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      Too old to govern? The age problem neither US party wants to talk about

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      The question was simple: what are your thoughts about running for re-election in 2026? “Oh,” said Mitch McConnell with a half-chuckle, a mumble and then: silence. The most powerful Republican in the US Senate stared into space and said nothing for more than 30 seconds.It was the second time in little more than a month that 81-year-old McConnell had frozen while speaking to reporters. But there were few voices in the Democratic party calling on him to step down.The question of age is one that both party establishments in America have cause to avoid.Democrat Joe Biden, 80, is the oldest president in American history. Republican Donald Trump, 77, is the second oldest and current frontrunner for the party nomination in 2024. The Senate, average age 64, has one of the oldest memberships of any parliamentary body in the world. It is small wonder that dealing with America’s drift into gerontocracy is not top of its agenda.“Both political parties are pulling their punches,” said Frank Luntz, a political consultant who has worked on many Republican campaigns. “Democrats have been quiet about McConnell because they know their own party is run by someone who has the same challenges McConnell has.”If he wins re-election, Biden would be 86 by the end of his second term; a recent opinion poll found that more than three in four Americans think he would be too old to be effective. This week the Guardian reported a claim in a new book that the president has privately admitted he is occasionally tired.Critics faulted Biden’s response to recent wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, and described a speech he gave there as rambling. He mangled the names of Senator Brian Schatz and Mayor Rick Bissen and, in one odd digression, told the latter: “Rick, when we talked on the phone, I never – you look like you played in defensive tackle for – I don’t know who, but somebody good.”John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “In all honesty I’ve been a fan of Joe Biden and have tried to overlook some of the missteps but I did see him in Maui and that was troubling. He got to the microphone and started making jokes and then repeated himself three times between his unprepared remarks and prepared remarks. He just did not look good.”When McConnell suffered his second freezing episode while talking to reporters in Kentucky, Biden was quick to defend the “friend” he served with in the Senate. He said: “I’m confident he’s going to be back to his old self.” Asked if he had any concerns about McConnell’s ability to do his job, the president replied: “No.” Asked again, he insisted: “I don’t.”The congressional doctor has cleared McConnell – who tripped in March and was hospitalised for a concussion and minor rib fracture – to continue his duties. But observers increasingly question Washington’s octogenarian rule.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s lIke both parties are being led by decrepit leaders. Frankly, if there were people in the wings who could step forward, there would have been an effort.“But in the Democratic party, if Biden’s not the candidate, it’s a free-for-all and in the Senate, if McConnell’s not the leader, the wings of the party are going to bash each other: there’s the Trump supporters and there’s the let’s-move-past-Trump. That’s what’s keeping Biden and McConnell in place: the venomous battles that would ensue as soon as they step down.”This standoff creates a headache for party strategists on both sides going into next year’s elections. Jacobs added: “What’s going on here is handcuffing the Democratic communications masters. The talking points for going after McConnell just get turned around on Biden. The Republicans want to move past McConnell because going after Biden’s age is one of their very few talking points at this stage.”There have been no such inhibitions for rightwing media, including Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity. Some dissident voices have also emerged in both parties. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, has called on the president to retire because of his weak poll numbers and advanced age. Phillips told the Washington Post newspaper: “God forbid the president has a health episode or something happens in the middle of a primary.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to the McConnell incident, Phillips wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “For goodness sake, the family, friends, and staff of Senators Feinstein and McConnell are doing them and our country a tremendous disservice. It’s time for term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, and some basic human decency.”Meanwhile Republican candidates for president such as Nikki Haley, 51, former governor of South Carolina, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur, have called for generational change. Haley, who has called for mental competency tests for candidates over 75, told the Fox News network: “What I will say is, right now, the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country. I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things, and he deserves credit. But you have to know when to leave.”Such talking points could strike a chord with the public. Six in 10 Americans told a Reuters/Ipsos poll last November that they were very or somewhat concerned that members of Congress are too old to represent the American people.The oldest current senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, is 90 and was absent for months earlier this year after she suffered complications from shingles; she has said she will retire at the end of her term next year. Senator Bernie Sanders, the voice of progressives in the past two Democratic primaries, turns 82 next week. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa turns 90 later this month. A rematch between Biden and Trump appears the most likely scenario next year.Sally Quinn, a journalist and author, noted the strategic quandaries for both parties. “Donald Trump is going to be 78 next year so the Republicans don’t exactly have a spring chicken on their lineup and are reluctant to go after Biden for his age when Trump is getting up there.“It doesn’t help any of them to and it makes them look ungracious and unkind and unsympathetic, even though they’re all rolling their eyes privately and saying, ‘Oh, my God, they’ve got to go, they’ve got got to go.’ There isn’t anybody who’s not rolling their eyes over Dianne Feinstein. And the Democrats worry about Joe Biden: they think he’s done a great job and they like him but they also see that he’s 80, 81, and that’s old.”Quinn was married to the late Ben Bradlee, who retired as editor of the Washington Post in 1991 at the age of 70. “He was asked to stay and he said, I want to go out at the top, I don’t want to be hanging around here and hear them saying, ‘Oh my God, poor old Bradlee’s really losing it,’ and so he went out on top. With my blessing, by the way – a lot of the spouses don’t want to lose the power and the influence.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘There’s a very real danger here’: AOC on 2024, the climate crisis and ‘selling out’

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      The campaign office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sits deep in the Bronx, across the street from a Chinese takeaway and 99-cent discount store, near enough to a railway bridge to hear the rumble of passing trains. The front window of the plain redbrick building is dominated by a big, smiling photo of the US congresswoman and notices that say: “We welcome all races, all sexual orientations, all gender identities, all religions, all abilities,” and “We say gay in the Bronx”. Inside, the words “¡AOC! ORGANIZING BASE” are printed in giant purple letters on a wall.Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 became the youngest woman and youngest Latina to serve in the House of Representatives, is now 33, twice re-elected and comfortable in her political skin. She could hardly be described as an old hand but nor does she channel the shock of the new. She deploys social media with enviable authenticity; she grills congressional witnesses like a seasoned interrogator; she is an object of perverse fascination for Fox News and rightwing trolls; she has been around Washington long enough to draw charges of “co-option” and “selling out”.“AOC Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now,” ran a headline on New York magazine’s Intelligencer website in July. The article’s author, Freddie deBoer, argued that Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance on the Pod Save America podcast to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election was her “last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in American politics”.The Ocasio-Cortez who sits for an interview with the Guardian is clearly aware of the leftist’s eternal dilemma – purity versus pragmatism – and determined to navigate it with care. She makes clear that Biden cannot take progressives for granted next year but urges Democrats to unite against the bigger threat of “fascism” in America. She condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but wants the US to be clear about its aims there and acknowledge “the anxieties of our history”.And after a summer of extreme heat and wild weather, she evidently worries that incrementalism will not be enough to address a climate crisis that is crying out for revolution.Ocasio-Cortez’s first legislative proposal after arriving on Capitol Hill was a Green New Deal that envisions a 10-year national mobilisation in the spirit of President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. That went nowhere, but last year Biden did sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law, touting its $369bn investment in clean energy and climate action as the biggest of any nation in history.However, the president also approved more oil and gas drilling permits in his first two years in office than his predecessor, Donald Trump, according to the Bureau of Land Management.It is, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges, a mixed picture. “What is difficult is that the climate crisis does not really care about the political complexities that we very much have to grapple with in our work,” she says, wearing a blue dress with floral shoulder pattern and sitting on a long wooden seat dotted with black and yellow cushions.“We can celebrate all of these policies that result in reductions but we also can’t erase them with increased oil and gas production. I’m very concerned about where our net math is on that because we can calculate, yes, we had an enormous amount of reductions that are represented in the Inflation Reduction Act, but this is not something that can be measured necessarily in dollars and cents.“It’s measured in carbon tonnes and in emissions and there’s a lot of funny math that happens in emissions when people talk about clean coal and how fracking somehow reduces our carbon emissions, when we know that it increases methane, which is far more powerful than CO2. While on one hand we can applaud the progress, on the other hand that in no way erases the the setbacks that we’ve had.”Ocasio-Cortez has joined Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Bernie Sanders in introducing a bill calling on the president to declare a national climate emergency to unleash every resource available. In early August, Biden claimed that he had “practically” declared such an emergency, but in reality he has not.Even so, the congresswoman says: “I believe he understands the scale of the crisis. I think what we are up against, which perhaps should be discussed more for those of us in the climate movement, is the geopolitics of this.”She goes on to describe a challenge that is bigger than one man or one nation. “The shift in energy represents a real threat to traditional power globally. As we shift away from non-renewables, we are talking about threatening power among some of the most influential institutions in the United States, in Latin America and globally. That is something that is going to have profound ramifications, all of which I don’t even believe we can fully appreciate yet.“I think that is what drives an enormous amount of blowback and resistance. When you look at, for example, the influence of the Koch brothers in US democracy, they basically have historically purchased enormous amounts of influence over the United States Senate. They are oil barons. These are fossil fuel companies that have exerted huge amounts of influence both in US democracy and in global interests.”Ocasio-Cortez also points to the power and influence of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Middle Eastern nations such as the United Arab Emirates. “When we talk about the transition to renewable energies, wrapped inside that is a profound challenge to the current global order and that, I believe, is something that we’re going to have to contend with in our time.”For the left, the war in Ukraine is potentially more complicated. Putin’s invasion is by any measure an affront to morality. But US support for Ukraine has put critics of the military-industrial complex (the government spends about $900bn a year on defence, around 15% of the federal budget or 3.3% of the gross domestic product) in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the Pentagon and endorsing a windfall for defence contractors. Longtime sceptics of US imperialism suddenly find themselves aligned with Republican hawks.Ocasio-Cortez articulates the uneasy accommodation: “It’s a legitimate conversation. I think on one hand, it is important for us to underscore what a dramatic threat to global order Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is and continues to be. We must defend democracy. We cannot allow this reversion into almost a late 19th-century imperial invasion order – it is so incredibly destabilising and dangerous. We must fight against that precedent. We must protect the democracy of Ukraine and the sovereignty of Ukraine 100%.“I think it’s also relevant to acknowledge that this is happening on the heels of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and how many of us were raised growing up saying this was going to be temporary, and it became a forever war. I believe that acknowledging the anxieties of our history of that is relevant.“Indicating to the people of this country what are we looking for, what are the levels of accountability, is not something that I think is an affront to democracy. I think the American people understandably want clarity about what our commitments are, to what extent they are. I think that is absolutely fair. We do not want a forever war and we also don’t want a return to a 19th-century imperial order either.”A self-described democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez has not been afraid to buck Democratic leadership, including by voting against a deal that Biden negotiated with Republicans in May to raise the debt ceiling. In 2020 she made the provocative comment that, in any other country, she and Biden would not be in the same party. Yet she has endorsed his re-election in 2024. Does that mean she has travelled towards him or he towards her?“I think it means that we have a US political system that’s not parliamentary, to my envy of many other countries,” she replies deftly. “There were so many people that were so up in arms about that comment, which I likely maintain to this day. But I find that parliamentary systems allow for a larger degree of honesty about the political coalitions that we must make. It’s not anything negative towards the president or towards anybody else.“It’s just a reality that we have very different political coalitions that constitute the Democratic party and being able to define that, I actually think grants us much power. It’s to say, listen, I am not defined by nor do I agree with all of the stances of this president, and I’m sure neither does he with mine.“But that does not mean that we are not in this together against the greater forces and questions of our time, and I think being able to demonstrate that ability to coalesce puts us in a position of far greater strength than, say, the Republican party who are at each other’s necks to the extent that they can’t even fund the government.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has been no greater rallying point for Democrats of all stripes than Trump. As Paul Begala, a former White House adviser, has observed: “Nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars.” Ocasio-Cortez, a celebrated member of “the Squad” of House progressives, regards continued solidarity as imperative for as long as the quadruple-indicted former president menaces US democracy.She warns: “We should be candid about the fact that his chances as the nominee are still the strongest, probably out of the entire [Republican] field, and what that means. There’s very real danger here because with our electoral college, we know it doesn’t matter how many millions more votes you get. It’s about the smattering of states who just represent a few thousand votes’ difference between Trump and Biden.“We are not in 2020, and seeing what that turnout may look like is something that I’m sure keeps many of us up at night. But that being said, I know that this is why, to me, support of President Biden has been very important, because this question is larger than any policy differences. This is truly about having a strong front against fascism in the United States.”But will that be enough to motivate the progressive base in 2024? Trump has no serious primary challenger, but his approval rating remains mired in the 40s. A recent Emerson College polling survey found the Green party candidate Cornel West drawing support from 7% of independents, 8% of Black voters and 7% of Hispanics – key parts of the Biden coalition. In a hypothetical presidential election, the survey found 44% support Trump, 39% Biden, 4% West and 13% undecided.Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges that, after defeating Sanders in the 2020 primary, Biden made welcome efforts to include progressives on joint policy taskforces and in his administration. But she cautions that he must now make his case to the left all over again.“In 2020 the Biden campaign, after the nomination, did work very hard to unite the party. We’re very early still in the 2024 election cycle, but I do believe that it will be very important for President Biden’s team to once again engage in that coalition-building because it is not one and done.”Likewise, she continues, Latino voters must not be taken for granted. “Republicans have been very aggressive about building presence in Latino communities, and I believe that we as Democrats can double and triple down in our efforts to communicate in a way that’s not just translations of English material, but for us to manoeuvre ourselves almost as a separate, distinct campaign that occurs in Spanish or in many of the languages and communities that constitute the base of the Democratic party.”Ocasio-Cortez was part of an all-Latino congressional delegation that recently visited Brazil, Chile and Colombia to begin redefining US relations with Latin America after decades of interventions and distrust. The group met landless workers and homeless workers who have organised popular movements while also becoming a formidable force at the ballot box.She reflects: “I think sometimes in the US, especially on the left but even across the political spectrum, there is a struggle between more grassroots movements feeling as though engaging in electoralism is a form of selling out, or the compromises required in being part of a legislative system are somehow delegitimising to an authentic relationship to advancing the working class.“I think what we’ve seen from MST [Landless Workers Movement] and MTST [Homeless Workers Movement] is that there’s actually a way to do both, that you can preserve your integrity but also understand the importance of taking a pragmatic approach and being in the game when it comes to having electoral representation.”It takes one to know one. Ocasio-Cortez, a former restaurant server and bartender who in 2018 defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley for a seat that represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, faces the accusation from some that she has gone from outsider to insider, that she has become just a little too comfortable toeing the party line.She laughs. “I think I would be remiss to not mention that I’ve absolutely been subject to part of that. But just as we hear from some of these folks in Brazil, we are so underserved without having that presence in governance. To sacrifice all of that to a historically neoliberal order has not served us.“I think that when you see how even the Democratic party of the United States has changed in just the last five years alone, we’ve seen the fruits of being able to have a seat at the table … I believe that we would not have the legislation that we have today if it were not for that progressive representation in government.”Her commitment to the system, whatever its flaws, invites the question of whether Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most gifted communicators in politics today, will run for president herself some day. She does not say no. “For me personally, I’m very much just motivated by what the conditions of the present moment are and what we can do to help advance that cause.“I am not interested in running for anything – president or anything else including for re-election in my own seat – just running for running’s sake. It always comes down to the conditions of that moment and the possibilities of our time.”The first woman nominated for president by the Democratic party was Hillary Clinton in 2016. In Trump, she lost to a rival who gloried in shameless misogyny. But Ocasio-Cortez, whose gender, race, age and ideology make her as antithetical to Trump as can be imagined, refuses to be discouraged.“I do believe that the power of misogyny is very real and very potent in American politics,” she says. “But I’m very encouraged by what has happened since then. I believe women have emerged as a profound electoral force, especially with the overturning of Roe v Wade. Young women especially I think have been very animated and organised in this moment. I think we are in a moment of generational change.“We are absolutely contending with an extraordinary misogyny in our politics. The United States can go around and say what it says, but many, many, many other countries have elected female heads of state, whereas the United States has gone well over 200 years without one. Those barriers are very real, but I think the change of this time is also giving a lot of us a lot of hope.”Before getting back to work in an office of greens, purples, whites and yellows – and hundreds of colourful backpacks for constituents entering the new school year – she sums up: “Certainly the conditions have been such and the misogyny in our politics has been such that we’ve never been able to elect a woman president. But that doesn’t mean we never will.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy review: necessary chronicle of US racist history

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      Robert P Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), holds a divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Seminary and a doctorate in religion from Emory University. He is a son of the south, pained by the nexus between Christianity and slavery. In White Too Long, published in 2020, he wrote of church stained-glass windows that paid homage to Confederate generals, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The deadly shooting at a Dollar General in Florida last week was just one more reminder that the past is always with us.In his new book, Jones draws a straight line between religion and European migration to North America and slavery and the subjugation of Indigenous people. He identifies and repeatedly criticizes the “doctrine of discovery”, as prime culprit and enabler.Enunciated in 15th-century papal decrees, adopted in 1823 as part of US common law through the supreme court case Johnson v M’Intosh, the discovery doctrine offered theological and legal justification for conquest and its aftermath. Jones extensively quotes Robert Miller, a law professor at Arizona State University and a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe.“In essence, the doctrine provided that newly arrived Europeans immediately and automatically acquired legally recognized property rights over the inhabitants without knowledge or consent of the indigenous peoples,” Miller wrote, in 2012.Jones adds: “Despite its near-total absence from white educational curricula … Native American scholars have been highlighting the impact of the doctrine of discovery for at least half a century.”He meticulously details events that further scar US history. It is a first-rate chronicle of horror. Jones lays out the lynchings of three Black circus workers in Minnesota, in 1920, and of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. He recounts the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, the destruction of “Black Wall Street” and the deaths of 300 African Americans.He also delves in detail into the US government-sanctioned execution of 38 Dakota males in Mankato, Minnesota, in December 1862. It remains the single largest event of its kind in US history. Abraham Lincoln played a central role.On the page, Jones lays out his pathway to a “shared future”. He advocates “reparations” for the descendants of enslaved Black people and argues for “restitution” to Native Americans.“This is a tall order,” he acknowledges. But he remains undeterred, writing: “We cannot shrink before the difficulty of the task … the creativity of our solutions is directly proportional to, and a measure of, the strength of our convictions.”With a significant exception – support from three-quarters of African Americans – the public holds a negative view of reparations, according to a 2021 survey. Nearly 70% are opposed, including 80% of whites, 65% of Asians, 58% of Hispanics and 49% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners. That’s a lot of hearts and minds to persuade.This fall, the Democratic-dominated California legislature will consider a reparations plan. After the US supreme court rejection of race-based affirmative action, and a similar rejection by Californians in 2020, the legislature may want to tread lightly.Jones can be swept away by his convictions. In 2016, in The End of White Christian America, he wrote an “obituary” and recited a “benediction” for what he perceived as the passing of white Protestantism. To say the least, he jumped the gun.Donald Trump’s election showed that primacy lost is not the same as extinction. Even in its lessened state and amid the rise of religious “nones”, Christianity remains a force in American life. As mainstream Protestantism slides and younger evangelicals leave the fold, the landscape of Sunday morning is being reshaped.“American megachurches are thriving by poaching flocks,” an Economist headline blared. “Denominations are out. Brand identity and good vibes are in.” There is plenty to like about community and ice cream. Doctrinal orthodoxies have not fared well in the marketplace of US religion.Jones has refused to fully quit “defund the police”, the protest slogan that flourished after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in May 2020 but which Republicans predictably seized on to depict Democrats as soft on crime. Jones has also tweaked James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, for emphasizing class over race.“We can’t continue to paper over racial injustice with economic policy,” Jones wrote in 2021, in the aftermath of the Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset win in the Virginia governor’s race. Riffing off Carville’s famous 1992 campaign message for Bill Clinton, about the economy, Jones delivered his own: “‘It’s the culture, stupid’ – or less euphemistically, ‘It’s the white supremacy, stupid’ – must be the new mantra of political analysts today.”That’s a lousy bumper-sticker. Besides that, the data reflects that inflation, jobs, the economy and healthcare are the most pressing priorities for American voters. Only 6% place discrimination top of their list of concerns. By the numbers, it looks like Carville got it right.Jones also implicitly criticized Carville for calling the “defund the police” movement “lunacy”, writing: “I agree with Carville that ‘defund the police’ has been unhelpful. It’s neither a savvy political slogan nor an accurate depiction of what most police reform advocates actually want to do.”Not a “savvy political slogan” and “unhelpful” are understatements. Last year, after Republicans took back the US House, James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of Democratic leadership, put it this way: “‘Defund the police’ is killing our party and we’ve got to stop it.”New York City and San Francisco have experienced major exoduses. Safe streets and thriving tax bases are necessities for vibrant urban centers. Heading for 2024, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are locked in polling dead heats. Despite his many indictments, Trump retains traction. Racial resentments helped propel him into the White House in 2016. They may do so again.
      The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      in Elections

      Two more Proud Boys face sentencing on US Capitol attack charges – live

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      From 2h agoHere’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Security guards for Ron DeSantis followed and physically blocked 15-year-old politics enthusiast Quinn Mitchell from speaking with the Florida governor during campaign events in New Hampshire, the Daily Beast reports.Since 2019, Mitchell has shown up to presidential events in the Granite State to ask candidates questions, and has often received a positive response from politicians who admire his civic mindedness. But after asking DeSantis whether Donald Trump “violated the peaceful transfer of power” – and getting a nonresponse in return from the governor – Mitchell says his security singled him out at campaign events:
      Speaking about it for the first time in an interview with The Daily Beast, Mitchell says that he was grabbed and physically intimidated by DeSantis security at two subsequent campaign stops, where the candidate’s staffers also monitored him in a way he perceived as hostile.
      The experience, Mitchell said, was “horrifying” and amounted to “intimidation.”
      At a Fourth of July parade DeSantis attended, Mitchell was swarmed by security and physically restrained after a brief interaction with the governor—with his private security contractors even demanding Mitchell stay put until they said so.
      With his mother alarmed, the situation escalated to such a degree that the candidate’s wife, Casey, spoke directly with her—but to suggest her son was being dishonest about what happened, according to Mitchell.
      Then, at an August 19 event—where Mitchell was tailed closely by two security guards—an attendee told The Daily Beast they saw a staffer for DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down, take a photo of the teenager on Snapchat before typing out an ominous caption: “Got our kid.”
      Seven other sources corroborated Mitchell’s version of events, either by sharing contemporaneous communications with the family or recounting what they witnessed in person at DeSantis events, including the Fourth of July parade. The teenager and his family say they have yet to receive any kind of apology from DeSantis.
      The DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down did not return multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
      “Really stupid in a small state like New Hampshire,” Mitchell deadpanned about the guards’ behavior. Indeed, the story has the potential to create an avoidable headache for DeSantis, whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is going far worse than expected. Despite early momentum and strong fundraising, most polls in the state and nationwide show the Florida governor in a very distant second place to Trump among GOP voters.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that former allies are turning their backs on Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate who was last week indicted in Georgia for trying to overturn its 2020 election result:As he attempts to meet mounting legal fees incurred in large part through his work for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani will reportedly not get “a nickel” from one billionaire who backed his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination – or, apparently, much from many other previously big donors.“I wouldn’t give him a nickel,” the investor Leon Cooperman told CNBC. “I’m very negative on Donald Trump. It’s an American tragedy. [Rudy] was ‘America’s mayor’. He did a great job. And like everybody else who gets involved with Trump, it turns to shit.”Brian France, a former Nascar chief executive, was slightly more conciliatory. But he told the same outlet his wallet was staying shut: “I was a major supporter of Rudy in 2008 and at other times. I’m not sure what happen[ed] but I miss the old Rudy. I’m wishing him well.”Donald Trump happened to Rudy.Giuliani, now 79, was once a crusading US attorney who became New York mayor in 1993 and led the city on 9/11 and after. Capitalising on the resultant “America’s mayor” tag, he ran for the Republican nomination to succeed President George W Bush. Briefly leading the polls, he raised $60m but flamed out when the race got serious.When Giuliani struggled with drink and depression, his former wife has said, Trump gave him shelter. When Trump himself entered presidential politics, in 2016, Giuliani became a vociferous surrogate. When Trump entered the White House, Giuliani failed to be named secretary of state but did become the president’s aide and attorney.In that capacity his actions fueled Trump’s first impeachment, over attempts to find dirt on opponents in Ukraine, and he helped drive the hapless attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, which has spawned numerous criminal charges.Republican politicians have a long record of claiming to be the party that supports the police, but as NBC News reports, a man who told officers to “go hang yourself” on January 6 is currently working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.“If you are a police officer and are going to abide by unconstitutional bulls—, I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself, because you’re a piece of s—,” said Dylan Quattrucci, the deputy state director of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, in a video he recorded on January 6 near the Capitol. “Go f— yourself.”Quattrucci’s position makes him the number-two figure in Trump’s campaign in the state, which is the second to vote in the GOP’s nominating process. Trump is currently the frontrunner is most polls of Republican primary voters, both nationwide and in New Hampshire.The video was first posted on Twitter by “Sedition Hunters”, an online group focused on tracking down participants in the January 6 attack. NBC News reports there’s no evidence Quattrucci entered the Capitol itself, though on his Twitter account, he does have a picture of himself posing with Trump at a New Hampshire campaign office.The sentencing hearing for Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys militia group convicted of serious charges related to the January 6 insurrection, has begun in Washington DC, Politico reports:Prosecutors are requesting a 20-year prison sentence for Pezzola, which, if granted, would be the longest handed out to any defendant related to the attack on the Capitol.There’s no telling how the state and federal cases against Donald Trump and others for trying to overturn the 2020 polls will end, but as the Associated Press reports, the environment for election workers nationwide has grown much more hostile in recent years:More than a dozen people nationally have been charged with threatening election workers by a justice department unit trying to stem the tide of violent and graphic threats against people who count and secure the vote.Government employees are being bombarded with threats even in normally quiet periods between elections, secretaries of state and experts warn. Some point to Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly and falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen and spreading conspiracy theories about election workers. Experts fear the 2024 election could be worse and want the justice department to do more to protect election workers.The justice department had created the taskforce in 2021 led by its public integrity section, which investigates election crimes. John Keller, the unit’s second in command, said in an interview with the Associated Press the department hoped its prosecutions would deter others from threatening election workers.“This isn’t going to be taken lightly. It’s not going to be trivialized,” he said. “Federal judges, the courts are taking misconduct seriously and the punishments are going to be commensurate with the seriousness of the conduct.”More people are expected to plead guilty on Thursday to threatening election workers in Arizona and Georgia.Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp yesterday rejected a call from a handful of rightwing lawmakers to convene a special session of the state legislature with the intention of removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn the state’s elections three years ago.But as the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker reports, Willis may not be out of the woods yet:
      Republicans at the state and federal levels are calling for multiple tactics to unseat Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, even if their legal standing is murky and they lack the support of Georgia’s Republican governor.
      Steve Gooch, the Georgia senate majority leader, and Clint Dixon, a state senator, have said they plan to use a commission designed to discipline and potentially remove rogue prosecutors to investigate Willis following her indictment of Donald Trump for attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
      In May, Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill, SB92, that makes it easier to remove elected district attorneys. Under the law, a prosecuting attorneys qualifications commission has the power to investigate complaints and discipline or remove district attorneys whom the appointed commissioners believe are not properly enforcing the law.
      Kemp on Thursday dismissed talk of using the commission or the legislature to remove Willis from office, but said the decision was not his. “Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis’s actions or lack thereof warrant action by the prosecuting attorney oversight commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” the governor said.
      The commission will begin receiving complaints on 1 October 2023, and earlier this month Burt Jones, the Republican lieutenant governor, announced three appointments to the eight-member group. Jones, who served as one of Georgia’s fake electors when he was a state senator in 2020, recently criticized Willis’s prosecution of Trump and said her treatment of the defendants like criminals is “very disturbing”.
      Here’s more from Reuters on the two Proud Boys who are being sentenced today, and what they were found guilty of:
      The first Proud Boy to face sentencing on Friday morning, Dominic Pezzola, did not play a leadership role in the group and was the only defendant of five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies including obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
      The second defendant, Ethan Nordean, was a leader of the group who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
      Thousands of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol following a speech in which the Republican falsely claimed that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Trump has continued to make those false claims even as he leads the Republican race for the 2024 nomination to challenge Democrat Biden.
      Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.
      The sentencing of Pezzola and Nordean follows U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday ordering two other former Proud Boys leaders, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, to serve 17 years and 15 years in prison, respectively.
      Biggs’ term is just one year less than the 18 years former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes received earlier this year.
      The sentences for Biggs and Rehl were far less than the 33-year and 30-year terms sought by federal prosecutors.
      The government is seeking a 20-year prison term for Pezzola and a 27-year term for Nordean.
      Although Pezzola was found not guilty of sedition, prosecutors said his assault on former Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, in which he stole Ode’s riot shield and used it to smash at a window at the Capitol, helps to justify a lengthy prison term.
      “Pezzola’s actions and testimony leave no doubt that he intended to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “He committed crimes of terrorism on January 6.”
      Pezzola’s attorneys are asking for their client to be sentenced to around five years in prison, and said in their sentencing memo that he has already served about three years in jail awaiting trial.
      Nordean’s attorney, Nick Smith, plans to argue for a lower sentence within the range of 15-21 months.
      “Nordean walked in and out of the Capitol like hundreds of Class B misdemeanants,” Smith wrote. “When the government does distinguish Nordean’s actions from any other January 6 defendant’s, it relies on characterization, not facts.”
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, two more members of the Proud Boys militia group will be sentenced by a federal judge on charges related to the January 6 insurrection. Prosecutors are requesting a 27-year prison sentence for Ethan Nordean, a chapter president in the group, after his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes, and a 20-year sentence for Dominic Pezzola, who was acquitted of that charge but convicted of other offenses related to the violent attack on the Capitol.Yesterday, a judge sentenced former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs to 17 years behind bars, and handed a 15-year sentence to Zachary Rehl, a leader of the group. Both men were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a civil war-era offense that is rarely brought. Their sentences were the second- and third-longest handed down from the attack on the Capitol, and two other members of the group, including its former leader, Enrique Tarrio, are scheduled to be sentenced next week.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Just-released government data shows better-than-expect hiring in August but the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.8%. Joe Biden will speak about the report at 11.15am eastern time.
      More defendants in the Georgia election subversion case may opt to skip next week’s in-person arraignment and enter their pleas in writing. Donald Trump did so yesterday, as did his former lawyer Jenna Ellis.
      The White House is asking Congress to allocate an additional $4b to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay for the response to recent disasters, including the wildfire that destroyed Lahaina in Maui and Hurricane Idalia in Florida and other southeastern states. More

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      Trump’s Georgia election subversion trial will be broadcast live on YouTube, judge says – as it happened

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      From 6h agoDonald Trump has entered a plea of not guilty to the charges brought against him by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis for trying to overturn Georgia’s presidential election results in 2020.By entering his plea, Trump opted to skip an in-person arraignment of the 19 suspects charged by Willis, which is scheduled to take place in Atlanta next week.Donald Trump will not be appearing in a Georgia courtroom for his arraignment next week, instead deciding to enter his plea of not guilty in writing and skipping another trip to Atlanta. Separately, Republican governor Brian Kemp rejected an effort by a small group of rightwing lawmakers to call the state legislature back in session to remove Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Georgia’s elections in 2020. And next week, we may get more details about the special grand jury whose work led to the indictments, when their full report is potentially made public by a judge.Here’s what else happened today:Jenna Ellis, a former attorney for Donald Trump who advised on ways to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, has pled not guilty to charges brought against her in the Georgia election subversion case, Reuters reports.Once a prosecutor in Colorado, Ellis spread multiple statements claiming voter fraud during the 2020 election and sent at least two memos advising Mike Pence to reject Biden’s victory in Georgia and other states. The Colorado supreme court censured Ellis earlier this year and she acknowledged making false statements.Ellis was among the 19 people indicted by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis last week, along with Trump, who today pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering.The editorial board of influential conservative publication National Review is calling on Mitch McConnell to step down as Republican leader in the Senate.They cite the two instances of the 81-year-old freezing up in public in recent months as evidence that it’s time to hand leadership of the minority party to someone else, though they do not call for him to resign his seat representing Kentucky.Here’s more from their piece:
      The details can be left to McConnell, who deserves a large measure of deference. A leadership transition doesn’t need to happen urgently, but the wheels should be turning.
      Stepping aside from leadership would not necessarily require leaving the Senate; McConnell could, like Nancy Pelosi, remain in office, and he would doubtless remain influential so long as he is capable of serving. But the job of caucus leader demands more.
      The time will come for a fuller appreciation of McConnell’s legacy. But his strenuous opposition to campaign-finance reform, effective resistance to the Obama agenda, stalwart refusal to fill the Scalia seat prior to the 2016 election, fruitful cooperation with President Trump on judges, and, lately, strong support for American leadership abroad when the winds in the party are blowing the opposite way easily make him one of the most consequential politicians of our era.
      Prudence and realism have been hallmarks of his leadership and now are called for in considering his own future.
      Joe Biden’s national infrastructure advisory council has recommended privatization and long-term leases of water systems to help revitalise the nation’s aging water infrastructure – a move that has not gone down well with water justice advocates.Nationwide, one in 10 people already depend on private water companies, whose bills are on average almost 60% higher than those supplied by public utilities. Private ownership is the single largest factor associated with higher water bills, more than aging infrastructure or climate disasters.“Water privatisation is a terrible idea,” said Mary Grant, the Public Water for All campaign director at Food & Water Watch. “Wall Street wants to take control of the nation’s public water systems to wring profits from communities that are already struggling with unaffordable water bills and toxic water. Privatisation would deepen the nation’s water crises, leading to higher water bills and less accountable and transparent services.”The council is also recommending the creation of a federal water department or an equivalent cabinet-level agency to oversee a national strategy to shore up the nation’s ageing water infrastructure. Federal funding for water and wastewater peaked in 1977, since when utilities have mostly relied on loans and raising bills to fund infrastructure upgrades. After decades of federal austerity for water, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act provided a major cash injection – but is still just a fraction, around 7%, of what experts say is needed to provide safe, clean, affordable drinking water for every American.Biden’s advisory council includes public and private sector representatives, but notably the chair is the CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure investment bank with an estimated $100bn in assets under management that targets energy, transportation, digital and water infrastructure.Joe Biden just announced he will travel to Florida on Saturday to survey damage caused by Hurricane Idalia:Earlier in the day, the White House announced he spoke to Florida’s Republican governor and 2024 presidential contender Ron DeSantis, and signed a major disaster declaration that will steer federal resources to the state.Biden and DeSantis are adversaries, but have put politics aside to make joint appearances when Biden has traveled Florida state following disasters, most recently in October in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.Now a tropical storm, Idalia is menacing the Carolinas. Follow our live blog for the latest on its path:Punchbowl News reports that Capitol physician Brian Monahan says Mitch McConnell, the top GOP lawmaker in the Senate who yesterday appeared to freeze up while addressing the press, is “medically clear” to work.Monahan attributed the episode, the second in as many months, to “occasional lightheadedness” as the Kentucky lawmaker continues to recover from a concussion he sustained earlier this year:Meanwhile, Joe Biden said he had spoken to McConnell, and his former senate colleague “was his old self on the telephone”. Here’s a clip of the president’s remarks:Scott McAfee, the judge presiding over the trials of Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case, says the proceedings will be streamed live on YouTube, Atlanta News First reports:McAfee cited the practice of Robert McBurney, the judge who presided over the grand jury investigation and indictment phase of the case:It’s unclear when Trump’s trial will start, but proceedings in his former attorney Kenneth Chesebro’s case are scheduled to start on 23 October.Why does Donald Trump want his trial severed from two other his fellow co-defendants?Because those two defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, both former lawyers for his campaign, have made motions for speedy trials – which is exactly what Trump doesn’t want. In a sign of just how speedy those trials will be, a judge set out a schedule for Chesebro’s trial that will see it start on 23 October.Politico reports that Trump’s attorney Steven Sadow argues that if the former president is put on trial at the same time, he won’t have enough time to mount a proper defense:In a fast-moving and ever more complex situation, lawyers for Donald Trump have moved to sever his election racketeering case in Georgia from two defendants who have asked for their own trials to be speeded up.As local Georgia court journalist Sam Gringlas reports:“Trump moves to SEVER his case from 2 defendants who want a speedy trial, slated for Oct. “We’re in a huge state of flux right now,” attorney Bob Rubin told me. “The case involving these 19 defendants seems to be going in a lot of different directions all at the same time.”His fellow senators may be keeping mum, but at least one Republican politics watcher thinks it’s time for Mitch McConnell to step down, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:It may be time for Mitch McConnell to “pass the torch”, a leading Republican pollster said, after the 81-year-old GOP Senate leader suffered a second apparent freeze while talking to reporters.“It’s one of the problems that we have with Washington, which is that there is a time to lead and a time to pass on the torch to another generation,” Frank Luntz told CNN.A spokesperson for McConnell said the senator felt “light-headed” on Wednesday, when he appeared to freeze during questions from reporters in Covington, in his home state of Kentucky, and was eventually escorted away. McConnell would consult a doctor, the spokesperson said.But the freeze followed a similar incident in Washington in July, when McConnell was speaking at the US Capitol. He said then he had been “sandbagged” – a reference to Joe Biden’s fall at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado in May – and returned to talk to reporters.On Wednesday, Biden called McConnell “a good friend”, and said he would “try and get in touch with him later this afternoon”.Tucker Carlson warns of Trump assassinationFar-right media personality Tucker Carlson is known for his outrageous statements and bigoted positions, as well as a degree of paranoia. They can mostly be found on social media these days, after being taken off air by Fox News.But even by his own low standards, Carson might have gone too far on comedian Adam Corolla’s podcast when he predicted that someone would try to kill Donald Trump, the Hill reports.“Begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment, and none of them work. I mean what’s next? You know, graph it out man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously. No one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion,” Carlson said.It’s not the first time Carson has gone there though. In a recent interview with Trump himself – held to distract people from the Republican debate – Carson asked bluntly: “Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you?”Following the second instance in as many months where the Senate’s top Republican Mitch McConnell froze up while addressing the press, Politico reports that some senators want to convene a special meeting to discuss his health.McConnell, 81, is the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, but suffered a concussion earlier this year that he took weeks to recover from, as well as a fall in July. The Kentucky lawmaker was challenged for the party’s leadership post earlier this year by Florida’s senator Rick Scott, but easily defeated him, and it remains unclear if a majority of his fellow Republicans want him to step down.Here’s more from Politico:
      Some rank-and-file Republicans have discussed the possibility of a broader conversation once senators return to Washington next week, according to a person directly involved in the conversations who confirmed them on condition of anonymity. Party leadership is not currently involved in those discussions, and nothing has been decided yet, this person added.
      It takes just five Republican senators to force a special conference meeting, which is the most direct way to have a specific discussion about the minority leader after his public pause on Wednesday revived questions about his condition. But the Senate GOP also holds private lunches two or three times a week, giving members another forum for hashing out the direction of the party’s leadership — one that could forestall the need for a special confab.
      And McConnell’s health is a touchy subject: The 81-year-old, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, doesn’t like to discuss it. Even detractors of the Kentucky Republican’s leadership style are sensitive to the health issues he faces after falling in March and suffering a concussion.
      Even so, the question now facing the GOP is whether McConnell’s health hastens a transition atop the conference leadership that has to happen eventually. McConnell squashed his first-ever challenge last fall from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on a 37-10 vote.
      If a special conference meeting doesn’t happen, the issue could be punted until after the 2024 election. However, a special meeting would undoubtedly draw more media attention that would amplify the risk of specifically broaching the touchy topic of McConnell’s leadership. And his own support may be relatively unchanged even after the two summer pauses.
      Donald Trump will not be appearing in a Georgia courtroom for his arraignment next week, instead deciding to enter his plea of not guilty in writing and skip another trip to Atlanta. Separately, Republican governor Brian Kemp rejected an effort by a small group of rightwing lawmakers to call the state legislature back in session to remove Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who indicted Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Georgia’s elections in 2020. And next week, we may get more details about the special grand jury whose work led to the indictments, when their full report is potentially made public by a judge.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      A self-described organizer for the Proud Boys militia group was just given a 17-year prison sentence for his actions on January 6.
      Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, released his delayed financial disclosure reports, in which he acknowledged luxury trips taken with Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow.
      Trump remains way ahead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports, though his support may have slipped a little bit since the Georgia indictment.
      Joseph Biggs, a self-described organizer for the Proud Boys militia group who entered the Capitol on January 6, was just handed a 17 year jail sentence by a judge after being convicted on seditious conspiracy charges.The term was much less than the 33 years prosecutors requested, which would have been the highest meted out in the cases stemming from the attack on the Capitol. Biggs is one of five Proud Boys scheduled to be sentenced in the coming days, a group that also includes its former leader Enrique Tarrio.A report produced by a special grand jury that Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis used to indict Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Georgia’s election in 2020 could be released in full on 8 September, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.Judge Robert McBurney had earlier this year made public parts of the report, but kept other sections sealed at the request of Willis, who cited due process concerns. In particular, a chapter where jurors recommended who should be indicted was kept out of the public eye. If it was released, it could answer whether there were people who the jurors thought should face charges whom Willis ultimately did not indict.McBurney said the due process concerns were alleviated by the announcement of charges in the case, and said he would release the report next Friday, unless any parties object.Here’s more from the Journal-Constitution:
      Such an “exceedingly public development” eliminates due process concerns, at least for the 19 defendants charged in the case and who might have been named in the special grand jury’s final report, McBurney wrote. For that reason, he said, he plans to release the final report at 10 a.m. on Sept. 8.
      At the same time, McBurney said, if “any concerned party believes something less than everything should be published,” they have until close of business on Sept. 6 to raise an objection. “If objections are timely filed, they will be carefully considered and a new publication date will be announced,” he said.
      Objections would likely come from individuals who were not indicted but who may believe the special grand jury voted that they be charged. They may want to keep such a recommendation from being made public.
      When the full special grand jury’s final report is published, it will show the vote tallies from the 23-member panel on each recommendation as to who should be indicted, grand jurors told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in prior interviews. This will allow the public to know whether the panel was overwhelmingly in favor or closely divided on each person.
      If you are wondering if Donald Trump’s indictment in Georgia has changed his political fortunes, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight took a look at the numbers and the answer is … no.“Looking at the big picture – including FiveThirtyEight’s averages of the national Republican primary and Trump’s overall favorable and unfavorable ratings – it’s clear that public opinion about Trump has not changed in a major way in several months, even after he was indicted on nearly 100 criminal charges in four different jurisdictions. After what is expected to be his final indictment, he remains the strong favorite in the GOP primary and a competitive candidate in the general election,” they write.The conclusion comes in a piece that analyzes some of the more recent polls that have come out of Republican primary voters, which show some fluctuations in Trump’s level of support, but no change to his status as the far and away frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination. He’s currently at 50% support in FiveThirty Eight’s polling average, down from 53% before news of the Georgia indictment broke, but still an overwhelming advantage.Here’s the moment from his press conference today where Georgia governor Brian Kemp rejected using the legislature to oust Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis.His remarks amounted to both a repudiation of the effort to stop her prosecution, and a defense of her conduct:Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp says he will not call the legislature into a special session to impeach Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who last week brought charges against Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn the state’s presidential election result in 2020, Atlanta’s WSB-TV reports.A handful of GOP lawmakers have requested Kemp convene the legislature outside of their normal session to remove Willis from the case, but the governor, who has publicly rejected the former president’s baseless insistence that Joe Biden’s election victory in the state was fraudulent, turned down doing that.“We have a law in the state of Georgia that clearly outlines the legal steps that can be taken if constituents believe their local prosecutors are violating their oath by engaging in unethical or illegal behavior,” Kemp said at a press conference today, according to WSB-TV.He characterized a special session targeting Willis as unfeasible and potentially also unconstitutional, and said, “As long as I am governor, we’re going to follow the law and the constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically.” More

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      Mississippi elects openly gay lawmaker for first time in state’s history

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      The US state of Mississippi has elected an openly gay person to its legislature for the first time ever.Fabian Nelson’s victory this week left Louisiana as the only American state never to have elected an LGBTQ+ person to its legislature. And it served up a salve of sorts to a wave of laws passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, including a ban in Mississippi on gender-affirming hormones or surgery for anyone aged 17 or younger.In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Nelson, a Democrat, called his election to the Mississippi house “a dream” and “shocking”. But Nelson, a foster father, also said: “Ultimately what won this campaign is the fact that I’m in touch with my community and the issues my community is facing.“At the end of the day, I put my suit on the same way every other person who walks in that statehouse does. I’m going to walk in there, and I’m going to be a sound voice … in the state of Mississippi.”Nelson, a 38-year-old realtor, won his seat by triumphing in a Democratic primary election runoff on Tuesday over Roshunda Harris-Allen, a local alderwoman and a professor of education at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution. Tuesday’s race was necessary after neither Nelson nor Harris-Allen had secured a majority of the vote in a three-way primary on 8 August.Republicans did not run a candidate for the general election scheduled for the fall. So, by virtue of his win on Tuesday, Nelson has clinched the statehouse seat that had been up for grabs. He is scheduled to be sworn in ahead of Mississippi’s next legislative session in January.His district encompasses an area south of the state capital of Jackson. As he has told media outlets such as the Los Angeles Blade and LGBTQ Nation, Nelson’s priorities include pushing for an expansion of Mississippi’s Medicaid program as well as developing the economy and infrastructure for his district’s underserved areas.He is also hoping to impede Republicans’ anti-LGBTQ legislative measures and efforts to disenfranchise voters in and around Jackson, which is mostly Democratic.Nelson said his election accomplishes a goal he set for himself the day that he visited the state capitol building on an elementary school field trip and told his teacher he would eventually earn an office in the house.“I’m still trying to process it and take it in,” Nelson said.The state director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Mississippi chapter, which endorsed Nelson, said the election “sends a real message in a time when we are seeing attacks … against the LGBTQ+ community”.“The majority of people reject that kind of animus,” the director, Rob Hill, told the AP. “I think a lot of youth around the state who have felt like their leaders are rejecting them or targeting them won’t feel as lonely today.”The president of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, Annise Parker, added: “Voters in Mississippi should be proud of the history they’ve made but also proud to know they’ll be well represented by Fabian.”Though Louisiana now stands as the only state to have never chosen an LGBTQ+ person for a seat in its legislature, it did elect its first openly gay Black man to public office late last year.Davante Lewis won a New Orleans-based seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission in December after defeating a three-term incumbent.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Democrat says court dates clashing with Trump’s campaign schedule is unfair

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      Assuming Donald Trump clinches the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, it would be unfair for any court dates associated with the former president’s pending criminal charges to “compromise [his] ability to have a robust campaign schedule”, the Democratic US congressman Ro Khanna has said.Khanna’s remarks on Tuesday – in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt – might be surprising to some, given his credentials as a leading progressive voice in the House. Khanna was the former co-chairperson of the liberal US senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination that Joe Biden ultimately secured.Nonetheless, while Khanna made clear that he believed Trump should have to answer the various charges against him, the Californian said the timing of exactly when that happens is of the utmost importance.“My instinct on all of this is they’re not going to have trials in the middle of something that’s going to compromise a candidate’s ability to have a fair fight,” Khanna said. “I just don’t see that happening in our country.”He continued: “You can’t just say OK, because someone was president or someone is a candidate, that you’re above the law. Everyone is under the law, and that allegations, the evidence needs to be pursued. But what we’re discussing is the timing.“And I do think we need to make sure that in the timing, if Trump does emerge as the Republican nominee, that it does not compromise the ability to have a robust campaign schedule. And I imagine that the courts will take that into consider if he is the nominee.”Khanna’s comments come as Trump grapples with 91 criminal charges contained in four separate indictments related to subversion of the 2020 election which he lost to Biden, retention of classified information once he left the Oval Office and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump has denied wrongdoing and claims that he is being politically persecuted. Trials have been scheduled for next year, but it is not uncommon for such proceedings to be delayed – sometimes significantly.In his conversation with Hewitt, Khanna alluded to the possibility of trial delays, which often result from logistical complications that are commonplace even when the defendant is much less well-known than an ex-president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m not sure that that’s going to be the actual date at the end of the day,” Khanna said when Hewitt mentioned that one of the cases against Trump was set for trial on 4 March 2024, when many states have scheduled presidential primary voting. “There’s an ability to move it. I mean, let’s see what happens.”Khanna also brought up the possibility that one of the other candidates vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination ends up swiping it from Trump, even though polling shows that he holds a commanding lead in the contest.“You know, he may not be the nominee,” said Khanna, who has been in Congress since 2017. “I mean, that’s still – that has to be determined.” More

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      Biden privately admitted feeling ‘tired’ amid concerns about his age, book says

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      Amid relentless debate about whether at 80 Joe Biden is too old to be president or to complete an effective second term, an eagerly awaited book on his time in the White House reports that Biden has privately admitted to feeling “tired”, even as it describes his vast political experience as a vital asset.“His advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name,” Franklin Foer writes in The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future.“It was striking that he took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am. His public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.“In private, he would occasionally admit that he felt tired.”Foer does not cite a source for Biden’s reported private remarks but his book, according to its publisher, Penguin Random House, is based on “unparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades”.The Last Politician will be published in the US next week. On Tuesday, as the Atlantic published an excerpt on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Politico noted tight security around the release and anxiety in the White House.The Guardian obtained a copy.Biden’s age has been a constant of coverage since the former senator and vice-president entered the race to face Donald Trump in 2020. At 77, Biden beat Trump convincingly and became the oldest president ever elected. If Biden wins a second term next year, and completes four years in power, he will be 86 when he steps down.Republican candidates to face Biden have relentlessly focused on his age, with rightwing pundits piling in – despite the fact the clear Republican frontrunner, Trump, is 77 years old himself.But public polling has long showed concern about Biden’s age among Democratic voters. This week, the Associated Press and the Norc Center for Public Affairs showed 77% of respondents (89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats) saying Biden was too old to be effective if re-elected.In the same poll, only 51% (and just 29% of Republicans) said Trump’s age would be a problem if he returned to the Oval Office.Foer, a former editor of the New Republic, a progressive magazine, does not shy from the issue. But he does stress how Biden’s massive political experience – he won his US Senate seat in Delaware in 1972, chaired the Senate judiciary and foreign relations committees and was vice-president to Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017 – has given him unique strengths in the White House.Citing the Inflation Reduction Act and other attempts to address the climate crisis, Foer says Biden is not guilty of governing in the short term “because [he] will only inhabit the short term”, a failing of older politicians.In something of a backhanded compliment, Foer writes that Biden has sometimes muffed public remarks not because of the challenges of age, but because of “indiscipline and indecision” seen throughout his career.In the same passage in which he reports Biden’s admission to being tired, meanwhile, Foer says the president’s “wartime leadership”, regarding supporting Ukraine in its fight against the invading Russian army, “drew on his weathered instincts and his robust self-confidence”.Regarding Ukraine, Foer writes, “the advantages of having an older president were on display. He wasn’t just a leader of the coalition, he was the West’s father figure, whom foreign leaders could call for advice and look to for assurance.“It was his calming presence and his strategic clarity that helped lead the alliance to such an aggressive stance, which stymied authoritarianism on its front lines.“He was a man for his age.” More