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      ‘Cognitively impaired’? Trump’s confused attacks on Biden start to backfire

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      Donald Trump has long attacked Joe Biden, his likely opponent at the polls next year, as “Sleepy Joe”, portraying the 80-year-old president as too old and too mentally fogged to occupy the Oval Office. As recently as Friday, the former president attacked his successor for being unfit to deal with Russia and the threat of nuclear war.But Trump’s tactics rebounded when he said Biden threatened to lead the US into “world war two” – and suggested that he, Trump, thought he had beaten Barack Obama for the presidency back in 2016.There have been two world wars. The first ended in 1918, the second in 1945. The cold war, the nuclear stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union that often threatened a third world war, ended with the fall of the communist regime in Moscow in 1991.Obama was president, and Biden vice-president, from 2009 to 2017. In the 2016 election, Trump beat Hillary Clinton.Mockery of Trump’s stumbles was immediate and sustained. But it also pointed to an increasingly stark issue on both sides of the aisle: the advanced age of many American leaders, and polling that shows most voters want generational change.At 80, Biden is the oldest president ever. Should he win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 86 on leaving office. Polling has shown more than 75% of Americans think he is too old for a second term.Trump is 77 but polls show significantly fewer voters think he is too old to return to power. Whether gaffes like those he made in Washington move the needle remains, of course, to be seen.Addressing the Pray, Vote, Stand summit, a rightwing event, Trump said Biden was “cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead and … now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war”.Under Biden, he added: “We would be in world war two.”On Monday, the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, laughed as he said: “It’s almost like it’s the summer of 1939 all over again. You know, [Trump’s] father’s going to a Nazi rally or something, or a Klan rally. I don’t know which rally he did or didn’t go to.”Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens, New York, in 1927. Donald Trump has reportedly expressed sympathy for Nazism and Adolf Hitler.“But yeah,” Scarborough said. “You think they may want to take out the ‘cognitively impaired’ part of his speeches from now on.”Jonathan Lemire, his fellow host, said: “That’s an attack line the Republicans and Trump love to use [against Biden] but, man, that does seem like he was looking in the mirror just there.“I mean … we see these polls that suggest that voters are more concerned about President Biden’s age than Donald Trump’s age. Trump is only three years younger and anyone watching Trump day in, day out says he’s changed too.”Biden says he is fit to serve. So does Trump, telling NBC in an interview broadcast on Sunday “there should be a competency” test for presidents, of the sort he “aced” while in the White House. That prompted memories of previous national mirth, when in summer 2020 Trump, then 74, bragged about successfully recognising “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in a cognitive exam.But, again, the issue remains a serious one.Democrats protest that disproportionate attention is paid to Biden’s age than that of Trump. Last week, Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist, told CBS News: “Joe Biden is getting older, we all know that. But the other guy he’s probably going to be running against is getting older, too. And in the focus groups that I’m doing, old and steady still beats old and crazy.”Nonetheless, on Sunday, a new poll from CBS and YouGov said only 34% of voters thought Biden would complete a second term if elected. Asked the same question about Trump, 55% said they thought he would complete a full four years.Asked if the two men had the necessary mental and cognitive health to be president, 26% said only Biden did, 44% said only Trump did and 23% said neither did.Ninety-one criminal charges and assorted civil lawsuits notwithstanding, Trump leads Republican polling by wide margins. His challengers have made age and cognitive ability an issue but such is Trump’s dominance, they have mostly directed their fire at Biden.Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor who is a distant second to Trump, said last week age was “absolutely a legitimate concern” when electing a president.“The presidency’s not a job for someone that’s 80 years old,” DeSantis told CBS.He did not say if he thought the same about someone who was 77, and who the former Republican party chair Michael Steele called a “dumbass”, over his Washington remarks.But DeSantis added: “Obviously, I’m the governor of Florida, I know a lot of people who are elderly, they’re great people, but you’re talking about a job where you need to give it 100%, we need an energetic president.”Concern about the age of many US party leaders has spread beyond the presidency, particularly given public health scares suffered by Mitch McConnell, the 81-year-old Republican leader in the Senate, and Dianne Feinstein, the 90-year-old Democratic senator from California.DeSantis said: “I think that if the founders could kind of look at this again, I do think they probably would’ve put an age limit on some of these offices.” More

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      Here’s the scary way Trump could win without the electoral or popular vote | Stephen Marche

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      In an ordinary time, under ordinary political conditions, the specter of another Trump presidency would be strictly the stuff of nightmares. The former president is facing 40 criminal charges for his mishandling of classified documents, and will have to interrupt his campaign next summer to defend himself in court. Those charges are apart from the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records he faces in New York. And then there’s the rape defamation lawsuit, which will begin in January, and which he will almost certainly lose.The American people, however, can be awfully forgiving. In current polling, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are tied nationally; no Republican nominee has emerged to challenge Trump. But, as we have been learning pretty much continuously since 2000, the will of the majority of the American people no longer matters all that much in who is running their country.The abstruse and elaborate mechanisms of the US constitution relating to elections, which used to be matters for historical curiosity, have become more and more relevant every year. In 2024, there is very much a way for Donald Trump to lose the popular vote, lose the electoral college, lose all his legal cases and still end up president of the United States in an entirely legal manner. It’s called a contingent election.A contingent election is the process put in place to deal with the eventuality in which no presidential candidate reaches the threshold of 270 votes in the electoral college. In the early days of the American republic, when the duopoly of the two-party system was neither desired nor expected, this process was essential.There have been two contingent elections in US history. The first was in 1825. The year before, Andrew Jackson, the man from the $20 bill, had won the plurality of votes and the plurality of electoral college votes as well, but after extensive, elaborate negotiations, John Quincy Adams took the presidency mostly by offering Henry Clay, who had come third in the election, secretary of state. Jackson, though shocked, conceded gracefully. He knew his time would come. His supporters used the taint of Adams’s “corrupt bargain” with Clay to ensure Jackson’s victory in 1828.Jackson was a patriot. He put the country’s interests ahead of his own, to preserve the young republic. The United States is older now, and the notion of leaders who would put the interests of the country ahead of themselves and their party is archaic. The 2022 midterms were unprecedented in terms of how many election deniers were appointed to serious office.“Many 2020 election deniers and skeptics ran for office in the 2022 midterm elections, with 229 candidates winning their elections,” a University of California report found. “A total of 40 states elected a 2020 election denier or skeptic to various positions, from governor to secretary of state to attorney general to congress.”The American people are already disinclined to believe in the legitimacy of any election that doesn’t conform to their own desired outcome any more, left or right. In 2016, at the inauguration of Donald Trump, the crowds chanted “not my president”. As of August, the percentage of Republicans who think that 2020 was stolen is near 70%.So the possibility of the electoral college releasing a confusing result, or being unable to certify a satisfying result by two months after the election, is quite real. The electoral college, even at its best, is an arcane system, unworthy of a 21st-century country. There have been, up to 2020, 165 faithless electors in American history – electors who didn’t vote for the candidate they had pledged to vote for.In 1836, Virginia faithless electors forced a contingent election for vice-president. If the 270 marker has not been reached by 6 January, the contingent election takes place automatically. And the contingent election isn’t decided by the popular votes or the number of electoral college votes. Each state delegation in the House of Representatives is given a single vote for president. Each state delegation in the Senate is given a single vote for vice-president.The basic unfairness of this process is obvious: California with its 52 representatives, and Texas with its 38 representatives, would have the same say in determining the presidency as Wyoming and Vermont, which have one apiece. State delegations in the House would favor Republicans as a matter of course. In the struggle for congressional delegates, Republicans would have 19 safe House delegations and the Democrats would have 14, as it stands, with more states leaning Republican than Democrat.All that would be required, from a technical, legal standpoint, is for enough electoral college votes to be uncounted or uncertified for the contingent election to take place, virtually guaranteeing a Republican victory and hence a Trump presidency. It would be entirely legal and constitutional. It just wouldn’t be recognizably democratic to anyone. Remember that autocracies have elections. It doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts.In 2021, I published a book about American political decline, The Next Civil War, which examined the structural crises underlying the collapse of the American political order, but I didn’t include a chapter on the electoral system because it seemed too far-fetched, the stuff of historical figments. Those deep structural crises are now, rapidly, overtaking the electoral system itself. A contingent election would be, in effect, the last election, which is the title of the new book I co-wrote with Andrew Yang about exactly that possibility. The rot is advancing faster than anybody could have imagined. Figments from history are now hints to the future.Polls aren’t worth much at the best of times but this year they are particularly meaningless. Democrats have taken comfort from a recent New York Times/Siena College poll that showed how the Republican advantage in the electoral college, which was 2.9% in 2016, rising to 3.8% in 2020, has diminished to less than a single percentage point, according to the most recent data. None of it matters.The real danger of 2024 isn’t even the possibility of a Trump presidency. It’s that the electoral system, in its arcane decrepitude, will produce an outcome that won’t be credible to anybody. The danger of 2024 is that it will be the last election.
      Stephen Marche is a Canadian essayist and novelist. He is the author of The Next Civil War and How Shakespeare Changed Everything More

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      Trump says Republicans ‘speak very inarticulately’ about abortion

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      Donald Trump grappled with a wide range of contentious issues in an interview with NBC that generated criticism against the network, including his thoughts on democratic principles, abortion rights and ageing politicians.He also confirmed his interest in choosing Kristi Noem to be his vice-presidential running mate if he wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 as he seeks a second term in the White House.In an interview on Sunday with Kristen Welker during her debut as host of NBC’s Meet the Press, the former president advised members of his party to abandon their hardline stance of abortion bans with no exceptions.He said Republicans “speak very inarticulately” about abortion and criticized those who push for abortion bans without exceptions in the cases of rape, incest and the health of the mother.“Other than certain parts of the country, you can’t – you’re not going to win on this issue,” said Trump, who faces more than 90 pending criminal charges across four separate indictments, including for subversion of the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.“But you will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks.”Trump predicted that both sides would eventually come together on the issue after the US supreme court last year eliminated the federal abortion rights that had been put in place decades earlier by the Roe v Wade ruling. Three justices whom he appointed to the supreme court made the elimination of those rights a reality.“For the first time in … years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us,” he said.Trump said he is “all for” a presidency competency test, but the 77-year-old expressed his opposition to age limits.He alluded to taking a mental competency test two or three years ago and boasted that he “aced it”.“I get everything right,” Trump said during the interview conducted at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf retreat. “I’m all for testing. I frankly think testing would be a good thing.”In 2020, it was revealed that some of the early questions in that test involved Trump identifying an elephant and counting backward from 100.Asked if it is time for a new generation of US leadership, Trump said: “It’s always time for a new generation.” But he qualified his answer: “Some of the greatest world leaders have been in their 80s.”Those remarks from Trump came after retiring Republican US senator Mitt Romney of Utah called for a “new generation of leaders”.Trump notably defended Biden, his Democratic rival, on his age. A poll last month from the Associated Press and the Norc Center for Public Affairs showed 77% of Americans – including 69% of Democrats – think the 80-year-old Biden is too old to serve a second term.“I don’t think Biden’s too old,” Trump said to Welker. “But I think he’s incompetent, and that’s a bigger problem. It’s really a level of competency, not the age.”Two days before Trump attacked Biden’s acuity, Trump told a summit in Washington that a “cognitively impaired” Biden would lead the US into “world war two”, which already occurred between 1939 and 1945.Meanwhile, Trump said he “liked the concept” of having a woman as his running mate if he wins the Republican nomination, adding that he had his eye on Noem, the South Dakota governor. “I think she’s fantastic,” he said. “She’s been a great governor. She gave me a very full-throated endorsement, a beautiful endorsement actually. Certainly she’d be one of the people I’d consider.”Noem recently confirmed that she was a candidate for the position. “Of course, I would consider it,” she told Fox News. But that was before the governor was splashed across the tabloid press for allegedly having an affair with former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski since at least 2019.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Daily Mail’s reporting has not been denied, though Noem’s spokesperson said it was “so predictable” that the South Dakota governor would be attacked soon after she endorsed Trump for the Republican nomination.Trump was asked if he still believes democracy is the most effective form of government. “I do – but it has to be a democracy that’s fair,” he said. “This democracy – I don’t consider us to have much of a democracy right now.”He went on to complain about the indictments against him, which also contain charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to conceal hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.Those charges are separate from civil cases that include a $250m lawsuit by the New York attorney general about his business affairs as well as a defamation claim stemming from a rape accusation that a judge has deemed to be “substantially true”.During the interview, Trump said he was not “consumed” with the prospect of prison time.“I don’t even think about it,” Trump said. “I’m built a little differently I guess, because I have had people come up to me and say, ‘How do you do it, sir? How do you do it?’ I don’t even think about it.“I truly feel that, in the end, we’re going to win.”Trump has maintained he would not pardon himself if he is re-elected, but he revealed to Welker that he had discussed pardoning himself in the dying days of his presidency – a sign that he and his legal team understood the legal peril he brought on to himself by challenging the election’s results.He said his failed election challenges eventually prompted him to ignore advice from his attorneys “because I didn’t respect them”.Sunday’s interview earned NBC criticism from many commentators who questioned the wisdom of giving such a soapbox to Trump after his alleged criminal misdeeds from before, during and after his presidency.One question by Welker that some dismissed as a soft ball sought to discuss the contents of a message that Trump left for Biden when he left the White House.Earlier this year, CNN was pilloried for giving Trump a town hall-style platform in New Hampshire that indirectly led to the dismissal of its programming architect, former morning TV producer and CNN chief Chris Licht.NBC has said the network has also invited Biden to sit down for an interview with Welker. 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      Donald Trump pleased at praise from Putin: ‘I like that he said that’

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      Donald Trump enjoyed hearing that he had drawn praise from the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the former US president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican White House nomination has said.Told during a recorded interview with Kristen Welker, the new NBC Meet the Press moderator, that Putin had fawned over his stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump replied: “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”Trump’s remarks to Welker – circulated by NBC on Friday to promote the interview with the ex-president, which is scheduled to air on Sunday morning – drew condemnation from some political quarters. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Republicans against Trump group shared a clip of the comments and wrote to its nearly half-million followers: “A vote for Trump is a vote against America.”One of the overarching themes during Trump’s lone term in the Oval Office centered on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.Putin has endorsed Trump’s repeated boasts that he could bring Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to an end within a matter of hours if he were elected to a second term in the White House.“Mr Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said at an economic forum in Russia recently. “We cannot help but feel happy about it.”Trump’s boasts on that topic have earned him derision from his Republican and Democratic opponents, saying a conclusion to the conflict would require a surrender to demands from Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But, in his conversation with Welker, Trump doubled down on his position, saying he would simply get Putin and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “into a room and I would get a deal worked out”.Asked by Welker for specifics on precisely how he would bring a swift conclusion to the war in Ukraine, Trump declined to answer, saying: “If I tell you exactly, I lose all my bargaining chips.”“I mean, you can’t really say exactly what you’re going to do,” Trump told Welker, according to NBC. “But I would say certain things to Putin. I would say certain things to Zelenskiy.”Welker noted to Trump that Russian bombs had destroyed maternity wards, and forces under Putin’s command had deliberately attacked civilians. Furthermore, the international criminal court (ICC) in the Hague in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin, accusing him of war crimes in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s all terrible,” Trump told Welker.Trump has been facing more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments charging him with attempted subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, retention of classified information after his presidency and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Civil cases he is grappling with include a $250m lawsuit by the New York attorney general about his business affairs as well as a defamation claim stemming from a rape accusation that a judge has deemed to be “substantially true”.Trump nonetheless denies all wrongdoing and has sought to cast himself as the victim of political persecution. He also maintains substantial leads in national and key state polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary. More

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      US special counsel seeks gag order on Trump’s ‘inflammatory’ statements

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      The US special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for election subversion has asked a judge to impose “limited restrictions” on the former president’s public statements, citing his frequent “inflammatory attacks” on the court, prospective witnesses and citizens of Washington DC.In a filing on Friday, federal prosecutors requested that judge Tanya Chutkan issue a “narrow” gag order that would prohibit Trump from making statements “regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses” and “about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating”.The request noted his “near-daily” disparaging posts on social media site Truth Social, including his post after his arraignment that said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU”; claims that the justice system is “rigged” against him; attacks on DC as a “filthy and crime ridden” district where he says he will not get a fair trial and direct attacks on Chutkan, including calling her “a fraud dressed up as a judge” and “radical Obama hack”.The filing from Jack Smith, the special counsel, who has himself been disparaged by Trump as “deranged” and someone with “unchecked and insane aggression”, said that prosecutors were seeking a “well-defined restriction that is targeted at extrajudicial statements that present a serious and substantial danger of materially prejudicing this case”.Prosecutors noted that his attacks on social media have previously endangered the subjects of his vitriol, sometimes leading to violence: “The defendant knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets.”Chutkan has previously warned Trump’s legal team about his statements. Last month, she told his lawyer: “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”The gag order request came the same day that unsealed filings revealed that Twitter, now known as X, gave prosecutors at least 32 of Trump’s private messages.Repeated violations of gag orders in criminal matters can lead to jail time for defendants. The judge has set a March 2024 date for the trial on charges of conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn his separate criminal case in Georgia, Trump was released on the condition that he not intimidate co-defendants, witnesses and others. More

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      Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis turns on ‘malignant narcissist’ ex-president

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      Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”Ellis, 38, was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association, a non-profit that by its own description has been “on the frontlines of America’s culture war” since 1977.Ellis was one of 18 Trump associates charged with him in Georgia over attempts to overturn Biden’s victory there. Charged with violating state anti-racketeering laws and solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, she was granted $100,000 bail and pleaded not guilty.Trump pleaded not guilty to 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.Denying all wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he also faces four federal counts related to election subversion; 40 federal counts related to retention of classified information; 34 state counts in New York over hush-money payments; and civil cases including a $250m lawsuit lodged by the New York attorney general over his business affairs and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.Nonetheless, Trump leads polling regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary by vast margins, in national and key state surveys.Ellis is a former counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic group, whose claims to be a constitutional lawyer have been widely doubted.Described by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as “a lawyer whom Trump sought out after seeing her television commentary”, in 2020 Ellis rose from relative obscurity to become part of what she called an “elite strike force team” working to overturn Trump’s defeat by Biden.That effort failed. American Family Radio signed up Ellis in December last year. On her show on Thursday, she spoke to Steve Deace, another rightwing host.Deace said: “Before that man [Trump] needs to be president again … [to] escape the quote-unquote, ‘witch-hunts’, that man needs Jesus again because … his ambitions would be fueled by showing some self-awareness. And he won’t do it because he can’t admit, ‘I’m not God.’”Ellis said Deace had “perfectly articulated exactly how I as a voter feel”. She knew Trump well “as a friend, as a former boss”, she said, adding: “I have great love and respect for him personally.“But everything that you just said resonates with me as exactly why I simply can’t support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.” More

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      Prosecutors warned Trump’s knowledge of Twitter search warrant could ‘precipitate violence’, court filings show – as it happened

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      From 4h agoFederal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
      Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
      In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.It’s 4pm eastern time. That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      Americans do not trust the government’s economic news – or the media’s reporting of it – according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian that presents the White House with a major hurdle as it pushes Joe Biden’s economic record ahead of next year’s election.
      Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith urged the judge overseeing his federal 2020 election interference criminal case to deny a request by Donald Trump to recuse herself from the case. There is “no valid basis” for US district judge Tanya Chutkan to remove herself from the case, Smith wrote.
      Twitter gave the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for alleged election subversion access to at least 32 of the former president’s private messages. The company, now known as X, turned over the messages after receiving a search warrant, citing newly unsealed filings to the US circuit court of appeals.
      Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to the newly unsealed court filings. Prosecutors worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.
      Joe Biden spoke out in support of auto workers as they launched a historic series of strikes after their union failed to reach an agreement with the US’s three largest vehicle manufacturers. “No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ rights to use their options under the collective bargaining system, and [I] understand their frustrations,” the US president said in a brief, unscheduled appearance at the White House.
      Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Maine as Hurricane Lee rapidly approaches the north-easternmost US state amid the likelihood of a landfall there or more likely in Canada over the weekend.
      Donald Trump’s October trial in a civil case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, could be delayed because the former US president has quietly sued the judge Arthur F Engoron.
      Donald Trump said he would testify under oath denying he asked a staffer to delete surveillance footage at the center of an investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents. In an NBC interview, the former president said it is “very unlikely” he would pardon himself if he is re-elected in 2024.
      The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii, which killed at least 115 people last month.
      The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.
      A lawyer for Hunter Biden, who was indicted on Thursday over illegally possessing a firearm, said he expected the case “will be dismissed before trial”. The president’s son was indicted by special counsel David Weiss on three felony gun charges after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.
      Three men were acquitted in the final trial connected to a scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a pandemic-era plot steeped in extremist politics and domestic terrorism that saw others imprisoned for lengthy terms.
      About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.
      The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii.A joint statement by James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, and Pete Sessions, the subcommittee chair, reads:
      The deadly wildfire in Maui shocked the nation and left many, especially those directly impacted by the tragedy, with serious questions that remain unanswered today. President Biden built his entire reputation on empathy and compassion but failed to deliver an appropriate response when it mattered most.
      At least 115 people were killed in last month’s wildfires on the island of Maui. The fire nearly destroyed the town of Lahaina, and caused more than $5.5bn in damage, according to estimates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.The House oversight committee’s investigation into the fires is separate from a hearing by the energy and commerce committee, which will feature testimony from Hawaii utility and energy officials.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed former justice department official Jody Hunt for an upcoming hearing to transfer Jeff Clark’s case to federal court.From my colleague Hugo Lowell:About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.The Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that almost 30% of respondents were “very interested” in getting the vaccine and another 24% were “somewhat interested”.On Monday, the FDA approved Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that target a recently circulating Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus.The results of the poll suggest that more Americans are willing to get a booster shot than a year ago. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six Americans opted for an updated shot.About 14% of those who said they were not interested in getting the booster said it was because they had Covid-19 already, while another 14% said they believed their previous vaccinations provided sufficient protection.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.“I can’t see myself leaving the race under any circumstances before New Hampshire,” he told the New York Times. “If I don’t do well in New Hampshire, then I’ll leave.”As the Times pointed out, Christie is following the playbook he used in 2016, when his run for the Republican nomination focused on New Hampshire … and ended after it, after he finished sixth in the primary.Christie then became the first major figure to endorse Donald Trump in his insurgent run to the White House.Christie planned the transition at Trump Tower, only to be brutally (if of course metaphorically) defenestrated by Jared Kushner, whose father Christie put in jail back when he was a prosecutor in New Jersey. That didn’t stop Christie supporting Trump, and nor did Trump’s part in Christie ending up in the ICU with Covid. It took January 6 to finally propel Christie away from Trump, whose unfitness to govern the former governor is now dedicated to exposing.As the Times reported, Christie is portraying the Republican primary as an existential matter for the country:
      ‘The future of this country is going to be determined here,’ Mr Christie told a crowd this week at a local brewery, clutching an IPA. ‘If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.’”
      The Times also noted the current state of play in primary polling:
      Though Mr Christie has improved in recent polls, he still trails Mr Trump in New Hampshire by double digits, and by much more in national polls and surveys of Iowa, the first nominating state.
      Christie told the Times he wanted to emulate John McCain, the Arizona senator who “broke late” in New Hampshire in 2000, ending up winning the state.McCain, of course, did not win the Republican nomination in 2000. George W Bush did. McCain did win it in his second attempt, eight years after his first. He was then heavily beaten in the general election, by Barack Obama.An exhaustive manifesto for the next conservative US president produced by Project 2025, an initiative led by the hard-right Heritage Foundation, uses “dehumanising language” about LGBTQ+ Americans too extreme even for candidates currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination, a leading advocate said.“The dehumanising language is consistent with the way the right talks about LGBTQ+ people overall,” said Sasha Buchert, director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal.“They’re never talking about transgender people or gay and lesbian people, it’s always referring to them as an ideology of some kind, or an ‘ism’. There’s no humanity involved … Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric.”Donald Trump is the clear leader of that Republican race, despite facing 91 criminal indictments and multiple civil suits. Primary candidates have eagerly embraced anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, particularly over state anti-trans laws and the place of LGBTQ+ issues in public education. This summer, however, Trump’s closest polling rival, Ron DeSantis, was forced on to the defensive over an online video that used harsh imagery and language to accuse Trump of being too soft on LGBTQ+ issues.By its own description, Project 2025 is the work of “a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations”, aiming to shape the presidential transition should a rightwing candidate beat Joe Biden next year.In the words of Paul Dans, its director, Project 2025 is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state”.Such language may echo conspiracy-tinged rants by Trump and his supporters, but that “army” has produced something solid: Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, a 920-page document that sets out policy wishes across the breadth of the federal government.Read on…As the old saying goes, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”: the Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s claim not to have been vaping during a theatrical performance in Denver from which she and a male companion were ejected has been proven false.In an episode that generated widespread headlines, the far-right controversialist was escorted out of a performance of the Beetlejuice musical at the Buell Theatre last weekend.Speaking on condition of anonymity, a woman who sat behind the congresswoman told the Denver Post: “These people in front of us were outrageous. I’ve never seen anyone act like that before.”The woman, who is pregnant, said she asked Boebert to stop vaping.Boebert said simply: “No.”Boebert and her companion were eventually escorted from the theatre. Boebert’s office confirmed the incident but denied the congresswoman had been vaping, even though such behaviour was detailed in a widely cited incident report.Surveillance footage obtained by 9News, an NBC affiliate, disproved Boebert’s claim.More:Donald Trump has widened his lead in the Republican presidential primary in the three weeks since the first GOP primary debate – in which he did not take part, according to a new poll.The Fox News poll showed 60% of potential Republican primary voters support Trump, up from 53% in a survey taken before the 23 August debate in Milwaukee. The report said:
      Some of Trump’s biggest gains come from women (+10), voters under age 45 (+9), White evangelicals (+8), and White men without a college degree (+8).
      Trump’s closest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has seen his support drop since the debate, the results showed. The survey found 13% of GOP voters back DeSantis in the primary, down three points. Vivek Ramaswamy held his third-place slot at 11%Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, may be back on the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign trail with him “pretty soon”, he said.In an interview with Meet the Press, moderator Kristen Welker asked the former president, “we’ll get her on the trail soon?” Trump replied:
      Yes. Soon? Yeah, pretty soon. When it’s appropriate, but pretty soon. She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much.
      He added:
      Honestly, I like to keep her away from it. It’s so nasty and so mean.
      The former first lady was a prominent fixture in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, but she has rarely been spotted by her husband’s side since leaving the White House. Most notably, she did not appear at any of his court appearances.Joe Biden appeared to support the auto workers strike in strong comments made during his White House address this afternoon. He said:
      No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ right to use their options under the collective bargaining system.
      “I understand the workers’ frustration,” he added.
      Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.
      My colleague Maya Yang is covering the strike on our dedicated UAW strike blog.The team of special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, now known as X, to produce “data and records” related to Donald Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.Court filings last month showed Twitter delayed complying with the warrant, leading to a federal judge holding the company in contempt and fining it $350,000.The filing said prosecutors got the search warrant after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”.The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior”, according to the filing.Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
      Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
      In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.Twitter handed over at least 32 direct messages from Donald Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith earlier this year in the justice department’s investigation into the 2020 election subversion case, according to newly unsealed court filings.In the new filings, Smith’s team revealed “the materials Twitter produced to the Government included only 32 direct-message items, constituting a minuscule proportion of the total production”.From Politico’s Kyle Cheney:A prominent New York progressive is warning that mayor Eric Adams’s hostile comments about the rising number of migrants in the city are “dangerous” and risk inciting violence against the new arrivals and other immigrants.Tiffany Cabán, aiming for re-election to the city council this November and long endorsed by leading leftwing figures, including US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attacked as “irresponsible” the mayor’s remarks last week that the sharp increase in migration to New York would “destroy” the city.Cabán told the Guardian:
      The idea that new arrivals would destroy New York City is absurd to me. New arrivals, immigrants, made our city.
      “I think there’s a real possibility of his rhetoric fomenting violence, and that’s the last thing we need,” Cabán, a former public defender, added.New York and other Democratic-led cities have received hundreds of thousands of people who crossed the US-Mexico border to request asylum since last year.More than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York, most making their own way but many also bussed by Texas authorities, without liaison. Officials say they are struggling to provide for nearly 60,000 migrants currently in the city’s care. More

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      Trump’s Georgia charges thrust Coffee county in to the spotlight. Its people seek accountability

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      The Coffee county board of elections in Georgia held its first meeting on Tuesday after being mentioned more than 50 times in Fulton county’s indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others for allegedly participating in a criminal conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 election. Local residents, still frustrated over a lack of accountability for officials who may have known about the conspiracy, pressured the reluctant board for an independent investigation.The small, rural county 200 miles south-east of Atlanta made its way into the indictment – and global headlines – because Trump allegedly sent associates there to copy software and other digital information from the state’s elections system in early 2021. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, called it “the largest voting systems breach in US history”.The coalition is in the sixth year of a federal lawsuit over vulnerabilities in Georgia’s computerized voting system and is responsible for uncovering much of the information that Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis used in the parts of her indictment concerning the breach.Although Misty Hampton, the former Coffee county elections director, and Cathy Latham, the county’s former GOP chair, were both named in the indictment, local residents said many questions remain unanswered about how Trump’s associates were able to do what they did, and who knew what, when.Their concern is not just what happened in 2021, but that the digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands, meaning that future elections could be affected in Georgia and in other states that use Dominion Voting Systems and equipment made by partner companies.County residents wanted to know why board chairman Wendell Stone did not tell the board and the public about the breach when he learned about it from an email in 2022. Stone told the Guardian he was not sure if he ever saw the email.Several dozen members of the public filled a small room in a nondescript, low-slung building near railroad tracks in the county seat of Douglas, a city of about 12,000, seeking answers. What had been until recently a group of mostly Black residents concerned about the breach was nearly split between Black and white – a reflection of the population of Douglas.The brief, business part of the meeting was taken up by new elections director Christy Nipper announcing she would be certified later the same day to manage the state’s computerized elections system, and asking the board’s five members to buy a tape recorder for recording future meetings: “If we’re going to be under a microscope,” she said, “I want to make sure we get it right.”Jim Hudson, an 80-year-old retired attorney, pushed the board to initiate its own investigation into the multiple occasions various Trump associates entered the rural county’s elections office, copying digital information. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) is conducting an investigation, but has not released results.“I’m not a rabble rouser,” said Hudson. “But this deserves your attention. This thing reaches coast to coast – from California all the way to the east coast,” he said, naming some of the many national outlets that have covered the story.Judi Worrell, who said she moved to Coffee county 50 years ago, echoed Hudson, mentioning a nephew in British Columbia who had seen the news and asked her: “What’s going on down there?”“I can’t understand how people thought you could get away with this!” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHudson and Marks both noted that Stone likely knew about the breach as early as 2 May 2022, when Washington Post reporter Emma Brown sent him an email asking about it – and did nothing to engage the board or explain to the public what had happened. The email was also discovered through coalition open records requests.“You should have immediately contacted the board,” Hudson said.Asked after the meeting, Stone told the Guardian, “I don’t know if I ever read that email,” referring to Brown’s query, which had the subject, “Washington Post inquiry.”“You know how it is – you may see something, and not realize the significance of it,” he added.Asked about why he doesn’t back Hudson’s proposal for the board to hire independent counsel to investigate the breach, Stone said: “I simply feel it’s not an expense taxpayers should be paying.”Stone also pointed to the GBI’s investigation. “I feel certain that a detailed explanation will come out once [their] investigation has concluded,” he said. “The most important question is what’s being done to ensure that election results are … fair, transparent and correct in this county moving forward.”Sitting in the first row of the meeting was attorney Ben Perkins, who had been hired in recent months to help “properly conduct our meetings in a way that is appropriate and effective”, according to board minutes from a previous meeting. The county has paid Perkins nearly $15,000 in the last two months, according to a records request filed by the Guardian.After the meeting, several dozen members of the public, plus Nipper and board members Ernestine Thomas-Clark and Paula Scott, met at a nearby church, where Marks answered questions on the breach, drawing from the emails, video and other information the coalition has obtained.Thomas-Clark, the only Black board member and the only one to back the proposal for an independent counsel, repeated her support for a locally-run investigation. “I think there’s more to be uncovered,” she said. “Something is not being said.”Local resident Mary White explained that public expressions of concern about the breach to date had mostly involved Black residents, most of whom vote Democrat. “The majority of the people on the board and the county commission vote Republican, which goes with being white,” she said. Coffee county’s population is about 70% white, but slightly more than half of Douglas’ population is Black.At the same time, she said, a small but growing group of white residents was concerned about what happened at the county’s election office. Worrell suggested she would be glad to hold a meeting on the issue at her church, which is mostly attended by white residents of Douglas. “We’re the exception,” said White, about white neighbors of hers willing to get involved in seeking answers. “We all know who we are.”“But it’s not a Black versus white issue,” she added. “It’s a voting rights issue.”This article is part of US Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on 15 September, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org More