US Politics

‘I’d like to file lawsuits in all 50 states’: Mike Lindell still pushing Trump’s lie The MyPillow chief and Trump ally has become a popular figure on the right, spending lavishly on lawsuits to ban voting machines and endorsing candidatesAmong the rightwing crusaders promoting Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, wealthy pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell occupies a key niche, spending lavishly on lawsuits to ban voting machines in some states, endorsing big lie advocates for top offices in 2022 and financing an anti-voting machine film, plus related projects.In some respects, Lindell is an unlikely figure to emerge in the hotbed of US politics and the conservative ecosystem. As the chief executive of MyPillow he was once better known for his TV adverts than his extremist politics. But Lindell has become an ally of a still-powerful Trump who is eying a 2024 bid to return to the White House. Lindell has also become a popular figure on the right himself, making several appearances at recent Trump rallies.Dr Oz embraced Trump’s big lie – will Maga voters reward him in Senate race?Read moreBut election experts and voting watchdogs say Lindell’s legal blitz to ditch voting machines, and other drives that sustain Trump’s baseless claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, are deeply flawed and dangerous and potentially further damage voter confidence in elections.Lindell though sounds undaunted, telling the Guardian that he has spent about $30m to retain about 70 lawyers, cyber consultants, private investigators and other staffers for his projects to prove widespread fraud in the 2020 elections, despite mountains of contrary evidence, and expand his crusade to get rid of voting machines.Last month Lindell pumped about $500,000 dollars into an Arizona lawsuit filed by two Trump and Lindell backed state candidates for Secretary of State and Governor, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake, respectively, to obtain a preliminary injunction against voting machines that Lindell has repeatedly charged are defective.Lindell said that he plans to underwrite similar anti voting machine lawsuits in the next few months in many other states including Colorado, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Alabama. “I’d like to file the lawsuits in all 50 states,” he said. “I didn’t come all this way not to succeed. We’ve got to get rid of them all.”To further spur his conservative agenda, Lindell has publicly endorsed several candidates for top posts in battleground states including Lake and Finchem, who early this month benefitted from a Trump sponsored fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago that Lindell attended.Lindell is also backing a candidate in Colorado for secretary of state, Tina Peters, a Mesa county elections clerk indicted on 10 counts for tampering with voting equipment in an effort to reveal what she thought were sizable election machine errors, who Lindell headlined a rally for last month. A judge on 10 May barred Peters from running the county elections this year; Peters remains a candidate to be Secretary of state but first has to win a June Republican primary.And in Michigan Lindell has bet on two Trump loyalists, Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo who, respectively, were endorsed by a state Republican convention to be the Republican candidates this fall for attorney general and secretary of state.To promote his messages more widely, Lindell said he’s recruited ex-Fox News reporter Lara Logan, who claims she was “pushed out” by Fox after making incendiary comments comparing Anthony Fauci to notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, to do a documentary about voting machine fraud and the voting machine companies that Lindell boasts will be “huge”.Moreover to help spread dubious claims of widespread election fraud, Lindell late last year launched Cause of America, a grassroots group whose self-styled mission is to “restore trust in local elections”, which Lindell said he’s subsidizing to the tune of $100,000 to $200,000 a month.Currently, to facilitate the CEO’s pricey lawsuits to get rid of voting machines, which legal and voting experts say face long odds, Lindell has retained a team of lawyers including Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and Kurt Olsen, who was was subpoenaed on 1 March by the House committee binvestigating the 6 January Capitol attack by a mob of Trump loyalists.Election watchdogs say Lindell’s lawsuit spending spree is promoting conspiratorial views of voting fraud and has scant chance of legal success, but carries big risks to further confuse voters about the risks election fraud in 2020. Even William Barr, Trump’s own conservative attorney general, admitted in late 2020 there was no evidence of widespread fraud.“This is just another effort by proponents of the big lie to spread unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and undermine confidence in American elections,”Larry Norden, senior director for elections and government at the Brennan Center, said.“Like most other states, Arizona conducts its elections entirely on paper ballots and audits the machine results with a review of those ballots after the election is over,” he added. “ Every post-election review of the 2020 Arizona election, including the partisan review led by Cyber Ninjas, confirmed that Joe Biden won.”Norden stressed too that “hand-counting of ballots in any but the tiniest of jurisdictions is far too time-consuming and prone to human error to be feasible. Even in very small jurisdictions it would require trained election staff working in multi-member teams with oversight.”Other voting watchdogs offer similar views.“These ridiculous lawsuits are designed to continue undermining Americans’ confidence in every aspect of our electoral system, allowing Lindell and his cronies to decry any outcomes they don’t like as fraudulent,” Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser to the watchdog group American Oversight, said.”Hand-counting ballots actually increases opportunities for fraud, but given that Lindell and Finchem were active participants in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, it’s obvious there is no low to which they won’t stoop to foist their candidates on America, democracy be damned.”Lindell though is bullish about winning the class action lawsuits, despite dozens of other lawsuits by Trump lawyers to overturn the 2020 results that alleged fraud and that courts rejected “There’s no reason they won’t succeed,” Lindell boasted, adding that “the likelihood is very high”.Since Trump’s defeat, Lindell’s adamant advocacy that the election was rigged and his legal attacks on voting machines have sparked substantial legal headaches for the Minnesota-based mogul, a 60-year-old former crack addict and born-again Christian who once said Trump had been “chosen by God”.Two voting machine companies Lindell has portrayed as part of an election rigging operation have filed defamation lawsuits against him, and he has countersued at least one of them.Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit in February against Lindell, and a month later a judge declined Lindell’s efforts to dismiss the suit. Another voting equipment firm, Smartmatic, has also sued Lindell for defamation for an undisclosed amount.Further, the House Capitol attack committee subpoenaed Lindell’s phone records from 1 November, 2020 to 31 January 2021 as part of their inquiry, which prompted Lindell to sue the committee, House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Verizon to block the panel’s effort.Not surprisingly, Lindell angrily decried Pelosi and the committee’s inquiry as “election deflection. It’s all political and criminal.”Lindell, however, attended Trump’s “Save America” rally on the Ellipse prior to the Capitol attack where Trump urged the crowd to “fight like hell”, and he also attended a Trump rally in Georgia on 4 January where Trump railed without evidence that there was significant fraud.On 15 January, Lindell met briefly with Trump at the White House where the executive said he told Trump of “evidence” he had gathered that the voting machines were rigged.Incredibly to most experts, Lindell postulated that he has evidence Trump won by almost 15m votes with about 82m for Trump to some 67m for Biden, figures nowhere near the official total. Biden won by sabout 7m votes, or 81.2m for Biden, versus 74.2m for Trump.Norden of the Brennan Center noted that 93% of the 2020 votes were cast on paper ballots, including all the votes in the main battleground states, and that post-election audits “confirmed the machine results. The idea that the machines could have been so wildly off and yet none of it got caught by any of the post-election reviews is beyond absurd.”Meadows texts reveal just how tight the Fox News-Trump embrace isRead moreOn another legal front, some watchdog experts say that the lawyers Lindell has recruited to handle the anti-voting machine litigation could face ethics problems.“Lawyers must abide by the rules of professional conduct, which forbid lying to a court, bringing frivolous claims and misrepresenting facts,” said Michael Teter, the director of Project 65, a bipartisan legal ethics watchdog group focused on lawyers trying to undermine democracy.“Mr Lindell may be willing to pay hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to these lawyers to continue the effort that began in 2020 to discredit our elections through bogus lawsuits grounded in falsehoods, conjecture and distortions,” Teter added. “But the lawyers who take Mr Lindell’s money and allow the courts to be abused as part of political theater can, and we hope will, face professional consequences.”Lindell’s legal crusade seems aimed at weakening, rather than improving, the election process, concluded Norden of the Brennan Center. “Everything about this [lawsuit] effort wreaks of yet another attempt by the same cast of characters to undermine the election system.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

Democrats lose Senate vote to codify abortion rightsFinal tally was 49-51, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin, voting against the measure The US Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would codify the right to an abortion into federal law, after it was blocked by Republicans.It was a largely symbolic vote by Democrats to mobilize Americans around the issue ahead of a likely supreme court decision striking down the protections enshrined by Roe v Wade. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead moreThe Senate roll call was a stark reflection of the partisan divide over abortion rights, with all Republicans and one conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of Virginia, voting against the measure. The final tally was 49-51, well short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to serve as vice-president, presided over the vote.“Sadly the Senate failed to stand in defense of a women’s right to make decisions about her own body,” Harris told reporters, after stepping off the dais. Pointing to the onslaught of laws restricting abortion access in Republican-led states, she said “the priority should be to elect pro-choice leaders at the local, the state and the federal level”.Democrats moved quickly to hold the doomed vote after a leak last week of a draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito in February and confirmed as authentic, indicated that the court’s conservative majority had privately voted to strike down Roe and subsequent rulings. The extraordinary disclosure ignited protests around the country, pushing reproductive rights to the center of the political debate six months before the congressional midterms. A final ruling from the court is expected this summer.Ahead of the vote, a group of House Democratic women marched across the Capitol to protest against the end of Roe, chanting: “My body, my decision.”Democrats, under intensifying pressure to act, saw a political opportunity in forcing Republicans to vote against a bill protecting abortion at a moment when the threat to access is urgent and polls show a majority of Americans want the procedure to remain legal in all or some cases.They hope to use the Republican blockade as a data point in their midterm message to voters: that the GOP has become a party of “ultra-Maga” extremists, on the cusp of fulfilling a decades-long goal to strip women of their reproductive rights.It is an issue Democrats hope will energize young voters disenchanted by the Biden administration and persuade Republican-leaning suburban women to back them again this cycle.“If we do not take a stand now to protect a woman’s right to choose, then mark my words, it will be open season, open season on our God-given freedoms,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. He called “one of the most consequential we will take in decades”.If passed, the bill would have codified Roe v Wade into federal law, ensuring the right of healthcare providers to perform abortions and the right of patients to receive them. But it would also go further, in some cases invalidating state-level restrictions on abortion access enacted after the Roe decision in 1973.As such, Republicans cast the bill as a “radical” attempt to expand reproductive rights that goes far beyond Roe and would legalize “abortion on demand”.“We will stand with the American people, stand with innocent life, and block the Democrats’ extreme bill,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday.Republicans are betting the economy will take precedence over abortion this November. Polling shows Republicans are well positioned to make significant gains in the midterm elections, buoyed by historical headwinds, discontent with the party in power and widespread concern over the rising cost of gas, food and rent.But there are signs that Republicans do worry about a potential political backlash if Roe is overturned and states move swiftly to outlaw abortion, as many are preparing to do.A day ahead of the vote, McConnell sought to tamp down conservative calls for a nationwide ban on abortion if they take control of the chamber in November, telling reporters: “Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes.”The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the bill, instead urging support for an alternative measure that they say is tailored to reflect the landscape of abortion rights. But many Democrats see their proposal, which is not expected to receive a vote, as too weak.“Unlike some far-left activists, Senator Murkowski and I want the law today to be the law tomorrow,” Collins said on Wednesday, objecting to the lack of protections for religious exemptions in the Democrats’ bill.0In a dramatic shift, one of the only other Democrats in Congress with conservative views on abortion rights, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, said he would support the measure and voted in favor of advancing it. In a statement citing the leaked supreme court ruling, Casey said the “circumstances around the entire debate on abortion” had changed since the last time the Senate voted on the measure.Without a clear legislative path forward, Democrats are turning to the fall elections, urging Americans to elect them as the “last lines of defense” against the end of Roe.Abortion is also likely to be a major issue in races for governor and state offices, as the battle lines shift to the states.The show vote on Wednesday only intensified calls from progressives and abortion rights groups for Democrats to eliminate the filibuster. The long-simmering debate has divided the party, which does not have enough votes to end the rule. It has also energized efforts to reform the supreme court, including controversial proposals such as expanding the number of justices on the bench or imposing term limits.TopicsUS SenateAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

The supreme court overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protects women’s rights to abortion in the US would create an open season on Americans’ freedoms, majority leader Chuck Schumer has said.
Schumer was speaking before a vote in which the US Senate rejected legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law 51-49.
On 2 May, a draft decision by the United States supreme court to overturn Roe was published by Politico, which has been verified as genuine by the justices but it ‘does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.’

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Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.We’re ending the live US politics blog now, but look out shortly for the Guardian’s full coverage of Wednesday’s historic vote in which Democrats’ efforts to enshrine abortion rights into federal law fell well short in the US Senate.The day was dominated by the vote on the women’s health protection act, which Democrats knew was doomed to failure, but which they hope can now be used against Republicans who went on record to defeat the legislation.Here are the day’s highlights:
Senators voted 51-49 to reject the women’s health protection act, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans.
Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to abortion rights but promoting instead more restrictive legislation.
Arizona ended an eight-year death penalty hiatus when it executed convicted murderer Clarence Dixon by lethal injection.
A New York district judge said he would lift a civil contempt order against Donald Trump for failing to cooperate with a criminal investigation into his business activities if the former president paid $110,000 and met other obligations.
Joe Biden hailed American farmers as the “backbone of freedom” during a speech in Illinois and announced measures to support the agriculture industry and reduce food prices.
A judge in Florida struck down new congressional districts drawn by the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, saying they made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.
A reminder you can follow developments in the Ukraine war in our live 24-hour news blog here.Democrats criticize Republican Senators after doomed vote on abortion After leaving the chamber, the vice president, Kamala Harris, told reporters that the Senate is “not where the majority of Americans are on this issue”. “This vote clearly suggests that the Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue,” ⁦@VP⁩ Harris says after presiding over the failed vote on abortion rights. pic.twitter.com/BrEmO7yqvt— Lauren Gambino (@laurenegambino) May 11, 2022
A number of Senators from the Democrats also quickly reacted after the expected failure to advance their legislation to protect abortion.Ron Wyden, from Oregon, said the vote was a “punch in the gut” for those who “believe in liberty, privacy and equal rights. Now Americans know which side every Senator stands on.”Angus King, of Maine, said women across the country are worried the Supreme Court “may take away their basic right to make decisions about their own body,” adding “we cannot move backwards”. Senators have voted 51-49 to reject Democrat-sponsored legislation enshrining abortion rights into federal law.The defeat of the Women’s Health Protection Act, introduced after a leaked supreme court draft ruling last week jeopardized almost half a century of constitutional abortion protections, was expected.The West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin announced this morning he would join Republicans in voting against the measure, leaving it no chance of achieving a majority. The backing of at least 60 senators would have been needed for it to pass. But Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer insisted on pressing ahead with the doomed vote in order to put Republican senators on record.Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t want to see the supreme court overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, and Democrats see the issue as a vote-winner ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections. In comments before the symbolic vote, Schumer said:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party, the Maga Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.Vice-President Kamala Harris has called the vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act and senators have begun voting. 60 Senate votes are needed for it to pass. Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski has issued a statement insisting that “I strongly support women’s reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion”.But she says she also “believes in limited government” and won’t be voting for the Women’s Health Protection Act in the imminent US Senate vote.Murkowski’s statement follows an earlier joint release with Maine Republican Susan Collins, in which they promoted their own reproductive rights act as an alternative.In her new statement, Murkowski says:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The legislation before the Senate today goes well beyond the precedent established in Roe and Casey. It does not include the Hyde amendment, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortions – and has been the law almost as long as Roe.
It does not include conscience protections for healthcare providers that refuse to perform abortions based on religious beliefs. It explicitly overrides the religious freedom restoration act for the first time. It also allows late-term abortions without any notable restrictions.
Instead of taking yet another failed vote on a wholly partisan measure, I urge Democrats and Republicans alike to recognize that what Senator Collins and I have offered is in line with the views of a strong majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose but believe that legal abortion should include reasonable limitations. The Senate is edging ever closer to the abortion rights vote. Members are currently finishing a vote on confirming Joe Biden’s pick Alvaro Bedoya to the federal trade commission, and will turn their attention to the Women’s Health Protection Act next, according to C-Span.Joe Biden has just wrapped up an address to agricultural workers in Kankakee, Illinois, in which he promised support for farmers and new measures to make food prices more affordable.The president hailed farmers as “the backbone of the country” and “the backbone of freedom” as he blamed soaring inflation and high prices on Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}You feed America. You got us through a pandemic and you’re literally the backbone of our country. But you’re also feeding the world. And we’re seeing Putin’s war in Ukraine, you’re like the backbone of freedom.
America’s fighting on two fronts. At home, inflation and rising prices. Abroad, it’s helping Ukrainians defend democracy, and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist.
American farmers understand Putin’s war has has has cut off critical sources of food.On Tuesday, at the White House, Biden insisted that tackling inflation was “my top priority”. Despite a small lift this morning with news that inflation had slowed for the first time since August, it remains at a near 40-year high and is likely to remain uppermost on voters’ minds as November’s midterm elections approach.Biden laid out measures he was taking to “lower costs on farmers”, including doubling an investment in fertilizer production to $500m, and looking at extending crop insurance protection “to give financial security to farmers”.By protecting farmers, Biden said, food prices could stabilize and fall.“Every little bit matters,” he said as he went back over previous initiatives to tackle high prices, including issuing a summer waiver for ethanol-rich fuel which he said would reduce gas prices.The AAA, however, was reporting on Wednesday a new record high national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline at $4.40. The White House released a fact sheet setting out Biden’s proposals to “make food more affordable, and lower costs for farmers”.Arizona ended an eight-year hiatus on executions Wednesday when it put to death a man convicted of killing a college student in 1978. The state halted the death penalty in 2014 following an execution critics say was botched, and difficulties in finding lethal injection drugs, Reuters reported.Clarence Dixon, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of 21-year-old Arizona state university student Deana Bowdoin, making him the sixth person to be executed in the US in 2022. Dixon’s death was announced late Wednesday morning by Frank Strada, a deputy director with Arizona department of corrections.Dixon’s death appeared to go smoothly, said Troy Hayden, an anchor for the Fox10 TV news program who witnessed the execution.“Once the drugs started flowing, he went to sleep almost immediately,” Hayden said.Dixon’s lawyers asked to postpone his execution, but judges rejected his argument that he wasn’t mentally fit to be executed and didn’t have a rational understanding of why the state wanted to execute him. The US supreme court rejected a last-minute delay of Dixon’s execution less than an hour before the execution began. In another Arizona death penalty case, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reported last week that Frank Atwood, convicted for murdering an eight-year-old girl, has two weeks to decide whether to be executed with cyanide gas, the poison known as Zyklon B used by the Nazis to murder millions of people in Auschwitz and other extermination camps, or lethal injection.Atwood’s execution is set for 8 June.Last month, the Texas court of criminal appeals issued a stay of execution for Melissa Lucio, a Mexican-American woman set to be judicially killed for the death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah. A state judge struck down new congressional districts in north Florida on Wednesday, saying that the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who drew the lines, made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice.“I am finding the enacted map is unconstitutional because it diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice,” circuit judge Lane Smith said on Wednesday, according to the Tributary. Lawyers for the state of Florida are expected to immediately appeal the ruling, and the Florida supreme court shaped by DeSantis could ultimately decide the case.The decision dealt specifically with DeSantis’ decision to dismantle Florida’s fifth congressional district, which stretched from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, was 46% Black, and is currently represented by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat. DeSantis’ new district chopped the district up into four districts where Republican candidates would be favored to win.A coalition of civic action groups and Florida voters immediately challenged the map, saying that they violated a provision in Florida’s constitution that says new districts can’t “diminish” the ability of minority voters to elect the candidate of their choosing. Last month, plaintiffs asked the court to block the districts in northern Florida specifically from taking effect for the 2022 election. Smith ordered the state to adopt a map that maintained a 5th congressional district stretching from Jacksonville to Tallahasee, according to the Tributary.The Florida map is one of the most aggressively gerrymandered maps in the US. Republicans currently have a 16-11 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation, but DeSantis’ plan would add an additional four GOP-friendly seats, increasing that advantage to 20-8 (Florida is gaining an additional US House seat because of population growth). It’s an effort that’s seen as a critical part of Republican efforts to retake control of the US House in the midterm elections.In a separate court on Tuesday, DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, won the opening legal round of his fight with Disney over the state’s “don’t say gay” bill that bans classroom discussions of sexual preference and gender identity issues.Three central Florida taxpayers alleged state laws were broken when DeSantis signed a new law dissolving Disney’s self-governing status, which critics said was in retaliation for the company attacking the “don’t say gay” law.But district court judge Cecilia Altonaga threw out the lawsuit, partly because the plaintiffs aren’t personally harmed, the Orlando Sentinel reports.The supreme court’s upcoming decision to reverse Roe v Wade (an early draft of which was leaked last week) doesn’t ban abortions. It leaves the issue to the states. As a result, it will put another large brick in the growing wall separating blue and red America.The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.One America is largely urban, racially and ethnically diverse, and young. The other is largely rural or exurban, white and older.The split is accelerating. Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes bluer. Of 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties – where a presidential candidate won at least 80% of the vote – jumped from 6% in 2004 to 22% in 2020.Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two per cent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil”.Almost 40% would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3% of Democrats and 13.8% of Republicans responded in the affirmative.Increasingly, each America is running under different laws.The second American civil war is already happening | Robert ReichRead moreGood news, of a sort, for Donald Trump out of New York, where a judge has said the former president must pay the state attorney general $110,000 and meet other conditions to purge a contempt of court order, but also that the fine will not grow by $10,000 a day, as it had been doing.The New York attorney general, Letitia James, says her civil investigation of the Trump Organization has found evidence of fraudulent behaviour in tax filings. Trump says the investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt.The judge in the contempt case, Arthur Engoron, said the daily fine on Trump stopped accruing on Friday, when the former president filed affidavits about his search for requested information – and his inability to find four phones which investigators would like to look at. Engoron said the contempt order could be restored if certain conditions are not met.Here’s our report on Trump’s phones, from yesterday:Trump tells court he lost phones linked to alleged fraud by his companyRead more More

US inflation rate slows but remains close to 40-year highConsumer price index reveals costs rising by a monthly rate of 0.3% in April, down from 1.2% in March, the first fall since August 2021 Price rises slowed in the US in April but the annual inflation rate remained close to a 40-year high, leaving many Americans struggling to afford necessities including food, shelter and fuel.The latest consumer price index (CPI) figures – which measure a broad range of goods and services – showed prices rising by a monthly rate of 0.3% in April, down from 1.2% in March, the first fall since August 2021.But it is still too early to say whether inflation has peaked. At 8.3% the annual rate of inflation in April was down from 8.5% in March but remains at a level unseen since the 1980s. Over the year the CPI’s food index increased 9.4%, the largest 12-month increase since April 1981. The so-called core-price index – which excludes the volatile categories of food and energy – increased 0.6% on the month, up from March’s 0.3% gain.The figures come as the Federal Reserve is moving to sharply increase interest rates in an attempt to bring prices back under control. The pace of rate rises, and fears that they may trigger a recession, have spooked investors and sent stock markets reeling.Soaring demand and a lack of supply thanks to the pandemic have led to price rises across a broad swath of goods and services. Air fares are up 40% over the last three months. A booming house market has made housing unaffordable for many Americans, especially people of color, and 49% of people recently told Pew Research that affordable housing is a large problem in their community.Randall Kroszner, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and former Fed governor, said the sharp rise in core inflation would worry the Fed. “That is where you look for evidence that inflation is becoming entrenched,” he said.Kroszner said global issues including the war in Ukraine and China’s Covid woes had combined with rising rates to deliver a “one-two punch” to the US economy. He believes the chances of the US entering a recession have risen and that the housing and jobs markets may be the next to suffer.“I’m generally an optimist but this is challenging,” he said.The rising cost of living has become a leading political issue as the US prepares for November’s midterm elections. Rising prices have battered Joe Biden’s approval ratings. This week an Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll found that Biden’s approval had fallen to 39%, approaching his previous record low of 38% set in February, and confidence in the US economy was close to an eight-year low.On Tuesday, Biden said his administration was doing all it could to tackle inflation. “I want every American to know that I’m taking inflation very seriously,” he said in remarks from the White House. “It’s my top domestic priority.The Biden administration has made attempts to bring down prices. In March the White House announced plans to release up to 1m barrels of oil a day from the strategic reserve, in an attempt to dampen high gasoline prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. But gas prices remain elevated at a national average of $4.37 a gallon compared with $2.96 a year ago, according to AAA.Republicans have blamed Biden’s stimulus programs for rising prices, a claim he disputes. ​​ The president said his policies had “helped not hurt” the nation’s economic outlook.MIT economics professor Kristin Forbes said the US recovery had shown the US economy lacked skilled workers in industries where demand for jobs was high, pushing up wages – a problem that also afflicted the UK in the wake of the pandemic.The former Bank of England policymaker told a committee of MPs in the UK parliament that she expected inflation in the US to fall, especially once increases in borrowing costs feed through into more expensive mortgages and loans.However, she said the UK faced an acute inflationary spiral that would continue into the autumn because Britain was the only country affected by all six drivers of global inflation. Inflation is running at 7% in the UK, but is forecast by the Bankto exceed 10% later this year. She highlighted the impact on the UK of higher energy prices, a falling exchange rate, trade restrictions that pushed up goods prices, a decade of modest inflation going into the pandemic, expectations among businesses and consumers of much higher inflation in a year’s time and a tight labour market, forcing wages higher.“The UK is the only country to tick every box with inflation pressures coming from all six areas,” she said.TopicsUS economyInflationEconomicsUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who votedCrystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election A Texas appeals court must reconsider its decision to uphold a five-year conviction for Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, the state’s highest criminal court ruled on Wednesday.My day with Pamela Moses after her charges were dropped | The fight to voteRead moreMason showed up to the polls to vote in 2016, while on supervised release – which is similar to probation – for a federal tax felony. She cast a provisional ballot at the urging of election workers, which was ultimately rejected because people with felony convictions in Texas cannot vote while they are serving any part of a federal sentence.Mason said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, and an official from the federal probation office testified at her trial that they never informed her she was ineligible. “That’s just not something we do. In my opinion, that’s common knowledge, but that’s not something we do,” the official said during her trial.A local judge in Tarrant county, where Mason lives, convicted her of illegally voting in 2018 and sentenced her to five years in prison. An appeals court upheld that ruling in 2020.The Texas court of criminal appeals said the an appellate court had “erred by failing to require proof that the appellant had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release”.Mason has remained out of prison on an appeal bond during that time. Her appeal to the Texas court of criminal appeals, Texas’s highest criminal court, was her last chance.“I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction, and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges,” Mason said in a statement. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted. I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.”Anna Tinsley Williams, a spokeswoman for Tarrant County district attorney Sharen Wilson, declined to comment on the ruling because it was a pending case.The case attracted significant national attention because of the severity of Mason’s sentence. It’s one of a string of cases in which Black defendants have faced harsh punishments for voting errors, in what many see as an obvious effort to intimidate Black voters. There is no comprehensive data comparing punishment for voting crimes by race.Even though Mason will remain out of prison, the case has already taken a significant toll on her life. She lost her job after she was indicted for illegally voting, and was sent back to federal prison for several months for being charged with a crime on supervised release. She nearly lost her home to foreclosure during that time as her teenage children stepped in to run the household.In recent years, she has become much more politically active, encouraging people to vote and learn about their eligibility if they have a felony conviction. She introduced Beto O’Rourke onstage in March when he formally earned the Democratic nomination for Texas governor.During her trial, prosecutors argued Mason knew she was ineligible to vote because witnesses testified that she read and signed an affidavit on the provisional ballot stating the voting eligibility requirements. And when the second court of appeals upheld her sentence in 2020, the court said the fact that Mason didn’t know she was ineligible was “irrelevant to her prosecution”. All prosecutors needed to prove was that she knew she was on federal supervised release, Judge Wade Birdwell wrote for the court.The Texas court of appeals said Wednesday that interpretation of the law was incorrect and “would lead to absurd consequences that the legislature could not possibly have intended”.“The state was required to prove not only that Appellant knew she was on supervised release but also that she ‘actually realized’ that ‘these circumstances … in fact’ rendered her ineligible to vote,” Judge Jesse McClure III, wrote for the 8-1 majority.“The court of criminal appeals clarifying that innocent mistakes cannot be the basis for prosecution is critical,” said Thomas Buser-Clancy, a lawyer with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is helping represent Mason. “We are hopeful that holding, as we go back to the lower court, will ensure that what was at worst an innocent mistake for Ms. Mason will lead to overturning her conviction.”The court rejected two other arguments offered by Mason’s lawyers in the appeal. They disagreed with an argument that because Mason’s ballot was rejected, she did not actually “vote” under the law. They also rejected an argument that her conviction should be overturned because federal law guarantees her the right to vote a provisional ballot. There were nearly 4,000 provisional ballots rejected in Tarrant county in the 2016 election. Mason appears to be the only person among them who was prosecuted.In a dissenting opinion, Judge Michelle Slaughter wrote that there was enough evidence that Mason knew she was ineligible to vote to convict her. After her federal conviction, she noted, the local election office sent two notices to her home address telling her she was ineligible to vote. Even though Mason was in federal prison at that time, Slaughter said, it was reasonable to infer Mason’s family either forwarded her the letter or that she read them when she returned home years later. (Mason has said she never saw the notices.) She also said the fact that Mason signed the provisional affidavit only corroborated that she knew she was ineligible.TopicsTexasThe fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

Trump-endorsed Republican accused of sexual assault loses Nebraska governor primaryCharles Herbster’s loss was a setback for Donald Trump, in his effort to bend the GOP in his direction ahead of possible 2024 run Republicans in Nebraska picked Jim Pillen as their nominee for governor on Tuesday, over a rival supported by Donald Trump and accused of groping multiple women.Charles Herbster’s loss was a setback for Trump, who has issued hundreds of endorsements and staged rallies in support of candidates including Herbster in an effort to bend the GOP in his direction ahead of a possible presidential run in 2024.Herbster’s loss raises the stakes on other high-profile primaries this month in Pennsylvania and Georgia, where Trump has also intervened.Trump’s influence proved decisive in West Virginia on Tuesday, however.In a US House primary pitting Republican incumbents against each other, Trump’s candidate, Alex Mooney, defeated David McKinley, who angered Trump by voting for Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure package and the creation of the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.In Nebraska, Pillen, a hog farm owner and veterinarian, defeated eight challengers including Herbster and Brett Lindstrom, a state senator generally viewed as a more moderate choice.“We live in the greatest place on the planet, right here in Nebraska,” Pillen said as a crowd chanted, “Let’s go, Jim!”Pillen will be a favorite in November’s general election against a state senator, Carol Blood. Nebraska has not elected a Democrat as governor since 1994.Pillen was endorsed by GOP leaders in the state including the term-limited governor, Pete Ricketts, former governor Kay Orr and former University of Nebraska football coach and congressman Tom Osborne.The allegations against Herbster didn’t stop Trump holding a rally with him.“I really think he’s going to do just a fantastic job, and if I didn’t feel that, I wouldn’t be here,” said Trump, who has denied sexual misconduct allegations of his own.Herbster alluded to the groping allegations in a concession speech.“This is one of the nastiest campaigns for governor in the history of Nebraska,” Herbster said.Last month, the Nebraska Examiner interviewed six women who claimed Herbster groped their buttocks, outside of their clothes, during political events or beauty pageants. A seventh woman said Herbster once kissed her forcibly.A Republican state senator, Julie Slama, said Herbster reached up her skirt and touched her inappropriately at a dinner in 2019.Herbster filed a defamation lawsuit against Slama, saying she was trying to derail his campaign. Slama responded with a countersuit, alleging sexual battery.Nebraska Republicans and Democrats also picked candidates for the US House seat previously held by the Republican Jeff Fortenberry, who resigned in March after he was convicted of federal corruption charges.Mike Flood, a former speaker of the Nebraska legislature, won the Republican nomination while state senator Patty Pansing Brooks was the Democratic pick. Flood will be strong favorite in the Republican-heavy first district, which includes Lincoln, small towns and a large swath of farmland.TopicsNebraskaRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans couldn’t pass abortion banRepublican leader says ‘I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes’ to pass ban should Republicans take control in midterm elections A day before Democrats staged a vote in the Senate to codify into law the right to abortion, a right under threat from the supreme court, the Republican leader in the chamber said his party would not be able to pass an abortion ban should it take control in midterm elections in November. Pro-choice states rush to pledge legal shield for out-of-state abortionsRead more“Historically, there have been abortion votes on the floor of the Senate. None of them have achieved 60 votes,” Mitch McConnell told reporters.“I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes there at the federal level, no matter who happens to be in the majority, no matter who happens to be in the White House.”The chamber is split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Democrats and progressives have urged the party to seek to scrap the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation.Such reform seems unlikely. With key Democrats opposed, Punchbowl News, a Washington outlet, reported on Wednesday that the issue was not even discussed at a party Senate lunch the day before.When Donald Trump was in power McConnell, too, came under pressure to scrap the filibuster to advance the Republican agenda.On Tuesday, the Kentucky senator told reporters there were “no issues that Republicans believe should be exempt from the 60-vote threshold”.The measure before the Senate on Wednesday – for which the Democrats do not even have 50 votes, with opposition from some in their own party as well as pro-choice Republicans – is the Women’s Health Protection Act. It would codify Roe v Wade, the 1973 supreme court decision that protects the right to abortion.Roe has been under imminent threat since last week, when a draft supreme court ruling overturning it, reportedly supported by five conservative justices, was leaked.On Wednesday, Politico, which published the leak, said the draft ruling by Samuel Alito was still the only one in circulation, with publication expected in June.The Democratic Senate vote is a response to protests that have spread since the draft ruling was published. Many Republican-run states have trigger laws ready to ban abortion at various stages should Roe fall.McConnell said: “If the leaked opinion became the final opinion, legislative bodies – not only at the state level but at the federal level – certainly could legislate in that area.”Total abortion bans would be possible, he said.Polling shows consistent majority support for abortion rights but Republicans say they doubt the issue will damage them at the midterms in November.Divided States of America: Roe v Wade is ‘precursor to larger struggles’Read moreMcConnell’s deputy, John Thune of South Dakota, told the Hill: “Our members are going to continue to hammer away on inflation, the economy, the border, crime.”Democrats hope the vote on Wednesday will prove politically useful.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, told reporters: “Every senator will have to vote, and every, every American will see how they voted. And I believe the Republican party … will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.”Jackie Rosen, of Nevada, said: “We have to take that fear, we have to take that anger that we’re feeling, channel it into action to defend our majority. You have to elect more pro-choice senators. We’re not living in a hypothetical.”TopicsUS SenateAbortionDemocratsUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More