeed, given the pressure she was under, perhaps more than any lawmaker now alive.The role Cheney has played raises a larger question about the meaning of representative democracy. Is it the responsibility of elected officials to represent the views of their constituents or their own principles?The question isn’t limited to Republicans. As the midterms draw closer, some Democratic operatives and pundits argue that Biden and the Democrats must move to the “center” to win.But where is the center? Halfway between democracy and fascism? And if Democrats must go there to win, what’s the point of winning?I call this the Dick Morris paradox.In early 1996, Bill and Hillary Clinton summoned pollster Dick Morris to the White House to make sure Bill Clinton would be re-elected.Morris’s advice to Clinton was to move to the center (“triangulate”) and say nothing in his re-election campaign except that the economy was terrific and would be even better in the second term.Whenever I ran into Morris slithering around the West Wing, I suggested he urge Clinton to advance some policies for the second term’s agenda – a hike in the minimum wage, universal pre-K, paid family leave, Medicare for all.Morris’s invariable response: “If Clinton pushes any of these, there won’t be a second term.”I said there was no point in having a second term without an agenda to do something important in the second term. He argued back that there was no use having an agenda without a second term.But if the only way to get or keep power is to say nothing to the public about what you believe or intend to achieve, or to mislead the public, what’s the point of having power?To Morris and most other political operatives, this question makes no sense. Politics is about getting and keeping power. Principles have nothing to do with it.To Dick Morris operatives, politicians have a responsibility to mirror whatever the public wants or believes.But what if the public has been lied to by a conman who tells them the last election was stolen? What if he has cynically exploited their bigotry, ignorance or distrust?Should candidates merely reflect what the conman has stirred up, as Hageman has done in Wyoming and other Republican candidates are doing with Trump’s “big lie” elsewhere?Or should candidates risk losing political power (or never gaining it) by standing on their own principles?The dilemma on the Democrats’ side is not nearly as dangerous for the nation, but it exists, nonetheless.Some of today’s Democratic candidates are moving to the so-called “center” because they’ve convinced themselves they must do so to gain or hold power, which is better than not having any.But is gaining or holding power more important than telling the public what one truly believes, and speaking truth?
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggleThe campaigns of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance have been tarnished by bizarre remarks and unscrupulous histories In Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance, the Republican party has three celebrities running for Senate in November.The only problem? At the moment, each of them looks as though they might lose.Oz, a television stalwart better known as Dr Oz to millions of Americans, is trailing his opponent in Pennsylvania by double digits.Vance, a bestselling author and conservative commentator, is behind in his race in Ohio, an increasingly red state that many expected Republicans to win. So far the most notable point of his campaign was when Vance appeared to suggest women should stay in violent marriages.In Georgia, Walker, a former NFL running back, is running close against Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Democrat. But Walker’s campaign has been characterized by a series of gaffes, and this week, more seriously, his ex-wife recalled in a campaign ad how he once held a gun to her head.The three men’s travails spell out a problem in selecting outsider, celebrity candidates. Each brings name recognition, but in some cases have been unexposed to the media’s glare.The Pennsylvania Senate race is looking particularly dire for Republicans. According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average, John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor, holds an 11% lead over Oz. Among Republicans in Pennsylvania, just 35% say they are “enthusiastic” about Oz’s candidacy, according to a Fox News poll in July, and 45% of Republicans say they “have reservations” about the physician.Oz’s struggles are significant enough that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is considering diverting money away from Oz’s campaign “to seats that we feel we can win”, Politico reported in July – a dramatic move given the Senate seat was previously held by a Republican.Oz has decided to try his hand at politics after being a fixture on American television for two decades, initially as a medical expert on the Oprah Winfrey show, then as the host of several of his own shows, including The Dr Oz Show, Surgeon Oz, and Transplant!.His TV career brought him fame, but scrutiny, too. In 2014 a Senate panel chastised Oz for featuring quack medical products on The Dr Oz Show. The doctor had described various supplements as “magic weight-loss cure”, and “the No 1 miracle in a bottle”, the Senate panel noted, despite no evidence to support the claims.“I don’t get why you say this stuff because you know it’s not true,” Claire McCaskill, a Democratic senator, said at the time.In response Oz said of the products, which included green coffee extract: “I recognize they don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact, but nevertheless I would give my audience the advice I give my family all the time, and I have given my family these products.”If suspicions linger about Oz’s snake oil salesman past, another problem for the GOP is that serious questions have been asked about whether Oz actually lives in Pennsylvania. Oz was a longtime New Jersey resident before, he says, he moved to the Keystone state in late 2020 – specifically into a house owned by his wife’s parents.Fetterman has seized upon Oz’s residency status by recruiting Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, from the TV show Jersey Shore, to troll Oz online.Walker’s campaign seems less doomed. He’s less than three points behind Warnock. But the retelling by Cindy Grossman, Walker’s ex-wife, of how the Republican “held the gun to my temple and said he was going to blow my brains out”, probably horrified some Georgians. Walker has said he struggled with mental health problems during the marriage, and has said he is “accountable” for violence in the relationship.Before the video aired, Walker’s campaign was hardly running smoothly, with reports that his staff faced a constant struggle to limit the candidate’s public appearances after a string of gaffes and bizarre comments.Walker has stumbled when talking about his ideas to limit school shootings, and baffled many with comments about the environment, when he claimed that “good air” above the US “decides to float over to China’s bad air”.He has also suggested in one interview that the theory of evolution is incorrect.“At one time science said man came from apes,” Walker said.“If that is true, why are there still apes?”The Daily Beast quoted one Walker staffer as saying: “He screws up on Fox News where people agree with him, so the idea of him taking an adverse interview or interacting with people who don’t agree with him is a non-starter.”The Republican leadership might have expected fewer problems from Vance, who is about four points behind Tim Ryan in Ohio. The Hillbilly Elegy author has been a frequent commentator in conservative circles and is a TV regular.But Vance attracted severe criticism in July, after Vice published footage of him suggesting that people should stay in violent marriages, during a Q & A at a school in September 2021. Speaking about the rise in marriages that end in divorce, Vance said:“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace.“Which is the idea that like: ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’“And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”Asked by Vice News why “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced”, Vance said he was a victim of domestic violence.“I reject the premise of your bogus question,” Vance said.“As anyone who studies these issues knows: domestic violence has skyrocketed in recent years, and is much higher among non-married couples. That’s the ‘trick’ I reference: that domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives got what they want, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair person would recognize I was criticizing the progressive frame on this issue, not embracing it.”If the disagreeability, and general incompetence, of the celebrity candidates – all of whom have been endorsed by Donald Trump – has surprised many, it doesn’t appear to have shocked senior Republicans.Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who has looked on as Trump has effectively taken over the GOP, is among those who seem to have admitted that some of the candidates would struggle in November.“I think it’s going to be very tight. We have a 50-50 nation,” McConnell said in an interview on Fox News.“I think when this Senate race smoke clears, we’re likely to have a very, very close Senate still, with us up slightly or the Democrats up slightly.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS SenateUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

Justice Department asks not to disclose affidavit behind Mar-a-Lago searchUnsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against Donald Trump, whose team is rattled by recent events The US Justice Department has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top Trump aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the Justice Department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes.FBI agents a week ago seized around 20 boxes of materials – including documents marked Top Secret – executing a search warrant which referenced the Espionage Act outlawing the unauthorized retention of national security information that could harm the United States or aid an adversary.“The affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course,” the justice department said, adding that it did not oppose unsealing both a cover page and a sealing order that wouldn’t harm the criminal investigation.Trump demands return of seized documents – by order of social mediaRead moreIn arguing against unsealing the affidavit, the justice department also said that the disclosure could harm its ability to gain cooperation from witnesses not only in the Mar-a-Lago investigation but also additional ones that would appear to touch on the former president.“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” prosecutors added.The existence of potential witnesses who could yet cooperate in a number of investigations against Trump – seemingly people with intimate knowledge of the former president’s activities – rattled close advisors once more Monday, further deepening distrust inside his inner political circle.The lack of insight into what the justice department intends to do with the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government documents has deeply frustrated the Trump legal team and aides alike in a week of perilous moments for the former president.At least one lawyer on the Trump legal team – led by former assistant US attorney Evan Corcoran, who also acted as the lawyer for Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon – has called up a reporter covering the story for any insight into how the justice department might next proceed.It added to the already fraught atmosphere inside the reduced group of advisors who have day-to-day roles around Trump that erupted shortly after the FBI departed Mar-a-Lago and sparked suspicions that a person close to the former president had become an informant for the FBI.That speculation came in part amid widening knowledge about how the FBI might have established probable cause that there was a crime being committed at Mar-a-Lago using new or recent information – to prevent the probable cause from going “stale” – through a confidential informant.According to multiple sources close to Trump, suspicions initially centered on Nicholas Luna, the longtime Trump body-man who stepped back from his duties around March, and Molly Michael, the former Trump White House Oval Office operations chief, who remains on payroll but is due to soon depart.Luna was subpoenaed by the congressional investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack but has not spoken to the FBI about this case, one of the sources said. And although Michael is slated to also leave Trump’s orbit, the source said, her departure – like Luna’s – is not acrimonious.The focus in the middle of the week shifted to Mar-a-Lago employees and other staff at the members-only resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the sources said, seemingly in part because the FBI knew exactly which rooms and where in the rooms they needed to search.But towards the weekend, and following the revelation that the FBI removed a leather-bound box from the property and already knew the location of Trump’s safe, scrutiny shifted once more to anyone else who had not yet been suspected – including members of Trump’s family, the sources said.A spokesperson for the former president did not respond to a request for comment. Calls to Trump lawyers went unanswered or straight to voicemail. The justice department declined to comment on the investigation or Monday’s request.Nonetheless, the escalating distrust and rampant speculation about an informant has started to reach dizzying levels, even by the standards of the Trump presidency, which was characterized in many ways by competing interests and political backstabbing, the sources said.It remains unclear whether the FBI relied on confidential informants, and the Guardian first reported that the search came in part because the justice department grew concerned that classified materials remained at Mar-a-Lago as a result of interactions with Trump’s lawyers.At least one Trump lawyer signed a document – apparently falsely – attesting to the justice department that there were no more classified materials left at Mar-a-Lago after federal officials in June removed 10 boxes worth of government records, the sources said, confirming a New York Times report.TopicsDonald TrumpFBITrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump demands return of seized documents – by order of social mediaFBI took records including some top secret national security files after a search of the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago property Donald Trump has demanded the return of some documents seized by the US justice department in an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida last week – apparently under the impression that posts on his Truth Social platform carry legal weight.Trump should announce run for 2024 soon to avoid indictment, source saysRead moreIn a post on Sunday, the former president wrote: “By copy of this Truth, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!”It is generally held that social media posts are not legal documents.According to an actual legal document, a search warrant unsealed on Friday, records concerning top secret national security matters were among those seized by the FBI. It has been reported that some such documents concerned nuclear weapons.Trump has called the nuclear weapons report a “hoax” and claimed to have had authority to declassify top secret records while in office. No evidence has been produced that he did declassify the records in question.On Saturday, citing anonymous sources, Fox News reported that in the search at Mar-a-Lago last Monday, the FBI seized boxes “containing records covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege”.Fox News also said anonymous sources said the justice department turned down Trump lawyers’ request to have such records reviewed by an independent third party.Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform – which he launched after being thrown off Twitter over the Capitol attack – appeared to be in response to the Fox News report.He also said: “Oh great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken.”The former president has used claims of mistreatment to boost fundraising and positioning for a potential presidential run in 2024, his complaints echoed by supporters in the Republican party and across the American right.Among them, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota argued on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that releasing the affidavit that persuaded a judge to permit the FBI search “would confirm that there was justification for this raid”.“The justice department should show that this was not just a fishing expedition,” Rounds said.The Ohio congressman Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said: “We want to know what did the FBI tell them?”On Monday afternoon the justice department said it objected to requests to unseal the affidavit, as doing so would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation”, possibly by “chill[ing] future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations”.The DoJ also said: “The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or improperly.”Trump continued to rage on Truth Social, claiming both that “Republicans could win many additional seats, both in the House and Senate, because of the strong backlash over the raid at Mat-a-Lago” and that the FBI “stole my three passports (one expired), along with everything else”.He added: “This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!”John Dean knows a thing or two about assaults on political opponents, having been White House counsel under Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal 50 years ago.He told CNN Trump and his allies “don’t seem to want to appreciate that the FBI and other federal law enforcement, as well as state and local, they enforce search warrants every day, against every kind of person”.“And there’s a reason Trump provoked this,” Dean said. “He’s the one who didn’t cooperate. He’s the one who forced [US attorney general] Merrick Garland’s hand. We don’t know what it is [Trump] has or had.“Garland isn’t a risk-taker. He isn’t a guy who’s bold and goes where no one else has ever gone. He’s somebody who does it by the book, so I think these people are going to have egg all over their face when this is over.”Trump has claimed the Mar-a-Lago search is comparable to the 1972 break-in at the Washington offices of the Democratic National Committee which fueled and christened the Watergate scandal.What does ‘Watergate’ teach us 50 years on?: Politics Weekly AmericaRead moreOn Saturday, a Fox News host also went to the Nixonian well, citing a famous claim about presidential authority the disgraced 37th president made in an interview with David Frost in 1977.Will Cain said: “You know, if I listen to alternative media today, and they’re telling me, ‘Oh, classified documents, no one is above the law, right? The rule of law applies to everyone.’“I’m curious. When it comes to classified documents, famously, President Nixon said, if the president does it, then it is not illegal. Is that not truly the standard when it comes to classified documents? The president has the ability to at any time declassify anything.”Experts agree that is not the standard when it comes to handling classified material. Furthermore, Nixon himself backed away from his infamous claim.After the Frost interview, Nixon said: “I do not believe and would not argue that a president is above the law. Of course he is not.“The question is what is the law and how is it to be applied with respect to the president in fulfilling the duties of his office.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsFBInewsReuse this content More

Trump should announce run for 2024 soon to avoid indictment, source saysSource close to Donald Trump suggested the justice department would find it trickier to prosecute a presidential candidate Donald Trump “has to” announce a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 in the next two weeks, according to a senior source close to Trump, if the former president wants to head off being indicted under the Espionage Act after the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago last week.Trump demands return of seized documents – by order of social mediaRead moreIn communications reviewed by the Guardian, the source indicated Trump needed to announce because politically it would be harder for the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to indict a candidate for office than a former president out of the electoral running.A source also suggested Ron DeSantis, Trump’s only serious competitor in Republican polling, will not run in 2024 if Trump chooses to enter the race.“He can wait,” the source said of the Florida governor.In contrast, a former White House official said Trump could yet decide not to run, for fear of losing his grip on his party and role as a kingmaker should an indictment force him to drop out of the race.A search warrant unsealed on Friday showed that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago five sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents and three sets of confidential documents, as well as other records.It was reported that some seized documents concerned nuclear weapons. Trump called that report a “hoax”.The warrant also revealed Trump to be under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which dates from 1917 and has been used to go after whistleblowers.If charged and convicted, Trump could face up to 20 years in federal prison or be barred from running for office.Trump denies wrongdoing, claiming he had the authority to declassify documents and that the FBI seized documents protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.But his legal jeopardy extends further.The House January 6 committee and the DoJ continue to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and incitement of the deadly US Capitol attack.Trump is also under investigation in New York, over his business and tax affairs, and in Georgia, regarding attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.On Monday it was confirmed that Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who became Trump’s personal attorney, is the target of a criminal investigation in Georgia, over his role in the attempt to overturn the election.Also on Monday, a judge ruled that Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally and Republican senator from South Carolina, could not avoid testifying in the Georgia investigation.Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaRead moreHaving long teased a new White House run, Trump seized on the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago for fundraising purposes, portraying it as an unprecedented raid and claiming mistreatment by political opponents. Senior Republicans echoed his claims, seemingly demonstrating Trump’s continuing hold on the party.Last week, a Trump attorney, Alina Habba, said she thought Trump could end his legal troubles by announcing that he would not run for the presidency again.Habba told Real America’s Voice: “I’ve sat across from him, every time he gets frustrated, I say to him: ‘Mr President, if you would like me to resolve all your litigation, you should announce that you are not running for office, and all of this will stop.’ That’s what they want.”But Habba also said: “I hope he runs. I told him, ‘This is going to actually increase your support in your base because they just always take it a little too far.’ The Democratic party, they can’t get out of their own way sometimes.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

According to the memo from the FBI and department of homeland security, the federal agencies have identified an increase in threats “occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms” including social media.They specifically link the increase to the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, a strong sign of yet more legal trouble to come for the former president.“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” the agencies wrote.Far-right Republican lawmakers in the House have joined in the attacks on federal law enforcement, including Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene:Impeach Merrick Garland and Defund the corrupt FBI!End political persecution and hold those accountable that abuse their positions of power to persecute their political enemies, while ruining our country.This shouldn’t happen in America.Republicans must force it to stop!— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 15, 2022
She was joined by Arizona’s Paul Gosar:It is crucial that we hold our Department of Justice accountable after the obvious political persecution of opposition to the Biden Regime.The “national security state” that works against America must be dismantled.— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) August 14, 2022
Yet there seems to be an awareness among Republicans that the attacks don’t match the message of a party that attempts to cast itself as supporters of law enforcement. “We cannot say that whenever they went in and did that search, that they were not doing their job as law enforcement officers,” Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said of the FBI in a Sunday interview on CNN:”We need to pull back on casting judgment on them.”Gov. @AsaHutchinson (R-AR) responds to Republicans attacking the FBI after investigators seized classified documents from Trump’s home. @CNNSotu #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/o1CtvURUmB— CNN (@CNN) August 14, 2022
The investigations into the Trump administration continued today, with Rudy Giuliani being informed that he was a target of the special grand jury looking into election meddling in Georgia, while another former Donald Trump lawyer, Eric Herschmann, was subpoenaed by the federal grand jury looking into the January 6 attack. Republican senator Lindsey Graham also lost his attempt to quash a subpoena compelling his appearance before the Georgia panel, though he has vowed to appeal. Meanwhile, a Trumpworld source said the former president should declare his 2024 run for the presidency soon to avoid indictment.Here’s what else happened today:
US defense secretary Lloyd Austin tested positive for Covid-19 for the second time this year, he announced. His symptoms are mild and he’ll work remotely.
President Joe Biden will tomorrow sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law, his marquee plan to lower both America’s carbon emissions and costs for health care.
Democrats fear that if the Republicans win the House this fall they could reinstate the Holman Rule, which allows the party in control of the chamber to write language into spending bills to cut the salaries of federal employees such as the attorney general or FBI officials, The Washington Post reports.
Much attention tomorrow night will be on the Wyoming and Alaska primaries, where congresswoman Liz Cheney is battling a Republican challenger in Wyoming and former vice-presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is hoping for a comeback by winning the state’s lone congressional seat.
The FBI and department of homeland security have warned of an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI headquarters in Washington DC and the issuing of general calls for “civil war” and “armed rebellion”.
The Senate Republican campaign fund is slashing its ad purchases in three crucial states, The New York Times reports.The cuts made in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona total about $10 million, and are a sign of lackluster fundraising for the GOP’s attempt to retake the upper chamber of Congress, where it needs only one additional seat to create a majority. The Republican candidates in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, and in Arizona, Blake Masters, are both down in the polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, although incumbent Republican Ron Johnson is leading in Wisconsin.President Joe Biden will tomorrow sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act, his marquee plan to lower both America’s carbon emissions and costs for health care.Tomorrow’s event will take place in the White House State Dining Room, the Biden administration announced. In the coming weeks, Biden “will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, will travel across the country to highlight how the bill will help the American people, and will host an event to celebrate the enactment of the bill at the White House on September 6.”The act’s passage came after more than a year of negotiations among Democrats, who set out to pass what the Biden administration hoped would be transformational legislation addressing a range of issues from the high costs of child and elder case, to the nationwide housing shortage, to immigration reform. But Republicans refused to support the bill, and the party’s razor-thin margin of control in Congress meant many of those proposals were stripped out of the bill, chiefly due to opposition from conservative Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.US House passes Democrats’ landmark healthcare and climate billRead moreThe Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has further details about Rudy Giuliani’s new legal trouble in Georgia:Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia that has been examining efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state by the former president and his allies, a source briefed on the matter confirmed on Monday.The move to designate Giuliani, 78, as a target – as opposed to a subject – raises the legal stakes for the ex-New York mayor, identified as a key figure in the attempt to reverse the former president’s electoral defeat to Joe Biden in the state.The office of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney prosecuting the case, told Giuliani he was a target of the criminal investigation into that attempt.Rudy Giuliani informed he is target of criminal investigation in GeorgiaRead moreA source close to former president Donald Trump says he should announce his 2024 campaign for presidency soon if he wants to avoid indictment, Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump “has to” announce a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 in the next two weeks, a senior Trumpworld source said, if the former president wants to head off being indicted under the Espionage Act after the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago last week.In communications obtained by the Guardian, the source indicated Trump needed to announce because politically it would be harder for the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to indict a candidate for office than a former president out of the electoral running.The source also suggested Ron DeSantis, Trump’s only serious competitor in Republican polling, will not run in 2024 if Trump chooses to enter the race.Trump should announce run for 2024 soon to avoid indictment, source saysRead moreEric Herschmann, a lawyer who advised Donald Trump and has become one of the more well known witnesses before the January 6 committee, has received a subpoena from the federal grand jury investigating the attack, Politico reports.He joins former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin in receiving summons from the panel looking into the breach of the US Capitol by Trump’s enraged supporters.With his witty ripostes and salty language, Herschmann’s testimony was among the more memorable aired by the January 6 committee. The lawyer detailed his opposition to other officials in the Trump White House, who wanted to take drastic actions to overturn the president’s loss in the 2020 election. More