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      in Elections

      Judge in Trump case sets hearing over Fani Willis conflict-of-interest claims

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      The Georgia judge overseeing the racketeering case charging Donald Trump and allies with attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has scheduled a hearing for February to weigh whether the Fulton county district attorney should be disqualified from prosecuting the charges.In a one-page order, the Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee set an evidentiary hearing for 15 February to address allegations raised by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman that the district attorney Fani Willis had an improper romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors.The judge also ordered the district attorney to file a response to the allegations by 2 February. Earlier this week, Willis’s office had privately told at least two lawyers involved in the case that they intended to submit their written response by that date, people familiar with the matter said.The case is unlikely to be dismissed outright even if the allegations are proven true. But that could result in the disqualification of Willis, which, under Georgia caselaw, would necessitate the disqualification of the entire Fulton county district attorney’s office, as well.At issue is an explosive complaint from Roman – director of Trump’s 2020 election-day operations – that Willis should be relieved of bringing the case because of conflicts of interests arising from her ongoing relationship with a lawyer named Nathan Wade, whom she hired as a special prosecutor.The filing claimed Willis personally profited from the contract. Wade was paid at least $653,000 and potentially as much as $1m for legal fees as one of the lead prosecutors on the Trump case, and the filing alleged Wade then paid for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The filing included no proof of the allegations. Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, a respected local attorney who publicly endorsed Wade when he ran to be a Cobb county superior judge 2016, has said the claims were based on sources and records from Wade’s divorce proceeding that remains under seal.Wade started divorce proceedings the day after he was hired as a special prosecutor on the Trump case. According to court records, the divorce case has been contentious, and Joycelyn Mayfield Wade wrote that her husband had failed to disclose his finances, including from his Fulton county work.For his part, Wade has repeatedly insisted in court filings that he had complied with the discovery obligations and accused his wife of being “stubbornly litigious and dragging the matter out for no stated reasons”.Three days after Trump was indicted in Atlanta last August, the presiding Cobb county superior court judge Henry Thompson held Wade in contempt for failing to disclose financial statements, including bank and credit card statements.Weeks later, Joycelyn Mayfield Wade said in a filing in September that she would be forced to subpoena records to obtain her husband’s earnings from legal work done for the Fulton county district attorney’s office and Fulton county in November and December respectively.Willis herself was subpoenaed for testimony on 8 January, just hours before Roman filed his motion seeking dismissal of the charges and disqualification. The subpoena ordered her to appear for a 23 January video-taped deposition.Willis has not directly addressed the allegations, and a spokesperson has said it would all be addressed in court filings.Roman’s allegations threaten to upend one of the most consequential criminal cases against Trump, who pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his co-defendants violated the Georgia Rico statute through his efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat.Whether Willis, and therefore the district attorney’s office, can be disqualified from prosecuting the Trump case turns less on Wade’s credentials and more on the extent of a potential conflict of interest, legal experts said.The standard for disqualification does not turn on whether Willis made prosecutorial decisions to benefit Wade, the experts said, but whether she made decisions to extend a criminal investigation actually benefited Wade, who was also paying for travel and vacations.In 2022, the chief Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney disqualified the Fulton county district attorney’s office from prosecuting the Republican lieutenant governor Burt Jones after Willis endorsed his political opponent, Charlie Bailey.The order from McBurney found that there was an “actual” conflict of interest because even though Jones might not have had definitive proof that “an investigative decision was made to benefit Bailey … any public criminal investigation into Jones plainly benefits Bailey’s campaign”.Should McAfee ultimately decide to disqualify Fulton county, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia would be tasked with deciding where the case would be transferred to. It could pursue the case itself, or give it to another district attorney’s office, which could choose to drop the charges. More

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      in US Politics

      Outrage after Trump claims presidents have ‘complete and total’ immunity

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      Donald Trump provoked outrage with an all-capitals 2am post to his Truth Social platform in which he claimed “full”, “total” and “complete and total presidential immunity” over acts committed in office.The comments prompted warnings that Trump intends to wield authoritarian powers should he return to the White House and come amid widespread fears that any Trump victory in the 2024 election would pose a dire threat to American democracy.After a crushing win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, Trump is widely expected to easily grasp the Republican presidential nomination and is competitive with, or sometimes ahead of, Joe Biden in most polling.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian who studies authoritarian leaders, said: “Trump is telling Americans very clearly that he will be jailing and killing Americans [if he returns to office next year].“Anyone who votes for him is complicit with these future crimes because of this transparency and these threats. Americans cannot say they did not know ahead of time.”Joe Walsh, a former rightwing Republican congressman turned Trump opponent, spoke to his party’s voters when he said: “A president with ‘full immunity’ is a king, is a dictator. He’s telling us what he wants. Is this what you want?”Trump wrote: “A president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him [or] her to properly function. Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met by almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term end.“Even events that ‘cross the line’ must fall under total immunity, or it will be years of trauma trying to determine good from bad.”Joyce Vance, a former US attorney now a law professor at the University of Alabama, said: “One of the obvious problems with this (just one of them), is that no former president has ever been indicted. Just Trump.”Indicted four times, Trump faces 91 criminal charges, concerning election subversion (four federal and 13 state charges), retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments (34, state).He also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection and civil suits concerning his businesses and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Regardless, Trump leads Republican presidential polling by vast margins, having won in Iowa this week and standing poised to win in New Hampshire next Tuesday.His complaint on Thursday concerned arguments in his federal election subversion case, in which a DC appeals court is due to rule on the immunity claim.A hearing last week produced the spectacle of lawyers for Trump saying a president who ordered special forces units to kill political opponents could only be brought to account if impeached and convicted by Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump incited the January 6 attack on Congress, an attempt to stop certification of his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, including law enforcement suicides, and more than 1,200 arrests. Trump was impeached over the riot but acquitted when enough Republicans in the Senate stayed loyal.After the DC hearing last week, Trump warned of “bedlam” if his criminal cases block a White House return.In his Truth Social rant, Trump said: “You can’t stop police from doing the job of strong and effective crime prevention because you want to guard against the occasional ‘rogue cop’ or ‘bad apple’.”Police officers do not enjoy blanket immunity.Trump continued: “Sometimes you just have to live with the ‘great but slightly imperfect’. All presidents must have complete and total presidential immunity, or the authority and decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped and gone forever. Hopefully this [DC appeals case] will be an easy decision.”Trump ended with an apparent appeal to another court, to which the case is headed.“God bless the supreme court!” the former president said, of a body to which he appointed three justices, cementing a 6-3 rightwing majority. More

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      Climate crisis ignored by Republicans as Trump vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’

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      In the wake of an Iowa primary election chilled in a record blast of cold weather – which scientists say may, counterintuitively, have been worsened by global heating – Republican presidential candidates are embracing the fossil fuel industry tighter than ever, with little to say about the growing toll the climate crisis is taking upon Americans.The remaining contenders for the US presidential nomination – frontrunner Donald Trump, along with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – all used the Iowa caucus to promise surging levels of oil and gas drilling if elected, along with the wholesale abolition of Joe Biden’s climate change policies.Trump, who comfortably won the Iowa poll, said “we are going to drill, baby, drill” once elected, in a Fox News town hall on the eve of the primary. “We have more liquid gold under our feet; energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world,” the multiply indicted former president said. “We have a lot of potential income.”Trump also called clean energy a “new scam business” and went on a lengthy digression on how energy is important in the making of donuts and hamburgers. The Trump campaign has accused Biden of trying to prevent Americans from buying non-electric cars – no such prohibition exists – and even for causing people’s dishes to be dirty by imposing new efficiency standards for dishwashers.Haley, meanwhile, has called the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature climate bill that provides tax credits for renewable energy production and electric car purchases, a “communist manifesto” and used the Iowa election to promise to “roll back all of Biden’s green subsidies because they’re misplaced”. DeSantis, who came second in Iowa, said that on his first day as president he would “take Biden’s Green New Deal, we tear it up and we throw it in the trash can. It is bad for this country.”Last year was, globally, the hottest ever recorded, and scientists have warned of mounting calamities as the world barrels through agreed temperature limits. Last year, the US suffered a record number of disasters costing at least $1bn in damages, with the climate crisis spurring fiercer wildfires, storms and extreme heat.Such concerns were largely unvoiced in frigid Iowa, however, apart from by young climate activists who disrupted rallies held by Trump, Haley and DeSantis. On Sunday, a 17-year-old activist from the Sunrise climate group interrupted a Trump speech to shout: “Mr Trump your campaign is funded by fossil fuel millionaires. Do you represent them, or ordinary people like me?”She was drowned out by boos from Trump supporters, and then scolded from the stage by the former president, who told the activist to “go home to mommy.” He then said the protester was “young and immature”.The continued championing of fossil fuels, and dismissal of young people’s worries about climate change, shows that the Republican candidates are “determined to drag us into a chaotic world just to make a bit more money”, said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise.“Not a single Republican is addressing root causes of the climate crisis. They’ve been bought out by oil and gas billionaires,” said Shiney-Ajay, who added that young climate activists were also dismayed at Biden, who has overseen a record glut of oil and gas drilling, despite Republican claims he has hindered US energy production.“The reality is that every presidential candidate, including Joe Biden, is falling so far short of the climate ambition we need, despite there being millions of lives at stake,” she said.Some Republicans have warned that the party must take climate change seriously if it is to remain viable electorally, with increasing numbers of Americans alarmed about the impacts of global heating. “If conservatives are scared to talk about the climate, then we’re not going to have a seat at the table when decisions are made,” said Buddy Carter, a Republican congressman from Georgia. “We are right on policy, so we need a seat at the table.”Still, polling has shown that the climate crisis remains of minor importance to Republican voters, compared to issues such as the economy and inflation, with just 13% of them saying it is a top priority in a Pew survey last year. None of the party’s leading presidential candidates have sought to significantly change this dynamic, to the frustration of some climate-conscious conservatives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Republican candidates can’t lose sight of the big picture amid the primary season,” said Danielle Butcher Franz, the chief executive of the advocacy arm of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative climate group.“Beyond the primary, the next Republican nominee must win over the hearts and minds of young Americans by speaking to the issue they care most about: climate change.”Butcher Franz said there must be “more productive rhetoric and real policy solutions from Republicans. The race for 2024 is an opportunity to do so that no candidate has fully seized.”Even if the candidates aren’t talking much about climate change, its effects are still being directly felt as the Republican primary field moves on to New Hampshire. Icily cold temperatures have gripped much of the US – the Iowa caucus was the coldest on record – due to a blast of Arctic-like weather that has triggered power blackouts, halted flights and caused schools to shut in parts of the country.The Arctic is heating up at four times the rate of the global average, and scientists think this is affecting the jet stream, a river of strong winds that steers weather across the northern hemisphere, and the polar vortex, another current of winds that usually keeps frigid Arctic air over the polar region. Both these systems risk becoming “wavier”, recent research has found, meaning Arctic-like conditions can meander far further south than normal.The current blast of cold weather is “certainly much more likely given how much the planet is warming” said Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at Verisk Atmospheric and Environmental who has studied the phenomenon. “There is scientific evidence that makes severe winter weather consistent or explainable in a warming world. One does not negate the other.”Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, said that while it seems counterintuitive, the science was “becoming clear” that extreme cold spells will be a consequence of global heating.“The irony is pretty rich” that Iowa has experienced such conditions during a Republican presidential primary, Francis added. “Of course, the deniers won’t see it that way, and won’t listen to any science that says otherwise.” More

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      in US Politics

      It isn’t ‘anti-democratic’ to bar Trump from office. It’s needed to protect democracy | Steven Greenhouse

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      Over the decades, several US supreme court justices have warned that the US constitution is not a suicide pact – in other words, that the constitution shouldn’t be interpreted in ways that jeopardize the survival of our nation and our democracy.Right now, however, I worry that the supreme court’s rightwing supermajority, in its anticipated rush to prohibit states from kicking Donald Trump off the ballot, will turn the constitution into a suicide pact. By letting an insurrectionist like Trump remain on the ballot – a man who spurned centuries of constitutional tradition by refusing to peacefully turn over the reins of power to the man who defeated him – the supreme court would be putting out a welcome mat to a candidate who has made no secret of his plans to trample all over the constitution and trash our democratic traditions.Many legal experts worry that the rightwing justices will focus on the wrong issue when the high court takes up the historic Colorado case about whether a state can kick Trump off the ballot – a case in which the court might also decide whether Trump should be disqualified from the ballot in all 50 states.When the court considers that case, the six conservative justices might focus on their concerns about infuriating rightwing voters, their political soulmates, if they rule that the constitution requires that Trump be disqualified as an insurrectionist. The justices will also no doubt worry that they’ll be seen as taking a high-handed, anti-democratic step if they deny voters the opportunity to vote for Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee.But the justices’ job is not to worry about angering the Maga crowd. Their job is to focus on enforcing the text of the constitution and, along with it, preserving our democracy. An insurrectionist candidate who stands a good chance of winning the presidency in November could drive a stake through the heart of America’s democracy.The Colorado case centers on the 14th amendment, a post-civil war measure that aimed to ensure all citizens – especially formerly enslaved people – the equal protection of the law. Section 3 of that amendment aimed to bar supporters of the Confederacy who had rebelled against the United States and its constitution from holding office: “No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”One can’t honestly deny that Trump promoted and aided an insurrection. He unarguably gave “aid or comfort” to the January 6 assault on the Capitol, which was essentially a coup attempt that sought to prevent the rightfully elected president, Joe Biden, from taking office. In disqualifying Trump, the Colorado supreme court wrote: “The record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the US government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”The House select committee on January 6 provided a mountain of evidence showing that Trump had planned and backed that insurrection. Trump not only “summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for Jan. 6”, the committee established, but also urged them to march to the Capitol to “take back” the country. Even as rioters stormed the Capitol and assaulted the police, Trump tweeted messages that whipped up the violent crowd’s animus against the then vice-president, Mike Pence.Trump, the committee wrote, also “refused repeated requests over a multiple-hour period that he instruct his violent supporters to disperse and leave the Capitol”. Trump also refused to call in the national guard or any federal law enforcement to stop the assault on the Capitol.The Court’s job is to uphold and enforce the Constitution without fear or favor, and it shouldn’t be cowed by anyone, not by Trump’s supporters and certainly not by Trump, who dangerously warned of “big, big trouble” if the justices rule against him in this case.Constitutional scholars say the Supreme Court might engage in some legal legerdemain and search for some escape clause to keep Trump on the ballot and prohibit states from disqualifying him. Some scholars predict the justices will rule that Trump must first be convicted in court as an insurrectionist before he can be disqualified – even though many supporters of the Confederacy were disqualified from holding office without being convicted in court and even though Section 3 says nothing about requiring convictions.Some constitutional experts contend that Section 3 doesn’t apply to presidents and that Trump therefore shouldn’t be disqualified under it. Section 3 specifically mentions disqualifying Senators and House members, but it doesn’t mention the presidency. But that’s undoubtedly because Section 3’s authors never dreamed that a past insurrectionist would ever be running for president. There can’t be any doubt that Section 3’s authors would have insisted on disqualifying Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, if he had become a candidate for the presidency of the United States.If the supreme court’s six rightwing justices allow Trump to stay on the ballot, they can do so only by turning their backs on the methods of constitutional interpretation that they have repeatedly trumpeted: textualism and originalism. Not only is the text of Section 3 crystal clear about barring insurrectionists, but the Radical Republicans who wrote the 14th amendment would have been repulsed by the idea of letting an insurrectionist like Trump run for the highest office of the land.Trump of course complains that the push to disqualify him is a leftist plot. But the two constitutional scholars who led the way in arguing that Trump should be disqualified – William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen – are highly regarded conservative members of the Federalist Society. Moreover, one of the jurists most respected by conservatives, former federal judge J Michael Luttig, has lauded the Colorado supreme court’s decision as “unassailable”.In decades past, the US supreme court did not shrink from issuing decisions that offended and angered millions of Americans, whether it was enraging many white southerners by barring school segregation in Brown v Board of Education, or infuriating millions of women by overturning Roe v Wade, or angering a wide swath of Democrats by cutting short the vote count to deliver victory to George W Bush over Al Gore. In the Colorado disqualification case, the justices should not shrink from angering Trump supporters. The justices should do what they’ve taken an oath to do: enforce the letter of the law.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNotwithstanding what Trump’s defenders say, those who seek to disqualify Trump are not suppressing democracy. They are seeking to enforce the constitution’s clear language against the nation’s most prominent insurrectionist. The person who is seeking to suppress democracy is Trump (along with many of his Maga supporters).Trump was anti-democratic in seeking to overturn Biden’s legitimate, 51-47% victory in 2020. Trump was anti-democratic when he called for terminating the constitution. Trump has threatened to be a dictator on day one, and someone who threatens to be dictator on his first day in office might not stop there.Moreover, whenever Trump loses – for instance, when he lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz – he claims that he was cheated and demands that legitimate democratic results be discarded. Trump’s philosophy is to accept election results only when he wins and never when he loses. What can be more anti-democratic than that? That anti-democratic philosophy fueled the January 6 insurrection.There’s no denying that on a certain level it would be anti-democratic to bar a popular candidate like Trump from the ballot, and, yes, that could stir up an ugly and perhaps violent and illegal response from the Maga crowd. Yet let’s not forget that much of the constitution is anti-democratic and counter-majoritarian; it, for instance, prohibits a majority of lawmakers from restricting your freedom of speech or your freedom to practice your religion.Those who warn that it would be anti-democratic to kick Trump off the ballot should realize that Trump’s election as president would be a far graver and longer-lasting risk to our democracy. This is a man who has talked of being a dictator, of terminating the constitution, of using his second presidential term to exact vengeance against his enemies and critics. This is a man who even floated the idea of executing Mark Milley, the general who was chairman of Trump’s joint chiefs of staff.If the supreme court lets Trump remain on the ballot, history may remember John Roberts and company as the court that gave a bright green light to the election of an insurrectionist who would end our democracy as we know it.For the nine justices, the bottom line should be not only that Trump was an insurrectionist, but that Trump has loudly signaled that if he’s elected to a second term, he will trample all over our constitutional and democratic norms. If the justices interpret the constitution to let insurrectionist Trump remain on the ballot, the Roberts court may be taking a giant, highly regrettable step toward turning our constitution into a suicide pact for our democracy.
      Steven Greenhouse is an American labor and workplace journalist and writer More

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      in US Politics

      Major poll gives Trump 16-point lead in New Hampshire days before primary

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      Donald Trump continues to dominate the race for the Republican presidential nomination, enjoying a 16-point lead in New Hampshire days before it becomes the second state to vote, according to a major new poll.Suffolk University, the Boston Globe and NBC found the former president at 50% support in New Hampshire, to 34% for the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, who edged out Haley for second in Iowa this week, was a distant third at 5%.In New Hampshire, undeclared voters can take part in state or presidential primaries. Many observers think such voters will have an outsized effect on the Republican primary this year, given the lack of real Democratic contest because Joe Biden is president.In the new poll, Trump dominated among registered Republicans and voters who called themselves conservatives. Haley led among moderates and independents.David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, told the Globe: “Haley’s had a tough week: underperforming in Iowa, trying to answer Trump’s attacks on her positions on social security and immigration, and the recent [Vivek] Ramaswamy endorsement of Trump helping him with younger GOP voters.”Ramaswamy, a brash biotech entrepreneur with whom Haley frequently clashed in debates, dropped out after finishing fourth in Iowa.For Haley, Paleologos said, there was still time “to at least close the gap with undecided voters or even with some Trump voters, and pull Trump below 50”.Other recent polls have shown Haley closing the gap in New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the American Research Group had Haley and Trump tied at 40% each.Not all polls are created equal. The polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight.com gives the American Research Group a C+ rating. Suffolk University gets an A-.After New Hampshire, the next state to vote will be Haley’s own. The FiveThirtyEight average for South Carolina puts Trump at 55%, Haley at 25% and DeSantis at 12%. Nationally, the site puts Trump at 63%, and Haley and DeSantis both 41 points behind.With Trump displaying such dominance despite facing unprecedented legal jeopardy – 91 criminal charges, various civil suits and attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting an insurrection – most observers think Haley must win in New Hampshire if the primary is to present anything like a meaningful contest.Seeking to present a straight choice between her and Trump, Haley said she would not take part in New Hampshire debates planned for Thursday (to be hosted by ABC) and Sunday (CNN). As Trump has skipped all debates so far, that left DeSantis the only contender willing to appear.Both debates were scrapped. CNN said: “We will continue to pursue other opportunities as the campaign season progresses through 2024, including candidate town halls this week with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.”Haley told CNN that Trump was “who I’m running against, that’s who I want. At the end of the day, he’s the frontrunner … There is nobody else I need to debate.”But on Wednesday Trump was more than 250 miles south of New Hampshire, in court in New York City in a defamation suit brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, whose claim that Trump raped her has already been deemed “substantially true” by the judge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming Haley was “terrified of getting smoked” on the debate stage, the DeSantis campaign posted Iowa remarks in which Haley said of Trump: “You can’t have an election and not appear on a debate stage in front of the people who are gonna be voting for you. That’s an arrogant approach to think you don’t have to do that.”Haley and DeSantis were campaigning in New Hampshire on Tuesday but DeSantis was reportedly preparing to switch focus to South Carolina. Once a fundraising juggernaut, the DeSantis campaign has seen donations fall in line with polling results.“It’s a pretty sober conversation in terms of how much more the campaign can raise in this environment,” an unnamed source told the Washington Post. Elsewhere, the DeSantis-supporting Super Pac Never Back Down began laying off staff.DeSantis sought to sound a warning to voters, telling CNN that should Trump be the Republican nominee, the presidential election “will revolve around all these legal issues, his trials, perhaps convictions … and about things like January 6” – the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited as he attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat.Republicans, DeSantis said, would “lose if voters are making a decision based on that. We don’t want it to be a referendum on those issues.”Many agree. Digesting the result in Iowa, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and a Biden surrogate, told MSNBC: “Almost half of the base of the Republican party showing up for this caucus voted against Donald Trump.“Think about that. I think that is telling. It tells you the weakness of Donald Trump and also the opportunity for Democrats because in the end … if the base doesn’t turn out for Donald Trump in the general election enthusiastically and Democrats turn out [their] base, this is all about independents – and independents don’t like Donald Trump.” More

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      Donald Trump beat his opponents. But can he beat the courts? | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s most dangerous race is not with other Republican candidates, but against the law. In his political match, he faces no serious contest. His victory in the Iowa caucuses results was crushing. But in his legal trials, he is on the run. For Trump, the legal is the political.The calendars overlap. His overarching strategy is not so much calculated to defeat his feeble Republican opponents but to delay his trials by any gambit necessary. The delays give him space to depict himself as a martyr, taking the slings and arrows for his believers, who are his hope to rescue him.So long as the band plays, he doesn’t have to face the music. Once it stops, his primary voters are replaced by a jury. He can rant all he likes on his Truth Social account, but the evidence will finally speak for itself. Trump strains to exploit the political campaign as his shield to avoid the day of judgment. Plus, it’s a cash cow.January 6 is more than the most important issue in the election for Trump and his followers. It is his passion play. His rivals have helpfully acted as his Greek chorus. Rather than develop an alternative strategy, say, to lever college-educated Republicans away from Trump, they have shouted from the wings to amplify his conspiracy theories. “Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” Ron DeSantis tweeted last June. Nikki Haley, for her part, chimed in to denounce the justice system as “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics”. Trump could not have paid for better ringers.Only Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, erstwhile but remorseful booster, was willing to utter the forbidden, “Too bad, go to jail.” The rest waved their hands at an August debate like eager pupils seeking teacher’s attention that they would pardon Trump. Five days before the Iowa caucuses, polling poorly, Christie dropped out, declaring: “I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.” He refused to endorse anyone. “No one’s going to tell the truth about him.” On a hot mic, he was caught saying about Haley: “She’s going to get smoked,” and “She’s not up to this.” Stating the obvious was more a shrug than a prophesy. Yet she could not even scratch into second place.The result of the Iowa caucuses was an easy tale foretold. But it has been significant in revealing the degree to which Trump has consolidated his domination over the shell of the Republican party. At the end of the process that will inexorably nominate him the remnant of the GOP will be subsumed into his cult.His success in debauching opinion among Republicans is clear in the answer of Iowa Republicans to an exit poll question: “Do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020?” Of the respondents, 65% answered negatively, and of them 69% voted for Trump. For them, the January 6 insurrection is the centerpiece of this election. With Trump, they believe that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers imprisoned for their violent assault on the Capitol are “hostages” who deserve pardons, and that Trump must be vindicated. In their eyes, he is not being prosecuted, but persecuted, just as Trump’s primary opponents have echoed.Iowa was more than a political event. It was a religious experience for most of the caucus goers, slightly more than half of them evangelical Christian nationalists. Voting for Trump was not a civic exercise but a spiritual crusade to make America into a Christian nation on a divine mission as the founding fathers supposedly intended according to their crackpot history. The first Trump term was just the beginning; the next will be like a second coming. Iowa is the first step towards Trump’s anointment, his deification for a holy war.In Trump’s first campaign in 2016, he was an outlander, a brash New Yorker from the church of the art of the deal. Iowa Republicans have consistently given their votes to the candidate who was the most fervent evangelical Christian linked to the religious right. In 2000, born-again George W Bush won in a walk; in 2008, it was preacher and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee who defeated John McCain; in 2012, rightwing Catholic Rick Santorum trounced Mitt Romney; and in 2016 Ted Cruz of Texas clobbered Trump, who then only won only 21% of the evangelical support.Within the new dispensation, Trump has been elevated into a double existence. He is both an American incarnation of King Cyrus of ancient Persia, who conquered Babylon, and the godhead himself. Before January 6, Christian nationalists saw him as a flawed vessel sent by God to restore the old kingdom. Many of the January 6 insurrectionists flaunted Christian nationalist signs, flags and slogans. Now, they view Trump as Christ-like, being crucified on their behalf. As Cyrus, Trump is forgiven his sins. As Christ, his crimes are signs of his divinity.During the 2016 Iowa caucuses, the most prominent evangelical leader of the Christian right in the state, Bob Vander Plaats, endorsed Ted Cruz. This time he backed DeSantis. Trump was so confident of evangelical backing that two days before the caucuses, he laid into him, tweeting: “Bob Vander Plaats, the former High School Accountant from Iowa, will do anything to win, something which he hasn’t done in many years. He’s more known for scamming Candidates than he is for Victory, but now he’s going around using Disinformation from the Champions of that Art, the Democrats.”Trump in Iowa conflated his pressing legal troubles with the imaginary oppression of Christians. “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before. And also presidents like never before,” Trump said on 19 December. Referring to the mafia kingpin who was finally nailed on income tax evasion, he added: “I always say Al Capone was treated better than I was treated.” Vander Plaats’ grip was broken.Of all the odd occurrences in the campaign so far, one of the strangest was a stray cogent remark from Ron DeSantis, who has been relentlessly clueless to the point that after his last debate with Nikki Haley he approached the audience from the stage to shake his wife’s hand. In trying to explain why he was failing, without mentioning that he spent more on private jets than on advertising, he blathered into coherence. “It’s all a racket – they’re trying to get clicks, they’re trying to do all this stuff,” he said. “Big causes start out as a movement, end up a business and degenerate into a racket. That’s just human nature.”Not exactly. DeSantis was paraphrasing a social philosopher on the psychological basis of authoritarian movements. Eric Hoffer was an itinerant longshoreman whose book The True Believer, on the mentality of Naziism and Communism, published in 1951, drew praise from President Dwight Eisenhower in one of his first press conferences. Hoffer described how individuals erased their volition and critical thinking by submerging themselves into movements led by demagogues.“The fanatic,” Hoffer wrote, “is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources – out of his rejected self – but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace.” The demagogue appeals to restoring the good old days. “A glorification of the past can serve as a means to belittle the present.” Through propaganda, “people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know’”. Enemies must be identified as the source of decay. “Finally, it seems, the ideal devil is a foreigner. To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.” But, Hoffer wrote, it would be a mistake to give too much credence to the ideas of demagogues. “The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”Eisenhower, who had led the armies that defeated Hitler, wrote a letter in 1958 warning against authoritarianism. Citing Hoffer, he stated that “dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems – freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions”.DeSantis, who has attempted and failed to supplant Trump by whipping up hysteria against the menace of “wokeness”, more or less got one of Hoffer’s memorable quotes right. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”In Georgia, on 14 August 2023, Trump was indicted on 41 felony counts with 18 co-defendants for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results under the state’s Rico statute – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.The problem in applying Hoffer’s aphorism to Trump is that with him it was always a racket.
      Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Trump doubled his voting base in Iowa. Here’s who voted for him

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      Iowa Republicans showed up on 15 January in force for Donald Trump, voting overwhelmingly in the nation’s first primary for the former president, whose grip on his party has only deepened as he weathers numerous lawsuits and 91 felony charges relating to his business dealings and involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Iowa caucuses confirmed polls that have consistently shown Trump carrying a comfortable lead ahead of the remaining Republican challengers.Before the caucuses, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, repeatedly reminded voters and the press that he had toured all of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump won 98 of them. With the exception of college graduates and voters under 30, who for the most part caucused for DeSantis or the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, most other demographic groups reported strong support for Trump this year.Even young Republican voters favored Trump slightly more strongly this year than in the 2016 Iowa caucuses: CNN entrance polls showed a modest 3% jump in caucus-goers under 30 who support Trump, while his share of supporters over the age of 30 nearly doubled across the board.Since 2016, Trump has consolidated support among evangelical Christian voters, a key block in Iowa. Just over 20% of Trump’s Iowa supporters in 2016 self-reported as evangelicals or born-again Christians; evangelicals made up 53% of his supporters in 2024 Iowa polling.Support for Trump among evangelical Christians can be chalked up to “transactional politics” said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.Their support may be puzzling on the surface – Trump, a philandering and corrupt adulterer twice divorced who is not particularly religious, would seem an unlikely candidate for wide support from the devout. But behind the scenes, leaders in the evangelical movement, including influential members of the Southern Baptist church, struck a deal with Trump in 2016. In exchange for the support and endorsements of church leaders, Trump would afford evangelicals institutional power in his administration. Through an evangelical advisory board, they would help set social policy and do whatever they could to end the legal right to abortion.Leaders in the church, in exchange, crafted a message that would make Trump more palatable to members.To evangelicals, “Trump was not a man of God,” said Nelson. “He was an instrument of God, like King Cyrus, the Persian king in the Bible.”The bargain held: Trump won the support of evangelical voters and then delivered to them a supreme court that overturned Roe v Wade, erasing nearly 50 years of legal precedent that guaranteed the right to abortion.And despite political divisions among prominent pastors in Iowa, support for Trump among evangelical voters increased this year.The Iowa primary may be a reasonable bellwether for evangelical support for him – and as far as it served as a litmus test for Republican party polling, the polling held up. But Iowa’s primary is atypical.Iowa is more racially homogeneous than the rest of the US – more than 85% of Iowans identify as white, and Black people make up only about 4% of the population, compared with the national average of 71% and 12%. While Black men across the US have increasingly reported supporting Trump in polling, there were so few non-white Republican caucus-goers that entrance polling did not register them as a statistically significant bloc.The Republican caucuses are also party meetings, requiring party membership to participate and consisting of an exclusively in-person vote.The time commitment, the fact that caucuses also involve Republican party business, and even the extreme cold in Iowa this week probably affected turnout, which was estimated at 110,000 voters, significantly lower than 2016.“The proportion of rank-and-file Republicans who are going to participate in the caucuses would be fewer than in a typical primary,” said Barbara Trish, a professor of political science at Grinnell College in Iowa.“The smaller the core of participants, the more likely they are to be more ideologically extreme, or more, on average, experienced and active in the party.”The next stop to test the strength and growth of Trump’s base is New Hampshire, which is also demographically less diverse than most of the country and thus not representative of what the US election as a whole will look like. Even so, Trump is predicted to win the state, further cement his monopoly of the party, and box out those who threaten it. More

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      Republican debate cancelled after Haley refuses to take stage without Trump

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      ABC News has cancelled the next Republican presidential debate after Nikki Haley said she would not appear on stage unless Donald Trump takes part.Trump has refused to participate in any of the Republican primary debates so far, making Ron DeSantis the only candidate committed to Thursday’s event in New Hampshire.“We’ve had five great debates in this campaign,” Haley said in a statement, released as she campaigned in New Hampshire. “Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them. He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden. I look forward to it.”Her statement was released a day after the all-important Iowa caucuses, which Trump won by a wide margin over Haley, who won just over 19% of the vote, and DeSantis, who earned 21% of the vote.The move also could be a result of the last debate which featured only Haley and DeSantis. Haley didn’t perform as well as expected, and DeSantis ultimately ended up beating her for second place in Iowa.Haley had argued to caucusgoers that picking her gives Republicans a better chance to defeat Biden in November, pointing to survey data showing her with the largest lead among the GOP field in a theoretical general election matchup.“Our intent was to host a debate coming out of the Iowa caucuses, but we always knew that would be contingent on the candidates and the outcome of the race,” ABC News spokesperson Van Scott said in a statement.Haley’s decision also casts doubt on another New Hampshire debate scheduled for Sunday on CNN.On X, DeSantis said Haley “is afraid to debate because she doesn’t want to answer the tough questions.” He accused her of “running to be Trump’s VP” and said that he looked “forward to debating two empty podiums in the Granite State this week”.Trump spokesman Steven Cheung on Tuesday called Haley a “desperate globalist who wants higher taxes, open borders, and China to dominate the United States”. He added: “That’s why the only people who are voting for her are Democrats who are trying to interfere in a Republican primary.”With the GOP campaign now shifting to New Hampshire, ahead of that state’s primary next week, Haley has projected confidence that her commitment to the state and surveys showing her with support there will provide her campaign with the momentum needed to cut into Trump’s strength.Along the campaign trail in Iowa over the past week, reporters had asked Haley when she would commit to participating in Thursday’s debate, hosted by ABC and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College.After his caucus win Trump flew to New York, where he made an appearance in court for the first day of E Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against him, before heading to a rally in New Hampshire.New Hampshire Republican party chairman Chris Ager told the Associated Press that invitations had been extended to Haley and Trump to join DeSantis on stage for the debate.“We would love to see them all,” he said in a text message. “People in NH expect to see a local debate. Candidates who skip do so at their own risk.” More