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      Ending taxes on home sales would benefit the wealthiest households most – part of a larger pattern in Trump tax plans

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      Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer – the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June – President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.

      Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes.

      But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trump’s proposals are those with the most valuable real estate.

      As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off.

      Most families already sell their homes tax-free

      Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,000 in gain from a home sale, while married people can exclude $500,000. All told, about 90% of home sales generate less than $500,000 in gains, so the overwhelming majority of sellers already owe no tax.

      The minority who would see new benefits from the proposed tax change are those with more than $500,000 in appreciation – typically owners of high-priced homes in hot real estate markets. Yale’s Budget Lab estimated the average benefit for these tax-free sales was $100,000 per qualifying seller.

      Homeownership itself isn’t equally distributed across the U.S. population. About 44% of Black Americans are homeowners, compared with 74% of white Americans. That racial gap has only widened over the past 10 years. Similarly, single women – particularly but not exclusively women of color – face additional barriers.

      A broader trend of upward wealth transference

      Though still just a proposal, the tax-free home sales bill is part of a broader set of Republican tax plans that would have regressive effects – that is, where the vast majority of benefits go to high-income people and very few to low-income people – under a pro-worker banner.

      Trump floated the tax-free home sales idea less than three weeks after he signed a large package of tax and spending measures in July 2025. That bill generated strong public criticism because of its emphasis on tax savings for the rich at the expense of almost a trillion dollars in cuts for federally funded health care for the poor and disabled.

      The home sales idea follows the same script – and echoes the distributional pattern established by his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That tax reform increased racial wealth and income disparities and provided 80% of its benefits to corporations and high-income individuals. In fact, my research shows that white households received more than twice as many tax cuts as Black households from that law.

      The same dynamic plays out in this new tax-fueled housing policy. Eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales would primarily benefit the 29 million homeowners who already have substantial equity – a group that skews heavily white, male and upper middle class. Meanwhile, America’s millions of renters, disproportionately people of color and women, would receive no benefit while potentially losing access to social programs Congress must cut to fund these tax breaks. More

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      The abortion pill is safe. But why should Trump let facts get in the way of his agenda? | Moira Donegan

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr’s health department is conducting a new review of mifepristone, the drug used in the majority of American abortions, claiming that a new study from a conservative thinktank has raised concerns about its safety.Mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA 25 years ago this month, has repeatedly been proven safe and effective for use terminating pregnancies in both multiple medical trials and in widespread patient use over the past quarter of a century. The report cited by Kennedy, meanwhile, comes from the Ethics and Public Policy Center – a group that applies “the Jewish and Christian traditions” to modern law and pushes back “against the extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives” – and was not peer reviewed. The study has been heavily criticized by medical experts for its methodology and lack of transparency regarding how it obtained and analyzed its data. The report appears to have dramatically inflated the rate of serious adverse health outcomes in patients who took mifepristone – in part by seemingly conflating the bleeding that occurs in the normal course of a medication abortion with hemorrhaging, and in part by relying on unclear terminology. The Ethics and Public Policy Center report classified “serious adverse events” as occurring in almost 11% of mifepristone patients. More reliable studies, subject to data transparency, peer review, and a more rigorously honest set of definitions, have found that such adverse health events happen in fewer than 0.5% of users. In a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies, the vast majority found that more than 99% of people who use mifepristone have no serious complications.Mifepristone is safe. But why let the facts get in the way of the Trump administration’s political agenda? The review of mifepristone marks the second time in less than a week that the Trump administration has marshalled false medical claims and junk science in an effort to constrain the freedoms of pregnant women and curtail their access to relief. On Monday, in a bizarre, rambling and frequently nonsensical press conference, the president appeared alongside Kennedy Jr to claim, falsely, that Tylenol use during pregnancy can cause autism in the resulting children, and to instruct pregnant women to avoid the painkiller and instead “tough it out”.The Trump administration has long been under pressure from the anti-abortion movement – which, not satisfied by the end of Roe v Wade (in a decision delivered to them by Trump’s appointees, hand-selected for the purpose), has continually pushed the administration to further limit access to abortion. Donald Trump has seemed unwilling to directly attack abortion, appearing to think that the issue is a political loser for him. But his administration has already curtailed access nationwide. His massive domestic spending bill included a provision barring most abortion providers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for any services they provide – abortion related or not – for a year, a move that makes it dramatically more expensive for clinics to offer abortion services. As a result, clinics are already shutting their doors in Democratically-controlled states like California. In Wisconsin, where the battle for abortion legalization led to a fantastically expensive state supreme court race and massive voter mobilization, the state Planned Parenthood affiliate made the decision to stop providing abortions in order to retain access to the Medicaid funding they need to stay open – even though that enormous political effort succeeded in re-legalizing abortion in the state.But that’s not enough for the anti-choice right. Three Republican-controlled states – Missouri, Idaho and Kansas – are suing the FDA, seeking to reverse changes to mifepristone regulations that allowed the drug to be prescribed via telemedicine and sent through the mail, and to restore other restrictions on the drug. Texas, Florida and Louisiana are seeking to join and expand that lawsuit to further restrict mifepristone. The new regulations, which have been endorsed by leading health experts, have made mifepristone dramatically more accessible in the years since the Dobbs decision, as women living in states that ban abortion seek out ways to have the medication prescribed and mailed to them by physicians abroad or in Democratically controlled states.Kennedy’s move against mifepristone could restrict access even further. Compared with surgery, the pill is a more accessible, safer and less resource-intensive way for clinics to provide abortions. It does not require a surgical room or very much of a provider’s time; patients can take the pills and have their abortions in the comfort and privacy of their own homes. Getting rid of the abortion pill, or making it harder to access, would put even more strain on abortion providers who are already having a difficult time keeping their heads above water.Even more tragically, the move could be devastating for women’s health and lives. In the pre-Roe era, when abortion was illegal and mifepristone had not yet been invented, many women in need of abortions sought out surgical procedures on the black market. But surgery is much riskier than taking a pill, and many of these women experienced injuries and infections that killed or permanently maimed them. There is exactly one reason why the US has not yet seen a return to those bad old days of unsafe surgical abortions and mass female death: that reason is mifepristone. The drug saves women’s dreams and dignity by allowing them to control their own reproduction; it saves their lives by allowing them to avoid a dangerous surgery in an illegal market. Even in liberal states, abortion has become much harder to access than it was before Dobbs; that alone is an injury to women’s citizenship and status. With mifepristone under threat, it looks like the Trump administration is threatening their lives, too.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s approval ratings slide, with Americans angry over inflation and Jimmy Kimmel

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      US President Donald Trump’s net approval in analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls slid two points in the last week to -9.4, after his ratings had been stable since late July. Currently, 53.1% disapprove of his performance, compared to 43.7% who approve.

      Trump’s net approval was worse last Wednesday at -10.0 before recovering. This is only slightly better than his worst net approval of this term, -10.3 on July 22.

      In Silver’s historic approval data, Trump’s ratings are worse than any other president after Harry Truman – they only top his own ratings at this stage of his first term.

      Trump’s ratings may have slid over his administration’s controversial attempts to cancel the late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel. Analyst G. Elliott Morris cited a YouGov poll this week in which 68% of Americans said it was unacceptable for the government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with, compared to just 12% who said it was acceptable.

      An alternative explanation for the slide in Trump’s ratings is inflation. Silver tracks Trump’s ratings on four issues: immigration, the economy, trade and inflation. Trump’s net approval on immigration (-5.3), the economy (-15.6) and trade (-17.3) have held up in the last month, but his net approval on inflation (-30.0) has dropped six points since the end of August.

      The benchmark US S&P 500 stock index peaked last Monday at nearly 6,700 points, an increase of 2.8% in the last month.

      I believe Trump’s ratings are unlikely to become very poor unless something goes badly wrong with either the stock market or the broader US economy.

      US and UK elections and polls

      Last Tuesday, Democrats held Arizona’s seventh House district in a US special election, with a substantial swing in their favour.

      Other US state and local elections will happen on November 4, covered here in The Poll Bludger.

      There will also be a deputy Labour leadership election in the United Kingdom in late October. The far-right Reform party is leading Labour by about ten points in national polls and would probably win a majority in the House of Commons on current voting intentions, given the UK’s first-past-the-post system.

      Victorian polls are contradictory

      A Victorian state Redbridge poll for The Herald Sun, conducted September 3–11 from a sample of 2,005 voters, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over the Coalition, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since July.

      Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down one point), 32% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (down one) and 18% for all others (up three). The next Victorian election is in November 2026.

      A Victorian state DemosAU poll, conducted September 2–9 from a sample of 1,327 voters, however, gave the Coalition a 51–49% lead. Primary votes were 38% Coalition, 26% Labor, 15% Greens and 21% for all others.

      Liberal Brad Battin led Labor incumbent Jacinta Allan by 37–32% as preferred premier. Respondents thought Victoria was headed in the wrong direction by a wide margine, 58–25%. A quarter of respondents thought crime was the most important issue, while 24% said cost of living was.

      Federal Labor led the Coalition in Victoria by a 55–45% margin. Primary votes were 32% Labor, 29% Coalition, 13% Greens, 12% One Nation and 14% for all others. One Nation’s vote in this poll is six points above its 2025 election result.

      NSW Resolve poll has big Labor lead

      A NSW state Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal August and September Resolve polls from a sample of over 1,000 voters, gave Labor 38% of the primary vote (steady since July), the Coalition 28% (down four), the Greens 10% (down three), independents 11% (up three) and others 12% (up two).

      Resolve doesn’t usually give a two-party estimate for its state polls, but The Poll Bludger estimated a Labor lead by 59–41%. Labor incumbent Chris Minns led Liberal Mark Speakman as preferred premier by 37–16% (compared to 35–16% in July).

      This poll was released shortly after Labor gained the seat of Kiama that had been held by convicted sex offender Gareth Ward at a September 13 byelection.

      Labor’s Katelin McInerney defeated the Liberals’ Serena Copley at the byelection by a 60.2–39.8% margin. (Ward had beaten McInerney by 50.8–49.2% as an independent at the March 2023 election).

      The next NSW election is in March 2027.

      Labor holds large lead in federal Morgan poll

      A national Morgan poll, conducted August 25 to September 21 from a sample of 5,084 voters, gave Labor a 55.5–44.5% lead by headline respondent preferences, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the August Morgan poll.

      Primary votes were 34% Labor (steady), 30% Coalition (steady), 12% Greens (steady), 9.5% One Nation (up 0.5) and 14.5% for all others (down 0.5). By 2025 election preference flows, Labor led by an unchanged 55.5–44.5%.

      The Coalition has taken the lead in Queensland, leading by 51.5–48.5%, but Labor is well ahead in all other states. Queensland was the only state the Coalition won at the 2025 federal election (by 50.6–49.4%).

      Labor had a commanding 69–31% lead among those aged 18–34, a 59–41% lead with those aged 35–49 and a 50.5–49.5% lead with those aged 50–64. The Coalition had a 56–44% lead with those aged 65 and older.

      Newspoll aggregate data for July to September

      On September 21, the Australian released aggregate data
      for the three Newspolls taken from July 14 to September 11. The overall sample size was 3,811 people, and Labor led by 57–43% across all three polls.

      The Poll Bludger reported that Labor led by 60–40% in New South Wales, 58–42% in Victoria, 51–49% in Queensland, 54–46% in Western Australia and 55–45% in South Australia. Morgan had Labor ahead by 56.5–43.5% in NSW, with the election result there at 55.3–44.7% to Labor.

      Labor led with university-educated people by a 60–40% margin. Labor also led by 57–43% among those with a TAFE/technical education, but only by 53–47% among those with no tertiary education.

      Additional federal Resolve questions

      I covered the national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers that gave Labor a 55–45% lead over the Coalition.

      In additional questions, 52% of respondents thought it was important for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to meet Trump, although 58% had a negative view of Trump.

      By 58–18%, voters also supported or accepted the adoption of nuclear-powered submarines by Australia (compared to 57–20% in November 2021).

      There was a 29–29% tie on whether Australia should recognise Palestine as a state this month. On the Israel-Gaza war, 39% wanted an immediate end without preconditions, 22% only supported ending the war if Hamas is removed from power and 13% only when the remaining hostages are returned to Israel.

      Liberals abandon Bradfield legal challenge

      Last Thursday, the Liberals abandoned their legal challenge to teal Nicolette Boele’s 26-vote win in Bradfield at the May federal election.

      The electoral commission had declared Boele the winner in June and she was seated pending the outcome of legal challenges. She will now serve a full term as the member for Bradfield. More

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      Kamala Harris’s election memoir shows just how deluded the Democrats still are | Nesrine Malik

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      Watching the Kamala Harris presidential campaign unfold last year, I remember thinking, and writing, about how striking it was that she had been rehabilitated almost overnight into a political titan. Authoritative accounts of her before that moment portrayed a lo-fi vice-president, who, even according to people who had worked to get her there, had “not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country”. Another striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.This was not the intention, but 107 Days is a hilarious book. The kind of “you have to laugh or else you’ll cry” type of hilarity. As the second Trump administration unfolds in ever-more disastrous ways, Harris and the other timeline that was possible had she won take on a calamitous, mythical quality. Here she comes, alerting us to the fact that her defeat was no fateful tragedy, but a farce. There was no hidden, better version of Harris that was muzzled and limited by circumstance. There was only a woman with a formidable lack of self-awareness and a propensity to self-valorise.The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her. The “not a thing that comes to mind” answer she gave when asked during the campaign if there was anything she would have done differently to Biden was not caution, but the truth. There is no sign here that she would have liked to meaningfully diverge on Gaza, for example, other than to introduce more parity in the rhetoric of compassion. Or any indication that she would have liked to grasp the nettle on economic policy and make more of her accusation that Donald Trump’s economic agenda “works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers”.This dearth of a unique Harris agenda explains why she often seemed so vague, skittish and rambling. How does she receive the news she will be the candidate? By reminding herself (and us) that she had the best “contact book” and “name recognition”, as well as the “strongest case”. She tries to cloak her ambition, saying “knew she could” be president, but only because she “wanted to do the work. I have always been a protector.” It’s fine to have ambition to be the president of the United States! Every cardinal dreams of becoming pope, as Cardinal Bellini of Conclave said. Even he did himself, to his shame, when he lamented upon the discovery of his ambition: “To be this age and still not know yourself.”My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking. The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.I lost count of the number of descriptions of crowds exploding, roaring, on fire. The audience applause to Harris’s Saturday Night Live appearance was some of the loudest ever heard. She replays her greatest hits, revealing a politician captured by the reverie of rapturous self-selecting crowds and buzzy studios, fatally unable to connect to the voters outside the bubble, who had soured on the Democrats and were checking out, or voting for Trump.View image in fullscreenBiden pops up often, a self-involved and petty figure, snapping at her heels and distracting her. But she is loyal, she tells us – often. So loyal that she couldn’t disparage him in the way that people needed her to (“People hate Joe Biden!” she is told by a senior adviser). But not so loyal that she doesn’t more artfully disguise that she wants you to know the man was a real drag who mentioned her too late in his speeches, and then called her before her big debate with Trump to unsubtly threaten her if she bad-mouthed him. But what is most telling, and alarming, is what she reveals about the Democratic establishment, and therefore what hope there is of an awakening among its ranks. One that could pose a meaningful challenge to Trump now, and Trumpism in the future. The 107 days were short, but they were a concentration of a process in which the party and its candidate had to dig deep quickly to unearth the most compelling and defining vision for the American people. The result was to take no risks, offer continuity and scold dissenters as Trump enablers, but with style. It wasn’t enough, and will never be.The answer to the question “what went wrong” isn’t “we didn’t have enough time” to establish Harris. It was that Harris, even now, with all the time to reflect and be honest with herself, is a politician who invests too much in presentation, and entirely exculpates herself of failures because she was dealt a bad political hand. What can you say besides, “to be this age and still not know yourself”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump news at a glance: more than 100,000 federal workers to quit on Tuesday in largest ever mass resignation

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      More than 100,000 federal workers are to formally resign on Tuesday, the largest such mass event in US history, as part of a Trump administration program designed to make sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.With Congress facing a deadline of Tuesday to authorize more funding or spark a government shutdown, the White House has also ordered federal agencies to draw up plans for large-scale firings of workers if the partisan fight fails to yield a deal.Workers preparing to leave the government have described how months of “fear and intimidation” left them feeling like they had no choice but to depart.“Federal workers stay for the mission. When that mission is taken away, when they’re scapegoated, when their job security is uncertain, and when their tiny semblance of work-life balance is stripped away, they leave,” a longtime employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) told the Guardian. “That’s why I left.”Here are the key stories at a glance.US set for largest mass resignation in history as Trump continues deep cutsThe Trump administration is set to oversee the largest mass resignation in US history on Tuesday, with more than 100,000 federal workers set to formally quit as part of the latest wave of its deferred resignation program.Read the full storyTrump to meet with US congressional leaders in last-ditch effort to avoid shutdownDonald Trump has reversed course and is purportedly planning to host a bipartisan gathering of the top four US congressional leaders at the White House on Monday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to avoid a looming government shutdown, the House speaker and the US president’s fellow Republican, Mike Johnson, said on Sunday.Read the full storyEx-Trump lawyer says president using Comey indictment to conceal being ‘criminal’The indictment of former FBI director James Comey is part of a concerted effort by Donald Trump to “rewrite history” in his favor, a former senior White House lawyer claimed on Sunday as he warned of more retribution to come for the president’s political opponents.Read the full storyEric Adams drops out of New York City mayoral raceThe mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, announced on Sunday that he was abandoning his faltering bid to win re-election, just over a month before election day. Adams, who was trailing in the polls, was elected as a Democrat but ran for re-election as an independent after he was indicted on federal corruption charges, which were then dropped by the Trump administration in exchange for his cooperation on immigration raids.Read the full storyChildren left short of clean water and sleep amid ‘prolonged’ detention by Ice, watchdogs allegeChildren, including the very young, have been spending weeks or months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in a remote part of Texas where outside monitors have heard accounts of shortages of clean drinking water, chronic sleep deprivation and kids struggling for hygiene supplies and prompt medical attention, as revealed in a stark new court filing.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Settled legal precedent in the US is not “gospel” and in some instances may have been “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with”, the US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas has said.

      Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and personal lawyer to Donald Trump, has settled a long-running defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over lies he told about the result of the 2020 presidential election.

      Democratic US senator Dick Durbin on Sunday renewed demands to meet with Trump administration immigration officials after days of clashes between federal officers and protesters at an immigration jail in his home state of Illinois.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on Saturday 27 September. More

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      Oregon sues to block ‘illegal’ deployment of 200 national guard troops to Portland

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      The state of Oregon filed a lawsuit in federal court on Sunday seeking to block the deployment of 200 national guard troops to Portland, arguing Donald Trump’s characterization of the peaceful city as “war ravaged” is “pure fiction”.Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said at a news conference that she had been notified by the Pentagon that the US president had seized control of the state’s reservists, claiming authority granted to him to suppress “rebellion” or lawlessness.“When the president and I spoke yesterday,” Kotek said, “I told him in very plain language that there is no insurrection, or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland.”A Pentagon memorandum dated Sunday and signed by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, obtained by the Washington Post, said: “200 members of the Oregon National Guard will be called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days.”Trump’s action, in asserting federal control of the state’s national guard troops, is clearly “unlawful”, Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said, given that it was not taken in response to a foreign invasion or mass anarchy, but one small protest by dozens of activists outside a single Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland.“Let’s be clear, local law enforcement has this under control,” Kotek, said. “We have free speech demonstrations that are happening near one federal facility. Portland police is actively engaged in managing those, with the federal folks a the facility, and when people cross the line, there’s unlawful activity, people are being held accountable.”The state’s lawsuit notes that the president’s false claims about the Ice facility being “under siege”, and life for Portland resident being “like living in Hell”, appear to be based on a single Fox News report broadcast earlier this month, which mixed social media video from a conservative journalist of the current protest with video of much larger protests in 2020, in another part of the city.“The problem is the president is using social media to inform his views,” the attorney general said, either because he was trying to mislead the public intentionally, or is “relying on social media gossip” about the actual conditions in a US city.Kotek added that she had tried to inform Trump, during a phone conversation on Saturday, that he had been badly misled about current conditions in Portland, which is once again a vibrant and peaceful city a half-decade on from the pandemic-era racial justice protests.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What I said to the president is: ‘I don’t understand what information you have.’ When he says to me that the federal courthouse is under attack, that is absolutely not true,” Kotek said. Video featured in the recent Fox News report on Portland did show images of a 2020 protest outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland that were wrongly described as recorded during the current anti-Ice protest.“Some demonstrations happening at one federal facility, that are being managed on a regular basis by local law enforcement, if that is the only issue he’s brining up, he has been given bad information,” Kotek said.“We cannot be looking at footage from 2020 and assume that that is the case today in Portland.” More

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      Ex-Trump lawyer says president using Comey indictment to conceal being ‘criminal’

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      The indictment of former FBI director James Comey is part of a concerted effort by Donald Trump to “rewrite history” in his favor, a former senior White House lawyer claimed on Sunday as he warned of more retribution to come for the president’s political opponents.Ty Cobb, who defended Trump’s first administration during the Mueller investigation into his 2016 campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, also told CBS that he doubted Comey would be convicted, if the case ever reached trial.Trump’s moves, he said on the Sunday morning show Face the Nation, were “wholly unconstitutional [and] authoritarian” and an attempt to hoodwink future generations.“Trump wants to rewrite history so that the next generation may not know that he incited a violent insurrection, refused to peacefully transfer the power of the presidency after losing an election, stole classified documents and showed them to friends and guests at Mar-a-Lago, and that he was a criminal,” Cobb said.“He’s a convicted felon. All, anybody involved in those events that offended him, they’re in real danger.”Cobb, a distant relative of the baseball legend with the same name, has become a vocal Trump critic since serving as his liaison to special counsel Robert Mueller, and said his role as lawyer for the administration, not as a personal attorney to the president, allowed him to call “balls and strikes” now.He laid out why he thought the indictment against Comey, for allegedly lying to Congress, was fatally flawed; and assailed Trump’s appointment of a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience to pursue the case, after he fired a federal prosecutor, Erik Siebert, when he declined to bring charges.“So, you have the rewriting history stuff. The US attorney that he appointed, his personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, her role previously in the administration was, you know, trying to eliminate the theory that, you know, America had slaves, at the Smithsonian,” he said.“She was there to whitewash the Smithsonian and paint America as something that it isn’t. America needs to learn from the mistakes and lessons that we’ve had, and one of the biggest mistakes that America ever had was re-electing President Trump.”Cobb’s front-row seat to the machinations of Trump’s first term has made him an in-demand commentator on the workings of the second, and he told CBS he does not like what he sees.“Former attorney general [Robert] Jackson, the Nuremberg prosecutor, highlighted in 1940 that the most important thing at the justice department when he was attorney general was that people not target individuals, that they merely pursue crimes,” he said.“Griffin Bell years later said essentially the same thing [and] emphasized how politics and favor have no business at the justice department. It’s all about even-handedness.”Cobb said Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has “wholly abandoned that and is now merely doing the president’s bidding when he says, ‘Prosecute my enemies, now’”.But the case against Comey, he said, was flimsy at best, and would almost certainly collapse.“The grand jury rejected one of the counts, the top count, actually, in the indictment, approved two, but by a very slim margin, 14 out of 23 in a process where there’s no defense attorney in the room, and the standard is merely probable cause,” he said.“The next courtroom that this will be assessed in, if it gets to trial, requires unanimity from 12 people, and there will be a vigorous defense. I don’t see any way in the world that Comey will be convicted. And I think there’s a good chance, because of the wholly unconstitutional, authoritarian way that this was done, that the case may get tossed out well before trial.”Separately, without mentioning Trump, his appointed FBI director Kash Patel contradicted a recent social media claim by the president that nearly 275 of the bureau’s agents were planted among the pro-Trump crowd that carried out the 2021 US Capitol attack.Patel reportedly issued a statement to Fox News Digital, according to the outlet, in which he said FBI agents at the scene of the attack were only sent to the scene after the mob attacked the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep Trump in office despite his losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.Issued Saturday night, the statement from Patel did make it a point to say that was not “the proper role of FBI agents”, among other things.In yet another bizarre social media episode for Trump, he posted – and then deleted – an artificial intelligence video in which his likeness was promoting magic medical beds that a far-right conspiracy claims can cure any ailment. The video depicted Trump touting a card guaranteeing access to new hospitals equipped with such beds. More

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      Eric Adams drops out of New York City mayoral race

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      The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, announced on Sunday that he is abandoning his faltering bid to win re-election, just over a month before election day, delivering the message in a social media video set to the strains of My Way.Adams, who was trailing in the polls, was elected as a Democrat but ran for re-election as an independent after he was indicted on federal corruption charges, which were then dropped by the Trump administration in exchange for his cooperation on immigration raids.In his video statement, seated on the steps of the mayor’s residence beside a photograph of his late mother, Adams said that it had been impossible for him to mount a winning campaign, blaming “constant media speculation about my future” and a decision by the city’s campaign finance board’s decision to withhold millions of dollars in matching funds over suspicious donations.View image in fullscreenHe also acknowledged that he had lost the trust of some New Yorkers after being charged with corruption but claimed the charges were unjust. “I was wrongfully charged because I fought for this city, and if I had to do it again, I would fight for New York again” Adams said, without explaining how allegedly obtaining illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from foreign nationals for himself was in the best interest of New Yorkers.The mayor will serve the remainder of his term in office, which ends on New Year’s Eve, and his name remains on the ballot for the November election since the deadline to remove it has passed.The withdrawal of Adams narrows the race to lead the country’s largest city to a three-way contest between the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani; the former governor, Andrew Cuomo; and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa.Three weeks ago, when Adams had insisted that he would stay in the race, amid reports that he had been offered an ambassadorship by the Trump administration if he would drop out to make it easier for Cuomo to defeat the democratic socialist frontrunner, Mamdani, the mayor was scathing about the former governor. “Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar,” Adams told reporters. “Andrew has had a career of pushing Black candidates out of races.”After Adams announced the end of his campaign on Sunday, Cuomo nonetheless praised him for “putting the well-being of New York City ahead of personal ambition”.Without mentioning Mamdani by name, Cuomo added: “We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them.”Mamdani, a New York state assembly member who defeated Cuomo to win the Democratic nomination earlier this year, did not immediately comment on the mayor’s withdrawal.Earlier on Sunday, he posted video on Instagram of an influential Black pastor welcoming him to address the congregation of a Black Christian megachurch in East New York. The pastor, A R Bernard, pointed out to congregants that, if elected, Mamdani would not be the first democratic socialist mayor on the city, since the late David Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, was also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.Sliwa, the Republican nominee, said last week that he had turned down multiple offers of millions of dollars to end his own campaign.Recent polls of the four-way contest have shown Mamdani leading Cuomo by more than 20 points, with Sliwa and Adams far behind. When pollsters asked likely voters for their preferences in a race without Adams, Mamdani still led Cuomo by a sizable margin. More