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      From Germany to Israel, it’s ‘the will of the people’ v the rule of law. Which will win? | Paul Taylor

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      The will of the people expressed in free elections and the rule of law upheld by independent courts are two of the pillars of a liberal democracy, or so we were taught at school. Yet these two core principles keep colliding in increasingly polarised societies from Washington to London, Paris to Berlin and Warsaw to Jerusalem, with populist politicians demanding that “the will of the people” override the constitution, treaties or the separation of powers.It is vital for the long-term health of democracy that the judges prevail. If politicians are able to break or bend fundamental legal principles to suit the mood of the moment, the future of freedom and human rights is in danger.In the United States, the supreme court will soon rule on whether Donald Trump should be allowed to run again for president after having encouraged and condoned the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021 in a violent attempt to prevent Congress certifying the election of Joe Biden as his successor. Two states, Colorado and Maine, have barred him from the ballot.The 14th amendment of the constitution, adopted right after the civil war, states that no person shall “hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath (…) to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.If the court applies the constitution literally, it’s hard to see how it can let Trump stand in November’s election, even though he may not be found guilty by a court over the insurrection. However, to deny the runaway favourite for the Republican nomination a chance to regain the White House would ignite a firestorm of outrage among his supporters, and perhaps a wider sense of a denial of democracy.Even some Trump-haters contend that it would be wiser for him to be defeated in an election than prevented by judges from running for office. The fact that the supreme court is dominated by conservative justices appointed by Trump and his Republican predecessors might not be enough to convince millions of Americans that they were robbed of a free vote.The same kind of issue has arisen repeatedly in the UK, where the high court ruled in 2016 that even after the Brexit referendum, the government still required the assent of parliament to give notice of Britain’s intention to leave the European Union. The Daily Mail infamously branded those judges “enemies of the people”. In 2019, the supreme court overruled Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament, and more recently it ruled unanimously that Rwanda was not a safe country to send people seeking asylum in Britain. Each time, populist politicians denounced what they call “rule by judges” and vowed to find ways to limit their powers.Of course, it is politically inconvenient when judges tell a government, or a parliament, that it is acting illegally or unconstitutionally, but it is an essential safeguard of our democracy that those rulings be respected and implemented faithfully.While Britain lacks a written constitution and is governed by a mixture of laws and informal conventions, its courts are bound to uphold the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a founding signatory, and the jurisprudence of the European court of human rights that derives from it.View image in fullscreenIn France, the constitutional council last week struck down substantial parts of an immigration law passed by parliament last month. Les sages (the wise persons) annulled more than a third of the measures, including provisions that would have obliged parliament to set annual immigration quotas, discriminated between French nationals and foreigners, and between working and non-working foreigners in entitlement to welfare benefits, and denied automatic citizenship to French-born children of foreign nationals.Emmanuel Macron had referred the law to the council as soon as the conservative opposition forced his minority government to accept a severe toughening of its original bill, drawing charges of hypocrisy since his party voted for the legislation knowing that parts of it were likely to be ruled unconstitutional.As expected, the council’s ruling was denounced as a “legal coup” against the will of parliament and the people by mainstream conservative Republicans and Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally, who demanded that the constitution be changed to permit a referendum on immigration quotas. But amending the constitution is a lengthy process that requires both houses of parliament to adopt identical wording and then a three-fifths majority at a special congress of both houses. Don’t hold your breath.In Germany, the federal constitutional court ruled last year that the government’s attempt to divert money left over in an off-budget special fund for Covid-19 recovery for investment in the country’s green energy transition was unconstitutional. The ruling has left the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, with a massive hole in his budget that the government is struggling to fill.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe court decision has prompted the beginnings of a sensible debate on amending a constitutional debt brake enacted during the global financial crisis in 2009, which severely restricts budget deficits except in times of emergency. At least no one in Germany has branded the justices “enemies of the people” or demanded their heads on pikes.In Israel, an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government to curb the independent supreme court’s right to interpret quasi-constitutional basic laws to overrule government decisions and appointments and to reject legislation passed by the single-chamber parliament caused months of civil unrest last year.Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges and seeks to exert political control over judicial appointments, argued that the will of the people should prevail over an unelected judiciary. Far-right members of his government contend that Jewish religious law should trump the basic law anyway. The supreme court this month overturned a law that would have prevented it using the principle of “reasonableness” to quash government decisions.In Poland, a democratically elected nationalist government defied the EU to dismantle the independence of the judiciary by packing the constitutional court and prosecutors’ offices with loyalists and creating a politically controlled body to discipline judges for their rulings. Now a pro-European government is trying to reverse the damage wrought by its predecessors, but faces accusations of violating the rule of law itself by ignoring the packed court’s rulings.The common thread in all these different situations is that in a democracy, the will of the people is not and should not be absolute and unconstrained by law. Perdition that way lies.
      Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank

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      E Jean Carroll aims to give defamation money ‘to something Trump hates’

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      E Jean Carroll intends to spend the $83m awarded to her in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on something the former president “hates”, she revealed just days after the judgment.On Friday, the jury in Carroll’s case decided that she should receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m punitive retribution in the case pitting her against Trump. Of the $18.3m, Trump was told to pay Carroll $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign and $7.3m for the emotional harm caused by statements he made against her in 2019.Carroll and her legal team did not speak to reporters as they left court but broke their public silence on Monday in an interview with Good Morning America.Alongside her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Carroll told host George Stephanopoulos that Friday’s win had left her overcome with “elation”.“It filled me up … It was almost painful,” she said, adding: “Today, I’m very happy.Stephanopoulos asked her to give the public an idea as to how she planned to spend the millions of dollars she’s won, and Carroll provided a clear outline.“I’d like to give the money to something Donald Trump hates,” Carroll said. “If it’ll cause him pain for me to give money to certain things, that’s my intent.”Carroll also said that she would perhaps explore giving to “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump”.Trump went on his Truth Social platform to decry Friday’s decision as “absolutely ridiculous” and said he would be filing an appeal.“Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon,” Trump’s Truth Social post said in part. “THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”Pointing to Trump’s combative response, Stephanopoulos asked Carroll’s attorney whether or not their side expected to collect the money awarded to them. Kaplan said that she was “pretty confident”.“We might not get it right away. But one way or the other, he owns a lot of real estate. It can be sold. We will collect the judgment,” Kaplan said.In the weeks leading up to the trial, Carroll revealed that she wasn’t sleeping or eating in anticipation of facing the former president.A judge determined Trump had defamed Carroll after sexually abusing her in a department room dressing store in the mid-1990s and subsequently defamed her.However, once she arrived for the trial that produced Friday’s judgment, Carroll said seeing Trump was like seeing “an emperor without clothes”.“It was like he was like nothing, like an emperor without clothes,” Carroll said. “All my terror leading up to it, and there he is. He’s just something in a suit.”The recent trial was separate from one about a year earlier in which Carroll won $5m for sexual abuse and separate, earlier remarks which had also defamed her. The proceeding was mostly absent of theatrics, though Trump caused a stir when he walked out during Kaplan’s closing statement.Asked about her reaction to that moment, Kaplan quipped that she felt the moment won Carroll about $10m.“The idea in a case where our basic thesis is that he’s a bully who can’t follow the rules, to act like a bully who doesn’t follow the rules? An interesting strategy, let me put it that way,” Kaplan said about how Trump stormed out during her closing statement.Kaplan went on to note that if Trump goes on to defame Carroll again, they would “bring another case”.“It’s just going to be more money,” Kaplan said. More

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      Can Biden win back Iowa rural voters who shifted away from Democrats?

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      During the eight years he served in the Iowa state Senate, Tod Bowman was a self-described “door knocker”, trekking to the front porches and patios of constituents in the rural counties he represented to appeal for votes.They would, in turn, tell Bowman, a moderate Democrat, of their concerns – that government assistance programs amounted to a “handout”, that too many undocumented migrants were entering the country, that Barack Obama, the president for much of Bowman’s time in office, was planning to take their guns away. Occasionally, whoever opened the door would start interrogating Bowman before he even finished introducing himself.“Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” was the typical demand, Bowman remembered. The former high school teacher and wrestling coach came up with his own disarming reply: “I’m an Iowan.”By 2018, such encounters were happening more and more frequently, and that November, voters in the farms and small towns that made up Bowman’s eastern Iowa district replaced him with a Republican. While Bowman believes a combination of alienation from the national Democratic party and dislike of some bills he supported led to his defeat, he saw only one man to blame for the rising hostility he faced on the campaign trail.View image in fullscreen“Trump certainly made it almost acceptable in our psyches to name call, to lie, to manipulate, to be very aggressive instead of civil,” Bowman said in an interview at his house in the town of Maquoketa. “I really feel he’s changed politics, probably, if not forever, for a certain, significant period of time.”Beyond altering the tone of American politics, Donald Trump’s ascension to the helm of the Republican party undid progress Democrats had made in winning the trust of voters in rural areas nationwide, and many of their election victories ever since have relied on support from cities and suburbs. Whether this trend continues could prove crucial in deciding the victor of this year’s presidential election, where turnout in rural areas could tip swing states towards either Trump or Joe Biden. It will also play a role in determining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the latter of which Republicans are trying to gain by winning seats in Montana, West Virginia and Ohio.Few states exhibit the consequences of rural voters shifting away from Democrats better than Iowa. Once viewed by the party as a swing state, Trump won Iowa decisively in 2016 and carried 31 counties that had twice voted for Obama – the most of any single state. In the 2020 election, Biden won none of them back, and the president this year is not expected to campaign for victory in the Hawkeye state.The rise of Trump also undid a fragile tie that voters had unknowingly reached in Wyoming, a town of 523 people in Bowman’s district that was, at the end of 2015, the only community in Iowa with a population of more than 500 evenly split between registered Democrats and Republicans, according to a Des Moines Register analysis.The next year, Wyoming voters overwhelming voted for Trump. So, too, did the surrounding Jones county, which supported a Republican candidate for the first time in 28 years. Wyoming voted again for the New York real estate mogul in 2020, and today, there are more than twice as many registered Republicans than Democrats in town, according to the county auditor.“People are thinking that, you know, there’s a way to make a living, and there’s a way to do things, and I think it’s caused them to change parties. They’re tired of the way that the nation has been run,” the town’s mayor, Steve Agnitsch, a Republican, said by way of explanation for why Trump did so well with his neighbors.Tony Amsler, the chair of the county Democratic party, views the once-and-perhaps-future-president as a politician whose message seemed almost tailored to Iowa. “Democrats have traditionally been progressive when it comes to social issues. Iowans are very conservative when it comes to money. Those things are something, and then comes Donald Trump,” he said.“He certainly represented those who have been disenfranchised, those who think politics wasn’t listening to them. If you add this all together, you’ve got a juggernaut, and it’s hard to change direction.”The former president was the pick of Wyoming’s Republicans last week, when the Iowa caucuses were held. In the months preceding the first-in-the-nation contest, neither Trump nor any other candidate stopped in what is nicknamed “The Christmas City” for the lights Wyoming residents string all over its Main street each year. A few blocks of houses and businesses bisected by a state highway, Angitsch described his town as a community that is avoiding the stagnation that can grip the midwestern countryside. There are new buildings in its high school, the library is open five days a week and though Wyoming’s sole grocery store closed not long ago, a Dollar General was built just down the street.As for Trump, Biden, and their ilk, few in Wyoming believe either man, or anyone else in Washington DC for that matter, thinks much about the town.“We’re in podunkville. Nobody cares about the simple people in life,” said 67-year-old farmer Steve Wherry from a barstool at Rack’s Swinging Door, Wyoming’s main watering hole, where the television was showing a local news broadcast about Trump’s angry outbursts during his defamation trial in New York City that day.Wherry had voted for Trump in the past two presidential elections, and planned to do so for a third time in November, but with all the drama he heard from the news about the former president, he was less upbeat about his candidacy this time.View image in fullscreen“I think there’s people that are not gonna vote for him because of all the trials and all that stuff that’s going on, and there’s people that don’t think that he can guide this country in the right way,” Wherry said. “He’s got himself in trouble a little bit.”Sitting on the opposite end of the bar, 71-year-old retiree Craig Taylor said Trump’s troubles were enough to make him want to vote for someone else.“He’s all about the United States and the country, but they’re just not going to leave him alone,” said Taylor, who twice voted for Trump after supporting Obama in 2008.“We need to make America great again, but we need someone better than him to do it,” Taylor said, as he cracked open a Miller Light. But who? Conspiracy theorist and vaccine opponent Robert F Kennedy Jr was appealing, but Taylor didn’t think he would get much farther. “They’re not going to let him get in,” he said.Heather Campbell, a 39-year-old human resources manager, believed she had found a candidate who cared about communities like Wyoming in Tim Scott. Campbell saw the South Carolina senator speak when he visited her workplace in a nearby town, and was impressed by how he refrained from attacking any of his rivals.But Scott ended his campaign two months before the caucuses, deepening Campbell’s disillusionment with politics. “That’s what sucks,” she said, as she picked up dinner for her family. “He didn’t have the funding, he didn’t have the media funding, and that’s not right.”How communities like Wyoming ultimately vote can have ripple effects across the county. Republicans were able to create the current conservative supermajority on the supreme court only after Democratic senators were defeated in rural states like North and South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas and Iowa, paving the way for the appointment of justices who have limited environmental regulation and allowed states to ban abortion.“The rural skew in especially the Senate and the electoral college is really shaping our institutions in a way that I don’t think people fully comprehend,” said Matt Hildreth, executive director of progressive group RuralOrganizing.org.Three years ago in Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin used strong support from the countryside to become governor of a blue state, while last year, a Democratic-aligned judge was elected to a crucial seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court, in part because of votes from the state’s smaller towns.In November, Democrats’ continued control of the Senate will hinge on the re-election of imperiled lawmakers from Montana and Ohio, both red states where rural voters are plenty. And in the expected rematch between Trump and Biden, turnout by right-leaning voters outside of population centers could determine if it is the former president or the current president at the inauguration next year.For Democrats, “You’re not looking to win some of these rural counties, you’re looking to cut the losses, maybe by two or three points, which could make a difference in a close race,” said Robin Johnson, an adjunct political science professor at Monmouth College in Illinois, who has consulted with the party on how to improve their rural support.View image in fullscreenIn his view, Democratic candidates have suffered in rural areas because they neglected campaign tactics that work. Chief among them: yard signs, which he says can greatly boost their visibility.“When I was working campaigns, you were taught that yard signs don’t vote. But in rural areas, it’s important because your neighbors notice. If you’ve got a sign up for a Democrat and you normally vote Republican, it kind of gives an okay to consider that person,” Johnson said.Two years ago, Amsler ran for a state house seat representing an area that included Wyoming. He met many voters who spoke approvingly of Biden and were supportive of his candidacy, but didn’t want to display a yard sign for his campaign.“I’m afraid of what those fanatics will do to my lawn, to my home,” they’d tell him.Amsler’s Republican opponent beat him handily, the same year the GOP gained a supermajority in the state senate, and defeated the last Democrat in its congressional delegation.“When I ran for office, I knew I would not win. I wanted to move the needle,” Amsler said. A year-and-a-half later, he’s not sure if he did. “What really concerns me is, we’ve had that real shift from purple to red.” More

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      US historians sign brief to support Colorado’s removal of Trump from ballot

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      Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.“For historians,” the group wrote, “contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.”Lawyers for Trump argue that the presidency is not an “office” as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.Maine has also sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined a brief in support of Trump.The 25 historians – among them James McPherson of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar – pointed to 1860s congressional debate.“Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine … replied, ‘Let me call the senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office civil or military under the United States”.’ Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.”The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as “chief executive officer”.Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that “no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress”, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.“Contemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,” the historians wrote. “Congress … chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.“Republican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, ‘This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.’ To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.”The historians also said “adverse consequences followed” amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and “participat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.”The historians concluded: “The court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.”Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton – an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief – calls such arguments “risible”.“By their reasoning,” Wilentz writes, “Trump’s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump’s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.”Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.Wilentz continues: “Whether motivated by … fear of Trump’s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.”Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that “purports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture”, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence – as presented by the historians’ brief – of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a “petard … exploding in the majority’s face.”He also writes: “The conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump’s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds … the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.”If the court does not “honour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump”, Wilentz writes, “it will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge.” More

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      The search for Trump’s running mate: ‘like auditions for The Apprentice’

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      The last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump’s running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists.Undeterred, Trump’s campaign surrogates in the recent Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, both of which he won handily, have been trying to outdo each other with extravagant displays of fealty. “It’s very clear he’s holding these open auditions like it’s The Apprentice,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “He will flirt with everyone. He will make them dance. They will all debase themselves and humiliate themselves and jockey for that spot.”When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump understood that he needed a vice-presidential pick who could help shore up support among Republican evangelicals and social conservatives, who were suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. Pence, the then Indiana governor and fierce social conservative, was from what Trump likes to call central casting.This year Trump’s allies and Republican strategists believe that he needs help attracting suburban swing voters in a handful of battleground states, where November’s election will likely be decided. Many commentators therefore predict that he will choose a woman or a person of colour, especially since the demise of the constitutional right to abortion.Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said one of the factors important to Trump is “just how much of a sycophant they would be, not just in terms of ‘Oh, I love you, Donald Trump’, but do you love me enough when I tell you to violate your oath of office in the constitution that you’ll do it?’ And that person for me is Elise Stefanik.”Stefanik, 39, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump, appears to have timed her run perfectly.She gained national prominence last month after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. Stefanik claimed victory and declared: “I will always deliver results.” Trump reportedly described her as a “killer”.Since then she has outdone even the notoriously obsequious Pence. Soon after Trump described those convicted of crimes in the insurrection as “hostages”, she parroted the same term on NBC television’s flagship Meet the Press programme. When Trump confused rival Nikki Haley with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi while discussing January 6, Stefanik brazenly denied what everyone had heard.Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “She’s running flat out for it. That’s the only explanation for the things she says and does. I’m embarrassed for her but she’s not embarrassed because she only has one career goal. She says whatever she thinks he’ll like. He does like it.”In what is currently Washington’s favourite parlour game, the smart money is currently on Stefanik. Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Just based on what she did at that congressional hearing, what could make Trump more pleased than watching her take apart the Ivy League presidents? That would be very appealing for him to put her on the ticket.”Another contender is Kristi Noem, serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. Noem campaigned for Trump at several events in Iowa earlier this month.Then there is the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, who is African American and could help Trump make inroads among Black voters. Scott was a one-time Republican rival to Trump but dropped out of the race in November. He has since endorsed Trump and told him during his victory speech in New Hampshire: “I just love you!” He also just announced his engagement to be married.Other potential running mates are Trump’s former White House press secretary and current Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Ben Carson, who was Trump’s housing secretary; Kari Lake, who narrowly lost a gubernatorial bid in Arizona in 2022 and is now running for the Senate there; Florida congressman Byron Donalds; Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; and Ohio senator JD Vance.There appears to be broad resistance to picking Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador and his last rival for the Republican nomination. On 19 January she said being a running mate was “off the table” while Trump said he would “probably” not pick her. Since then relations between the two have soured with Trump using insults such as “birdbrain” and Haley critiquing his age and mental acuity.In addition, Haley’s hawkish views on foreign policy, including military aid for Ukraine, are anathema to Trump’s “America first” base. Rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson vowed recently: “I would not only not vote for that ticket, I would advocate against it as strongly as I could.”Trump has publicly said he has already made up his mind, but he is reportedly still calling friends, supporters and donors for advice on whom he should pick. The stakes are unusually high this time and the oft-quoted old saw from Franklin Roosevelt’s deputy John Nance Garner – “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss” – may not apply in 2024: Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, meaning that a vice-president’s ability to assume command has never been more pertinent.Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University, said: “A wary, sceptical voter is going to be thinking: ‘OK, what happens if … ?’ It makes the choice of the running mate all the more important.“We talk about this every election and we then dismiss it as voters don’t really think that way. But it’s on the table in this election in ways it hasn’t been in the past because you are focusing on the candidate’s health and their mental faculty, and the chance that one or both could not finish out a term.“That does lead to a different calculation with Trump in this regard. It’s not so much about picking up some electoral votes or reaching out to a group. It is the question of picking somebody who credibly can say they’re ready to lead from day one. You would think their chops would be more important than just their demographic.”Trump may not be in a hurry to make a final decision. The longer he dangles the prospect of the vice-presidency, the more that aspirants will genuflect and make elaborate attempts to get in his good graces.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University, agreed. She said: “He doesn’t think he needs anybody to win this election so my guess is he’ll require lots of prominent people to come and pay homage to him. Then he’ll wait for the convention [in July] to announce it because he wants to make clear that VP – that they’re irrelevant. Generally, we worry more who his VP will be than he does.” More

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      Trump’s ‘achilles heel’? Haley’s refusal to drop out infuriates ex-president

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      It was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent’s clothes. “When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won,’” he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November.Yet the 77-year-old remains consumed with rage over Haley’s unwillingness to quit the race. His petulance offers a reminder of the unhinged behaviour that turned off independent voters in New Hampshire and could prove to be a liability in a head-to-head contest with Biden. It is also at odds with what is an unusually professional and disciplined campaign operation.Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Donald Trump wants the race to be over and we see evidence of why that’s important for the Trump campaign from his speech, which was essentially a train wreck and exhibited all the worst tendencies of Donald Trump. It was an undisciplined Trump and this is what turns off independent voters.”She added: “This is the achilles heel for the Trump campaign and they know it. The sooner this gets wrapped up then he doesn’t have any more of those impromptu late night speeches. Their worry is not that they’re not going to win the nomination; their worry is the damage that Trump having to respond to Haley will do in the general election with independent voters.”Trump’s investment of emotion and energy in attacking Haley is wildly out of proportion for the minimal threat that Haley poses. He won the Iowa caucuses in a landslide – she was third – and beat her by double digits in New Hampshire. No other Republican candidate in history who won the first two contests has failed to clinch his party’s nomination. His dominance looks set to render the next five months of primaries irrelevant.Newt Gingrich, a former House of Representatives speaker and ex-presidential candidate, said: “Trump’s best strategy is to assume he is the nominee and go straight at Biden and ignore Haley, let her flounder around until she either runs out of money or realises that there is no future. She’ll presently disappear.”Republicans have coalesced around the former president, putting pressure on Haley to step aside. She is not competing in next month’s Nevada caucuses. Trump has racked up endorsements from most of South Carolina’s leading Republicans and opinion polls show him with a big lead in the state, which has a strong base of Christian evangelicals, ahead of the primary on 24 February.View image in fullscreenYet Haley, 52, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, is soldiering on. She tweeted on Thursday: “Underestimate me, that’s always fun.” Next week she is scheduled for a fundraising tour that includes stops in New York, Florida, California, Texas and South Carolina. She is expected to continue to draw donor support as Never Trumpers within the party make a last stand and hope he could yet be derailed by the 91 criminal charges against him.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I do know some of her donors and my guess is they want her staying in to put Trump through his paces. They don’t put it on the record but they think there’s a reasonable chance that something will happen to Trump, either health-wise or conviction to the extent that he can no longer be the nominee.”Haley describes herself as “scrappy”, continues to hold rallies and is becoming more aggressive in her denunciations of Trump. On Wednesday she launched a $4m advertising campaign in South Carolina describing the prospect of a Biden v Trump election as “a rematch no one wants”. Its narrator says: “Biden – too old. Trump – too much chaos. There’s a better choice for a better America.”How long can she last? Michael Steele, a Trump critic and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “My bet is two weeks. You really want to go into that race in your home state and lose by 30 or 40 points? Where is the political viability after that? We’ve seen candidates who run actual general election presidential campaigns and they lose their home state and we never heard from them again.”Haley’s tenacity has enraged Trump. He has branded her “birdbrain”. He has threatened to blacklist anyone who donates to her campaign. He has railed against her frequently on social media, writing: “Could somebody please explain to Nikki that she lost – and lost really badly. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain non-fake media say, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS.’”The insults and outbursts are a reminder of why Trump alienated moderate voters in the past. While his win in New Hampshire was historic, it also exposed general election vulnerabilities, showing him to be highly popular with Republicans but highly unpopular with independents, who were allowed to take part in the Republican primary under the state’s rules.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has never been such a wide gap between the Republican vote and the independent vote in a New Hampshire Republican primary. According to CNN’s exit polls, Trump won Republican voters by 74% to 25%, but Haley won independents 58% to 39%.Forty-two per cent of voters said they would not consider Trump to be fit for office if he were convicted of a crime. An analysis by Fox News found that 35% of voters in New Hampshire would be so dissatisfied with a Trump nomination that they would not vote for him in November.Steele, a host on the MSNBC cable news network, added: “There’s 91 indictments hanging over this guy. Of course he’s vulnerable but everyone wants to keep puffing him up like he’s some tiger or some lion. It’s just ridiculous.“I just wish people would get honest about what’s in front of them. This guy is vulnerable as hell. He’s weak as hell. But in reality TV land, he’s the guy that fires people: he’s rough, he’s tough, he’s single-minded. No, he’s a petulant little boy who shows that petulance when he’s challenged.”Biden’s campaign is working on the premise that Trump will be the nominee. He has delivered two major speeches about the threat that Trump poses to democracy and the dangerous rise of white supremacy. This week he held a joint event with his vice-president, Kamala Harris, in Virginia to promote reproductive freedom, highlighting Trump’s role in the supreme court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Dobbs decision basically became this before-and-after moment in American politics where there just became this sense that the Republican party had become too ugly, too extreme, too dangerous, and it has struggled mightily in election after election since the spring of 2022.”He added: “You’re starting to see, even in the early going here, there is a lot more weakness than strength coming out of the Republican party in the last couple of weeks. It’s because Maga [Make America great again] has become unattractive even to Republican voters. Fear and opposition to Maga is the most powerful force in American politics. It’s why Republicans keep losing, and Republicans have chosen a candidate who is ultra-Maga to be their nominee in 2024.” More

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      Donald Trump ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $83.3m in defamation trial

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      A New York City jury awarded $83.3m to E Jean Carroll in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on Friday.Carroll will receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m in punitive retribution. The former president is paying Carroll compensatory damages of $18.3m – $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign. The $7.3m is for the emotional harm caused by Trump’s 2019 public statements. Carroll and her legal team were beaming as they left court in a black SUV. They did not answer questions immediately after court let out.Moments after the decision was announced, Trump decried it as “absolutely ridiculous” on Truth Social, and said he would be filing an appeal.“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” Trump wrote. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”The Manhattan federal court decision comes less than one year after Carroll won $5m in her sexual abuse and defamation trial against Trump.This sum stems from Carroll’s rape claim against the president in a June 2019 New York magazine article. The publication ran an excerpt of her then-forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.In that excerpt, Carroll said that Trump raped her inside the dressing room of a luxe Manhattan department store around early 1996. The tenor of Trump’s denials – saying, for example, that she lied and was a political operative – became the subject of her 2019 defamation suit against him.At the time, Carroll could not sue Trump over the alleged assault, as it would have taken place outside the civil statute of limitations. A novel New York state law in 2022, the Adult Survivors Act, opened a one-year window for adult accusers to file suit for incidents outside the civil statute of limitations.Carroll filed another lawsuit, this one over the incident and defamatory statements after Trump’s presidency ended. This lawsuit proceeded to trial first and the judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, determined jurors’ findings – that Trump sexually abused Carroll and tarnished her reputation – would be accepted as fact in this trial.As a result, Trump could not re-litigate her sexual abuse claim. The jurors were tasked only with weighing financial penalties for damaging Carroll’s reputation – and the sum required to keep Trump from making still more defamatory statements.“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll said on the stand. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation. I expected him to deny it, but to say it was consensual, when it was not. But that’s what I expected him to say.”She continued: “The thing that really got me about this was, from the White House, he asked if anyone had any information about me, and if they did, to please come forward as soon as possible, because he wanted the world to know what’s really going on – and that people like me should pay dearly.”Trump did not attend Carroll’s first trial but made appearances at the second – marking the first time she confronted him publicly in a courtroom. Trump’s comportment during the courtroom showdowns was in keeping with his infamously bombastic behavior, prompting warnings from the judge.“Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders,” Kaplan warned.“Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial … I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”“I would love it, I would love it,” Trump retorted with a gesture.“I know you would, you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Kaplan said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe end stages of this trial were also marked by another hallmark of Trump’s legacy: Covid-related chaos. On 22 January, trial proceedings were postponed as one juror experienced coronavirus symptoms; his leading attorney, Alina Habba, also told judge Kaplan that she felt unwell and had been exposed to Covid.Trump did take the stand on 25 January. Kaplan restricted the scope of her questions and his responses, as per his prior ruling that he could not re-litigate her claims.Habba was allowed to ask: “Do you stand by your testimony in the deposition?”“One hundred percent, yes,” he said, referring to the deposition in which he denied her claims.“Did you deny the allegation because Ms Carroll made an accusation?”“That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation. No difference,” Trump retorted. This sparked an objection from Carroll’s camp. Kaplan said that everything after “yes, I did” was stricken.“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms Carroll in your statements?”“No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency,” Trump said. Carroll’s team objected again. Kaplan deemed that everything after “no” be stricken, so jurors were ordered to disregard this statement.In total, Trump’s direct and cross testimony lasted about two or three minutes. More