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      There is still a way to stop Donald Trump – but time is running out | Jonathan Freedland

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      The few Republicans who have not succumbed to the cult of Donald Trump cling to one last hope. They are crossing their fingers that on Tuesday night the ex-president’s march to his party’s nomination will be halted, or at least delayed, by a defeat in the New Hampshire primary at the hands of the former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley. But it is a thin hope.Even if Haley wins a famous victory in this snowbound state, the battles ahead are on terrain far more tricky for her and congenial to him. On Monday, Trump won his party’s contest in Iowa by a record-breaking margin, amassing more votes than all his rivals combined – and the primary electorates that come next look more like Iowa’s than New Hampshire’s, which, unusually, includes a big slice of Trump-sceptic independents. When you combine that with surveys that show Trump even – or better than even – with Joe Biden, making him many forecasters’ favourite to win the White House in November, it prompts a question that confounds blue-state America and baffles most of the rest of the world. Given all that he’s said and all that he’s done, given all that he is, why do so many Americans want Donald Trump to be their next president?Any answer to that question has to begin with the weakness of Trump’s opponents. When the New York Post branded Ron DeSantis “DeFuture” in 2022, hailing him as the man to push Trump aside and become the Republican standard bearer in 2024, it had not reckoned on the Florida governor being astonishingly awkward with the basics of retail politics: smiling, shaking hands, interacting with other people. It’s been painful to watch. (Seeing Nikki Haley flail as she defends her view that the US has “never been a racist country” is not much better.)More important, though, was the strategic miscalculation. DeSantis decided to offer Trumpism without Trump, picking fights with the same culture-war targets as the former president – migrants, the media, the “woke” – but without the chaos and lunacy. Trouble was, that made him too Trumpy for those Republicans eager to move on, and not Trumpy enough for the Maga hardcore. That latter group weren’t looking for Trump-lite, because they’re quite happy with the full-strength original.Still, the larger failure was shared by almost the entire Republican field, including Haley. Even though they were nominally running against Trump, only one of them – Chris Christie of New Jersey – dared make the direct case against him. They feared antagonising the (many) Republicans who love Trump, so tiptoed around his obvious and disqualifying flaws – including his support for a violent insurrection in 2021 that sought to overturn a democratic election. Each candidate hoped someone else would take on that task, knocking out Trump in a kamikaze mission that would leave the remaining contenders to scoop up his supporters.It was a classic collective action problem. Had they combined against Trump, they’d have all benefited. Between them, and in their own different ways, they could have devised what political pros say many Republicans needed in order to make the break from Trump: a permission structure. They could have told Republican voters that they did not make a mistake in choosing Trump back in 2016, but his record of broken promises – he never did build that wall – and association with serial electoral defeats, in midterm contests as well as in 2020, made him the wrong choice in 2024. Haley is edging towards that message now, but it has come as time is running out.Trump has been aided, too, by the opponent he hopes to face in November. Initially, many Republicans were wary of backing Trump because they feared he would lose (again) to Biden. But as the president’s numbers continue to bump along the bottom, that fear has receded. Biden’s parlous standing is not chiefly about his record, but something he can do nothing about: how old he is and, more important, how old he seems. One poll found that just 34% of Americans believe the 82-year-old Biden would complete a second term. Biden’s frailty has led Republicans to dismiss the electability argument that might have compelled them to look for an alternative to Trump.And yet, an uncomfortable truth has to be faced. That Donald Trump is very possibly set to return to the Oval Office is not only down to the weakness of others; it is also a product of his own political strengths. He has a skill lacking in every other major figure in the current US political landscape: the ability to craft a narrative that millions believe. He has, for example, turned what should have been a terminal blow – facing multiple prosecutions and 91 criminal charges – into a winning story, one in which he is a victim of, and courageous fighter against, a liberal establishment engaged in “lawfare”, confecting bogus allegations to keep him from power. That story is false, but it has persuaded nearly half the country.He is helped in that by a news environment in which Americans regard themselves as entitled not only to their own opinions but to their own facts, where their feeds and timelines confirm their prejudices and shield them from any unwelcome evidence to the contrary.But Trump is also helped by some actual facts. When he brags about the health of the economy when he was president, it’s not wholly spurious. During his first three years in office, before Covid-19 struck, the typical US household saw its standard of living go up – with a 10.5% real-terms increase in the median household income – only for that same measure to fall by 2.7% during Joe Biden’s first two years. In that period, inflation surged and Americans’ wages could not keep up with rising costs.Of course, it’s laughable for Trump to claim those healthy pre-Covid economic numbers were all down to him. But that doesn’t stop millions of US voters looking back fondly on, say, the low petrol prices of the Trump years. Meanwhile, memories of the daily mayhem, bigotry and creeping authoritarianism are fading.His opponents are weaker than they needed, and still need, to be; he is stronger than many can bear to admit; and the core issue of any election – the economy – may favour him. For all those reasons, Trump has a plausible, even probable, path back to the White House.The best chance to stop him has already passed. It came in February 2021, when the Senate could have convicted Trump on the “incitement of insurrection” charges levelled against him in his second impeachment following the 6 January riot. Had that happened, Trump would have been barred from public office for life. That was the moment, but Senate Republicans ducked it.Trump has benefited from that cowardice, from that perennial belief that someone else will deal with Trump, eventually. Well, eventually is now – and it may already be too late.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Jonathan Freedland is presenting three special episodes of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast from New Hampshire. You can hear the first episode here More

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      Digested week: regular-sounding folk suspend disbelief over Trump | Emma Brockes

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      MondayThere wasn’t much to laugh to about when the Iowa caucus results came in on Monday, although the New York Post, erstwhile endorser of second place candidate, Ron DeSantis, raised a smile with the evidently vein-popping effort it had to put into finding a normal-sounding quote from Donald Trump. “Trump easily wins Iowa caucus in historic landslide, urges unity to ‘straighten out death and destruction’,” was the best they could eke from slim pickings.Results from Iowa famously don’t predict presidential election outcomes; since 1972, when the first caucuses were held, only three winners in Iowa have gone on to become president, and only one of them – George W Bush – on the Republican side. In previous years, this observation might have been useful, but in the case of Trump, of course, citing precedent doesn’t get us anywhere. The same week of his landslide in Iowa, Trump appeared, once again, in a court in downtown Manhattan, to face E Jean Carroll in her second defamation suit against him. The first suit last year ended when a judge found Trump guilty of libel and sexual abuse and awarded Carroll $5m (£3.95m) in damages, a fact that has, apparently, had no impact whatsoever on the 42% of Americans who recently gave him a favourable rating.Accounting for this disconnect gets harder. Reporters in Iowa on the day of the caucus threw up the now familiar conundrum of otherwise regular-sounding folk – people working in the ethanol industry, small business owners, retired farmers and insurance agents – expressing if not full-throated support for Trump, then at least a willingness to suspend disbelief. On the subject of the January 6 storming of the Capitol, an otherwise measured sounding man told the New Yorker: “It’s confusing, because the media tells one narrative, and then if you get on to any social-media platform that gives you a different narrative.” He added that he believed the last election had some voting “irregularities”. The default assumption – that Trump succeeds by making dumb people feel good about themselves – becomes a less and less credible explanation.TuesdayHere’s a man who never disappoints. Brooklyn Beckham, whether he’s unveiling his recipe for a bacon sandwich (bacon, bread) on US morning TV, or a gin and tonic (gin, tonic, lime) in a video on Bustle, or simply charming us with his cheerful rotation through those professions people tend to imagine – if they gave it a good crack – they would probably be brilliant at (photography, cooking). Many of Beckham’s recipes emanate from “Nanny Peggy”, his great-grandmother on his dad’s side, or from English folk history passed down through the generations and stored, in modern times, in a sacred archive on the internet accessible by Googling: “English people + favourite food”.In partnership with Uber Eats, some of these dishes of Beckham’s will be available to the British public for two days at the end of January, as part of a “pop-up restaurant” the delivery app is offering to users in London. These include his tikka masala, his spag bol and his pork and prawn dumplings, plus of course his signature dish, Nanny Peggy’s English breakfast sandwich. How Beckham will render open source recipes for beans on toast, bangers and mash, and a cup of tea – one lump or two! – we will have to wait for the inevitable cookbook to find out.View image in fullscreenWednesdayIf Beckham’s life in the glare of public attention is hard, it has nothing on that of the modern prince, held to uxorial standards to which his forefathers were not. At least this week Prince William knows the Daily Mail has his back. With the Princess of Wales in hospital for scheduled surgery, the loyal newspaper praised the heir to the throne for participating in his own family, observing: “The Prince of Wales will likely have a busy couple of months juggling childcare and aiding his wife”. Well, it’s all relative.ThursdayGambino, Genevese, Lucchese and … members of the New Conservatives and the European Research Groups, including Lee Anderson and Miriam Cates. This week the “five families” of the Tory party, self-styled like the unloved boy at school who gives himself a nickname, re-emerged after forming in December to challenge Rishi Sunak over his Rwanda immigration policy.The organised crime families of 1960s New York had a certain murderous dash, while the five families of Westminster have the veteran Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash and something called the Common Sense Group, better known for battling “wokeness” by supporting a campaign aimed at “cancelling cancel culture”. It’s not exactly Serpico. But as the Rwanda bill came back to face a second round of votes, so the Tory dons rose, pressuring Sunak to tighten the bill’s language that it may survive any European or international legal challenges.And while it’s true that this group of Tory MPs has grown trigger-happy, it’s mainly with nicknames; so that as well as the five families thing, the legal committee organised by Mark Francois, the Tory MP who countered German critics of Brexit by evoking the second world war, has been pompously named the “Star Chamber”. Whether Francois sees himself in this scenario as Cardinal Wolsey, or more of a John Gotti figure, is something about which I’m happy to remain in the dark.View image in fullscreenFridayNobody cares about the Baftas in the US, making the concept of the annual “Bafta snub”, in which a popular US film is snubbed by Bafta, somehow even more poignant for participants. A corker this year, the Bafta Barbie snub comes hard on the heels of the Golden Globes Barbie snub, and ahead of what we imagine will, in March, be the crowning snub of the year towards Barbie, the Oscars Barbie snub.The $1bn movie was this week only nominated for five Baftas and not in the director or best movie category, although Greta Gerwig (oh, sure, and Noah Baumbach) was nominated for best original screenplay. The endless tedium of Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was rewarded with 13 Bafta nominations, including one for Emily Blunt, which is the least the film can do for her, frankly, given that scene in the committee room with Florence Pugh – and which if you haven’t seen it, trust me, falls into a category all of its own: rank misuse of a national treasure. More

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      As the election looms, we must be alert to Trump’s threats of vigilante justice | Robert Reich

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      Donald Trump has galvanized an army of vigilantes who are casting a fearsome shadow over the 2024 election.It’s impossible to know how large this potential army is, but last October 41% of pro-Trump Americans agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” (That view was shared by 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats.)We’re seeing the consequences. The day after the Maine secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, barred Trump from the primary ballot there in late December, her home was “swatted”. As Bellows explained, “That’s when someone calls in a fake emergency to evoke a strong law enforcement response to scare the target. Swatting incidents have resulted in casualties although thankfully this one did not.”Along with the swatting, Bellows discussed “extraordinarily dehumanizing fake images” of her online:“I know from my previous work that dehumanizing a person is the first step in paving the way for attacks and violence against them. These dehumanizing images and threatening communications directed at me and people I love are dangerous. We should be able to agree to disagree on important issues without threats and violence.”The Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has also faced mounting threats since the Colorado supreme court in December disqualified Trump from the state’s primary ballot.“Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats,” Griswold has said. “I stopped counting after that. I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence.”Jack Smith, the special counsel in charge of two federal prosecutions of Trump, has received a number of death threats. Between April and September of last year, the justice department spent more than $4.4m providing increased security for Smith and his team. On Christmas Day he was swatted.On 4 August, Trump posted, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The following day, a Texas woman left a voicemail for Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over the case charging Trump with seeking to overturn the 2020 election, threatening that, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”Security has been increased for Judge Chutkan, as well. On 7 January, she was swatted.On 6 August, two days after Trump’s post, a man left a voicemail threatening the lives of the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Sheriff Patrick Labat for their roles in the Georgia criminal election interference case against Trump.Trump has also encouraged people to “go after” the New York attorney general, Letitia James.In addition, the far-right group the Proud Boys, according to the justice department, “played a central role in setting the January 6 attack on our Capitol into motion”. The House select committee investigating the attack found that in the months leading up to it, then-Trump operative Roger Stone regularly communicated with Proud Boys members, including their leader, Enrique Tarrio.In September, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on charges related to the attack. (In 2020, Trump issued Stone a blanket pardon.)As of December, roughly 1,240 people have been arrested in connection with the US Capitol attack. Some 170 have been convicted at trial, and 710 have pleaded guilty. So far, more than 720 have received prison sentences, ranging from a handful of days to more than 20 years.Many have sought to defend themselves by saying they were doing what Trump asked them to do. On that fateful day, Trump told the crowd he had summoned to Washington that:
      We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more … We will stop the steal … Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back … You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong … We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.
      Afterward, the crowd stormed the Capitol.There is a direct and alarming connection between Trump’s political rise and the increase in political violence and threats of such violence in America.In 2016, the Capitol police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol police.The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers declined to a still-high 7,500. (The 2023 data is not yet available.)Data also shows extraordinarily high levels of threats against mayors, federal judges, election workers and administrators, public health officials, and even school board members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe threats have clearly intimidated some Republican lawmakers.The retiring senator Mitt Romney recounted (in McKay Coppins’s biography of him) that during Trump’s 23 January 2021 impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit.Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security – afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” She cited how “members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”Just before the House vote on impeachment, the Democratic representative Jason Crow of Colorado said he heard firsthand from Republicans that fear was holding at least two of them back. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears – saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment,” Crow said on MSNBC.Former representative Peter Meijer, a Republican from Michigan, recalls one of his House colleagues voting to overturn the election results on the evening of January 6, hours after the assault: “My colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in.” After voting to impeach Trump, Meijer himself faced so many threats that he felt the need to purchase body armor and make changes to his daily schedule.Meijer also noted that his colleagues who voted not to certify the 2020 election “knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families. They felt that that vote would put their families in danger.”When announcing his retirement, former Republican congressman Anthony Gonzalez cited threats to him and his family after his vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment. Gonzalez was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. In September 2021, Gonzalez announced he would not seek another term.The Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania state senate explained why she signed a letter backing Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in that state: “If I would say to you, ‘I don’t want to do it,’ I’d get my house bombed tonight.”Political violence is an inherent part of fascism. Hitler’s SA – the letters stood for Sturmabteilung or “Storm Section”, also known as the Stormtroopers or Brownshirts – were vigilantes who did the Nazis’ dirty work before the Nazis took total power.During the German presidential elections in March and April 1932, Brownshirts assembled Alarmbereitschaften, or “emergency squads”, to intimidate voters.On the night of the Reichstag election of 31 July 1932, Brownshirts launched a wave of violence across much of northern and eastern Germany with murders and attempted murders of local officials and communist politicians and arson attacks on local Social Democratic headquarters and the offices of liberal newspapers.When five Brownshirts were sentenced to death for the murders, Hitler called the sentences “a most outrageous blood verdict” and publicly promised the prisoners that “from now on, your freedom is a question of honor for all of us, and to fight against the government which made possible such a verdict is our duty.”A chilling echo of these words can be found in one of Trump’s recent speeches in Iowa, in which he claimed that his supporters had acted “peacefully and patriotically” on 6 January 2021. “Some people call them prisoners,” he said of those who were serving sentences for their violence. “I call them hostages. Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”America is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933, and Trump is not Hitler. But it is important to understand the parallels.That Donald Trump still has not been held accountable for encouraging the attack on the US Capitol, or for provoking his followers with his blatant lie that the 2020 election was stolen, continues to galvanize an army of potentially violent Americans.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Judge hints that Trump’s election interference trial might be delayed

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      The federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results indicated on Thursday that the scheduled trial date would not hold as a result of the case being frozen while the former US president appeals to have the charges dismissed.The US district judge Tanya Chutkan last summer scheduled the trial in Washington DC to start on 4 March – allowing Trump and his team seven months to prepare his defense – and has taken pains to ensure that date would not be delayed.But when Trump appealed her decision in December to reject his motion to toss the charges on grounds he could not be prosecuted for actions he took as president related to his duties, the case became automatically frozen while the US court of appeals for the DC circuit considered the matter.In her six-page order prohibiting the special counsel Jack Smith from filing motions pending the appeal, Chutkan affirmed that Trump would get the full seven-month period and that any time that elapsed between December and the end of the appeals process would not count against him.“Contrary to Defendant’s assertion, the court has not and will not set deadlines in this case based on the assumption that he has undertaken preparation when not required to do so,” the judge wrote.The line marked the first time that Chutkan has acknowledged that the March trial date may no longer be viable. While the DC circuit is expected to issue a decision on the immunity appeal expeditiously after oral arguments last week, it could be weeks until a decision is handed down.Trump can also continue his appeal efforts – and continue to have the case stayed – by asking the full appeals court to rehear the case “en banc” should the three-judge panel at oral arguments uphold Chutkan’s ruling. En banc means a hearing before an entire bench of judges. Trump could also ultimately appeal to the US supreme court.The situation reflects the success Trump has had to date with executing his strategy of seeking to delay the case, ideally beyond the 2024 election in the hope that he wins re-election to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.Chutkan’s order was a win for Trump insofar as she affirmed that prosecutors should not be filing motions related to the substance of the case in order to comply with the stay order that has frozen the case, even if she declined to hold them in contempt as Trump had wanted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump had complained that the filings from prosecutors, submitted to the trial court while they litigated the immunity issue, diverted their attention and created an unfair burden because his lawyers needed to review them to make sure it included things “involved in the appeal”.“While that is not a major burden, it is a cognizable one,” Chutkan wrote of Trump’s complaint. She added that Trump could make further objections to prosecutors’ findings, and he could do so when the appeals process is resolved and “the court sets a new schedule”. More

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      Trump lawyers urge supreme court to reinstate him on Colorado ballot

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers urged the US supreme court on Thursday to reverse a judicial decision disqualifying the former president from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot as the justices prepare to tackle the politically explosive case.Trump’s lawyers in court papers presented the former US president’s main arguments against a Colorado supreme court ruling on 19 December barring him from the primary ballot over his actions around the January 6 Capitol attack, citing the 14th amendment of the US constitution.The justices have scheduled oral arguments in the case for 8 February.Trump’s lawyers urged the court to “put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts”, noting that similar efforts were under way in more than 30 states.The lawyers said the 14th amendment provision does not apply to presidents, that the question of presidential eligibility is reserved to Congress, and that Trump did not participate in an insurrection.The brief adheres to an accelerated schedule set by the justices on 5 January when they agreed to take up the case. Colorado’s Republican primary is set for 5 March.Trump is the frontrunner for his party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the November 5 election.The plaintiffs – six conservative Republican or independent voters in Colorado – challenged Trump’s eligibility to run for office in light of his actions before the attack.They now have until 31 January to respond to Trump’s filing.The Colorado ruling marked the first time that section 3 of the 14th amendment – the so-called disqualification clause – had been used to find a presidential candidate ineligible.Section 3 bars from holding office any “officer of the United States” who took an oath “to support the constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.The Colorado lawsuit is part of a wider effort to disqualify Trump from state ballots under the 14th amendment, so the ruling by the justices may shape the outcome of that drive.For instance, Trump also has appealed to a Maine court a decision by that state’s top election official barring him from the primary ballot under the 14th amendment. That case is on hold until the supreme court issues its ruling in the Colorado case.The 14th amendment was ratified in the aftermath of the American civil war of 1861-65 in which southern states that allowed the practice of slavery rebelled in a bid for secession.The Capitol rampage was a bid to prevent Congress from certifying 2020 Biden’s election victory over Trump, who gave an incendiary speech to his supporters beforehand, repeating his false claims of widespread voting fraud.Trump also faces criminal charges in two cases related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome.The Colorado plaintiffs have emphasized the lower court‘s findings that Trump’s intentional “mobilizing, inciting, and encouraging” of an armed mob to attack the Capitol meets the legal definition in section 3. “This attack was an ‘insurrection’ against the constitution by any standard,” they said in legal papers. More

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      Trump lawyer: Ex-president not responsible for E Jean Carroll backlash because supporters were likely to believe him – live

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      On cross-examination, Donald Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway.Madaio asked whether people most likely receptive to Trump’s denials were most likely Trump supporters? Were Trump supporters more likely to believe him?“Wouldn’t you think that Trump supporters would have already thought Ms. Carroll a liar in her accusations?” he asked. “If they already had an opinion formed on this subject, and they already had an opinion of Ms Carroll, would President Trump have any affect on their opinion?”“Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he added.“I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.Pressed on this, Humphreys said people are “more likely” receptive to information that easily “conforms to their views.”Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events at E J Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump:
      Trump’s lead attorney Alina Habba tried to cast doubt on the threats E J Carroll faced as a result of Trump’s public remarks about her. Citing derogatory tweets directed towards Carroll, Habba asked whether Carroll agrees that the tweets are “not necessarily tied” to Trump’s statements. Carroll said, “Some of the tweets are definitely tied to the president’s statement.”
      Cross-examination also took a turn for the absurd when Habba pointed to a 2013 tweet in which Carroll referred to penile functions. “You left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct” asked Habba, to which Carroll answered in the affirmative.
      Habba also appeared to suggest that Carroll had not suffered as a result of Trump’s comments, pointing to TV appearances as an example. “So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba. “No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.
      Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor, also took to the witness stand today. She said that to restore E J Carroll’s reputation by putting out corrective messaging in relation to Donald Trump’s 2019 statements, Humphreys estimated, it could cost from $7.2m to $12.1m.
      On cross-examination, Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway. “Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he said. “I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.– Maya Yang
      Meanwhile, the defamation trial has concluded for the day.Judge Lewis Kaplan has not spoken about plans for Monday.Here’s an update on another Trump case, from the AP: The judge overseeing the former president’s 2020 election interference case rjected his lawyers bid to hold special counsel Jack Smith’s team in contempt, after prosecutors turned over thousands of pages of evidence and filing a motion after the judge put the case on hold.US district judge Tanya Chutkan said in her rulingthat her pausing the case did not “clearly and unambiguously” prohibit the prosecutor’s those actions, but she said no further substantive filings should be submitted until the hold is lifted.A trial in that case is currently scheduled for 4 March, but will likely be delayed because Trump has appealed a ruling that rejected claims that he was immune to prosectution.Following the Senate’s passage of a stopgap funding bill shortly before a shutdown deadline on Thursday, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer released the following statement in which he hailed the bill’s passage:
      “It’s good news for every American, especially our veterans, parents and children, farmers and small businesses, all of whom would have felt the sting of a shutdown.”
      With court currently on a break, here is another update in US politics: third-party centrists across the country have filed a formal complaint over an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” surrounding the 2024 presidential election.The Guardian’s David Smith reports:The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election.No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.For the full story, click here:On cross-examination, Donald Trump’s attorney Michael T. Madaio suggested that the ex-president was not responsible for backlash against Carroll – because supporters were likely to believe him, and his denials, anyway.Madaio asked whether people most likely receptive to Trump’s denials were most likely Trump supporters? Were Trump supporters more likely to believe him?“Wouldn’t you think that Trump supporters would have already thought Ms. Carroll a liar in her accusations?” he asked. “If they already had an opinion formed on this subject, and they already had an opinion of Ms Carroll, would President Trump have any affect on their opinion?”“Do you think that those same people would have been unlikely to believe Ms Carroll’s initial allegation?… You agree that people have confirmation bias, right?” he added.“I believe that confirmation bias can occur in many contexts, yes,” said Humphreys.Pressed on this, Humphreys said people are “more likely” receptive to information that easily “conforms to their views.”Court has resumed.Ashlee Humphreys is now under cross-examination.Joe Biden has released the following statement in response to a justice department report which found that the police response to the 2022 Uvalde school shooting in which 21 people were killed “was a failure”:
      Today’s report makes clear several things: that there was a failure to establish a clear command and control structure, that law enforcement should have quickly deemed this incident an active shooter situation and responded accordingly, and that clearer and more detailed plans in the school district were required to prepare for the possibility that this could occur.
      There were multiple points of failure that hold lessons for the future, and my team will work with the Justice Department and Department of Education to implement policy changes necessary to help communities respond more effectively in the future.
      Congress must now pass commonsense gun safety laws to ensure that mass shootings like this one don’t happen in the first place. We need universal background checks, we need a national red flag law, and we must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The families of Uvalde – and all American communities — deserve nothing less.
      Jerry Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York, is in contact with the FBI and Capitol police about a reported death threat from Roger Stone, a staunch far-right Donald Trump ally.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:“It was a surprise to me. I just found out a few days ago … I saw it on Mediaite,” Nadler told reporters, naming the website which said it obtained audio of the threat and saying he had been in touch with authorities.The reported threat also mentioned Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who on Wednesday told CNN he also learned of the threat from the Mediaite report.Speaking before the 2020 presidential election to an associate who was then a serving New York police officer, Stone reportedly said: “It’s time to do it.“Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit any more.”For the full story, click here:Court is currently on break and will resume at around 1.50pm.We will bring you the latest updates once court is back in session.Ashlee Humphreys calculated that up to 24.7m of these impressions were associated with likely belief in Donald Trump’s statements.To restore Carroll’s reputation by putting out corrective messaging in relation to the 2019 statements, Humphreys estimated, it could cost from $7.2m to $12.1m.Attorney Shawn Crowley, who was questioning Humphreys, asked how a person’s reputation is impacted when the same negative claim is repeated – especially by a prominent source.Ashlee Humphreys said that she studied how many people Donald Trump’s June 2019 statements reached.She studied 47 online news articles that cited his 21 June and 22 June 2019 denials.Humphreys determined that these publications’ websites had 13.2m impressions – that is, unique visitors on a particular day – related to these articles.As for social media impressions, Humphreys said that her low estimate was just over 7 million and her high estimate was more than 25m. With television, Humphreys calculated that Trump’s statements reached 63.1m; print newspapers reached more than 2.83m.Humphreys estimated that the total number of times Trump’s statements were viewed ranged from some 85.8m to 104.1m.Ashlee Humphreys, a Northwestern University marketing professor, has taken the witness stand. Humphreys’ testimony could help put a dollar amount on the reputational harm Carroll endured because of Donald Trump’s comments. Humphreys provided testimony in Carroll’s first trial against Trump, but her presence in this trial could be quite perilous to him.She testified in two Georgia ex-election workers’ defamation trial against Trump’s crony, Rudy Giuliani.Those former election workers won $148m in the suit. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy protection following the conclusion of that case.Here are some court sketches coming through the newswires of E J Carroll’s defamation trial against Donald Trump:E J Carroll is now on redirect examination.Carroll’s lawyer is now asking her questions again.Cross-examination in E J Carroll’s defamation case against Donald Trump is now over. Here are the key developments from this morning:
      Trump’s lead attorney Alina Habba tried to cast doubt on the threats Carroll faced as a result of Trump’s public remarks about her. Citing derogatory tweets directed towards Carroll, Habba asked whether Carroll agrees that the tweets are “not necessarily tied” to Trump’s statements. Carroll said, “Some of the tweets are definitely tied to the president’s statement.”
      Cross-examination also took a turn for the absurd when Habba pointed to a 2013 tweet in which Carroll referred to penile functions. “You left that on your Twitter account as we stand here today, correct” asked Habba, to which Carroll answered in the affirmative.
      Habba also appeared to suggest that Carroll had not suffered as a result of Trump’s comments, pointing to TV appearances as an example. “So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba. “No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.
      Alina Habba concluded her cross-examination by suggesting that E J Carroll had not suffered because of Donald Trump’s comments – didn’t she have opportunities like having a Substack and TV appearances? Was she making more money? Was she better known?“So, your reputation in many ways is better today isn’t it Ms Carroll?” said Habba.“No, my status was lowered. I’m partaking in this trial to bring my old reputation and status back,” replied Carroll.“So, you sued Donald Trump to bring your old reputation back?” said Habba.“Yeah,” replied Carroll. More

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      in Elections

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

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

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      in US Politics

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

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