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      ‘He believes in power and chaos’: alarm as Steve Bannon plots to propel Trump

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      Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.The former White House chief strategist may not be in daily contact with Trump any more but it scarcely matters: he is a vital source for the far-right ecosystem that shapes and animates the “Make America great again” (Maga) base.Bannon, 70, is currently appealing a criminal conviction and four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The committee heard evidence that Trump spoke to Bannon at least twice on January 5 and predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.In the meantime, he hosts a regular podcast called War Room, which propagates false narratives about the 2020 election and coronavirus vaccines but is given a veneer of respectability by guests including Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, and other senior politicians.A pop-up War Room studio commanded a prime location at CPAC last week and featured guests such as Liz Truss, the former British prime minister. On the main stage, Bannon compared Trump to the Roman general Cincinnatus and declared: “His fate and destiny is to have the greatest political comeback in American history from November 5 to drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.“Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, OK? And on 20 January of 2025 we’re going to take out the trash.”The Maga-regalia wearing crowd went wild, cementing Bannon’s status as a tribune of the movement heading into the 2024 presidential election.Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “At the moment Steve Bannon is the id of the American right and, if we’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s don’t assume because somebody sounds extreme and unhinged that they will not be influential in this party.”Sykes makes an analogy with drug dealers competing with each other by selling purer and stronger forms of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant. “Steve Bannon is still peddling the most powerful meth out there.“Donald Trump does not look at Steve Bannon and think this guy is unhinged; he’s looking at Steve Bannon and saying this is exactly what I want to hear from my supporters. Steve Bannon knows what he’s doing and he will act as a gravitational pull on the rest of the right because they have to match him.”Unkempt and unpolished, Bannon is the opposite of a career politician. He is a former naval officer, Goldman Sachs investment banker and film producer. He was executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement that has embraced racism and antisemitism, and became chairman of Trump’s 2016 winning election campaign.His tenure at the White House was short and acrimonious as he clashed with the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who later described him as a “toxic” presence who accused him of “undermining the president’s agenda”. Trump himself may have been piqued by how much media attention Bannon was receiving and eventually branded him “Sloppy Steve”.But his ideas have proved harder to kill. Bannon continues to advocate the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, a radical downsizing of federal government bureaucracy, and an isolationist “America first” policy that he insists would keep the country out of a third world war. Such notions are percolating through to Republicans in Congress who oppose further military aid to Ukraine.Bannon also helps set the narrative on Trump’s signature issue, border security, blaming undocumented immigrants for crime, even thought studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other US residents, and advocating mass deportations as a solution.Bannon argues that biggest losers from the record influx of immigrants is the Black and Latino working class. “Every Black person, every Hispanic person in our country, vote for Trump,” Bannon said at CPAC last Saturday. “Trump will set you free because right now they’re enslaving you.”He then assured his overwhelmingly white audience: “They call you racist, they call you xenophobic, they call you nativist. Nothing could be further from the truth because they can’t win the intellectual argument. What they have to do is try to smear you and you don’t care because you know that’s not true.”Bannon has a sign on his mantelpiece that says, “There are no conspiracies but there are no coincidences” – placing him in a twilight zone between conspiracy theories and otherwise. War Room is his biggest mouthpiece. Last year a study by the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington found that almost 20% of its episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, making it a bigger disinformation spreader than any other political podcast.Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow who led the research, said War Room had been one of the most prominent platforms for election denialism even after networks such as Fox News pulled back. “The way he approaches things that are more conspiratorial in nature… he’s quite effective at considering the questions in a way that makes the audience think it’s not immediately evident that he’s confirming them. There’s this idea that he seems to be hearing all sides of the conversation.”As America braces for another divisive and volatile election, longtime Trump critics warn that Bannon still casts a long shadow. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said: “Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party.“He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”Asked what a Bannon return to the White House would mean, Wilson replied: “Concentration camps. This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”Bannon has spent years courting far-right nationalist movements around the world and the results were on vivid display at CPAC. Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that a decade ago he was the sole foreign-born speaker at the conference but now it has become a hub for populists from countries including Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary and Spain.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “To his credit, and to America’s detriment, he was one of the first people to look outside of the American political system to find like minded public high-profile figures in foreign counties like Nigel Farage to play an outsized role in being messengers.”Truss, who was removed as prime minister after just 50 days, found common cause with Bannon in blaming a “deep state” supposedly dominated by the left. Bardella, a former Breitbart News spokesperson and Republican congressional aide, added: “For people like Farage and Liz Truss, Bannon extends to them a second lease on life. They’ve peaked in terms of their public service career; there’s nothing left for them to be able to realistically attain.“Here comes Bannon with this direct line to one of the two most powerful forces in American politics in Donald Trump: we will elevate you, you will have status, you will have the perception of influence, you again will be an influencer. These people are desperate for relevancy Bannon is giving them that combination of relevancy and legitimacy and access to power.” More

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      Donald Trump sweeps Michigan’s Republican party convention

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      Donald Trump swept at the Michigan Republican party convention, where the party is poised to award all 39 delegates up for grabs to the former president.The delegates awarded today will fuel Trump ahead of Tuesday, 5 March, when 15 states will hold primaries and Trump’s nomination could be all but decided. The Michigan state party delegates met on Saturday at the sprawling Amway Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, huddling in 13 separate meeting rooms representing the state’s 13 congressional districts.Their near-uniform support for Trump at today’s convention eclipsed the support the former president earned in the primary, when former UN ambassador Nikki Haley garnered about 26% of the vote. She did not win any delegates awarded on Saturday for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the party will officially nominate a candidate for the presidential election in November.The Michigan Republican party’s process for awarding delegates to the national committee was complicated this year: the Democratic-controlled state legislature decided to hold the presidential primaries early. This prompted the state Republican party to create a “hybrid” model, holding a primary on 27 February and a convention four days later to remain in compliance with the national party’s rules.The convention on Saturday at times took on the tone of a campaign rally.“President Trump, I’m going to help you win Michigan,” exclaimed Bernadette Smith, a Michigan Republican party activist running to be Michigan’s Republican National Convention committeewoman, during a speech at the convention Saturday. “I’m from Detroit – I was raised in Detroit,” said Smith, to cheers. “Detroit is red, they just don’t know it yet.”But if delegates found common cause today, it was only in their unyielding support for Trump. The Michigan Republican party has been split for months over interpersonal feuds in the county chapters, the role of Christian nationalism in the party at large and questions about how to salvage the party from financial collapse.The divisions fomenting in the party broke out into the open this year in a leadership dispute when a group opposing the former Michigan GOP chair, Kristina Karamo, voted to oust her in January. The Republican National Committee in February recognized Pete Hoekstra, a close Trump ally whom Karamo’s opponents elected to chair the party, as the rightful leader of the Michigan GOP.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKaramo and her allies refused to accept defeat, vowing to hold a separate convention in Detroit – which fell apart only after a judge ruled on Tuesday that Karamo had been properly removed from her seat and forbade her from using official Michigan GOP social media accounts or accessing its finances. More

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      Joe Biden’s disapproval rating reaches new high, according to new poll

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      Strong voter disapproval of Joe Biden’s job performance has reached 47% – the highest negative polling number at any point in his presidency, according to a survey published on Saturday.The Siena College-conducted poll, commissioned by the New York Times, showed that Biden currently lags behind likely Republican candidate Donald Trump 43% to 48% in registered voters nationally.The survey found that just one in four voters (24%) think the country is moving in the right direction – a key question in the run-up to a national election – and more than twice as many voters said that Biden’s policies had personally hurt them than those who said they had helped.Of the two-thirds of the country that feels the nation is headed in the wrong direction, the poll found that 63% said they would vote for Trump.Conducted at the end of February, these results come as the Biden re-election campaign attempts to change the narrative on voter concerns about the Democrat candidate’s age and mental acuity and his handling of foreign policy and the economy. A majority of voters think the economy is in poor condition, the polling showed.The survey is only the latest to reveal the depths of voter dissatisfaction with the president. Last week, a Bloomberg News poll found Biden trailing Trump in several critical states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.In the Bloomberg survey, a large share of the respondents voiced concerns with Biden’s age and a significant percentage said Trump was dangerous, and suggested the number of “double haters”, as pollsters call voters who approve of neither candidate, is significant.Those findings were broadly repeated in Saturday’s Times poll. Biden’s approval rating came in at 38%, with Trump faring better with a 44% favorable rating.Nineteen per cent of voters said they disapproved of both men, but among them Biden is slightly less hated, with a spread of 7% between Biden (38%) and Trump (45%). That spread, according to the Times, is significant: the candidate less disliked by “double haters” has won the last two presidential elections.Those findings may bolster what Democrat and Republican pollsters drew from recent primary voting.In South Carolina last week, the number of primary voters who backed Republican contender Nikki Haley but said they would never vote for Trump is perceived to represent the margin that will ensure Trump’s defeat to Biden in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the New York Times poll provides an array of red warning lights for the Biden campaign, including signals that the Democratic party coalition of female, Black and Latino voters is fraying.Among working-class, non-university-educated voters of color, Biden is only narrowly leading, 47% to Trump’s 41%, the poll found. Four years ago, Biden held a 50-point lead.Last week, Trump suggested that his legal problems has won him support among Black voters.“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,” he told the Black Conservative Federation gala in South Carolina. “A lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.” More

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      What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

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      In the Alabama state supreme court case that dubbed embryos “extrauterine children” and imperiled the future of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state, the first reference to the Bible arrives on page 33.“The principle itself – that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification – has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God’,” the Alabama supreme court justice Tom Parker wrote in an opinion that concurred with the majority. Attributing the idea to the Book of Genesis, Parker’s opinion continued to cite the Bible as well as such venerable Christian theologians as John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas.For experts, Parker’s words were a stunningly open embrace of Christian nationalism, or the idea that the United States should be an explicitly Christian country and its laws should reflect that.“He framed it entirely assuming that the state of Alabama is a theocracy, and that that is a legitimate way of evaluating laws and policies,” said Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida professor who studies religion and culture. “It looks like he decided to just dismiss the history of first amendment religious freedom jurisprudence at the federal level, and assume that it just doesn’t apply to Alabama.”View image in fullscreenDebates over the centrality of Christianity in US life have raged since the founding of the country. But now that Roe v Wade has been overturned and Donald Trump is once again running for president, observers say Christian nationalism has gained a stronger foothold within US politics – and its supporters have grown bolder.“They’re sort of saying the quiet parts out loud,” said Paul Djupe, who studies Christian nationalism as the chair of data for political research at Denison University in Ohio, of Parker’s decision.Today, 30% of Americans support tenets of Christian nationalism, according to a study released earlier this week from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Researchers asked more than 22,000 Americans how much they agreed with statements such as: “The US government should declare America a Christian nation”; “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American”’; and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” Ultimately, about 10% of Americans qualify as “adherents” to Christian nationalism, and another 20% are “sympathizers”.White evangelicals are particularly likely to support Christian nationalism: 66% hold Christian nationalist views.View image in fullscreenPRRI did not ask whether people self-identify as Christian nationalists, because many people who may hold those beliefs shy away from the divisive label. Yet over the last several years, conservatives at the local, state and federal level have notched major legal and political victories that have cleared the way for Christian nationalist priorities such as the overturning of Roe v Wade and the proliferation of efforts targeting sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and the separation of church and state in schools. Now, supporters are seeing further opportunity in a potential second Trump term. Whether someone openly claims the label of “Christian nationalist” is almost beside the point, Ingersoll said.“There are all kinds of people who are influenced by it in ways that they’re not even aware of,” Ingersoll said. “Most people couldn’t tell you who Thomas Aquinas was, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t have to know who that is to have been shaped by a form of Christianity that arose from his work. And I think that happens with Christian nationalism all over the place. It’s a way of shaping the public discourse.”Parker has ties to proponents of the “Seven Mountain Mandate”, a theological approach that once seemed fringe within evangelicalism but is now gaining traction. Backed by a network of nondenominational, charismatic Christians known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this mandate calls on its adherents to establish what they believe to be God’s kingdom over the seven core areas of society, including the government. On 16 February, the day the Alabama supreme court issued its ruling, a prominent proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate released an interview with Parker.View image in fullscreen“God created government and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others is heartbreaking,” Parker said in the interview, whose existence was first reported by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. The interview took place in front of a framed copy of the Bill of Rights.A spokesperson for the Alabama state supreme court did not immediately return a request for comment from Parker.“It is clear that in the US, there have been two competing visions of the country,” said Robert P Jones, PRRI’s president and the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. “They’re mutually incompatible visions of the country, but they really have been: are we a pluralistic democracy, where everybody stands on equal footing before the law, or are we a promised land for European Christians?”‘I’m going to be your defender’Support for Christian nationalism is deeply linked to partisan politics. Residents of red states are far more likely to espouse Christian nationalist beliefs; in Alabama, 47% of people are adherents of or at least sympathetic to Christian nationalism, according to the PRRI survey. More than half of Republicans also hold Christian nationalist beliefs, compared with a quarter of independents and just 16% of Democrats.According to Jones and the PRRI survey, Christian nationalists’ top litmus tests for politicians are support for access to guns and opposition to immigration, although they are also very likely to say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.The 2015 US supreme court decision Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, sparked a huge backlash among many conservative Christians. Galvanized by the ruling, they threw their considerable electoral power behind Trump, who had announced his presidential candidacy just days before Obergefell was decided.View image in fullscreen“Conservative Christians have long had this kind of worldview that they’re embattled by the broader culture,” Djupe said. The Obergefell decision “was a huge spur and Trump played with it. He came on the scene to run for president about the exact same time saying: ‘You’re about to be persecuted. I’m going to be your defender.’”Trump went to great lengths to reward rightwing Christians for their support. According to one analysis, Trump’s judicial appointees were more than 97% Christian and a majority had some kind of affiliation with a religious group such as churches, the Christian law firm the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Catholic fraternal order the Knights of Columbus – far higher rates than judges who were appointed by Democrats or other Republicans. (The judges were no less well-credentialed.) Trump-appointed judges were also much likelier to vote in favor of Christian and Jewish plaintiffs embroiled in cases over the free exercise of religion.Trump also appointed three of the six US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe. The supreme court’s new conservative majority has steadily eroded the separation of church and state embedded in the US constitution.View image in fullscreenThe post-Roe skirmish over abortion rights illustrates another key element of a Christian nationalist worldview: the tendency to not only cast issues in binary terms, but to believe that the opposing side is a force of literal evil.“If you believe that babies are being murdered – which is the rhetoric that you often find in these ‘pro-life’, anti-abortion circles – if you believe that, then that is a very troubling and even diabolical activity,” said Matthew Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and author of an upcoming book about Christian extremism, The Violent Take It by Force. “There’s no dialogue with the other side … in their mind, you never compromise with demons. You exorcise demons.”Christian nationalists are roughly twice as likely as other Americans to believe that political violence is justified, according to the PRRI survey.‘They’re seeing the energy’In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, openly embraced Christian nationalism. “We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”But Greene is something of an outlier. Powerful organizations within the Christian legal movement, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, are not yoked to the charismatic strain of evangelical Christianity that is today more closely linked to Christian nationalism, according to Djupe – even if they often work toward similar aims.View image in fullscreenStill, Djupe believes that the energized charismatic movement is pulling other Christian groups further to the right. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, has ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, which has also been linked to Trump’s rise. Johnson once suggested that no-fault divorces were responsible for school shootings.“They’re seeing the energy, they’re seeing the growth among charismatics, and saying, ‘Hey, you know, there’s clearly something to that formula that’s influential,” Djupe said. I think they’re starting to adopt it.”View image in fullscreenPolitico reported last week that the Center for Renewing America, a rightwing thinktank close to the former president, is drawing up plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas throughout a second Trump administration. The Center’s president, Russell Vought, has also advised another powerful conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, on its Project 2025, a playbook of proposals for a Trump administration 2.0, according to Politico.If Trump does win in November, experts fear what may happen next.“This is a worldview that does cast political struggles into an a kind of apocalyptic struggle between good and evil,” Jones said. “We stop thinking about our fellow citizens as political opponents and we start seeing them as existential enemies. And that really, at the end of the day, is poison to the blood of democracy.” More

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      A far-right US youth group is ramping up its movement to back election deniers

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      Turning Point USA, a far-right youth group known for its fundraising prowess and for promoting election-conspiracy theories, is mounting a multimillion-dollar mobilization drive via its advocacy arm in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.Arizona-based TPUSA, a non-profit co-founded in 2012 by then 18-year-old Charlie Kirk that’s become a key ally in Donald Trump’s Maga ecosystem, has launched the drive through Turning Point Action, which has raised tens of millions of dollars and is hiring hundreds of full-time employees in the three states, according to its spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet.While its current fundraising drive is to support the voter-outreach efforts, TP Action is likely to help finance other political advocacy initiatives, including ousting some key Arizona election officials who disputed claims of election fraud in 2020.Dubbed “chase the vote”, the drive is being supplemented by another get-out-the-vote campaign that TP Action is starting with the Christian nationalist and televangelist Lance Wallnau.Together with Wallnau and some other Maga allies like Moms for America, TP Action is planning a “courage tour” in the same three swing states to enlist pastors and their churches in the voter-mobilization drive, which will include booths in churches to register voters.TP Action’s fledgling campaign is aimed at identifying and registering “patriotic” voters, encouraging early voting and getting voters to the polls in November, according to its website. Billed as the “first and most robust conservative ballot-chasing operation”, TP Action’s drive could benefit Trump and Maga-allied candidates in the three states.The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”Kolvet pushed back on criticism of the group’s 2022 results, noting that TP Action only spent $500,000 in total in several states in 2022, but that this year it intends to mount a much better-financed and robust effort, hiring hundreds of full-time employees for its “chase the vote” drive and seeking to raise an eye-popping $108m dollars.View image in fullscreenTP Action’s aggressive fundraising could prove useful in other election-related projects this year that the group is likely to get involved with.Austin Smith, a state legislator and TP Action’s enterprise director, in a tweet this week signaled an effort to oust several key election officials in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, in primaries this July.Smith said “[we] need to clean house in Maricopa county” and cited, among other officers, the county recorder, the Republican lawyer Stephen Richer, who rejected unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud in 2020 and 2022.Kolvet said TP Action to date hasn’t joined the effort, but added that “it’s more likely than not we’ll get involved in some of these races. We’re going to get behind conservative candidates.”One key example: TP Action in February endorsed Trump loyalist Kari Lake’s 2024 Arizona senate campaign.Kirk and TPUSA’s strong fundraising talents could prove helpful to TP Action’s current drive. TPUSA’s annual revenues have soared in recent years with help from leading rightwing donors including the Bradley Impact Fund, which chipped in $7.8m in 2022, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and dark-money behemoth Donors Trust.TPUSA has also benefited mightily from hosting several gaudy gatherings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and in tony Arizona venues that have drawn some big donors and conservative stars like the representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, and Don Trump Jr.These events and mega-donor checks have helped make TPUSA a fundraising goliath: the group’s revenues soared from $39.8m dollars in 2020 to $55.8m in 2021 and $80.6m in 2022, according to public records.TPUSA now employs 450 people and has broadened its focus from fighting left and “woke” influence on campuses to other culture war fronts by setting up a Turning Point Faith unit that’s hosted large gatherings at churches featuring Wallnau and other Christian nationalist figures.Notwithstanding TPUSA’s fundraising successes, the organization and Kirk have been buffeted by criticism on multiple fronts. Late last year, Kirk ignited a political firestorm in mainstream GOP circles by using his eponymous radio show and an Arizona bash to make incendiary attacks on the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, which recycled old and unverified slurs about King, and disparaged Black airline pilots.During a major TPUSA event in Arizona in December, Kirk opined that “MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe.”“Kirk’s cheapening of Martin Luther King’s legacy and disparaging remarks about Black pilots hurt our cause, and don’t help it,” Salmon of Arizona said, adding that Kirk is “one of the strongest voices for factionalism in the party”.Other GOP veterans also voiced harsh critiques.“Kirk chases conspiracies that animate his followers and generate funds,” the long-time GOP consultant Tyler Montague said. “Kirk has used this method to push conspiracies about election fraud, Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and now he’s opened a new front in racism with his Martin Luther King attacks.”Montague’s comments are in keeping with earlier criticism of Kirk for promoting Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in 2020.Kirk and TP Action collaborated with about a dozen other groups to bring busloads of Trump allies to DC to attend Trump’s 6 January March to Save America rally that preceded the mob attack on the Capitol.View image in fullscreenPrior to the rally, Kirk predicted in a tweet it “would likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history”, but he quickly deleted the tweet after the day’s violence.Independent analysts who study misinformation criticize Kirk’s penchant for pushing conspiracies and false narratives on the Charlie Kirk Show, which runs daily on the evangelical Salem Radio Network.“The Charlie Kirk Show consistently ranks high in the top 100 shows on Apple podcasts, and has been a leader in spreading false and unverified claims,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in AI and emerging technologies.Kirk’s dubious claims range “from the idea that the Covid-19 vaccine was poison, to the belief that the election was stolen in 2020 with fraudulent ballots, to claims that purported Ukrainian bioweapons facilities are somehow linked to Anthony Fauci,” she added.Kirk had company in backing Trump’s election fraud claims, which could pose legal risks to a top TP Action official: Tyler Bowyer, the COO, who also had that title with TPUSA, and who was one of Arizona’s 11 fake electors for Trump in 2020. He and the other fake electors are facing a state attorney general probe.The 11 fake electors filmed themselves signing documents stating they were legitimate electors, even though the then GOP governor, Doug Ducey, had certified Biden’s win by more than 10,000 votes.Bowyer, an Arizona GOP national committeeman who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won, introduced a resolution at a Republican National Committee meeting that began in late January seeking to get the RNC to indemnify RNC members in multiple states who had been fake electors and who face legal bills due to state probes.Bowyer justified his resolution by writing on X that “we need to send a clear signal that the RNC will defend those who serve as electors against Democratic radicals trying to criminalize civic engagement and process”.The resolution didn’t pass, but to appease Trump backers the RNC pledged to “vocally” back individuals who “lawfully” served as Trump electors in states that Biden actually won.Prosecutors in three states have brought charges against fake electors for sending certificates to Congress falsely stating Trump had won their states, and the justice department has probed fake elector schemes in multiple states in its wide-ranging inquiry into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s election.Serendipitously, right before the RNC meeting, TP Action hosted a two-day summit dubbed Restoring National Confidence, which drew several big-name election deniers including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, ex-Trump senior White House strategist Steve Bannon and Don Jr.In a tweet, Don Jr wrote: “It was great speaking to all my friends at the Turning Point Restoring National Confidence Summit earlier this week.”The tight ties between TPUSA and Don Jr were underscored in 2020 when TPUSA paid a company owned by Don Jr $333,000 to buy copies of one of his books, which TPUSA gave away as part of a fundraising drive, according to the Associated Press.But watchdog groups are alarmed by TPUSA and TP Action’s record of promoting the ex-president’s bogus claims of election fraud, and candidates in Arizona in 2022 who espoused similar election falsehoods. They’re bracing for more in another heated election year.“They’ve backed conspiracy theorists for high office, mobilized activists around the ‘big lie’ and hired one of Arizona’s fake electors to help run their campaign arm,” said Heather Sawyer, the president of the watchdog group American Oversight.“Since January 6, TPUSA has become an animating force behind the election-denial movement.” More

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      ‘I don’t know’: Nikki Haley unsure Trump would follow constitution

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      Asked if she thought Donald Trump would follow the US constitution if he is elected for a second term as president, Nikki Haley said: “I don’t know.”“I don’t know. I don’t – I don’t know,” the former South Carolina governor, Trump’s last opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview to be broadcast in full on Sunday.“I mean … you always want to think someone will, but I don’t know.”Trump has won every primary vote and heads into Super Tuesday on 5 March, when multiple states hold nominating contests, on the brink of securing the nomination.Refusing to drop out, Haley has attacked Trump in steadily harsher terms. But though she has kept the twice-impeached former president from utterly dominating at the polls, she has not come close to winning a state.Trump’s campaign rhetoric has been characteristically dark, including a wish to be a “dictator” on day one in office and promises to take “ultimate and absolute revenge” on his enemies. He has mused about “vindication” and about “terminating” the constitution.Haley said: “You know, when you … go and you talk about revenge – when you go and you talk about, you know, vindication [and] when you go and you talk about – what does that mean? Like, I don’t know what that means, and only he can answer for that.“What I can answer for is, I don’t think there should ever be a president that’s above the law. I don’t think that there should ever be a president that has total immunity to do whatever they want to do.”The US supreme court this week stunned many observers when it said it would hear oral arguments over Trump’s claim, in his federal election subversion case, that he has absolute immunity for acts committed in office.A federal appeals court roundly rejected the argument but it will be presented to a rightwing-dominated supreme court to which Trump appointed three justices in four years. Scheduling concerns mean any trial is likely to be close to or after the November election.Facing 91 criminal charges – for election subversion (four federal, 13 state), retention of classified information (40) and hush-money payments (34), Trump has sought to delay each case, ultimately to be able to have them dismissed if he is re-elected.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHaley, who served the former president as ambassador to the United Nations, has said Trump cannot win a general election but also refused to rule out endorsing him and said she will not support Joe Biden.Trump has roundly mocked Haley and demanded she drop out.As president, Haley told NBC, “I think that we need to have someone that our kids can look up to, that they can be proud of.”Trump’s hush-money trial – concerning payments to an adult film star who claimed an extramarital affair – will begin in New York at the end of March.Haley added: “I think we need to have a country of law and order, a country of freedom, and a country that goes back to respecting the value of a taxpayer dollar, and we don’t have any of that right now.” More

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      Trump Georgia case: judge says he hopes to have decision on whether to disqualify Fani Willis in two weeks – live

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      A lawyer for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case has argued that not removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, would undermine public confidence in the legal system.John Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, argued that just “an appearance of a conflict of interest” between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade would be “sufficient” to disqualify her from the election subversion case.Merchant told Judge Scott McAfee that “if the court allows this kind of behavior to go on … the entire public confidence in the system will be shot”, AP reported.If the judge denies the bid to disqualify Willis, “there’s a good chance” an appeals court would overturn that ruling and order a new trial, Merchant argued, it writes.The Republican senator for Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, has endorsed Nikki Haley in the GOP presidential primary, marking the first endorsement from a sitting senator for Haley.“I’m proud to endorse Gov Nikki Haley,” Murkowski said in a statement.
      America needs someone with the right values, vigor, and judgment to serve as our next President – and in this race, there is no one better than her.
      The endorsement comes just days before Super Tuesday, when Alaska and several other states will cast their ballots.Murkowski was among seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump for his alleged role in the January 6 insurrection.In closing arguments in the hearing to determine whether the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, should be disqualified from handling the Trump election interference case, lawyers for the district attorney’s office argued that the defendants had failed to show any actual conflict of interest.Adam Abbate, a lawyer with the district attorney’s office, accused the defendants’ attorneys of pushing “speculation and conjecture” and trying to harass and embarrass Willis with questions on the witness stand that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, AP reported.“We have absolutely no evidence that Ms Willis received any financial gain or benefit” from the relationship, Abbate told the judge.Judge Scott McAfee has said he hopes to have a resolution on the motion to disqualify the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, from the case she brought against Donald Trump within the next two weeks.The hearing is now adjourned.It’s been a big day for two of Donald Trump’s most significant court cases. In the matter of the classified documents found in his possession at Mar-a-Lago, judge Aileen Cannon sounded skeptical of prosecutors’ request for a July trial, but did not set a new date. In the case alleging meddling in Georgia’s 2020 election, Trump’s attorneys argued for the removal of district attorney Fani Willis, saying failing to do so would undermine faith in the legal system. Willis is now in court as her office is expected to argue why it should remain on the case.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Joe Biden said the United States would airdrop aid into Gaza, and may also make deliveries by sea, while calling on Israel to facilitate access by land.
      Trump said Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, is a potential candidate to be his vice-president.
      Nikki Haley campaigned in Virginia ahead of its primary next week, and was interrupted by protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
      Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fani Willis is back in the courtroom where a judge is considering whether to remove her from the election meddling case she brought against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants:Joe Biden’s vow to get humanitarian aid into Gaza by air and potentially sea comes after more than 100 people were killed amid a scramble to pick up food in the besieged territory, leading even some of Israel’s allies to demand an investigation. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood, Emma Graham-Harrison and Julian Borger:Israel is facing growing international pressure for an investigation after more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire on Thursday.Israel said people died in a crush or were run over by aid lorries although it admitted its troops had opened fire on what it called a “mob”. But the head of a hospital in Gaza said 80% of injured people brought in had gunshot wounds.The UK called for an “urgent investigation and accountability”. In a statement, David Cameron, the foreign secretary, said: “The deaths of people in Gaza waiting for an aid convoy were horrific … this must not happen again.” Israel must allow more aid into Gaza, Lord Cameron added.France called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of the disaster, and Germany said the Israeli army must fully explain what happened. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said: “Every effort must be made to investigate what happened and ensure transparency.”The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 112 people were killed and more than 750 others were injured as crowds rushed towards a convoy of trucks carrying food aid.The United States will work with Jordan to drop food into Gaza by air and will consider make deliveries by sea, Joe Biden said, while noting he will “insist” Israel allow more trucks bearing aid to enter the territory by land.“In the coming days, we are going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing airdrops of additional food and supplies into [Gaza] and seek to continue to open up other avenues into [Gaza], including the possibility of a marine corridor to deliver large amounts of humanitarian assistance,” Biden said in the Oval Office. The president initially misspoke, saying the airdrops would be done in Ukraine rather than Gaza.“In addition to expanding deliveries by land, as I said, we’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need. No excuses, because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now – it’s nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line.”In a statement released just as Joe Biden announced the US would airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza, the independent senator Bernie Sanders called on the president to approve such action – while also insisting the onus lay on Israel to help civilians.“The United States, which has helped fund the Israeli military for years, cannot sit back and allow hundreds of thousands of innocent children to starve to death. As a result of Israeli bombing and restrictions on humanitarian aid, the people of Gaza are facing an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Whether Netanyahu’s rightwing government likes it or not, the United States must immediately begin to airdrop food, water, and other lifesaving supplies into Gaza,” the progressive lawmaker from Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, wrote.Here’s more:
      But while an airdrop will buy time and save lives, there is no substitute for sustained ground deliveries of what is needed to sustain life in Gaza. Israel MUST open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities. The United States should make clear that failure to do so immediately will lead to a fundamental break in the U.S. – Israeli relationship and the immediate halt of all military aid.
      The US will begin airdropping humanitarian aid into Gaza, Joe Biden has said.Biden said the airdrops will begin in the “coming days”, an announcement that came a day after more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza were killed when desperate crowds gathered around aid trucks and Israeli troops opened fire.Donald Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow has argued that Fani Willis should be disqualified from the election interference case because she may have lied to the court about her undisclosed affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Sadow said Willis’s claim under oath that her relationship with Wade did not begin until after she hired him was not credible, Reuters reports. He told the judge:
      Once you have the appearance of impropriety … the law in Georgia is clear: That’s enough to disqualify.
      Joe Biden has signed into law a short-term stopgap spending bill to avert a partial government shutdown, the White House has said.The bill was approved by the Senate on Thursday following a House vote that narrowly averted a shutdown that was due to occur this weekend.The temporary extension funds the departments of agriculture, transportation, interior and others through 8 March. It funds the Pentagon, homeland security, health and state through 22 March.A lawyer for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case has argued that not removing Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, would undermine public confidence in the legal system.John Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, argued that just “an appearance of a conflict of interest” between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade would be “sufficient” to disqualify her from the election subversion case.Merchant told Judge Scott McAfee that “if the court allows this kind of behavior to go on … the entire public confidence in the system will be shot”, AP reported.If the judge denies the bid to disqualify Willis, “there’s a good chance” an appeals court would overturn that ruling and order a new trial, Merchant argued, it writes.Judge Scott McAfee has said he might be able to make a decision on the hearing on Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis as he hears closing arguments in the case. CNN quotes him as saying:
      I think we’ve reached the point where I’d like to hear more of how the legal argument apply to what has already been presented, and it may already be possible for me to make a decision without those needing to be material to that decision.
      Closing arguments began about half an hour ago over whether Willis should be disqualified from handling the election interference against Trump because of her romantic relationship with a deputy handling the case. More

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      Judge hears closing arguments in ‘daytime soap opera’ Fani Willis hearing

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      A Fulton county judge began hearing closing arguments on Friday afternoon in a three-day evidentiary hearing to determine whether the district attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from handling the election interference against Donald Trump because of her romantic relationship with a deputy handling the case.The hearing has offered a dramatic deviation from the racketeering case against the former US president and 14 remaining co-defendants for trying to overturn the election in Georgia.The matter kicked off in January when Michael Roman, a Republican operative and one of the defendants in the case, filed a motion claiming Willis financially benefitted from the case because of a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a top prosecutor in the case. Trump and several other defendants later joined the request.Willis and Wade both admitted to a romantic relationship, but both said it only began after he was hired on 1 November 2021. They both testified about vacations they had taken together and revealed personal details about a romantic relationship that they say only began in 2022, after he was hired, and ended last summer.A star witness who was supposed to undercut their claims ultimately failed to produce meaningful evidence.On the surface, the question at the heart of the matter was whether Willis had a conflict of interest because of her relationship with Wade. But over several hours of testimony, lawyers for Roman, Trump and the other defendants did not produce any concrete evidence showing that she did.Willis testified that she repaid Wade in cash for any travel they had taken together – a claim that drew skepticism from defense lawyers, but no evidence to prove otherwise.“This was a disqualification hearing that quickly denigrated into a daytime soap opera,” said J Tom Morgan, a former district attorney in DeKalb county, a Fulton county neighbor. “Have they proven a conflict of interest, where this all started, absolutely not.”Lawyers may use Friday’s hearing to try and introduce additional evidence, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, including cellphone records that defense lawyers say undercut Wade’s claims that he never spent the night at Willis’s condo.It’s not exactly clear what the standard Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, will use to determine whether Willis should be disqualified. Georgia law allows for a prosecutor to be disqualified if there is an actual conflict of interest. Experts say state law has long established this high bar to clear and the defendants in the case have not done so.But McAfee has suggested that defense lawyers may not need to prove an actual conflict, but merely the appearance of one. “I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” he said at a recent hearing.Robert CI McBurney, a different Fulton county judge who was overseeing the case at an earlier stage, disqualified Willis from investigating a fake elector after she appeared at a fundraiser for his political rival. That appearance, he said, would lead to questions about her motives in every step of the case, which was enough to disqualify her.A disqualification would upend the case and delay it past the 2024 election. The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state agency, would have the sole discretion to reassign the case to another prosecutor, and there’s no timeline for how long that could take.But even if Willis and Wade aren’t disqualified, defense attorneys have used the hearings to damage the two prosecutors’ judgment and credibility in the public’s eye.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy bringing to light something they failed to disclose on their own, they’ve seeded the impression that the two were trying to conceal something.While it may not stand up legally, defense lawyers have also showed text messages from an associate of Nathan Wade’s in which he says the affair “absolutely” began before he was hired (the witness, Terrence Bradley, later testified he was only speculating). They also put a former friend of Willis on the stand that said she was certain the relationship began before Wade was hired. And they have also sought to introduce cellphone evidence that could undermine Wade’s claims he never spent the night at Willis’s condo before the relationship began.“I was standing in the grocery store and I would guess that the two women in front of me have not really paid much attention to this case or the politics,” Morgan said. “But they start talking about the text messages … it’s more interesting. People who haven’t paid any attention to this all of a sudden are paying attention to it.”Morgan also said the timing or existence of a relationship between Willis and Wade wasn’t really relevant to whether there was a conflict of interest. But during the hearing, the two prosecutors had boxed themselves in to a story that the romantic relationship only began after Wade was hired.Any evidence that comes to light questioning that undermines their credibility and could lead to accusations of perjury. Willis herself has said with certainty that the relationship definitely did not begin until after Wade was hired, but also acknowledged that it was difficult to say exactly when a romantic relationship begins.“It’s not like when you’re in grade school and you send a little letter saying, will you be my girlfriend? and you check it,” she said during one point in the hearing.More than anything, Trump’s team has succeeded in muddying the waters of the case and taking the attention off his efforts to undermine democracy. Willis underscores that when she testified during the first day of the hearing.“You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” she said. More