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      A second Trump term will be far more autocratic than the first. He’s telling us | Jan-Werner Müller

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      The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Plenty of observers seem to think that’s all one needs to know as one beholds Donald Trump’s seemingly inevitable Republican nomination for president and possible second term. They assume that because it wasn’t fascism the first time, it cannot be fascism the second time; Trump is expected once more to be the bumbling, blustering buffoon, supervised by adults in the room.This relaxed view ignores that, with today’s pioneers of autocracy, things tend to only get really bad when they enter office the second time. The difference with Trump is not that he would leave democracy intact; the difference is that figures like the far-right Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, or Polish strongman Jarosław Kaczyński carefully hid their authoritarian plans. Trump, by contrast, is broadcasting everything in advance – and, if elected, will claim that he has a mandate to exact retribution and occupy the White House permanently.One of the great illusions of the 1990s was not, contrary to conventional wisdom, the belief that history had ended. Rather, it was the notion that democracies make mistakes but that their leaders are uniquely capable of correcting and learning from them. By contrast, the thinking went, autocrats cannot face up to problems; dictatorships are destined to end like the Soviet Union ended in 1991.Today, we should know better. Whether the likes of Orbán and Kaczyński always wanted to be autocrats is beside the point. The fact is that they, just like Trump, considered it deeply unfair that they had suffered election defeat (duly attributed to various enemies, from judges to hostile media outlets). When they came back to power, they had learned one thing for sure: not to waste political capital on culture wars, but to capture state institutions, ideally on day one, with the judiciary and the state bureaucracy as primary targets. For once you control the judges, you can go after the journalists, the teachers and the academics, and forever wage culture war to your heart’s content.Whether Trump personally has learned anything we can debate. But those around him evidently have. In 2025, they will not permit the “deep state” to frustrate the leader again; as a number of astute analysts have pointed out, there is a detailed scheme to replace perhaps up to 50,000 civil servants with political cronies, and bring the justice department under political control.It is typical for authoritarian populists to hijack the bureaucracy in broad daylight, advancing the argument that only they represent what populists call “the real people” (Trump’s very words to his supporters on January 6). After all, who is the state there for? The people, of course. Hence, when populists take over the state, they claim it’s really the people themselves rightfully taking possession of what is theirs. Recall Trump’s inaugural address, when he claimed that “we are transferring power from Washington and giving it back to you, the people”. The people never got it back, of course, because of the supposed “deep state”; this time must be different.The fact that the Heritage Foundation, a supposedly mainstream, sort-of-Reaganite conservative thinktank, has taken the lead in working out a plan to destroy the US administrative state is symptomatic of the fact that plenty of Republicans outside the immediate Maga cult have not only made their peace with an election denier and insurrection promoter but would appear to be onboard with threats Trump has spelled out in speech after speech: on Veterans Day, he promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”Other aspiring autocrats were probably also seething with resentment – but they carefully camouflaged their intentions as they prepared the path back to office. In 2010, Orbán could wait for power to fall into his lap, in light of the Hungarian center-left’s disastrous economic record and corruption scandals (which pale in comparison with what Orbán would end up doing in his kleptocratic system); he never announced that he sought to replace independent judges, destroy media pluralism and pass a new constitution.Trump is not hiding anything; nor does a figure like the Heritage president, who considers Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model”. Trump threatens that “either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state”. Judges, journalists, anyone who didn’t do his bidding to steal the 2020 election, anyone in the Biden administration (communists!), anyone in foundations and universities declared by the Trump acolyte JD Vance to be “cancers on American society” – all should realize that he means it, and that self-styled center-right figures are not disavowing him.If Trump wins, he will claim that “the people” – for only his voters are the “real people” – democratically decided in favor of revenge and destruction.
      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University. He is also a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘Moderate’ or Roe v Wade killer: can Trump have it both ways on abortion?

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      A few months ago, the former president Donald Trump accused the Republican party of speaking “very inarticulately” on abortion. And yet, for the GOP presidential frontrunner, inarticulateness seems to be a feature, not a bug, of his own approach to abortion.Trump thinks he can run in 2024 as a “moderate” on abortion, Rolling Stone reported this week – even though he’s currently running ads in Iowa, a crucial state in the Republican primary, proclaiming himself “the most pro-life president ever”. It’s a title to which Trump has a legitimate claim: his three nominees to the supreme court not only handed the nation’s highest court a definitive conservative majority, but all three voted to overturn Roe v Wade in summer 2022.That move handed the anti-abortion movement the victory of a lifetime, but Republicans have been paying for it ever since. They underperformed in both the 2022 midterms and the 2023 Virginia state elections, losses that have been widely credited to the party’s inability to figure out a path forward on abortion. Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, won every abortion-related ballot measure of the last 18 months, even in red states. After Ohio, seemingly a conservative stronghold, voted to enshrine abortion rights in its state constitution earlier this month, abortion rights activists rushed to remind Democrats that “abortion is a winning issue” in 2024.While Republicans have flailed over how to message on an apparently toxic issue, Trump has – in typical Trump fashion – flip-flopped on it with apparent ease. Shortly after the 2022 midterms, Trump blamed “the abortion issue” for Republicans’ poor performance. He has refused to say whether he supports a federal ban and called the decision by Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, to sign a six-week abortion ban a “terrible thing”.But all the while, Trump continues to take credit for overturning Roe.“I was able to kill Roe v Wade,” he bragged on social media in May.Howard Schweber, a professor of American politics and political theory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that “Trump has what, in my experience of observing politics, seems like a nearly unique ability to maintain cognitive dissonance in ways that his supporters find untroubling.“His supporters will say, ‘Oh, well, he really means that when he says’ – and then finish that sentence with whichever position they approve of. That’s the gamble that he’s taking,” he said.Trump has not said what, if any, specific abortion policy he would support as president. DeSantis has said that he would support a 15-week national abortion ban, a position championed by the powerful anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has said that she would sign an abortion ban as president, but doubts that Republicans could muster the votes in Congress.Iowa has a reputation for conservative evangelicalism, but most Iowans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. By not letting himself get nailed down on a specific abortion policy, Trump might be approaching Iowa as though the presidential primary is already over, said Tim Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. (Which it very well be: Trump is polling far higher than any of his competitors, who have largely cratered.) In a general election, where voters are more likely to be less dogmatic, it can pay to be vague – particularly on a charged issue like abortion.“Things that you might say a little more forcefully during the nomination process during the primaries, you back off a little bit when it comes time to time for the general election,” Hagle said. “And that’s been a strategy of candidates for decades.”Republicans in Iowa have launched an effort to amend the state constitution and clarify that it does not protect abortion rights. In order for the amendment to show up on the ballot, the Republican-controlled state legislature would have to pass it before handing the measure to voters. That could backfire, increasing turnout among abortion rights supporters who oppose Trump.“But then we’re also talking about turnout in the presidential year, which is high anyway,” Hagle said. “So if you lose turnout in a midterm year, that’s going to make more of a difference than in a presidential year.”Most Americans oppose the overturning of Roe. But that doesn’t mean voters are all that motivated by it: numerous polls since Roe’s overturning have found that Democrats are highly energized by abortion, while Republicans are less so – a reversal of the status quo while Roe was the law of the land.As long as Trump wins the primary, he’s in little danger of losing the conservative evangelicals who oppose abortion rights. While they may want him to be more forceful on the issue, it’s improbable that they would turn to a Democrat in response to Trump’s reticence.“Sometimes the option is to not vote at all, but I can’t imagine that they would want to do that either,” Hagle said. “It does create a little heartburn on the part of the pro-life folks that supported him if all the sudden he’s taking a more moderating position, but he may see that that’s more appropriate given his electoral strategy.”Even people who say that they would like to keep abortion “mostly legal” are not always that invested in doing so. A recent poll from the New York Times – which did not look at Iowa – found that, among voters who want abortion to be “mostly legal”, Biden led by only one point. Those voters are also twice as likely to say they plan to vote based on economic issues, rather than social issues like abortion.Schweber, though, is convinced that there are would-be Trump voters who will defect solely based on their support of abortion.“Women voters – particularly middle-class and upper-class, suburban women voters – do take abortion rights seriously,” he said. In 2016, Schweber said Republican women told him, “It doesn’t matter, they’re never going to overrule Roe.”“That sense of security is obviously gone,” he added. More

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      The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory review: Trump and his evangelical believers

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      With The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, Tim Alberta of the Atlantic, author of a previous blockbuster on Republican politics and, this year, the profile that helped bring down Chris Licht at CNN, delivers another essential read. It is substantive, news-filled and personal.“I have endeavored to honor God with this book,” he writes. The son of an evangelical Presbyterian minister who came to religion from finance, Alberta lays bare his hurt over how the cross has grown ever more synonymous with those who most fervently wave the Stars and Stripes, on the right of the political spectrum.“All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.” Isaiah’s teaching stands nearly forgotten.In his prologue, Alberta takes us back to summer 2019, and his father’s funeral. The Rev Richard Alberta died suddenly, of a heart attack. Regardless, a church elder delivered to Alberta a one-page screed expressing his disapproval of the author for not embracing Donald Trump as God’s anointed. Yes, the same guy who made “Two Corinthians” a punchline. Time, place and decorum were discarded. Alberta’s sins demanded rebuke.“I was part of an evil plot, the man wrote, to undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States. My criticisms of President Trump were tantamount to treason – against both God and country – and I should be ashamed of myself.”Alberta passed the letter to his wife.“What the hell is wrong with these people?” she cried.As many congregants would see it, probably nothing. The unidentified elder simply repeated sentiments that had taken root in evangelical America since Trump’s election in 2016. The letter embodied a shift that was decades in the making. Demographics were in flux. Barack Obama had occupied the White House. The spirit of Protestant dissent, which once fueled rebellion against the crown, had given way to declaring Trump a divine emissary, a modern-day Cyrus. Or Caesar.Funny how Obama never held such a place of honor. Then again, he was Black and liberal and his personal beliefs could be discounted. American evangelism had evolved into caffeinated American nationalism, white identity close to the surface.Franklin Graham, the late Billy Graham’s son, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. “The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment,” he said, on Facebook.Another famous scion, the now disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr, admonished his flock to stop electing “nice guys”. Instead, he tweeted, “the US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government”. Resentment and grievance supplanted the message of scripture and “What would Jesus do?”Alberta remembers a preacher in Colorado who conflated a Republican midterms victory with the triumph of Christ. “May this state be turned red with the blood of Jesus, and politically,” Steve Holt prayed, at a revival in spring last year.“Lauren Boebert looked right at home,” Alberta recalls, of the far-right controversialist and congresswoman from the same great state. “Boebert wasn’t bothered by this pastor praying for Jesus’s blood – His precious, sacrificial blood, shed for the salvation of sinners – to win an election, because, well, she wasn’t bothered by much after all.”Months later, Boebert won re-election in a squeaker. Her recent behaviour at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver – singing, dancing, vaping, groping – simply confirmed what everyone had thought since she arrived on the national scene. She is profoundly unsuitable for power.Alberta grapples with the decline in evangelical affiliation and the growth of evangelical unpopularity. He is mindful of religion’s lack of purchase among younger Americans. Scandal, and the embrace of conservatism and Trump, has extracted a heavy price. “Religious nones” grow stronger at the polls. In 2020, more than one in five voters identified that way. White evangelicals made up 28%.Alberta also delivers a deep dive into events at Liberty University, the Virginia machine built by Jerry Falwell Sr and Jr.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Jerry Jr told me … the school was building a new $35m facility,” Alberta writes. “There would even be a hologram of Falwell Sr preaching.”So much for the biblical injunction against worship of idols and images.“I actually own my father’s name and it happens to be my name too,” Falwell Jr is quoted as saying. By that logic, the sordid circumstances surrounding Falwell Jr’s marriage would be stains on his father’s legacy. “I like to watch”? It doesn’t scream piety or faith.These days, Falwell Jr litigates against the school his father built. Fallen from grace, he wants back in. Among his gripes is that present management is “choosing piety over competence”, Alberta quotes him as saying. “It’s exactly what my dad didn’t want to see happen.”Alberta also captures Trump’s true feelings for the evangelical community, or at least those who sided with Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary. “So-called Christians.” “Real pieces of shit.” Seven years on, it does not seem much has changed.According to recent reports, Trump has privately derided anti-abortion leaders as lacking “leverage” to force his hand while tweaking them for having nowhere else to go after the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade. He has reportedly mocked as “disloyal” and “out of touch” those evangelicals who cast their lot with Ron DeSantis. In Iowa, Trump holds a 30-point lead. DeSantis falls, Nikki Haley nipping at his (lifted?) heels. As November 2024 draws closer, a Trump sell-out of his evangelical supporters looms large.Alberta closes his book with a verse from II Corinthians, the Epistle of Paul Trump couldn’t get right: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
      The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism is published in the US by Harper More

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      Federal judge rejects Trump’s attempt to dismiss 2020 election subversion case

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      A federal judge on Friday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, ruling that he enjoyed no immunity from prosecution simply because it was based on actions he took when he was still president.The order by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan simultaneously denied two of Trump’s motions to dismiss – on presidential immunity grounds and constitutional grounds – setting the stage for Trump to appeal to the DC circuit and ultimately the US supreme court.“The court cannot conclude that our constitution cloaks former presidents with absolute immunity for any federal crimes they committed while in office,” Chutkan wrote. “Nothing in the constitution’s text or allocation of government powers requires exempting former presidents.”“Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan’s 48-page opinion added.Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington next March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.The former president has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.Trump’s lawyers filed their motions to dismiss in October, advancing a sweeping and unprecedented interpretation of executive power that argued former presidents could not be held criminally accountable for actions undertaken while in office.The filing contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the indictment, from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.The judge emphatically rejected the presidential immunity arguments in the opinion accompanying her order, writing that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”The judge appeared to take particular umbrage at the Trump lawyers’ claim that it was unconstitutional to charge Trump just because no other former presidents before him had been charged, writing that while his case was unprecedented, so too were the crimes for which he has been charged.“The supreme court has never immunized presidents – much less former presidents – from judicial process merely because it was the first time that process had been necessary,” Chutkan wrote, invoking US history and the pardon conferred to Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandalThe presidential pardon to Nixon was granted and accepted precisely to prevent the possibility of criminal prosecution over Watergate, the opinion said – without which, there would have been no need for a pardon in the first place.The judge noted, however, that she was not expressing an opinion on an adjacent argument Trump had raised about whether his actions related to January 6 could be prosecuted because they fell within the so-called “outer perimeter” of his duties as president.Chutkan’s denial came hours after the DC circuit also rejected Trump’s attempt to use a similar presidential immunity argument to protect himself from several civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for inciting the violence that took place during the January 6 Capitol attack.In a statement, a Trump spokesperson attacked the order: “Radical Democrats, under the direction of crooked Joe Biden, continue to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.” More

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      Trump victory in 2024 would mean no trial in Georgia for years, lawyer argues

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      Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia would be delayed until 2029 if he won re-election next year because the US constitution prohibits states from interfering with federal government functions, his lawyer argued at a court hearing on Friday.“I believe that the supremacy clause and his duties as president of the United States – this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office,” the former president’s lawyer Steve Sadow said.The remark came during an hours-long hearing before the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the sprawling conspiracy and racketeering case connected to the efforts taken by Trump and dozens of his top allies to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state.While that argument – that Trump would be shielded from the criminal case brought by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis were he to become president once more – has been privately discussed for months, this marked the first time Trump’s lawyer affirmed the position in open court.The remark from Sadow came as the judge grappled with how to schedule a trial date in the case. Fulton county prosecutors had previously asked the judge to set trial for 5 August 2024, positioning it after Trump’s other criminal cases in Washington, New York and Florida.Trump’s current schedule includes: his Washington trial on federal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 election on 4 March, his New York trial on local charges over hush-money payments to an adult film star on 25 March, and his classified documents trial in Florida on 20 May.Fulton county prosecutors’ proposal envisioned going to trial after those cases were complete. But with the New York case and the Florida case are almost certain to be delayed for months, and Trump likely to be the GOP presidential nominee, McAfee put off setting a trial date at the hearing.The judge said an August trial date was “not unrealistic”, though he added he was uncertain that could be determined months in advance.McAfee gave no indication how he might rule on a trial date and tried to navigate its politically and legally sensitive nature by questioning Trump’s lawyer and prosecutors on whether proceeding in the summer, just months before the election, would amount to “election interference”.The arguments were predictable: Trump’s lawyer Sadow argued it would take Trump off the campaign trail during the most crucial time, while prosecutor Nathan Wade contended that Trump was a defendant and it was “moving forward with the business of Fulton county”.The judge then turned to the question of whether Trump’s trial could even continue should he win the election, with prosecutors anticipating the case stretching into 2025. “Could he even be tried in 2025?” McAfee asked.Sadow responded that Trump could not, because the supremacy clause in the constitution meant the state’s interest in prosecuting him would be secondary to the federal government’s interest in him fulfilling his presidential role, although how it would apply in a criminal prosecution remains untested.The situation would apply only to Trump, Sadow conceded – and the judge indicated he would break up the remaining 14 co-defendants so that they would go to trial in several groups. McAfee added that it was still too early to decide how many groups he would create.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the indictment handed up by an Atlanta-area grand jury charging them with reversing his defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – all of whom gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump, to some degree – as well as the local bail bond officer Scott Hall.The district attorney’s office currently does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported this week. More

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      His debate with Gavin Newsom showed Ron DeSantis will never be president | Lloyd Green

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      On Thursday night, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, reminded the US why he will never be president. His voice grates, his visage a cross between a squinted grimace and scowl. He looks like Manuel Noriega, the ex-Panamanian dictator, without the scarring. On a personal level, he lacks humor, warmth, wit or uplift. He is ham-handed, an awkward social warrior.DeSantis comes across as too hot. This is the guy who picked a fight with Mickey Mouse, his state’s largest employer. He holds degrees from Yale and Harvard, but repeatedly flashes clouded judgment. In other words, there are plenty of reasons why he is getting walloped among Republicans by Donald Trump.“You’re down 41 points in your own home state,” California’s Gavin Newsom happily reminded DeSantis during their televised debate, which Fox moderated.And if you can’t win your own state, you are going nowhere. Recall: Senator Elizabeth Warren lost to Joe Biden in 2020’s Massachusetts primary and never regained her former stature.The dust-up was organized and moderated by Fox’s Sean Hannity, with Fox advertising the gubernatorial cage match – between the governors of two of the US’s largest states – as “DeSantis vs Newsom: The Great Red v Blue State Debate”.Over 90-plus minutes, DeSantis attacked Newsom – whose Republican ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle is engaged to Don Jr – without lasting impact. He ran through a litany of California’s woes but couldn’t make them stick. Then again, he carries a ton of baggage, from crime and abortion to January 6 and needless Covid-related deaths. A recent court settlement over Florida’s improper withholding of Covid records highlights the fact that DeSantis’s boasts were empty.Florida is plagued by high murder and gun mortality – as Trump, DeSantis’s bitter rival, is fond of reminding Republican primary voters. DeSantis has dangled the prospect of pardoning January 6 defendants but claims to love the police.By the numbers, Florida’s homicide rate tops California’s (and New York’s, for that matter). Beyond that, Christian Ziegler, the chair of the Florida Republican party, is under investigation for rape and sexual assault. Law and order; traditional family values; whatever.On the debate stage, DeSantis failed to land the blows he needed to rejuvenate his formerly promising campaign. His one-on-one confrontation did nothing to dent Nikki Haley’s rise or bring him any closer to Trump. Air continues to exit DeSantis’s low-flying balloon.He recently received the endorsement of Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical leader in Iowa, but that gain has yet to move the dial. On the other hand, Haley just this week scored the endorsement of the Kochs’ political network, which translates into money and campaign foot-soldiers, as DeSantis knows from personal experience.“DeSantis wins formal Koch backing as momentum continues to shift,” a Politico headline from 2018 blared. Those days are so gone.“When are you going to drop out and give Nikki Haley a shot to win?” Newsom zinged. Great question, one that DeSantis failed to answer in front of the Trump fan boy Sean Hannity. DeSantis – a Rupert Murdoch personal favorite – fell flat on Murdoch’s own network. Meanwhile, the Fox board member and ex-House speaker Paul Ryan was touting Haley to whomever would listen.Much like Mike Pence, the former vice-president and former presidential wannabe, DeSantis is bogged down in abortion and Dobbs, the gift the right wing prayed for but is now living to regret. For Pence, it was a matter of conviction; for DeSantis it looks like a case of expedience that quickly headed south.In July last year, Florida enacted a 15-week cut-off for abortion. For DeSantis that wasn’t enough. He doubled down on the issue and lost. To burnish his rightwing credentials, he then pressed the Florida legislature to adopt a six-week abortion ban and it backfired. Tremendously.He got what he demanded and is now living with its consequences. A majority of Floridians are pro-choice, by a 56-39 margin. Florida isn’t Mississippi, to DeSantis’s chagrin.“You want to roll back hard-earned national rights on voting rights and civil rights, human rights and women’s rights, not just access to abortion, but also access to contraception,” Newsom fired. The US is still waiting for DeSantis’s retort.Here, Trump smells blood. He has privately derided anti-abortion leaders as lacking “leverage” to force his hand while tweaking them for having nowhere else to go once the supreme court struck down Roe v Wade. He has also reportedly mocked as “disloyal” and “out of touch” those evangelicals who cast their lot with DeSantis.Simply put, Vander Plaats won’t be receiving a Christmas card from the Trumps later this month. In that same vein, the evangelical rank and file has parted ways with its leadership. These days, Nascar and Florida’s Daytona are their spiritual homes; church pews on Sunday, not so much.In a sense, DeSantis is stuck in the past, rerunning yesteryear’s campaigns. Right now, Trump demonstrates traction with younger voters and is making inroads with minority communities. By contrast, DeSantis is picking losing fights.Gasping for attention, he unfurled a “poop map” of San Francisco to highlight the magnitude of the city’s homeless problem. The stunt backfired. Right now, it’s DeSantis’s campaign that seems to be the raging dung heap. The words “Florida man” usually precede a punchline or something gruesome.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Trump can be sued over January 6 Capitol attack, US appeals court rules

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      A US appeals court on Friday ruled that Donald Trump must face civil lawsuits over his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, rejecting the former president’s claim that he is immune.A panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit found that Trump was acting “in his personal capacity as a presidential candidate” when he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol. US presidents are immune from civil lawsuits only for official actions. Part of the lawsuit was filed under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law, which makes it illegal to prevent an officer of the United States from performing their duties through threats or intimidation.“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “While Presidents are often exercising official responsibilities when they speak on matters of public concern, that is not always the case.”Srinivasan, an appointee of Barack Obama, was joined by Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judith Rogers, an appointee of Bill Clinton.While the panel ruled Trump could be sued, it made it clear it was not precluding him from arguing that he was acting in his official capacity as a defense as the lawsuit proceeds.“When these cases move forward in the district court, he must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” the opinion said.The ruling clears the way for Trump to face lawsuits from police officers and US lawmakers seeking to hold him responsible for the violence by his supporters during the riot, which was an attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” said James Blassingame, a Capitol police officer who is a plaintiff in the case, James Blassingame v Donald Trump. “I couldn’t be more committed to pursuing accountability on this matter. I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the 2024 election.The civil suits will only add to the significant legal problems the former president faces. In total, Trump already faces 91 felony charges.Both the justice department and the Fulton county district attorney have criminally charged Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The justice department is also prosecuting him for his handling of classified documents after leaving office. The Manhattan district attorney also has a pending case against Trump over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump has also spent much of the last month defending his business in a civil case in New York on charges it committed fraud by inflating the value for obtain more favorable terms on loans and insurance. More

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      House debates resolution to expel Republican George Santos – live updates

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      The House has started its resolution debate on expelling New York Republican representative George Santos.Santos has remained defiant and in denial of all charges against him, including wire fraud, arguing that his fellow lawmakers are “bullying” him out of the House.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      George Santos remained defiant ahead of the House expulsion vote. In a fiery press conference this morning on Capitol Hill, Santos accused the House ethics report which detailed “pervasive” fraud as “slanderous” and “littered in hyperbole, littered in opinion.”
      Anna Kaplan, a former Democratic New York state senator who is challenging George Santos for his House seat, has responded to the upcoming House expulsion vote surrounding Santos, saying: “If George Santos is expelled tomorrow, the special election will be right around the corner. I am battle tested, and I am ready to flip New York’s third congressional district blue. We’ve already raised over $1m. We’re just getting started.”
      New York Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has released a statement in response to George Santos’s vows to introduce a privileged resolution to expel him today, saying: “No one in Congress, or anywhere in America, takes soon-to-be former congressman George Santos seriously, This is just another meaningless stunt in his long history of cons, antics and outright fraud.”
      A New York appellate court reinstated a gag order on Thursday that prohibited Donald Trump and his lawyers from publicly commenting on court staff in the former president’s civil fraud case. “Petitioners having moved to stay enforcement of the aforesaid gag order and supplemental limited gag order pending hearing and determination of the instant petition. Now, upon reading and filing the papers with respect to the motion, and due deliberation having been had thereon, it is ordered that the motion is denied,” the court stated.
      Donald Trump continues to attack the wife of the New York state judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed a gag order on Trump in the former president’s civil fraud case in New York. In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump has accused Dawn Engoron of posting anti-Trump memes on X, formerly known as Twitter. Dawn has said that the X account is not run by her.
      Donald Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise has condemned the reinstatement of the gag order, telling CBS: “In a country where the first amendment is sacrosanct, President Trump may not even comment on why he thinks he cannot get a fair trial.”
      The Joe Biden administration has announced new action to protect communities from lead exposure. In a statement released on Thursday, the White House revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a proposal to “strengthen its lead and cooper rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years, helping secure safe drinking water for communities across the country.”
      A vote on Santos’s fate will take place tomorrow.Republican leaders delayed the vote, saying that they have other business to get to today. Tomorrow’s vote will be the third time this year that the chamber has considered expelling Santos.The debate has concluded.In a final defense, Santos remained defiant. He did not offer much defense of himself, but said he would not resign.“If tomorrow, when this vote is on the floor, it is in the conscience of all of my colleagues that they believe this is a correct thing to do, so be it. Take the vote. I am at peace,” he said.“I do not believe that the Long Island crew is acting in bad faith, just exceedingly bad judgement,” said the Florida Republican representative Matt Gaetz.“Since the beginning of this Congress, there’s only two ways you get expelled. You get convicted of a crime or you participated in a civil war. Neither of those apply to George Santos and so I rise, not to defend George Santos, whoever he is, but to defend the very precedent that my colleagues are willing to shatter,” he added.“I’ve heard your argument. I feel your passion. I understand your position but you’re about to go too far. Just calm down and step back,” said the Louisiana Republican representative Clay Higgins as he addressed the House.“This is what I advise my colleagues on both sides of the aisle … We’re talking about the removal of a member of Congress. Are the American people to believe the opinions of congressmen is a higher standard than the delivered vote of the American people? Is a report from a committee a higher standard than the two-year election cycle as established by our founding fathers and enshrined in our constitution? Calm down,” said Higgins.The floor has been yielded back to George Santos who is now saying: “We hear a lot about process, we hear a lot about findings … this process has been skewed, how this process is sloppy.”He added that this process “is contradictory to the core”.The findings of the committee were shocking,” said the Republican representative Michael Guest of Mississippi.“We know that the ethics committee authorized 37 subpoenas. They issued 43 requests for information. They interviewed 40 witnesses. They reviewed 172,000 pages of documents and they issued a 56-page investigation report,” he said.“The report … paints a picture of the fraud committed by Santos,” he continued, pulling up a large display of the language used in the report.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the display read, quoting from the report.“He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contribution to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit,” it added.“I’m not trying to be arrogant or spiteful or disrespectful of the [ethics] committee but I’m curious to know, what is the schedule of the ethics committee?” said Santos, complaining that other findings launched by the ethics committee have taken years.“Why rush this? To deliver a predetermined outcome sought out by some members of our conference? Or some members of this body?” he added.“It is a predetermined necessity for some members in this body to engage in this smear campaign to destroy me. I will not stand by quietly,” he continued.“Every member expelled in history of this institution has been convicted of crimes or confederate turncoats guilty of treason. Neither of those apply to me but here we are,” said George Santos in his House remarks.“On what basis does this body feel that that precedent must be changed for me?” he said.“I have been convicted of no crimes, Mr Speaker. My loyalty to this country … is true and unquestionable,” he added.The House has started its resolution debate on expelling New York Republican representative George Santos.Santos has remained defiant and in denial of all charges against him, including wire fraud, arguing that his fellow lawmakers are “bullying” him out of the House.The Joe Biden administration has announced new action to protect communities from lead exposure.In a statement released on Thursday, the White House revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a proposal to “strengthen its lead and cooper rule that would require water systems to replace lead service lines within 10 years, helping secure safe drinking water for communities across the country.”
      The president’s bipartisan infrastructure law invests over $50bn for the largest upgrade to the nation’s water infrastructure in history, and today’s action builds on these historic levels of funding from president Biden’s Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, to replace lead service lines across the nation,” the White House said.
      Joe Biden has once again reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to upholding protections surrounding reproductive healthcare.“Congress must codify the protections of Roe v Wade,” he tweeted on Thursday.Donald Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise has condemned the reinstatement of the gag order, telling CBS:“In a country where the first amendment is sacrosanct, President Trump may not even comment on why he thinks he cannot get a fair trial.”Kise, who called today’s decision “a tragic day for the rule of law,” added: “Hard to imagine a more unfair process and hard to believe this is happening in America.” More