US Politics

In the week leading up to the conviction delivered in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday, right-wing media was focused on Donald Trump’s innocence. Hosts of the popular podcast “Timcast IRL”, which scored an exclusive, 17-minute interview with the former president before his speech at the Libertarian National Convention, discussed the case at length.

Their guest, Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, argued that he had watched Michael Cohen – Trump’s former lawyer and the star witness in the criminal case against the former president – “implode the prosecution’s case”. Host Tim Pool agreed that “there is nothing here” and the case was “absurdity and insanity”.

The three hosts and their guest had all been watching the case very closely; they were deep in the weeds. And they were utterly convinced it was bogus, that only a “rigged system” would find him guilty.

On Friday, a jury of his peers did find Trump guilty of falsifying business records in relation to hush money payments intended to cover up his affair with an adult movie star. Trump, who was found guilty on all 34 felony counts he faced, is now the first president in American history to be convicted of a crime.

Much about Trump is unprecedented. This moment is history-making.

Is America more polarised than ever?

Many Trump supporters, like Pool and his friends, had suspected this was coming. The guilty verdict only reinforced their certainty that the system is “rigged” against Trump – and by extension, anyone who supports him or even just some of his politics.

In the right-wing media universe, that is the only logical conclusion.

Trump has successfully deployed this narrative in the right-wing media for years now, and it has stuck. A day after the verdict was handed down, Trump told his supporters – as he has many times before – that “if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”

Outside of the right-wing media universe, however, comments like these are reported on with a mixture of incredulity and concern. Mainstream media outlets note the significant threat this kind of rhetoric – and the increasing normalisation of political violence – pose to the institutions of American democracy.

This increasing divide in American politics, culture and society is often described as “polarisation” – a phenomenon where two entirely separate political universes (one right-wing, the other left) move further away from each other and into the extreme.

Protesters argue across the street from the Manhattan district attorney’s office in New York on Tuesday, April 4.
Stefan Jeremiah/FR171756 AP

But the notion that polarisation is getting worse or is the biggest problem in American politics today suggests there was, at some point, a golden age of political consensus in the US. It also assumes there is a constant political centre to return to, and that there is a similar level of extremism on both sides of the political divide.

This plays into a very Trumpian framing that labels US President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as extremists – or, in Trump’s words, “socialists” and “Marxists” – when they are nothing of the sort.

The reality of American politics today is not a simple question of polarisation that can somehow be reversed. Rather, the stark division between the two camps – and their world views – is, for the moment at least, irreconcilable.

That division has a long history. The wildly different reactions to the conviction are emblematic of a fundamental truth: the United States has never been one country. Trump did not create that situation, but he is better than anyone at exploiting it. He is already turning a criminal conviction into a winning campaign strategy.

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1968 was an inflection point for the US. Is another one coming in 2024?

The new normal

Those with enduring faith in the strength of American democracy and its institutions will argue this division is not necessarily all-encompassing. They might point to polling which has fairly consistently shown that Trump supporters outside of his core base might be shifted by a criminal conviction. This is particularly true of Democrats and independents who had previously voted for Trump – the voters Biden was able to attract back into the fold in the 2020 presidential election and needs to keep onside come November.

But even that is changing; recent polling suggests it might be prison time over a criminal conviction that would be decisive for voters – an unlikely outcome. Some polling suggests a criminal conviction may not matter at all.

Trump is masterful at shifting the political ground. And voters have known who he is for a long time. His ability to avoid accountability – to defy the “rigged” system – is something many of them admire.

Many things about his presidency and his political career are unprecedented. It is now entirely possible Trump will be the first former president to win an election despite – or perhaps even because of – multiple criminal convictions. More

Marian Shields Robinson, the mother of Michelle Obama, who moved with the first family to the White House when son-in-law Barack Obama was elected president, has died. She was 86.Robinson’s death was announced in an online tribute by Michelle Obama, and included details of the time Robinson spent living in the White House, as an informal first grandmother to the Obama children.“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” the statement said. “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life.”She was a widow and lifelong Chicago resident when she moved to the executive mansion in 2009 to help care for granddaughters Malia and Sasha. In her early 70s, Robinson initially resisted the idea of starting over in Washington, and Michelle Obama had to enlist her brother, Craig, to help persuade their mother to move.“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Robinson wrote in the foreword to A Game of Character, a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.Robinson wrote that her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago but still used a line of reasoning on her that she often used on him and his sister. He asked her to see the move as a chance to grow and try something new. As a compromise, she agreed to move, at least temporarily.Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and seven when the White House became home in 2009. In Chicago, Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to the girls during the 2008 presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.At the White House, Robinson provided a reassuring presence for the girls as their parents settled into their new roles, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her 2018 memoir, Becoming.Robinson gave a few media interviews but never to White House press. Aides guarded her privacy, and, as a result, she enjoyed a level of anonymity openly envied by the president and first lady.View image in fullscreenThe Obama family reflected on Robinson’s time living at the White House in their tribute to her: “The trappings and glamour of the White House were never a great fit for Marian Robinson. ‘Just show me how to work the washing machine and I’m good,’ she’d say. Rather than hobnobbing with Oscar winners or Nobel laureates, she preferred spending her time upstairs with a TV tray, in the room outside her bedroom with big windows that looked out at the Washington Monument. The only guest she made a point of asking to meet was the Pope. Over those eight years, she made great friends with the ushers and butlers, the folks who make the White House a home. She’d often sneak outside the gates to buy greeting cards at CVS, and sometimes another customer might recognize her. ‘You look like Michelle’s mother,’ they’d say. She’d smile and reply, ‘Oh, I get that a lot.’”White House residency also opened up the world to Robinson, who had been a widow for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor, one floor above the first family. She had never traveled outside the US until she moved to Washington.Her first flight out of the country was aboard Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined the Obamas on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast. She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president: to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.Craig Robinson wrote in the memoir that he and his parents had doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Barack Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Without explanation, Craig Robinson said his mother gave the relationship six months.Barack and Michelle Obama were married on 3 October 1992.One of seven children, Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on 30 July 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. He died in 1991.Associated Press contributed to this report More

Donald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after the former president was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial.Here is a fact check of some of the things he said on Friday – and why they weren’t true.Trump claims the Joe Biden White House was behind his prosecutionDonald Trump claimed that the judge presiding over his hush-money case, Juan Merchan, and the court was in “total conjunction with the White House and the DoJ [Department of Justice]”. There is no evidence whatsoever supporting this claim.“This is all done by Biden and his people,” the former president said during a speech on Friday at Trump Tower.The accusation that Biden was behind the prosecution does not line up with the case’s facts.The elected district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, brought the case against Trump. Bragg is a state official who does not report to the federal government.Biden does not have any authority over Bragg or his office – and there is no evidence that the Biden administration had anything to do with the case.Trump rails against ‘nasty gag order’ he claims no one else has facedTrump claimed he is under a “nasty gag order, which nobody has ever been under”. He also said he has had to pay thousands of dollars in penalties – and that he was threatened with jail.Under Judge Merchan’s order designed to protect trial participants from Trump’s abuse, the former president is barred from making – or directing others to make – public statements about witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial. It also covers prosecutors, other staffers of Bragg, and members of the court staff. However, Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants about Merchan and Bragg.Trump has been fined $10,000 for 10 violations of the gag order for posts on his Truth Social platform and campaign website. Merchan has warned Trump that he would “impose an incarceratory punishment” for “continued willful violations” of the order.Trump claims he wasn’t allowed to testifyTrump claimed that he wanted to testify “but the theory is that you don’t testify because … they’ll get you on something you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury”.Trump has previously railed about being silenced and falsely claimed he was not allowed to testify at the trial. But ultimately he made the personal choice to not take the stand in his own defense.Merchan earlier this month addressed the ex-president’s claims, saying: “I want to stress, Mr Trump, that you have an absolute right to testify at trial.” Merchan added that the gag order preventing Trump from verbally attacking witnesses did not affect his right to take the stand.Trump claims prosecutors were not allowed to look into alleged federal campaign violationsTrump claimed that prosecutors who charged him were not allowed to look into alleged federal campaign finance violations.In fact, Manhattan prosecutors did not charge him with federal violations but instead listed the allegations as one of three “unlawful acts” that jurors were asked to consider.Prosecutors said the other crime for which Trump was charged was a violation of a state election law barring conspiracies to promote or prevent an election by unlawful means.Trump claims he faces 187-year prison sentenceDonald Trump claimed the crime for which he was convicted meant that “I’m supposed to go to jail for 187 years”.The former president was found guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree in furtherance of another crime, a class E felony in New York. That is the least serious category and is punishable by up to four years in prison.But as a first-time, non-violent offender, it is unlikely that Trump will face a long sentence. Experts say he is unlikely to receive prison time at all.Trump claims polling shows him ahead after convictionTrump claimed that a Daily Mail poll taken after his guilty verdict showed that he was “up by six points”.The poll he was referring to was an online survey of 400 likely voters that measured his favorability ratings – and not voting intention.Of those who said the 34 guilty counts had changed their view of Trump, 22% said they had a more favorable rating compared with 16% who said they viewed him more negatively.In contrast, a YouGov poll showed that 27% of voters said the conviction made them less likely to vote for Trump, compared with 26% who said they were more likely to vote for him and 39% who said the verdict “makes no difference” in how they’ll vote.Trump claims defense wasn’t allowed to use its election expertTrump claimed that the judge did not allow his defense team “to use our election expert under any circumstances”.Merchan did not bar the defense’s campaign finance expert, Bradley A Smith, from testifying in the trial. Smith was permitted to testify.Instead, Trump’s lawyers decided not to call on Smith after Merchan declined to broaden the scope of questioning the defense could pursue. More

Joe Biden warned on Friday that it was reckless and “dangerous” for anyone to claim Donald Trump’s criminal conviction was the result of a rigged trial, as the former president hit out at the verdict against him and Republicans maligned the integrity of America’s justice system.Donald Trump hit out furiously on Friday morning at the new status of “felon” conferred on him by a New York jury, whose guilty verdict made him the first former US president ever to become a convicted criminal.On Friday afternoon, Biden began a White House talk about the war in Gaza with remarks on criticism from Trump and the right wing about the historic trial that had concluded in New York the day before.The US president said: “It is reckless, it is dangerous, it is irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict. The US justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and is literally a cornerstone of America.”He added that the system and the justice it produced should be respected.“And we should never allow anyone to tear it down, simple as that, that’s America,” Biden said.The war of words came a day after Trump was found guilty of all 34 charges he had faced. On Friday morning, the ex-president painted himself as a victim of injustice in a rambling and often incoherent appearance at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, at which he labelled his opponents “fascists” and blamed his legal plight on Joe Biden.Trump was unanimously convicted by a jury of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.Speaking at Trump Tower in Manhattan to cheers from his supporters, Trump set the tone immediately by declaring himself innocent and revisiting populist election-campaign warnings.He said: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”The event had been billed as a press conference, but Trump took no questions.Instead, he lapsed into a 30-odd-minute monologue that hammered on familiar, inflammatory themes. He criticized the trial and peppered the speech with falsehoods and conspiracy theories that threatened bad things to come if he were not returned to the White House this November, including anti-immigrant rhetoric.Meanwhile, his legal team had already embarked on a counter-offensive to the criminal conviction, aimed at overturning Thursday’s verdict.With the 2024 presidential election campaign propelled deep into uncharted territory, Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, went on national television to make a spirited though measured defense of his client, vowing to lodge an appeal.The jury found that Trump falsified documents related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, shortly before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her story that she slept with him earlier in his marriage to Melania Trump.Appearing on NBC, Blanche insisted Trump’s defense had not been given “a fair shake” during the trial.“We’re going to appeal and we’re going to win on appeal,” Blanche told NBC Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “That’s the goal. The goal is … to appeal quickly and hopefully be vindicated quickly.”Trump now faces the prospect of rewriting the record books further, if he were to be sent to jail when the judge, Juan Merchan, sentences him on 11 July, four days before the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is scheduled to be officially anointed as the party’s presidential nominee for this November’s election.Some analysts predict that the prospect of a custodial sentence has risen because of Trump’s repeated breaking of gag orders during the six-week trial and his condemnation of Merchant as “corrupt and conflicted” after Thursday’s verdict.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Blanche played down that possibility, pointing to Trump’s advanced age and his previous lack of a criminal record.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who led the case against Trump and also was attacked by the former president, has yet to announce whether he will request a prison sentence.Trump pointedly linked his prosecution and the verdict with Biden, whom he labelled “the Manchurian candidate” and “the worst president in our history”, as well as “stupid” and “dishonest”.“They are in total conjunction with the White House, the DoJ, just so you understand, this is all done by Biden and his people,” he said, referring to the legal team that led the prosecution and presumably Merchan, whom he called – among other things – “a tyrant”.The president’s re-election campaign team had commented on Thursday. Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director, said: “No one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.”Trump and his campaign said that since the verdictthey have raised more than $30m.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Trump’s false accusations that the case was orchestrated by Biden raised the spectre of further political violence at a time when supreme court rulings are awaited on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob trying to reverse the last presidential election result.“The real concern here is not that Trump would be able to stir up his base and get loads more votes, because there aren’t loads more votes to get,” he said. “The real question is will Trump continue to feed this sense of persecution, making phony charges that Biden’s orchestrating all this.“That’s not the way our system works. But he has ruined public confidence in our election system, and he’s now ruining public confidence in our judicial system. The man is the worst thing that has happened to American democracy in my lifetime.”Trump trial coverage: read more
Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence election
Could Trump go to prison and can he still run for president?
What is Biden’s next move?
With conviction, good fortune runs out for ‘Teflon Don’ More

Approximately six minutes after 11am on Friday, Donald Trump entered the atrium of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City, wearing a scarlet tie. Behind the former US president, now a felon, stood the same escalator he used in 2015 to announce his presidential bid, triggering eight years of political chaos.In a long-winded address in front of five American flags, golden walls and no teleprompters, Trump spoke for more than half an hour, kicking off his first public event following his guilty verdict in his hush-money criminal trial.It was a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories – trademark Trump, in fact. But it also carried a foreboding threat, aimed at riling his already furious base and reinforcing his own deep sense of victimhood.“This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said before launching into a tirade against immigration. “They’re coming in from all over the world into our country, and we have a president and a group of fascists that don’t want to do anything about it.”Trump, making frequent hand gestures as he addressed a crowd of smiling Trump Tower employees, aides, reporters and his son Eric, went on to attack Joe Biden, baselessly saying that his fraud conviction had been “all done by Biden and his people”.“I don’t know if Biden knows too much about it, because I don’t know if he knows about anything, but he’s nevertheless the president, so we have to use his name, and this is done by Washington, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” he said.As Trump spoke, crowds of supporters gathered outside Trump Tower, which was heavily cordoned off by metal barricades and dozens of police officers. Loud cheers and honks could be heard from inside the building.“The level of support has been incredible,” Trump said before falsely claiming once again that his trial had been “rigged”, adding that he is under a “nasty gag order which nobody has ever been under”.In fact, in efforts to protect trial participants from Trump’s public attacks, judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, prohibited Trump from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors and staff members of the court and district attorney’s office.The former president, who has been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, maintained his innocence. “I paid a lawyer, totally legal. I paid a lawyer a legal expense,” he said, referring to his former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped facilitate the expenses to adult film star Stormy Daniels with whom Trump allegedly had a sexual affair.Calling himself “literally crucified”, Trump vowed to appeal the “scam” conviction, saying: “We’re going to be appealing it on many different things.”At one point, Trump made an elaborate claim, saying that his guilty verdict – a class E felony in New York, which is the least serious category and punishable by up to four years of jail time – is supposed to make him “go to jail for 187 years”.Trump went on to frame himself as a self-sacrificing martyr on a mission to save American democracy – an image in stark contrast with the many observers both home and abroad who see Trump as the real danger to US civic society.“It’s my honor to be doing this, it really is. It’s a very unpleasant thing, to be honest, but it’s a great, great honor. We are going to do what I have to do,” Trump said, adding vehemently: “I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and to save our constitution … We will continue the fight. We’re going to make America great again.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNaturally, Trump’s speech was also a campaign rally for a race in which he is still neck and neck with Biden – though what impact his new felon status will have on the race remains to be seen. “Remember, November 5 is the most important day in the history of our country,” Trump said at the end of his remarks.As he walked away from the podium, the onlooking crowd of Trump Tower employees broke into applause as reporters clamored for questions, which he left unanswered.Outside, crowds of supporters continued to gather across the street, many wearing red Maga hats and craning their necks in hopes of getting a view of the former president inside his 58-story skyscraper.One supporter waved a large flag, billowing in the wind with a print of Trump’s mugshot from his Georgia election-interference case and the words “Trump or death”. Another held a sign that read “Trump 2024. Save America again!”Across the street stood counter-protesters holding signs that read: “Tick tock, time’s up!” Others held signs saying “guilty” and “loser” in big, bold letters. In unison, the counter-protesters chanted: “No one is above the law! Trump is not above the law!”Behind them, someone waved a sign that read: “Caution: felon at large.” More

Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.Then a large black car, part of the Alitos’ security detail, started parking in front of her mother’s house instead of theirs, and Baden understood the perils of being an ordinary citizen going up against one of the most powerful men in the country.The two sides do not agree on much, but Baden, a staunch liberal, and Martha-Ann Alito, a staunch conservative, concur that they began exchanging words in late 2020, almost two months after Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. Soon after, according to Baden, the Alitos’ security detail began parking a car directly in front of her mother’s house – several houses down from its usual spots either directly in front of the Alitos or across the street from them.“This happened a handful of times,” Baden now recalls. “I took that as directly threatening.”Baden and her husband both say that the security detail’s car showed up in front of her mother’s house again two weeks ago, after the New York Times broke the story about an upside-down American flag hanging on the Alitos’ flagpole in the days before Biden’s inauguration – a symbol associated with the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Biden from taking office at all.Baden was no longer living with her mother by that point – she is now a mother herself and living on the west coast. Neither she nor her mother were mentioned by name in the initial Times story. Still, she found the message that this sent disturbing.“I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat,” she said. “The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.”Baden’s husband, who did not want to be identified by name, said he, too, remembered a large black security SUV parking in front of their house, most memorably after Martha-Ann Alito confronted the couple in February 2021 and Baden let an expletive fly at the justice’s wife.“Right after, a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night,” he recalled.The Alitos did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.Baden is an unusual witness to the Alito flag controversy and furore it has unleashed, because she never saw the upside-down flag flying outside the Alitos’ house and did not hear about it until the story hit the headlines two weeks ago.When the Times first contacted her, she said she didn’t want to be in any story because she had nothing to add. That changed when Alito put out a statement saying that his wife had briefly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s use of “objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”.Baden realised this was a reference to her. It both incensed and frightened her.“He’s lying about many, many things in that statement,” she claims. Contrary to Alito’s assertions, she alleged, it was not true that she had initiated any confrontation. She said it was also untrue that her lawn signs were directed personally at the justice or his wife.In Baden’s version of events, Martha-Ann Alito first approached her to complain about a home-made cardboard sign that said “Bye Don” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other – sentiments found on many similar signs around their neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and in the rest of the country.Alito took further umbrage after January 6 when Baden erected signs that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” – the latter intended, Baden says, as a condemnation of all Trump supporters, not as a message to the Alitos, who had no direct view of it from their house.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe next day, according to Baden, Martha-Ann Alito pulled up in front of their house in her car and glared at her and her partner (now her husband). The security detail started parking outside the house around the same time, and the dispute continued for more than a month, culminating in the swearing incident in mid-February and a police report that the Badens filed right after.“This was unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger, who had done nothing except put up a yard sign,” Baden charged. “I became truly afraid of what they might do.”That fear also made her hesitate about agreeing to be named publicly. She knows how quickly people can be vilified when stepping into a high-profile political controversy, and she has thought of Anita Hill, who tried in vain to stop Clarence Thomas being named to the supreme court in the early 1990s, and of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018, also to no avail.“I was scared for myself, for my mother, for my family, for anyone who shares my last name,” Baden said.Then news broke of a second flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement being flown at a second Alito home, and she felt she had no choice but to speak out.“That other flag sealed the deal for me,” she said. “I thought, if I don’t use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in world war two … he was a person who quite literally fought against fascism.”Her view of Alito was further coloured by the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended a constitutional right to an abortion. She happened to be in Virginia when the news broke, and participated in street protests outside the Alitos’ home, at which point her signs (and almost everyone else’s) were indeed personally directed at the justice.Now, she feels compelled to add her voice to the growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases before the supreme court and is willing to testify before Congress, as Hill and Blasey Ford did before her.“This story is not about me. I didn’t do anything except put a sign in my front yard,” she said. “The story is that one of the most powerful men in the country showed allegiance to an insurrection … I’m horrified by this behaviour, and want to see at least a modicum of accountability.“If I’m coming forward, it is to encourage other people to resist. I want to galvanise people and let them know they have the power. It truly gives me chills to think how close we came to a coup, and Christian fascists taking over our country. [But] this is still a democracy.” More

Guilty. The New York jury’s unanimous verdicts on 34 counts mean that Donald Trump is not only the first sitting or former US president to be prosecuted in a criminal trial, but the first to be convicted.Trump was found to have falsified business records to hide $130,000 of hush money paid to cover up a sex scandal he feared might hinder his run in 2016. Before his entry into politics, it would have been taken for granted that such charges would kill a campaign. Yet Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. If he is jailed when he is sentenced in July – which most experts think unlikely – it is assumed that he would continue. If anything, the prospect of such a sentence spurs him on.It is grim testament to his character that in some ways the most startling aspect of testimony in the five‑week trial was about his fear of the electoral impact that the adult film star Stormy Daniels’ allegation of extramarital sex might have. It was a reminder of how far he has lowered the political bar. Eight years on, critics have been forced to acknowledge that no scandal or shame seems to weaken the attachment of his core voters or the craven bond of Republican politicians. Each fresh revelation has seemed to almost reinforce his aura of impregnability to political controversy.This trial too was in some ways grist to his mill, raising funds and firing up supporters. Some said they were more likely to vote for him if he were convicted. He continues to play the martyr: “Our whole country is being rigged right now,” he lied to supporters. He says he will appeal against his “scam” conviction.Yet no one doubts that his anger, and his glum post-verdict demeanour, were real. Polling suggested that some supporters would think twice if there were a conviction. The hearings have cost him time and focus ahead of a closely contested election. With the outcome hanging on turnout and a small number of waverers in a handful of battleground states this November, even marginal effects could prove significant. Joe Biden now has an opportunity – albeit one which must be used carefully, and which will not on its own erase shortcomings within the Democratic campaign.The three criminal cases Trump still faces – over the alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election – are graver by far, but are not expected to be heard before election day. While this may not have been the case that his opponents wanted, it has proved that he breaks the law for political advantage. Failing to pursue it for fear that he would exploit the charges would have meant tacitly caving in to his bullyboy tactics.Having wreaked devastation upon US politics, Trump seeks to undermine the rule of law too. He has assailed the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the legal system itself. He broke a gag order 10 times. The damage he has caused must not be underestimated or overlooked. But the judicial process has held.While so many powerful Republican politicians have quailed and fallen into line, 12 ordinary men and women have held him accountable. Their verdict has confirmed once more that this man is unfit to run the country. Their peers should take heed when they issue their own verdict at the ballot box in November. More