Donald Trump

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares56 Views

    Georgia prosecutor confirms final criminal case against Trump is ‘over’

    by

    The case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia ended on Wednesday with a filing for dismissal by the state prosecutor who took over after the removal of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney.Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, confirmed to the Guardian that “it’s over”after superior court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page order on Wednesday dismissing the 2020 racketeering case. Skandalakis said he would be making no further comments about the matter.“The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow wrote in a message posted to X. “This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.”On Wednesday afternoon, Trump posted on Truth Social about the dismissal, saying: “This case should have never been brought in the first place… We have to hold responsible those who attempted to destroy our Legal System and Nation itself as they tried to use it to silence and imprison Political Opponents for protecting our Country, and exercising our FIRST AMENDMENT Rights. The few remaining Democrat Witch Hunts will soon meet the same embarrassing end.”In the long-winded post, Trump also lambasted Willis, Nathan Wade, Joe Biden and, as referenced above, the Democratic party.A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Biden in Georgia.The dismissal means that Trump no longer faces prosecution after his call in which he asked the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the US election results in Georgia.Special counsel Jack Smith had charged Trump with federal crimes of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Smith dropped both cases after Trump won the White House last year, citing longstanding justice department policy against the indictment of a sitting president. Smith himself is now the target of a Hatch Act investigation by the office of special counsel at the Department of Justice.Trump’s conviction on felony charges in New York for making hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election resulted in an unconditional discharge by the court after his election, sparing him any punishment.The justice department attempted to indict the New York attorney general, Letitia James, on charges of bank fraud and making false statements in Virginia; a federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James and James Comey on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the cases was unlawfully appointed.The Georgia case remained the only criminal prosecution of Trump still standing, but Willis’s disqualification by the Georgia supreme court doomed the effort. The court ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.Georgia’s supreme court sent the case to Skandalakis with instructions to find a new prosecutor, but that proved to be a struggle. With a 14 November deadline to act set by McAfee looming and no willing takers, Skandalakis appointed himself.Despite the dismissal, four people pleaded guilty before the case imploded. Trump had pleaded not guilty, but was also protected from state-level prosecutions while president. Fourteen other defendants remained subject to prosecution.Trump pardoned 77 people associated with the fake electors affair, including his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia case. None of them faced federal charges, rendering the move largely symbolic. He did not pardon himself. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares59 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Ignoring minorities is our original sin’: the complex roots of Nigeria’s security crisis

      by

      “If they explain Nigeria to you and you understand it, they didn’t explain it well enough”. So goes the maxim for trying to parse Nigeria’s labyrinthine political dynamics. A security crisis has engulfed the country, catching the attention of the US president in the process. With the help of our West Africa correspondent, Eromo Egbejule, I’ll try to get to the bottom of what is happening. The marginalisation of Nigeria’s minoritiesView image in fullscreenOn Friday, more than 300 schoolchildren were kidnapped from a Catholic school in the country’s north-central Niger State. That was just the latest example of escalating violence, as the country has been plagued by crises including the killings of hundreds in Benue State and a recent live-streamed terrorist attack on worshippers at a church in Kwara State. Earlier this month, Donald Trump threatened to invade, citing an ongoing ‘‘Christian genocide”, while Trinidadian hip-hop star Nicki Minaj spoke at a UN event in New York spotlighting Christian persecution.After Minaj’s address at the UN, Rolling Stone published an article claiming that “Nicki’s claims of extremism against Nigerian Christians … aren’t backed by any data.” The article has not been received well by many Nigerians online, who have argued that westerners are weighing in with unwarranted authority. “To start, there is religious persecution in Nigeria,” Eromo says.“The dominant Islamic class, entrenched by the 18th-century Fulani scholar Usman dan Fodio, proposed a much stricter version of Islam, which is what influenced the implementation of Sharia Law in 12 states after Nigeria returned to democracy, from 1999 to the early 2000s. And so some of those who haven’t adhered to that have been killed and displaced.”This not only affects Christians – Muslim groups are also impacted if they are not seen as Muslim proper. In the north there are Sunni groups attacking Shia groups, who are viewed as heretics by extremists such as Boko Haram.The country’s middle belt, a site of much of this violence, has “a predominance of minorities”. “Many Nigerian crises are essentially about the marginalisation of political, ethnic and religious minorities. Such minorities feel whatever little resources they have left are being taken away by the majority or state-backed minorities,” Eromo says. “It’s just that the most colourful manifestation of this marginalisation is between Christians and Muslims, and most minorities in the middle belt are Christian.” While there are significant Muslim casualties, this does not undermine the reality of religious persecution against Christians in Nigerian states such as Benue and Kaduna; but it should be seen as one aspect in a broader quagmire of domination.The herder-farmer conflictView image in fullscreenNigeria’s security crisis differs significantly by region. The most notable thus far has been Boko Haram’s insurgency in the north-east, but it is the herder-farmer conflict, which has been especially prominent in the middle belt, that has largely been extrapolated into a narrative of “Christian genocide”. There is little cattle ranching in Nigeria, due to a resistance in uptake of ranches and the prevalence of nomadic cattle herds. The Fulani herdsmen historically had a more symbiotic relationship with non-Fulani farmers, but this has become strained by resource competition and exploitation by criminal groups.Climate change, desertification and deforestation have all exacerbated the problem, as Fulani herdsmen travel farther south. And there is the rapid development of former herding trails. “Abuja used to be part of the big grazing roads in the 1960s, but now it is the capital, there’s malls and complexes where you used to take your cows through.” What this has left is a series of grievances and conflicts, and with a lack of functioning state policing to calm the problems, the result is large graveyards. These herdsmen and militias also have access to more complicated and sophisticated weaponry, with conflicts in the Sahel region fuelling the proliferation of unsecured weapon stockpiles. This has led to an asymmetric conflict with Christian farmers, who often only have machetes.A centralised power with little federal oversightView image in fullscreenEromo says that Nigeria has repeatedly failed to get to grips with insurgent violence because of a centralised government. “Abuja has all of the power, and there’s a lot of ungoverned, or under governed, spaces.” He also points to the lack of state police. He says that “Nigeria’s big problem” is “ignoring the minorities and focusing on regime security. It’s Nigeria’s original sin.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEromo continues: “Intelligence sharing is terrible. And so in all of these forests across the middle belt, north-east and into the north-west, there’s space for non-state actors to take over and to plan.” Indeed it was in Sambisa forest that the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls were held by Boko Haram. “So you have ideological criminals who are persecuting the religious, political and ethnic minorities. Then you have commercial criminals looking for money. There’s just so many groups – which is why the catch-all term is ‘bandits’.” The problem is also obfuscated by non-herder Fulani-speaking criminals exploiting resource conflicts and stereotypes.***‘Data is a luxury in Nigeria’View image in fullscreenThere are significant blind spots in the country’s data collection, hence calls for a unified national database. “Data is a luxury in Nigeria,” Eromo says. “There’s never enough data, no one even truly knows the true size of the economy, it’s just inshallah and vibes. Nigeria is so big, there’s forests where there’s no network, so sometimes you hear of atrocities 10 days later when a person escapes. Nigeria doesn’t even know how many people it has, we see an estimated 220 million, it could be less, it could be more. It’s been a problem spanning more than 100 years, since the first British census of Nigeria in 1921.”So the real extent of the persecution is not clear. “What if the people on the ground are seeing things that the rest of us don’t see?” Eromo says. “We have to tread carefully.”Religious persecution also cannot always be neatly divided from other motives. For example, Eromo tells me that the targeted abduction of Nigerian priests amounts to religious persecution. But priests are “economically important in small communities” and attract a higher ransom from church attendants as well as the Christian diaspora. “Some Imams have also been targeted, but people are more likely to pay for a priest.”***Where now for Nigeria?View image in fullscreenThere is no singular resolution for a country whose problems are too intricate and myriad to ever be done justice in this analysis. Is American intervention the answer? Certainly not. But I am loth to criticise the Nigerians who have echoed calls for US intervention. At the very least, perhaps such international embarrassment might wake up the Nigerian government. The narrative might be isolated from nuance, but that is understandably not the concern of victims and survivors. Why would Nigeria’s ignored minorities not embrace a moment of global attention? More

    • 138 Shares63 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump envoy Witkoff reportedly advised Kremlin official on Ukraine peace deal

      by

      Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff told a senior Kremlin official last month that achieving peace in Ukraine would require Russia gaining control of Donetsk and potentially a separate territorial exchange, according to a recording of their conversation obtained by Bloomberg.In the 14 October phone call with Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Witkoff said he believed the land concessions were necessary all while advising Ushakov to congratulate Trump and frame discussions more optimistically.“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff told Ushakov during the five-minute conversation, according to Bloomberg’s transcript. “But I’m saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here.”The envoy also offered tactical guidance on how Putin should raise the subject with Trump, including suggestions about scheduling a Trump-Putin telephone conversation before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s White House visit later that week.On Wednesday, Ushakov appeared to confirm the authenticity of the phone conversation, telling Russian state TV that the leak was probably an attempt to “hinder” the talks.“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,” Ushakov said.The White House did not dispute the veracity of the transcript, and Trump described Witkoff’s reported approach to the Russians in the call as “standard” negotiating procedure.“He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s got to sell Ukraine to Russia,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One as he flew to his home in Florida on Tuesday night. “That’s what a dealmaker does.”The recording offers a direct insight into Witkoff’s negotiating approach and appears to reveal the origins of the controversial 28-point peace proposal that emerged earlier in November.On the call, Witkoff, who recently helped broker the Gaza ceasefire agreement, suggested Moscow and Washington develop a joint peace framework modelled on that deal. “We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you,” he said.Ushakov appeared to take some of the advice onboard. Putin “will congratulate” and will say: “Mr Trump is a real peace man,” he said.The heavily criticised 28-point proposal would require Ukraine to cede the entire Donetsk region to Russia, including areas under Ukrainian control. Russia has not fully captured Donetsk.Those territories would become a demilitarized buffer zone recognised internationally as Russian, and the plan would also grant Russia control of Luhansk and Crimea while freezing battle lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.Putin said this month he believed the US plan could serve as the “basis for a final peaceful settlement”, though the Kremlin maintains it has not discussed the proposal in detail with Washington.The revelations come as Trump said on Tuesday he was sending Witkoff to meet Putin in Moscow, and the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, to meet with the Ukrainians – ahead of a possible White House meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday.“I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.The US has pushed Ukraine to accept the framework as the foundation for ending the nearly four-year conflict, though Ukrainian officials have insisted they will not recognise Russian control of occupied territories or accept limits on their military forces.The phone conversation took place as Trump’s stance toward Moscow appeared to be hardening. On the same day as the Witkoff-Ushakov call, Trump voiced frustration with Putin’s unwillingness to end the war, saying: “I don’t know why he continues with this war. He just doesn’t want to end that war. And I think it’s making him look very bad.”The Associated Press contributed to this report More

    • 175 Shares67 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: Pete Hegseth increases administration’s attacks on senator Mark Kelly

      by

      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, escalated attacks by Trump administration chiefs on Arizona senator Mark Kelly on Tuesday by ordering the secretary of the US navy to investigate “potentially unlawful comments” made by Kelly in a social media video with other lawmakers.Hegseth’s order came in the form of a memorandum to John Phelan asking the Navy secretary to review Kelly and a group of fellow Democrats’ comments in the video last week that sought to remind serving soldiers and intelligence officers that they have the right to refuse unlawful orders.Hegseth said in the memo that he wanted a brief from Phelan that he could review by 10 December.Pete Hegseth orders US navy to investigate Mark Kelly’s commentsThe Pentagon had issued a statement on Monday that it was investigating Kelly for possible breaches of military law.Kelly and the other Democrats have been accused by Donald Trump of “seditious behavior”, to which Kelly has responded that the US president is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against them as a “tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress”.The latest statement from the group, released by congressional lawmakers Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, confirmed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate sergeants at arms requesting interviews with them.Read the full storyTrump may have inadvertently issued mass pardon for 2020 voter fraud, experts sayDonald Trump may have inadvertently pardoned any citizen who committed voter fraud in 2020 when he granted a pardon to Rudy Giuliani and other allies for their efforts to overturn the election, legal experts say.The pardons of Giuliani and others who participated in the fake elector scheme earlier this month were largely symbolic since the federal government dismissed its criminal cases once Trump was elected. Many of those pardoned have faced criminal charges at the state level.Read the full storyUS to send envoy to Moscow to discuss proposals to end Ukraine warDonald Trump said he would send special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss developing proposals to end the Ukraine war, but despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points.The US president said negotiations had left “only a few remaining points of disagreement” but there was no breakthrough on the issues of territorial control and security guarantees and he dampened expectations of immediate peace summits.Read the full storyAnti-fascist groups named as US terror threats ‘barely exist’, experts sayExperts have told the Guardian the same anti-fascist groups the US state department recently named as foreign terrorist organizations and accused of “conspiring to undermine foundations of western civilization” barely qualify as groups, let alone terrorist organizations, and pose no active threat to Americans.“The whole thing is a bit ridiculous,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks extremist movements worldwide, “because the groups designated by the administration barely exist and certainly aren’t terrorists.”Read the full storyMajority of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, Pew study findsAfter receiving support from nearly half of Latino voters in the 2024 election, Trump had lost the backing of a majority surveyed in October. Pew found that 70% of Latinos “disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president”, while 65% disapprove of his administration’s approach to immigration and 61% believe his economic policies have worsened economic conditions.Trump won 48% of the Latino vote in 2024, up from 28% in 2016. Latinos, one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, account for one in five Americans.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Trump administration’s ICE raids across southern California have had disastrous effects on the region’s immigrants and swept up US citizens in the process, community leaders and residents said at a congressional hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.

      Jim Justice, the Republican US senator, and his wife have agreed to pay more than $5m that the couple owes in back taxes shortly after they were sued over the 16-year-old debt by the federal government.

      The BBC has been plunged into a new row over its treatment of Donald Trump, after an academic accused it of censoring his remarks about alleged corruption by the US president.

      Ralph Abraham, a top Louisiana health official who stopped promoting mass vaccination policies and once described Covid-19 vaccines as “dangerous”, has been appointed deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it was revealed on Tuesday.

      Investigators have identified the source of a leak in the Olympic pipeline two weeks after fuel was first spotted in a ditch near an Everett, Washington, blueberry farm.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 24 November 2025. More

    • 138 Shares41 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge orders Trump administration to provide bond hearings to detained migrants

      by

      A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump’s administration cannot impose mandatory detention on thousands of migrants held by US immigration authorities without first giving them an opportunity to seek release on bond.US district judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California, certified a nationwide class of individuals who were already living in the United States when they were detained and are legally entitled to a hearing to determine whether they can be released on bond while their deportation cases proceed.Sykes ruled last week that the Trump administration’s policy adopted in July of denying bond hearings to migrants detained during domestic enforcement operations in the US was illegal, joining dozens of other federal judges. While those decisions involved individual migrants or small groups, Sykes on Tuesday extended her ruling nationwide.About 65,000 people were in immigration detention in the US as of last week, according to government data.The Trump administration has argued that individuals’ differing circumstances required the issue to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but Sykes said that being deprived of the right to a bond hearing was an injury common to the class.“Such common injury can be resolved in a single stroke upon the determination that the new policy is in violation of (migrants’) due process rights,” wrote Sykes, an appointee of Joe Biden.The US Department of Justice and lawyers for the four migrants who filed the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed in immigration courts.Bucking a longstanding interpretation of the law, the Trump administration in July said that non-citizens already residing in the United States, and not only those who arrive at a port of entry at the border, qualify as applicants for admission.Sykes in her ruling last week disagreed, saying the law makes a clear distinction between existing US residents and new arrivals. More

    • 113 Shares63 Views

      in US Politics

      Gobble-degook: Trump talks turkey and trashes another presidential tradition

      by

      Don’t give up the day job. On Tuesday, Donald Trump came to the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House ready to serve up some political satire. It went about as well as you would expect.Like a startled turkey flapping in zigzags, the US president’s speech ricocheted bafflingly from topic to topic. He told jokes in the worst possible taste and watched them arc through the Rose Garden sky before landing with a thud. And on a day intended for charity and good cheer, he described a state governor as “a big, fat slob”.Trump has never met a presidential tradition he did not want to trash. For nearly eight decades, the turkey presentation has been a silly but reassuring ritual in which presidents offer a few bad puns and uplifting words about the state of the nation. They are not meant to make news.But this year, of course, things were different. Normally, two turkeys are in attendance following a public vote on which should be pardoned. On Tuesday, however, Gobble was present but Waddle was “missing in action”, as Trump put it – evidently a bird of the same feather as Marjorie Taylor Greene.The Rose Garden was transformed, its grass paved over with Mar-a-Lago-style slabs, while nearby was the presidential walk of fame, featuring tacky gold and framed portraits of Trump’s predecessors save for Joe Biden, replaced by an auto pen. Behind the president was a framed mirror in which a yellow crane could be seen at the site of the former East Wing.“I hope you like our new beautiful patio with matching stones at the White House,” said Trump after emerging from the Oval Office with the first lady, Melania, in light rain. “If it were grass today, you’d be sinking into the mud like they’ve done for many years, and you would be very unhappy.”It’s hard for Trump’s critics to accept that the man can be funny. At election campaign rallies, he can cut through the pretentiousness of politicians with a down-to-earth comment that strikes a chord with his audience. On this occasion, however, he lacked spontaneity, his wit was less rapier than baseball bat. The gags felt sour a day after a judge tossed out his justice department’s prosecution of political opponents.Trump rambled about a thorough investigation by Bondi and a host of departments “into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an auto pen last year for the turkey’s pardon.”If the president was expecting riotous laughter from an audience that included JD Vance and his wife, Usha, as well as attorney general Pam Bondi and “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth, he was disappointed. There was barely a chuckle.Nevertheless, he persisted. “I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined, that last year’s turkey pardons are totally invalid,” he said.Finally, some polite chuckles from the gathering. What a relief! But then Trump went and spoiled it by riffing on the pardon for Biden’s son Hunter and taking another dark turn.“The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located, and they were on their way to be processed – in other words, to be killed. But I’ve stopped that journey, and I am officially pardoning them, and they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner. We saved them in the nick of time,” he said.In his dark coat, suit and red tie, Trump was bombing. Would Melania or someone wield a hook to yank him off stage? The privilege of the presidency is that no one dares.Trump was doing “the weave”, drifting from nuclear power plants to border security, from car factories to AI, from tax cuts to the price of eggs. It was the biggest tonal misjudgment since he tried to tell military generals how to be tough guys.Finally, he got back to the turkeys. “When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them – well, I shouldn’t say this – I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy,” he said – a reference to Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that earned gentle mirth from the sycophants’ corner.“But then I realised I wouldn’t be pardoning them, I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn’t pardon them. I wouldn’t care what Melania told me: ‘Darling, I think it would be a nice thing to do.’ I won’t do it, darling.”Will next year’s pardoned turkeys be called Maxwell and Mountbatten?Trump boasted that, at more than 50lbs, his turkeys were bigger than those of his predecessors. He claimed that Robert Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, had certified them as the first-ever “Maha” [Make America Healthy Again] turkeys. He worried that Gobble might attack him and then, randomly, talked about immigration again.That led to the sickest witticism of the day: “Instead of pardoning, some of my more enthusiastic staffers were already drafting the paperwork to ship Gobble and Waddle straight to the terrorist confinement centre in El Salvador. And even those birds don’t want to be there. You know what I mean.”It was unfunny because it’s all too believable that Stephen Miller would try to send turkeys to the El Salvador mega-prison, along with kittens, puppies and cute rabbits. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt must have regretted bringing her infant son Nicholas to work.Indeed, Trump moved on to his draconian crackdown on crime in Chicago and Washington DC. “They burned this beautiful woman riding in a train,” was another phrase jarringly at odds with this once jovial occasion. Anger rising in his voice, he ditched a prewritten line about Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s weight and called him a “big, fat slob” before admitting that he could afford to lose a few pounds too.Then Trump walked over to Gobble, made his characteristically theatrical hand gestures and declared: “Gobble, I just want to tell you this – very important – you are hereby unconditionally pardoned!” He even appeared to do a turkey impression for a moment, then reached over to run his hand over the feathers, asking: “Who would want to harm this beautiful bird?”The future lame-duck president had delivered a box-office turkey. Had the nation of Mark Twain come to this? But no one in this audience of enablers was going to object. First they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they pretend to laugh at your authoritarian jokes. More

    • 125 Shares63 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats accuse Trump of ‘intimidation’ campaign as FBI seeks interviews

      by

      A group of Democrats accused by Donald Trump of “seditious behavior” have said that the US president is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against them as a “tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress”.The four politicians, along with two others, had made a video encouraging US military service members to resist unlawful orders – a message that angered Trump, who posted on social media that the group were “traitors” and thus could be jailed or even face the death penalty.The statement, released by congressional lawmakers Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, confirmed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate sergeants at arms requesting interviews with them.“No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our constitution,” they said, adding that they had each sworn an oath “to support and defend” the US constitution.“That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” they added.The statement deepens a dispute between the Trump administration and Democrats, including Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly and Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, over the video message, which urged the military and intelligence services members to “refuse illegal orders”.Slotkin said the FBI’s counter-terrorism division had notified the group that “they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us” and described the move as a “scare tactic” by Trump.“To be honest, the president’s reaction and the use of the FBI against us is exactly why we made the video,” she said.“He believes in using the federal government against his perceived adversaries, and he’s not afraid to use the arms of the government against people he disagrees with. He does not believe the law applies to him … which is exactly why we made the video, to give people some assurance that they weren’t alone as they watch this stuff unfold.”The Pentagon has also said it is conducting a review of misconduct allegations against Kelly that could, it said, result in him being recalled to active duty to face court-martial proceedings. More

    • 175 Shares63 Views

      in US Politics

      The Comey and James dismissals are a reminder of Trump’s lawlessness | Austin Sarat

      by

      Monday brought good news for two of Donald Trump’s most hated enemies: the former FBI director James Comey, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James. A federal judge dismissed the sham indictments the administration had obtained against them.Judge Cameron McGowan Currie reminded the president and his attorney general of the great lessons of a society governed by the rule of law: how things are done matters as much as what is done. Without fair procedures, no one can be safe from the arbitrary exercise of government power.This is never more apparent than when leaders target their political opponents and seek revenge against those who do not fall in line. The US is learning this lesson in real time as the Trump administration politicizes prosecution.Recall the president’s infamous 20 September direction to Pam Bondi, the US attorney general.“Pam,” Trump posted to Truth Social, “I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as the last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’“Then,” he continued, “we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past … I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot.”The president ended by making it clear what he wanted and why he wanted it. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Two days later, Bondi installed Halligan as interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia with an apparent mandate to go after Comey, James and others. Several days after that, Comey was indicted in federal court, accused of lying to Congress; the next month, James was indicted in a mortgage case. Both denied wrongdoing and said the cases were intended to punish them for past clashes with him.On Monday, Currie delivered a decisive rebuke to Trump and Bondi when she threw out the Comey and James indictments. She found that Halligan’s appointment violated the clear language of the statute governing such appointments and of the constitution itself.As a result, all of the actions flowing from her appointment, including the indictments of Comey and James, were “unlawful exercises of executive power”. While Currie left the door open for the administration to refile indictments against Comey and James, in Comey’s case, the time allowed under the applicable statute of limitations has run out.As the Washington Post notes, Currie’s decision is just the latest in a series of judicial rulings “disqualifying Trump’s interim U.S. attorney picks in New Jersey, Nevada, and Los Angeles”. Like her colleagues, Currie made clear that Trump’s Department of Justice had again distinguished itself by its dangerous combination of lawlessness and incompetence.Her opinion is good news for defenders of the rule of law. It should also strengthen the hand of other judges who want to push back against the administration’s vindictive prosecutions.Judges, like Currie, are never eager to dismiss an indictment issued by a grand jury. They are inclined to trust the grand jury process and are reluctant to cast aside the investment of time and resources that a good prosecutor makes in securing an indictment.In 1988, the supreme court held that, in most cases, dismissal of an indictment is appropriate only if errors in the handling of the grand jury process prejudiced a defendant by “substantially” influencing the decision to indict or raising “grave doubt” about whether the decision was free from such influence.As the attorney James M Burnham has written, this high bar “plays a central role in the ever-expanding, vague nature of federal criminal law because it largely eliminates the possibility of purely legal judicial opinions construing criminal statutes”. Burnham wants judges to be more active in policing indictments and making sure they are legally justified.Currie did just that. She found that Halligan lacked the authority to seek indictments of Comey or James because the justice department had not followed the applicable law governing the appointment of interim US attorneys. That law is, in her words, “unambiguous”.It allows the attorney general to appoint an interim US attorney, who can serve for a period of 120 days. It falls to a federal district court, not the administration, to choose a successor or extend the term of the current interim appointee – as happened with Halligan’s predecessor.The purpose of the law, Currie noted, was to prevent the president from circumventing the constitutional requirement that US attorneys go through a Senate confirmation process by making a series of interim appointments back-to-back.But Senate confirmation takes time. Alas, how inconvenient when the president demands that his enemies must be brought to justice now.Bondi may have known what the law required when she appointed Halligan to do the president’s bidding. But she seems to interpret her role as serving Trump and pushing the outer boundaries of the law until a judge has the temerity to tell her she can’t.Like federal judges in other cases, that is what Currie did. Along the way, the judge noted that Halligan was a “White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience”, who appeared alone before the grand jury after career prosecutors in her office concluded that neither had committed any crime.In the end, the judge, having pointed out the lawlessness and incompetence that accompanied Halligan’s appointment and the Comey and James indictments, reminded Bondi and the president that the legal requirements governing appointments, as the supreme court once said, are “more than a matter of etiquette or protocol”. No matter how much the president insists or how many all-caps messages he posts to Truth Social, those requirements cannot be discarded, she concluded, to suit the president, since they are “among the significant structural safeguards of the constitutional scheme”.

      Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty More

    • 138 Shares71 Views

      in US Politics

      Is the Democratic party embracing Bernie Sanders-style politics? | Dustin Guastella

      by

      Since the Democrats’ sweeping victories on 4 November, a strange thing has happened among the party factions: a semblance of unity has emerged.At first, “affordability” became the slogan of rapprochement. Moderates, populists and socialists agreed Democrats must campaign around the cost-of-living crisis and hang the broken economy around Donald Trump’s neck.At the same time party grandees – left, right and center – quietly agreed to ditch wokeness and embrace common-sense appeals to American solidarity and equality. Ideologically, we see the same convergence. Last week, writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma argued that the left has pulled the moderates toward populism, while the centrists have won debates on a number of cultural issues.And this week, James Carville – the bête noire of every leftwing Democrat and Bernie Sanders voter, the architect of Clintonian centrism – writes in the New York Times that he is become a populist.Here is Carville (James Carville!) describing what Democrats should do:“I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”Carville advocates a program that includes raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour (blowing past the old progressive demand of $15 an hour), universal childcare, free university education, and major investments in utilities. But more important than the suite of policies itself, the editorial signals to Democratic bigwigs that populism has won. A decade after he announced his first campaign for president, it seems that Sanders has won his crusade for the soul of the Democratic party.Winning consensus on the need for a “seismic” economic program is no small feat and it will go a long way to helping Democrats win back their working-class base. Still, there is a lot of work to be done and many pitfalls along the way.First, progressives must resist the temptation, so attractive to scorned factions, to reject centrist overtures. There is a danger that if moderates fulsomely embrace a social populist program, figures on the left will attempt to differentiate themselves by reanimating the dead-end politics of fringe woke causes.But being lefter-than-thou serves no one and would only succeed in helping the right paint the left as a collection of sky-pilots, eggheads, and weirdos. This is, in part, the lesson of the old Socialist party of Norman Thomas. Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the political narrative, and much of the practical program, of the socialists of his day. However, instead of embracing FDR’s social-democratic turn, Thomas & co tried more and more to distinguish themselves and discredit Roosevelt claiming that he only “carried out the socialist program on a stretcher”.Some on the left attacked Roosevelt’s enormously popular New Deal and lambasted Democrats as cynics and opportunists. The result was to hasten the political irrelevance of the very figures most responsible for inspiring a great populist revival in the 1930s. If today’s left wants to avoid a similar fate, they should embrace the new populists of the center and work with them to craft visionary social policy. And they should have the humility to revise their own opinions when the centrists have a point.Second, the turn toward populism will remain incomplete until party leaders are willing to stridently declare war on the economic elite – the same elite who fill the campaign coffers of powerful Democrats. Not only is it essential for candidates to draw lines between themselves and the very rich to demonstrate their populist convictions, but without naming the “millionaires and billionaires” as the cause of so much economic misery, Democrats will be unable to mount a serious challenge to rule by the rich.Many moderates who have lately flirted with populism have as yet been unwilling to point the finger at Wall Street and Silicon Valley as the villains of the contemporary order. Yet, it is precisely because the ultra-wealthy have hijacked American society that so many working-class Americans struggle to pay their bills. The fact is we cannot win a society that is more equal and more prosperous without directly challenging the plutocrats at the top.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFinally, policy matters. Becoming the party of “economic rage” is a good way to win elections but to fix the crisis (crises?), the new social populism must go beyond the standard welfare state toolbox. Carville and other newfound populists have made a huge political leap in embracing a suite of big, new public services and for that they should be commended. Yet it isn’t enough.No doubt, we urgently need bold redistributive programs to rebalance income and wealth and to address the persistent cost crunch. But these alone will not fix our broken economy. Nor are such programs popular enough to propel a populist takeover in Washington. To get a sense of just what is wrong, consider that since Bill Clinton was president, we have shed some 7m middle-income jobs in manufacturing, and in an exaggerated inverse-proportion we have gained some 700 billionaires.If a renewed leftwing populism is to succeed it needs to address this. We need to de-globalize the economy, to disentangle the home market from the increasingly dysfunctional world market. We need to bring manufacturing home and reindustrialize the rustbelt.We need to reign in and repatriate the hyper-global banking sector. We need to rebuild American infrastructure from coast to coast. And we need to strengthen the power of labor on the shop floor by leveling the legal playing field between workers and employers. All of this would amount to a democratic reorganization of the political economy away from the global rich and toward the domestic working class.This would be a populism worthy of the name and if moderate Democrats are embracing such a call, they ought to be welcomed with open arms. And if the hour isn’t too late, this kind of appeal might be the only chance Democrats have of winning back the working class and retaking Washington.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More