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      Special counsel files new indictment against Trump in election subversion case – live

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      Donald Trump faces a new indictment in the 2020 case against him after the US supreme court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The new indictment filed by the special counsel Jack Smith dropped allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the US justice department in his effort to overturn his defeat.Kamala Harris’s campaign denied Donald Trump’s claims that the two sides had reached an agreement about their upcoming debate in September.The former president said Tuesday that he had agreed to the rules for the 10 September debate, which will be their first encounter since Harris kicked off her White House campaign. Trump had previously spent several days suggesting he might not participate.The vice-president’s campaign has suggested the debate terms have not been finalized.“Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!” the Harris campaign said in a statement.More on the updated indictment against Donald Trump:The justice department filed a new indictment against Donald Trump on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The maneuver does not substantially change the criminal case against him but protects it in the wake of a July supreme court decision ruling saying that Trump and other presidents have immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones.“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” lawyers for Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the case, said in a filing that accompanied what’s known as a supersedeing indictment.“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v United States.”The document retains the same four criminal charges against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment are rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try to overturn the election.Read the full story here:Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will sit down for a joint interview with CNN on Thursday, the outlet reported.The interview will be their first together and the first for the vice-president in more than a month. It comes as Harris has faced growing criticism for not sitting down with a major media organization or holding a full press conference since she began her campaign.The updated indictment against Trump was issued by a grand jury that had not heard evidence in the case before, the special counsel said.The new indictment keeps the same charges, but there are several key changes – primarily, the removal of allegations against the former president related to his interactions with the justice department.It also no longer includes Jeffrey Clark, an official at the justice department who promoted Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen, as a co-conspirator.Donald Trump faces a new indictment in the 2020 case against him after the US supreme court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution.The new indictment filed by the special counsel Jack Smith dropped allegations that Trump attempted to pressure the US justice department in his effort to overturn his defeat.It’s worth noting that Kamala Harris has not responded to Donald Trump’s announcement that he has reached an agreement for the rules of their debate on 10 September.Earlier this month, her campaign said she would be willing to do two debates, one on 10 September, and another on a to-be-determined date in October. Her running mate Tim Walz will do one debate with Trump’s pick, JD Vance, on 1 October.Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris say they support cutting taxes on tips, and the topic may come up at their debate on 10 September. But as the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports, workers’-rights advocates aren’t thrilled about the suddenly popular policy:Tipping has always been a controversial subject in the US. Imported from Europe and popularized by some accounts after the fall of slavery to reinforce racial wage disparities, the practice comes freighted with historic baggage.Nor is it overly popular with consumers. Since the pandemic, 72% of US adults say tipping is expected in more places today than it was in 2019, according to a Pew survey. Four in 10 Americans oppose the suggested tips that have been popping up on payment screens everywhere from coffee shops and dry cleaners to self-service machines in airports.That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump and Kamala Harris from putting tips at the center of their election battle. Earlier this month, in a bold move, the vice-president endorsed a policy that the former president touted earlier this year to ban taxes on tips for service workers, as both candidates have been vying for working-class voters in the 2024 election, especially in the swing state of Nevada.At a glance, the idea of giving a break to tipped workers is attractive – in some states, the minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour, and an alarming 14.8% of those workers live in poverty. But the idea raises many issues: why should a low-wage worker who does get tips be treated differently from one who doesn’t? Will higher-paid workers be able to use the measure to cut their tax bills? Harris says no; Trump is less clear.Donald Trump agreed to the rules of the 10 September presidential debate after spending the last few days openly mulling pulling out of the event entirely. Here’s a look back at what we know about the squabble over the debate’s rules, from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:Donald Trump has expressed doubt that he will participate in a scheduled televised debate with Kamala Harris next month, hurling a trademark “fake news” slur at the network that agreed to host it.The former president and Republican presidential nominee threatened to pull out of the 10 September meeting with Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for November’s election, in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday night.Referring to an interview on ABC’s This Week earlier in the day with the host Jonathan Karl and Tom Cotton, the Republican Arkansas US senator, Trump questioned the network’s fairness for the only debate that both presidential candidates had already agreed on.“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump wrote with his usual penchant for erroneous uppercase letters.He also alluded to his ongoing defamation lawsuit against the This Week host George Stephanopoulos and the ABC network over comments the anchor made in March stating Trump had been found “liable for rape” instead of sexual abuse in a case brought by the New York writer E Jean Carroll.Donald Trump says he has agreed to the rules for ABC News’s 10 September debate with Kamala Harris, which will be their first encounter since she launched her presidential campaign.The two campaigns had reportedly been at odds over the rules of the debate, with the biggest point of contention being whether the candidates’ microphones would be muted when the other candidate was talking. Politico reported yesterday that Harris’s team wanted the microphones live during the whole broadcast, which would be a change from the CNN-hosted June debate between Trump and Joe Biden.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the debate will be held under CNN’s rules – which seems to indicate microphones will be muted when a candidate is not speaking:
      I have reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets.” We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a “fair and equitable” Debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance (No Donna Brazile!). Harris would not agree to the FoxNews Debate on September 4th, but that date will be held open in case she changes her mind or, Flip Flops, as she has done on every single one of her long held and cherished policy beliefs. A possible third Debate, which would go to NBC FAKE NEWS, has not been agreed to by the Radical Left. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
      Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will host fundraisers in three well-heeled western towns, the Harris-Walz campaign announced this afternoon.Emhoff’s first event will be in Ketchum, Idaho, on Thursday, and then on Friday, he’ll hold fundraisers in San Francisco and in Aspen, Colorado.Harris has raked in donations since entering the presidential race in late July following Joe Biden’s withdrawal, and saw a pronounced surge in fundraising during last week’s Democratic convention: More

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      Special counsel files new indictment against Trump over 2020 election

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      The justice department filed a new indictment against Donald Trump on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The maneuver does not substantially change the criminal case against him but protects it in the wake of a July supreme court decision ruling saying that Trump and other presidents have immunity for official acts, but not unofficial ones.“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” lawyers for Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the case, said in a filing that accompanied what is known as a superseding indictment.“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v United States.”The document retains the same four criminal charges against Trump that were originally filed last summer. But portions of the new indictment are rewritten to emphasize that Trump was not acting in his official capacity during his efforts to try to overturn the election.The new document, for example, removes mention of Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who aided Trump’s attempt to try to overturn the election. Clark was the only government official who was listed as an unnamed co-conspirator in the original indictment.“Trump is therefore absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials,” the supreme court wrote in its ruling in July.The supreme court also suggested that a president could be criminally immune in connection to acts between him and the vice-president. The superseding indictment reframes Trump’s interactions with Mike Pence, emphasizing that he was Trump’s running mate.At other points in the document, prosecutors emphasize that Trump was acting outside the scope of his official duties.“The defendant had no official responsibilities related to any state’s certification of the election results,” the document says.Prosecutors also highlighted that Trump used his Twitter/X account both for official and personal acts. They noted that the rally he attended on the Ellipse, near the White House, on 6 January 2021 was a “campaign speech”.Even if the case is still unlikely to go to trial before the 2024 election in November, and even if the Trump lawyers file motions seeking to excise more parts of the indictment, the decision to pursue a superseding indictment may have been to avoid more delay.Trump has been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, which came as part of a broader strategy to push his legal troubles past November, in the hopes that he wins and can appoint a loyalist as the attorney general who would then drop the cases entirely.In July, the supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of their office, most notably any interactions with the justice department and executive branch officials.The framework of criminal accountability for presidents, as laid out by the ruling, has three categories: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.The court also ruled that the special counsel, Jack Smith, could not introduce as evidence at trial any acts deemed to be official, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent. More

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      JD Vance asserts faith in Trump after admitting he once ‘didn’t fully believe’

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      JD Vance has admitted he once doubted Donald Trump’s abilities to be US president but insists he was won over by the policies and track record of a man he previously decried as “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin”.The Republican vice-presidential nominee obliquely referred to his former hostility at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as he attempted to blame Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, for the policies of the Biden administration at the same time as accusing her of preparing to steal Trump’s ideological clothes.His concession of past skepticism came after he accused Trump’s critics of wrongly forecasting his failure in office.“The same people who screwed this country up for 30 years said President Donald Trump would fail. Remember that?” Vance said. “But I remember, I was myself – I didn’t fully believe in the promises of Donald Trump. He persuaded me because he did such a good job.”He said Trump’s presidency was characterised by low petrol prices, affordable housing and rising wages, while inflation – which has become a political Achilles heel of Joe Biden’s presidency and, potentially, of Harris’s candidacy – was a non-issue.Vance’s brief allusion to his anti-Trump past follows widespread accusations of flip-flopping on his previous views on the former president and 2024 Republican nominee. Trump announced Vance – a first-term senator from Ohio – as his running mate at last month’s party convention in Milwaukee.The announcement drew widespread scrutiny of a litany of critical past comments by Vance, who described himself in 2016 as “a never Trump guy”, adding: “I never liked him.”In his speech, Vance threw the flip-flop accusation back at Harris, who has been accused of ditching previous leftwing stances when she campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “I’m not sure that this is a woman who knows what she actually believes she is,” he said. “If you think about it, she’s just a cog in the wheel of a very corrupt system.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGoing further, he accused Harris of trying to steal Trump’s most successful policies, including his advocacy of a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern US border.“I read a story this morning that her advisers are considering just copying all of Donald Trump’s policies,” Vance told supporters. “In fact, I’ve heard that for her debate in just a couple of weeks, she’s going to put on a navy suit, a long red tie, and adopt the slogan, ‘Make America great again’ [Trump’s signature slogan].” More

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      Trump raising money by selling pieces of suit he wore in Biden debate

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      Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he is selling a new collection of digital trading cards, and that supporters who buy 15 or more cards will receive a physical card adorned with a piece of the suit he wore for the presidential debate against Joe Biden in June.The announcement was made on Tuesday in a video posted on Truth Social.The cards, named the America First collection, features 50 new images of Trump, including him dancing, holding bitcoins and more.The digital cards cost $99 each, he said, and supporters who purchase 15 or more (at a cost of $1,485 or more) will receive the physical card.“People are calling it the knock-out suit,” Trump said in the video, adding: “I don’t know about that but that’s what they’re calling it.”He continued: “We’ll cut up the knock-out suit, and you’re going to get a piece of it and we’ll be randomly autographing five of them, a true collector’s item, this is something to give your family, your kids, your grandchildren.”Supporters who buy 75 digital cards, at a cost $7,425, will get to attend a gala dinner with the former president at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, Trump said.“You know they call me the crypto-president,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true or not but a lot of people are saying that, so don’t miss out, go to collecttrumpcards.com … and collect your piece of American history.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, the former president has released and sold digital trading cards in the past.In 2022, Trump introduced his first collection of digital trading cards, which included a picture of himself in a superhero costume. The cards sold out in less than a day, netting $4.5m (£3.39m) in sales.This is also not the first time Trump has sold parts of one of his suits. Last year, Trump began selling small cuts of the suit he wore when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken in an Atlanta jail. To receive a piece of that suit, supporters had to buy 47 digital trading cards, adding up to $4,653.The former Apprentice host also monetized the mugshot taken in the Atlanta jail last August, and sold it on coffee mugs, T-shirts and more items. More

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      U.S. convention season is done — but here’s why the marquee political events, past and present, are critical

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      Given the days of political pageantry at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago have come to an end, it’s an opportune time to examine parallels to past conventions — particularly those in the Windy City, a locale that has long been the grounds for historic political coronations.

      In the decades following Abraham Lincoln’s nomination in 1860, Chicago became a convention hotspot for both Republicans and Democrats. Politicians that include Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were nominated as their parties’ presidential candidates in the city.

      While the Republicans have held more conventions in Chicago to date, they haven’t held one there since 1960, when Nixon first ran for president. That’s likely because the state of Illinois is a longtime Democratic stronghold.

      But whether they’ve been held in Chicago or elsewhere, Vanderbilt University historian Nicole Hemmer says conventions used to take place “in smoke-filled rooms by just the elites… [where] powerful party leaders needed to gather in the same place to decide who the nominee should be.”

      Times have changed in the 21st century.

      A new era

      Those who oversaw this year’s Democratic National Convention included Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former public school teacher and fierce advocate for racial equality.

      Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaking on the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago.
      (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

      There are few similarities between Johnson and former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, the pugilistic police supporter and Democratic Party kingmaker who notoriously ordered “shoot-to-kill” edicts on protesters at the 1968 Chicago convention.

      With the ongoing war in Gaza, there were certain parallels between the 2024 convention and the 1968 event, since a major war is raging again halfway around the world.

      But there are some key differences, most notably the fact that no U.S. ground troops are deployed in the region, notwithstanding many U.S. military bases located in places nearby.

      2024 not as tumultuous as 1968

      The whole world was watching the Democratic National Convention in 1968, but was that the case for either the Democratic or Republican conventions in 2024? And did Americans care as much as they did in 1968?

      Thousands of demonstrators showed up to protest the Democratic convention in 1968, and hundreds were arrested. Protesters included predominantly white college students from the Students for a Democratic Society, sexually free “Yippies,” Black Panther Party members and Puerto Rican Young Lords.

      All opposed police brutality and the war in Vietnam. Their demonstrations followed a tumultuous spring in Chicago, when its west side erupted in anger over racial inequality and the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tenn. The Republican convention in Miami earlier that summer, meanwhile, was largely peaceful and orderly.

      Read more:
      Kamala Harris chooses running mate in the heat of another long, hot summer in American politics

      The year 1968 also saw the beginning of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Though a tactical defeat for the North Vietnamese fighting the U.S.-backed south, the offensive led to a tremendous amount of scrutiny about American tactics in the Vietnam War.

      American GIs were increasingly coming home in body bags — 3,800 alone during the offensive. Along with the ongoing domestic unrest, the first few months of 1968 were exceedingly tumultuous — arguably much more chaotic than 2024.

      Chicago police attempt to disperse demonstrators outside the Conrad Hilton, the downtown headquarters for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968.
      (AP Photo/Michael Boyer)

      War as an issue: 1968 vs 2024

      Thousands also descended upon Chicago in 2024 to protest America’s support of Israel’s attack on Gaza, but only dozens — not hundreds — were arrested by mid-week. The focus of the convention was not the war in Gaza.

      By comparison, the 1968 Democratic convention was heavily focused on the Vietnam War, given the anti-war platforms of Democratic contender Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert F. Kennedy, the party front-runner who was assassinated down two months earlier following a campaign speech.

      Hubert Humphrey addresses the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968.
      (AP Photo)

      Lyndon B. Johnson’s heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, won the party’s nomination before later losing to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election. But the Vietnam War and its impact on American life remained on centre stage.

      Kamala Harris’s candidacy, on the other hand, hasn’t dealt with any major internal party policy differences moving toward the election in November — and a stand-off with MAGA Republicans. And regardless of who wins in November, it isn’t likely the war in Gaza will be a major focal point for the American public — polls suggest inflation is by far their biggest concern.

      Conventions have changed, but still matter

      Conventions are certainly not decided by a bunch of white men smoking in closed rooms anymore. But even though representation has improved vastly from earlier eras, as well as more transparent processes of delegate selection and nominations, there can still be a sense that things have already been decided once conventions roll around.

      In fact, since at least the 1970s, tickets have largely been determined before the conventions begin.

      Both major parties in 2024 ran their conventions with the nominee already decided for all intents and purposes, though the Democrats cut it close by shifting dramatically to Harris earlier this summer after President Joe Biden, under pressure from the party, opted not to run for a second term.

      Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations in New York City in February 1965.
      (AP Photo)

      The year 1952 was the last time a presidential nominee — Democrat Adlai Stevenson — needed more than one ballot for the nomination at the convention, held, once again, in Chicago.

      He won in the third round of voting to become the nominee, but lost to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the presidential election.

      Still, contemporary observers argue that conventions are still important and allow for some political movements to make an impact.

      Marquette University politics professor Julia Azari explains:

      “If we look at the history of modern conventions, it’s tempting to dismiss the large, in-person gatherings of power players from around the country as pageantry. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that conventions have played an important role for some wings of the party, who may disagree with party leadership and want to attract media attention for themselves.”

      She points to the critical 1964 Democratic convention, held in the midst of the Civil Rights era, when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenged the all-white delegation from Mississippi, since Black people had been banned from party meetings in the state, where voting restrictions also prevented many from casting ballots in elections.

      By the time the Democratic convention of 1968 rolled around, a group of former MFDP delegates succeeded at being the sole Mississippi delegates to the DNC.

      Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, testifies before the credentials committee of the Democratic National Convention in August 1964.
      (AP Photo)

      Looking ahead

      Sixty years later in 2024 and in the wake of both the Republican and Democratic conventions, similar movements that seek to end wars, address environmental catastrophe, fight for reproductive rights or end racial inequality will hopefully continue to find openings at conventions to have their voices heard.

      Perhaps future conventions will run more virtually, as was the case in 2020 when both parties were forced to go entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Maybe there will be reforms to the primary system of selection or to campaign finance measures that are troublesome to some voters.

      Either way, convention season will continue to both offend and excite those of us who follow politics closely as we consider the past, present and future of these critical events. More

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      RFK Jr faces call for investigation into claim he chainsawed whale’s head off

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      His independent White House campaign has fizzled, but the flow of bizarre stories of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s unorthodox handling of the carcasses of wild mammals has experienced no similar suspension.An environmental group is calling for a federal investigation into the former presidential candidate for an episode in which he allegedly severed the head of a washed-up whale with a chainsaw – and drove home with it strapped to his car’s roof.The episode has parallels with another extraordinary tale reported earlier in August in which Kennedy confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and attempted to make it look like the animal was killed by a bicyclist.The latest grisly revelation, about the whale head, is not particularly new – it stems from a 2012 interview Kennedy’s daughter Kick gave to Town & Country magazine, in which she talks about a visit to other family members of the political dynasty in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, more than two decades prior.But the story’s re-emergence, following the bear tale and other off-the-wall declarations – including claims that part of RFK Jr’s brain was eaten by worms and that he had an apparent fondness for barbecued dog – has angered activists at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. The group previously denounced Kennedy’s candidacy and endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president.In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) this week, Brett Hartl, the organization’s government affairs director and chief political strategist, demanded an inquiry.“Mr Kennedy’s apparent transport of the marine mammal skull from Massachusetts to New York, and therefore across state lines, also represented a felony violation of the Lacey Act, one of the earliest wildlife conservation laws enacted by [the] United States in 1900,” he wrote, adding that it was also illegal to possess part of any animal protected by the endangered species act.“Normally, an unverified anecdote would not provide sufficient evidence as the basis for conducting an investigation. The [bear] story made it seem like this was normal behavior for him, so he may also possess additional illegally collected wildlife parts.”The former Kennedy campaign’s press office did not respond to a request for comment. And Noaa has yet to publicly acknowledge receipt of Hartl’s letter.The somewhat unpleasant recounting by Kick Kennedy – granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, the assassinated former US attorney general and Kennedy Jr’s father – remains the only documented account of the whale incident.Describing her father’s fascination with animal skulls and skeletons as “eccentric environmentalism”, she tells how the whale washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port and he sped to the scene.“[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York,” she said.“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”Hartl, on X, called RFK Jr an “environmental criminal”. In his group’s denouncement of his candidacy, it said “his conspiracy theories go against the science-based foundation of all environmental protections”, and that he was no different from Donald Trump in terms of policy priorities “driven by what will benefit Big Oil and the greedy corporations that fund them”.Kennedy announced he was suspending his presidential campaign last Friday and immediately endorsed Trump. More

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      Why is alleged predator Bill Clinton still welcome in the Democratic party? | Moira Donegan

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      One of the grim lessons of the #MeToo movement and its long backlash is this: whether someone finds a sexual abuse allegation credible largely depends on their pre-existing opinion of the man accused. When a woman comes forward with an account of a man’s mistreatment of her – be it humiliating boorishness, violent rape or any of the range of degradations and hurts that fall along the wide spectrum between – the listener’s response is fairly predictable. If they hate the accused man, they’ll believe his accuser. If they like him, they’ll say it’s bullshit.This rule holds, I am sorry to say, even for women who identify themselves as feminists. It held for Gloria Steinem, the famed feminist now in her 90s, who in 1998 defended Clinton amid his slew of sex scandals and abuse allegations in the pages of the New York Times, dismissing the allegations against him as trivial and making an unconvincing case that the offense she took at similar allegations against Clarence Thomas was different. It held true, most famously, for Bill Clinton’s wife, the liberal feminist icon Hillary Clinton, who has remained silently beside her husband throughout each of the allegations against him – and retained her feminist credibility despite her loyalty to an allegedly abusive man that I can only describe as canine.People who like Bill Clinton, or who find him convenient for their own goals, have a long history of underplaying the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and violence that he faces from at least four women. They say that Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment after the then governor brought her to his hotel room, propositioned her and exposed himself, is lying – even though Jones has multiple corroborating witnesses, and even though her story has not changed in more than 30 years.They say that Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says that Clinton raped her in a hotel room in 1978, when he was Arkansas attorney general, is lying, too – even though Broaddrick, like Jones, told multiple people of Clinton’s attack at the time.They say that Monica Lewinsky, the 22-year-old unpaid intern whom Clinton carried on an affair with in the White House when he was 49 and the most powerful person in the world, technically consented to the sex acts that Clinton asked her to do – an insistence that betrays a startlingly simple-minded and willfully obtuse understanding of sexual ethics.They echo Clinton’s denials of wrongdoing in all these cases, against all these women. That is, at least, what they say when they acknowledge the allegations about Bill Clinton’s conduct at all. Mostly, they ignore them – as Bill Clinton has, as his wife, Hillary Clinton has, and as Bill Clinton’s popular legacy seems to do.Bill Clinton’s supporters ignore his accusers because they can. These women’s dignity, their equality and their right to control their own bodies matter less to them than their esteem for Bill Clinton – less than whether he can deliver a few votes, make a zinger on television or look nice in a suit.On Wednesday night, the third night of the Democratic national convention, the whole party ignored these women when they gave Bill Clinton, a multiply accused alleged sexual harasser and rapist, a rousing welcome at Chicago’s United Center. The former president was given a prime-time speaking spot, trotted out like a prize and applauded like a hero.Are these people not embarrassed? Do they not, at least, take note of the hypocrisy involved? After all, the 2024 election is quickly shaping up to be about gender, with the boorish Trump, creepy, sex-obsessed JD Vance and the radically anti-choice Republican party turning the contest into a referendum on the status of women in American society. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee who will seek to become the nation’s first female president on election day, has taken on the mantle of the women’s struggle – not only in the symbolism of her candidacy, but in the tenor of her advocacy, in which she has championed the “freedom” of women to control their own bodies and lives.These are noble goals, ones that the Democrats can be proud of pursuing; but they are not commensurate with celebrations of an alleged rapist, with pomp and obsequiousness trotted out for a man who allegedly habitually sexually harassed women who worked for him and carried on an affair with an intern young enough to be his daughter. Sexual abuse, too, is hostile to women’s freedom – the freedom of women to live, work and participate in public without the threat of sexual force. This is a kind of gendered freedom that Bill Clinton has made it abundantly clear that he does not respect.The call for women’s freedom from rape, abuse and harassment has always been the least popular and most politically fraught feminist cause. Abortion has always had more appeal to male voters as a political issue. Misogynist men – in a tradition that extends from the Playboy founder (and alleged rapist) Hugh Hefner to Barstool Sports founder (and alleged perpetrator of sexual assault) Dave Portnoy to former president (and alleged rapist) Bill Clinton – have long supported abortion rights, in part because they understand abortion not as a matter of women’s fundamental freedom and dignity but as a matter of men’s increased sexual access to women and decreased responsibility for the resulting pregnancies.These prurient, sexually entitled misogynists are not all Republicans – rape, and its apologism, have always been bipartisan endeavors – but they are not the kind of voters that Democrats should be courting. A bargain in which women’s right to end a pregnancy is made in exchange for men’s right to rape, harass and abuse women is not an acceptable one. We can do better: we can reach for a version of America in which women are truly free and equal, endowed with all the bodily sovereignty, self-determination and sexual autonomy that men are. That’s not the world that Bill Clinton represents, and it’s not a world that a party that insists on celebrating him can deliver.Bill Clinton has been out of office for nearly three decades. In that time, his once-rosy status as a liberal hero has thankfully dimmed, even if his alleged history of sexual abuse has not played a sufficient role in the reassessment of his reputation. Liberals now rightly look back at Clinton’s crime bill with horror; his devastating cuts to the welfare system were punitive and cruel, hurting women and children the most. He modeled a vision of a conservative Democratic party, one less committed to its principles than in cynically trading them away for a chance at power.His vision of change has failed, and his political project has been revealed as morally bankrupt. It’s not clear that he can even deliver many votes; a large swath of the American electorate is now too young to remember much of his presidency, aside from the sex scandals. It’s time for Democrats to send the old man home. And to tell him to keep his hands to himself.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘January 6 was just the warm-up’: the film that tracks three Maga extremists storming the Capitol

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      Homegrown is a documentary about three American patriots who love their country, revere Donald Trump and balk at the result of the 2020 presidential election. Director Michael Premo spent months trailing his subjects – Chris, Thad and Randy – in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol building of 6 January 2021, and his illuminating, gripping film looks back at a dark period of recent US history. Implicitly, though, it also warns of further unrest.“I think January 6th was just the warm-up,” Premo says. “This November, we’re going to see an even more frantic and desperate attempt to attack every level of the electoral system.” He is not optimistic about the US’s current direction of travel. The country, he argues, is effectively on the brink of civil war.Homegrown premieres in the International Critics’ Week sidebar at this year’s Venice film festival. It is one of a number of campaigning political pictures that could put the event at loggerheads with Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Italian government. Joining it on the programme is Separated, Errol Morris’s documentary about family separation on the US’s southern border; Dani Rosenberg’s harrowing Gaza-themed drama Of Dogs and Men; and Olha Zhurba’s Songs of Slow Burning Earth, which is billed as an audiovisual diary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Another highlight, says festival boss Alberto Barbera, will be the epic M: Son of the Century, Joe Wright’s eight-part TV biopic charting the life and times of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whose government established the Venice film festival back in 1932. “And I must add,” Barbera told Variety magazine, “the time it describes has some pretty striking similarities with the present day.”View image in fullscreenLinks with the past are certainly clear in Homegrown, which spotlights a right-wing insurrectionist movement that had flourished on the fringes for decades before finding a new energy and focus under the Maga banner of Trump. Premo, a New York-based film-maker, began researching the documentary in 2018, eventually homing in on his three main protesters. One, Chris Quaglin, is a New Jersey electrician who divides his time between preparing a nursery for his soon-to-be-born son and stocking his “man-cave” with firearms in readiness for war. He says: “An AR-15 and enough people is enough to take our country back.”This, Premo argues, remains a distinct possibility. “Most prominent thinkers still dismiss the idea of civil war, because their reference is an event that occurred in 1860 under a very specific set of circumstances. But that’s discounting the way that modern political violence manifests itself, and particularly the way that sectarian violence plays out around the world. If this was happening in another country, say in Africa or Asia, I think American journalists would already be referring to the situation as a cold civil war. That’s how it feels to me.”Homegrown climaxes with powerful, ground-level footage of the January 6 attack. We see Quaglin in the thick of the action, resplendent in his stars-and-stripes Maga jumpsuit. He is swept up in the moment, storming the DC police by the metal barricades. “Almost a victory, I would say,” he brags afterwards, although this moment of near triumph proves short-lived. Quaglin was later found guilty of assaulting police and obstructing Congress and is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.Premo has spent his career filming direct action protests. January 6 felt different, he says. “This was one of the most well-documented crimes in history. It was planned in public: a collaborative conspiracy involving numerous actors and institutions. Everyone knew it was coming.”View image in fullscreenThe director says he anticipated a massive police presence which would prevent protesters from gaining access to the Capitol. In the event, he was shocked by the lack of security; he says it almost felt deliberate. “I have to imagine that there are many law enforcement people who are part of these same conservative Facebook groups. They’re watching Fox News, watching Alex Jones and all the other pundits bang the drum about storming the Capitol. They had the same information I did and chose to do nothing about it.”What Homegrown highlights, however, is how broad-based and diverse America’s right-wing populist movement has become. Premo, who is black, claims that its main organising principle is not race hatred so much as despair and disillusion, characterised by a widespread loss of faith in American democracy’s ability to safeguard public interests. Significantly, the film chooses to cross-cut Quaglin’s journey with that of his fellow rebel Thad Cisneros, a charismatic Latino activist from Texas. Cisneros explains that he was first radicalised by watching Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. He now dreams of forming an alliance with Black Lives Matter organisers.Cisneros, it transpires, is now also serving time and thus unavailable for comment. But he represents an increasingly fractured and muddied political landscape, one in which the old left-and-right stereotypes no longer apply. “We need to have a more nuanced understanding of the people driving this movement,” Premo says. “We need to know who these people are, what they look like, where they come from. Only then can we understand what we need to do to support the principle of a pluralistic democracy that stands any chance of surviving beyond this current era of us-versus-them politics.” More