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      Trump is not immune from prosecution in 2020 election interference case, court rules

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      A federal appeals court panel has decided to reject Donald Trump’s arguments that he cannot be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results because it involved actions he took while president.While hearing oral arguments in Washington DC on 9 January, the three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit had expressed skepticism with Trump’s claim to immunity, while the former US president looked on in the court room. On Tuesday they rejected the claim.Last year, Trump filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, which charged the former president over his efforts to reverse the 2020 election, including by advancing fake slates of electors and obstructing Congress on 6 January 2021.The motion was rejected by the trial judge, prompting Trump to appeal to the DC circuit. The special counsel sought to bypass the potentially lengthy appeals process by asking the US supreme court to intervene directly, but the nation’s highest court returned the case to the appeals court.The ruling has been issued by the panel, which includes one judge appointed under George HW Bush’s presidency and two chosen by Joe Biden.The very legal process itself is acting as a hindrance to the prosecution in the federal criminal case and playing into Trump’s hands.Observers before the decision came down viewed a long-shot ruling in Trump’s favor as an obvious, significant blow to Smith – while a ruling that Trump is not immune would mean him appealing to the full DC circuit and then potentially the US supreme court, causing huge delay in the case amid the primaries and thrusting the conservative-leaning highest court into the middle of the presidential election.The appeal the panel just ruled on arose after the DC federal judge Tanya Chutkan in early December rejected Trump’s claim, based on his sweeping and unprecedented interpretation of executive power, that she should dismiss the case. She ruled that he enjoyed no immunity from prosecution simply because when the actions in question took place when he was still president.A grand jury indicted Trump last August, accusing him of conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, in the case brought by the Department of Justice-appointed Smith.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe charges relate to Trump’s wide-ranging efforts after losing the 2020 election to Biden to overturn the results, campaigning in vain in court, in the media and by pressuring election officials in swing states, culminating in his encouragement of supporters on 6 January 2021, to stop the certification by Congress of Biden’s victory, which led to the deadly invasion of the US Capitol.Trump faces 91 charges in four separate criminal cases, two federal, one in New York and one in Georgia. More

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      Far-right group Project Veritas admits it had ‘no evidence’ of voter fraud in Pennsylvania

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      The far-right political agitator James O’Keefe and the Project Veritas organization he once led have admitted that they had “no evidence” backing up widely spread claims of voter fraud at a Pennsylvania post office during the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.O’Keefe and Project Veritas made that admission Monday after settling a lawsuit filed against them by Robert Weisenbach, the postmaster of Erie, Pennsylvania, in state court, concluding one of the more prominent legal battles spurred by Republican lies that Donald Trump was defrauded out of another term in the White House.“Neither Mr Weisenbach nor any other [postal] employee in Erie, Pennsylvania, engaged in election fraud or any other wrongdoing related to mail-in ballots,” O’Keefe said in a statement published Monday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “I am aware of no evidence or other allegation that election fraud occurred in the Erie post office during the 2020 presidential election.”Claims by an Erie mail carrier and Trump supporter named Richard Hopkins thrust his local post office into the center of rightwing conspiracy theories seeking to delegitimize Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Hopkins maintained in a signed affidavit that he had overheard Weisenbach discuss illicitly backdating mail-in ballots, which overwhelmingly favored Biden after Trump urged his supporters to vote in person instead despite vaccines meant to limit the spread of Covid-19 still not being widely available at the time.But Hopkins recanted his sworn allegations after Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who was then leader of the chamber’s judiciary committee, cited them to support his calls for a federal investigation into ballot tampering.Hopkins sought to cast doubt on his retraction soon after, saying in a YouTube video: “I did not recant my statements.” But Monday, Hopkins confirmed he was wrong to have besmirched Weisenbach.“I only heard a fragment of the conversation [involving] Weisenbach and reached the conclusion that the conversation was related to nefarious behavior,” Hopkins said in a statement released along with O’Keefe’s. “As I have now learned, I was wrong. Mr Weisenbach was not involved in any inappropriate behavior concerning the 2020 presidential election.”Hopkins’s statement alluded to the results of a US post office inspector general’s investigation which cleared Weisenbach and his colleagues of wrongdoing. The statement also apologized to Weisenbach, his family and his post office employees, along with anyone who was “negatively” affected by Hopkins’s falsehoods. “I implore everyone … to leave the Weisenbach family alone and allow them to return to their normal, peaceful lives,” Hopkins’s statement added.Neither Project Veritas nor Weisenbach’s attorney, David Houck, could immediately be reached for comment. But Houck confirmed to NBC News that Monday’s statements from O’Keefe and Hopkins came after they had agreed to settle Weisenbach’s lawsuit.Houck did not elaborate on any other terms of the settlement.“The only comment I’m allowed to make about it is that the case was filed, litigated, and settled to the satisfaction of the parties,” Houck said to NBC.O’Keefe’s and Hopkins’s statements Monday inspired heaps of schadenfreude in some quarters. A comment on X from Bill Grueskin, who spent six years as academic dean of the prestigious Columbia Journalism school, summarized the general reaction.“Sorry to take down a couple of your heroes, but it appears that James O’Keefe and Project Veritas got something wrong,” Grueskin wrote while sharing screencaptures of Monday’s mea culpas.Despite Trump supporters’ claims to the contrary, election integrity experts consider the 2020 race to be the most secure ever. In a rare instance of an improperly reported voting result from the 2020 election, a Virginia county confirmed in January that Trump had been awarded 2,237 ballots more than he should have, and Biden was short changed nearly 1,650.O’Keefe and Project Veritas earned notoriety for video stings – often involving hidden cameras – which targeted progressives. One of his more prominent stings took down the community activism group Acorn, whom O’Keefe duped by posing as a pimp aspiring to establish a brothel.Another aimed at US senator Mary Landrieu during her final term in office saw O’Keefe and three associates plead guilty in 2010 to entering federal property under false pretenses. O’Keefe was sentenced to three years of probation and a fine of $1,500.O’Keefe resigned from Project Veritas in February 2023 after the group’s governing board found that he had “spent an excessive amount of donor funds in the [previous] three years on personal luxuries” and filed a civil complaint against him.In September, Project Veritas suspended its operations and laid off most of its employees. Then, Hannah Giles resigned as chief executive of Project Veritas in December, alleging that “illegality” and “financial improprieties” in the past had left the nonprofit “an unsalvageable mess”. More

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      ‘In a word, horrific’: Trump’s extreme anti-environment blueprint

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      The United States’s first major climate legislation dismantled, a crackdown on government scientists, a frenzy of oil and gas drilling, the Paris climate deal not only dead but buried.A blueprint is emerging for a second Donald Trump term that is even more extreme for the environment than his first, according to interviews with multiple Trump allies and advisers.In contrast to a sometimes chaotic first White House term, they outlined a far more methodical second presidency: driving forward fossil fuel production, sidelining mainstream climate scientists and overturning rules that curb planet-heating emissions.“Trump will undo everything [Joe] Biden has done, he will move more quickly and go further than he did before,” said Myron Ebell, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team for Trump’s first term. “He will act much more expeditiously to impose his agenda.”The prized target for Trump’s Republican allies, should the former president defeat Joe Biden in November’s election, will be the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark $370bn bill laden with support for clean energy projects and electric vehicles. Ebell said the legislation, signed by Biden in 2022 with no Republican votes, was “the biggest defeat we’ve suffered”.Carla Sands, a key environment adviser to the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute who has criticized Biden’s “apocalyptic green fantasies”, said: “Our nation needs a level regulatory playing field for all forms of energy to compete. Achieving this level playing field will require the repeal of the energy and environment provisions within the Inflation Reduction Act.”View image in fullscreenThe GOP-controlled House of Representatives has already pushed bills to gut the act. But fully repealing the IRA, which has disproportionally brought popular funding and jobs in solar, wind and battery manufacturing to Republican districts, may be politically difficult for Trump even if his party gains full control of Congress.However, Trump could still slow down the progress of the clean energy transition as president by redrawing the rules for the IRA’s generous tax credits.He would, his allies say, also scrap government considerations of the damage caused by carbon emissions; compel a diminished EPA to squash pollution rules for cars, trucks and power plants; and symbolically nullify the Paris climate agreement by not only withdrawing the US again but sending it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, knowing it would fail.“The Paris climate accord does nothing to actually improve the environment here in the United States or globally,” said Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s former EPA chief of staff. She argued that the agreement puts too little pressure on China, India and other developing countries to reduce their emissions.In recent rallies, Trump, the likely Republican nominee, has called renewable energy “a scam business” and vowed to “drill, baby, drill”. On his first day in office, Trump has said he would repeal “crooked Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate” and approve a glut of new gas export terminals currently paused by Biden.View image in fullscreenAreas currently off-limits for drilling, such the Arctic, will also probably be opened up to industry by Trump. “I will end his war on American energy,” Trump has said of the incumbent president, even though in reality the US hit record levels of oil and gas production last year.“I expect the Republicans will put together their own very aggressive reconciliation bill to claw back the subsidies in the IRA,” said Tom Pyle, president of the free market American Energy Alliance and previous head of the US Department of Energy’s transition team under Trump.“The president will benefit from having the experience of being in office before, he’ll get a faster head start on his agenda. He won’t be encumbered by the need to be re-elected, so there will be a short window of time but he may be more aggressive as a result.”‘There is no logic to it’Critics of Trump, who are already fretting over his potential return to the White House, warn this agenda will stymie clean energy investment, place Americans’ health at the mercy of polluters, badly damage the effort to address the climate crisis and alienate America’s allies.“A return of Trump would be, in a word, horrific,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official, now fellow at the University of New Hampshire.“It would also be incredibly stupid. It would roll back progress made over decades to protect public health and safety, there is no logic to it other than to destroy everything. People who support him may not realize it’s their lives at stake, too.”View image in fullscreenA second Trump term would be more ideologically extreme than the first, with fewer restraints, Rosenberg claimed. “There were people part of a reasonable mainstream in his first term who buffered against his craziest instincts – they won’t be there any more,” he said.Should Trump manage to repeal the IRA and water down or scrap EPA pollution rules, there would be severe consequences for a world that is struggling to contain an escalating climate crisis, experts say.The US, the world’s second biggest carbon polluter, would still see its emissions drop under Trump due to previous policies and a market-led shift away from coal to gas as an energy source, but at only half the rate of a second Biden term, according to an analysis by Energy Innovation shared with the Guardian.This would deal a mortal blow to the global effort to restrain dangerous global heating, with scientists warning that the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half this decade, and eliminate them entirely by 2050, to avoid breaching agreed temperature limits and plunge billions of people into worsening heatwaves, floods and droughts.“I don’t think Donald Trump would actually be able to replace the IRA, but you couldn’t rule it out,” said Anand Gopal, executive director at Energy Innovation.“If he did, the global effect would be potentially disastrous. It would encourage everyone else to go backwards or slow down their climate pledges and put the world way off track to where it needs to be. It could prove the difference between staying under 1.5C warming or not.”Much will hinge upon any new Trump administration’s ability to better navigate arcane regulatory procedures and the courts. His previous term saw an enormous number of legal defeats for his hurried attempts at environmental rollbacks, as well as the departure of scandal-plagued cabinet members overseeing this effort.“You can’t just snap your fingers,” said Jeff Navin, a former chief of staff at the US Department of Energy. “You need to spend a lot of time redoing regulations. Is that something Trump really wants to do rather than just pursue other grievances? I don’t think so.”View image in fullscreenBut some conservatives believe Trump will prove more successful second time around, pointing to an amenably conservative supreme court and more detailed planning ahead of the election, such as the Project 2025 document put out by the rightwing Heritage Foundation, which details severe cuts to the EPA and Department of the Interior, as well as a greater politicization of the civil service to push through Trumpian goals.“We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” Paul Dans, director of Project 2025, told E&E News last year. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.”Jeff Holmstead, who ran the EPA’s air office during George W Bush’s administration, said Trump’s administration would be “much more prepared” for a second term.“They know what they need to do to undo rules in a in a legally defensible way,” he said. A new Trump administration would take a more “surgical approach” to deregulation, he said, taking more of its cues from industry.Under Biden, Gunasekara said, there has been an “unnecessary tension” between the oil sector and regulators.“You have to work with the industry players,” she said. “Agencies should not be about suppressing or boosting particular technologies.”Early on, Trump officials will probably work with Congress to kill certain rules through a parliamentary procedure called the Congressional Review Act. The Clinton-era statute empowers Congress and the president to work together to overturn major federal regulations within 60 legislative days of finalization, by passing a joint resolution of disapproval signed by the president.“Generally in the past, anything that is finalized after mid- to late May is likely to be within that window,” said Holmstead. “So speed is of the essence for the Biden administration.”A fresh Trump term could engulf federal climate scientists, too, who were ignored but largely allowed to issue their work during Trump’s last term. A new Trump White House could intervene more to alter climate reports, or even stage a previously mooted public debate on the merits of climate science.View image in fullscreen“I expect that idea will be revived and I think we would get a much wider view of climate science that wouldn’t be controlled by a small cabal,” said Ebell. “That will start very quickly.”Trump’s plans come as Biden has struggled to inspire younger, climate-conscious voters who have been angered by his ongoing leasing of public lands and waters to the fossil fuel industry, such as the controversial Willow oil project in Alaska.Biden has overseen a boom in liquified natural gas exports that he has belatedly attempted to restrain and his administration has floundered in its attempts to sell the IRA to the American public, with most voters unaware of the climate legislation or its significance in driving down emissions.Still, the president’s position on climate change is incomparable to Trump’s, according to Rosenberg. “The contrast is incredibly stark between Biden and Trump,” he said. “Do I think Biden is the best of the best? Of course not. But compared to Trump? That’s just scary.“Anyone who cares about public health, the environment, science, international relations, you could go on, should be scared about another Trump presidency.” More

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      Biden would veto standalone Israel aid bill backed by GOP, says White House

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      Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday he would veto a standalone bill backed by House of Representatives Republicans that would provide aid to Israel, as it backs a broader bill providing assistance to Ukraine and Israel and providing new funds for border security.“The Administration strongly encourages both chambers of the Congress to reject this political ploy and instead quickly send the bipartisan Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act to the President’s desk,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.Officials from the Democratic president’s administration have been working for months with Senate Democrats and Republicans on a $118bn legislation package revealed on Sunday combining billions of dollars in emergency aid for Ukraine, Israel and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, with an overhaul of US immigration policy.The bill includes $60bn in aid to Ukraine, $14.1bn for Israel in its war in Gaza, and about $20bn for new enforcement efforts along the US-Mexico border.Republican House leaders said days before its release on Sunday night that they would reject the bipartisan Senate bill, and instead vote on a bill providing aid only to Israel.The bill represented a rightward tilt in Senate negotiations over border measures, yet the backlash was intense from conservatives. They savaged the border policy proposal as insufficient, with Donald Trump leading the charge.“This is a gift to the Democrats. And this sort of is a shifting of the worst border in history onto the shoulders of Republicans,” the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee said Monday on The Dan Bongino Show. “That’s really what they want. They want this for the presidential election so they can now blame the Republicans for the worst border in history.”Many Senate Republicans – even those who have expressed support for Ukraine aid and the contours of the border policy changes – raised doubts Monday they would support the package. A private Republican meeting was scheduled in the evening to discuss it.Still, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer moved toward a key test vote on Wednesday.“The actions here in the next few days are an inflection point in history,” the New York Democrat said in a floor speech Monday afternoon. “The security of our nation and of the world hangs in the balance.”Schumer worked closely with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on the border security package after the Kentucky Republican had insisted on the pairing as a way to win support for Ukraine aid. The Democratic leader urged his colleagues across the aisle to “tune out the political noise” and vote yes.“For years, years our Republican colleagues have demanded we fix the border. And all along they said it should be done through legislation. Only recently did they change that when it looks like we might actually produce legislation,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth Schumer and McConnell have emphasized for months the urgency of approving tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine’s fight, saying that the US’s ability to buttress democracies around the world was at stake. Yet with the funding stuck in Congress, the defense department has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv.The Republican-majority House passed an Israel-only bill in November, but it was never taken up in the Democratic-led Senate, as members worked on Biden’s request for Congress to approve the broader emergency security package.The statement from House speaker Mike Johnson and representatives Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer and Elise Stefanik pointed to a provision in the bill that would grant work authorizations to people who qualify to enter the asylum system. They also argued that it would endorse a “catch and release” policy by placing people who enter the asylum system in a monitoring program while they await the final decision on their asylum claim.Under the proposal, people who seek asylum, which provides protection for people facing persecution in their home countries, would face a tougher and faster process to having their claim evaluated. The standard in initial interviews would be raised, and many would receive those interviews within days of arriving at the border.Final decisions on their asylum claims would happen within months, rather than the often years-long wait that happens now.But the House Republican leaders said: “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time.”Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      House Republican leaders demand Senate reject immigration compromise; Haley joins opposition to deal – as it happened

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      In a just-released statement, the top Republicans in the House called on the Senate to vote down the bipartisan immigration policy legislation.“Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it,” speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, whip Tom Emmer and conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik said.They instead called on Congress’s upper chamber to pass the Secure the Border Act, a package of hardline policies the House approved last year – among them, restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall – that Democrats have rejected.“Because President Biden has refused to utilize his broad executive authority to end the border catastrophe that he has created, the House led nine months ago with the passage of the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2). That bill contains the necessary components to actually stem the flow of illegals and end the present crisis. The Senate must take it up immediately,” they said.A bill to enact hardline immigration policies and send aid to Israel and Ukraine’s militaries is not even 24 hours old, but is already facing opposition that appears insurmountable. The House’s Republican leaders called on the Senate to reject the measure, and said that even if the chamber passes the bill, they will not hold a vote on it. Back in the Senate, an increasing number of Republican lawmakers say they will not support the legislation. But the worst news of all for the nascent proposal may have arrived from GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who called it “horrendous”.Here’s what else happened today:
      Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s majority leader, said the chamber will vote on the immigration bill Wednesday.
      Joe Biden remains supportive of the immigration proposal, saying, “doing nothing is not an option”.
      The special election to replace George Santos in a New York swing district could turn into a proxy battle over immigration reforms.
      James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who was his party’s negotiator in the immigration talks, said voting down the proposal would amount to hypocrisy.
      Migrant aid groups as well as a major union spoke out against the immigration policy changes.
      The Senate’s Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber will vote on the bipartisan immigration policy bill Wednesday.The legislation also includes military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and is supported by Joe Biden, as well as the Senate’s Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell. But its prospects in the House appear dire, after speaker Mike Johnson said the legislation will not be considered. Meanwhile, a growing number of Senate Republicans as well as some Democrats have also spoken out against the bill.In a speech on the chamber’s floor, Schumer said Wednesday’s vote “will be the most important that the Senate has taken in a very long time”, and blamed attacks from Donald Trump and others for undermining the legislation’s prospects.“The $64,000 question now, is whether or not senators can drown out the outside noise, drown out people like Donald Trump who want chaos, and do the right thing for America,” Schumer said.“I urge senators of goodwill on both sides of the aisle to do the right thing and turn the chaos out. History is going to look over our shoulders and ask if the Senate rose to the occasion. We must, we must act.”Asked by reporters what he expected to happen next with the immigration policy bill, Joe Biden said: “Hopefully passage in the Senate.”The president is today in Las Vegas, where he met with unionized culinary workers. He’s heading back to Washington DC later in the day.Non-profits working with asylum seekers and migrants have also come out against the Senate’s immigration reform bill.Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an El Paso-Texas based organization that provides legal services to migrants, said:
      Closing the border, creating a new ‘metering’ system, and debilitating our asylum laws will do nothing to address the underlying issues that force vulnerable children and families to flee their homes, seeking safety and a better life. Although the bill contains small silver linings, they come at too high a cost.
      Ayuda, which provides legal services to low-income immigrants in Washington DC and surrounding states, said:
      Amongst many of the draconian changes proposed, this legislation would create a new authority, with narrow exceptions, that would allow officials to summarily expel asylum seekers. It would also restrict screening standards for asylum seekers and expedite asylum claims to the extent that many will not be able to access counsel or adequately represent themselves.
      The Service Employees International Union opposed the bill as too extreme, with president Mary Kay Henry saying:
      Compromise is almost always necessary to achieve great goals, but the extreme Republicans who pushed this deal were never going to give up any of the items on their longstanding anti-immigrant wish list. From Trump on down, they have admitted that they see chaos as politically beneficial. We can support our international allies fighting for democracy without setting a dangerous precedent that does not reflect our values. Any Republican arguments to the contrary are in service of a political agenda and not of working people
      It’s not just members of Congress who are thinking about immigration. The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh reports that Latino voters in Nevada, a swing state where a Democratic senator is up for re-election in November, are also watching closely to see how Washington handles the issue:In East Las Vegas last week, there were few signs that Nevada was gearing up for the first presidential election contest in the western US, happening in mere days.The neighbourhood, the heart of the city’s Latino community, was bereft of lawn signs and campaign banners. There were no clipboard-wielding canvassers crowding its wide, palm-tree-lined streets. An occasional ad on the local Spanish-language radio station, encouraging listeners to vote, was one of the few signs that the presidential primaries were coming up.“Will I vote in the primaries? Yeah, maybe,” said Ruby Romero, 38, who owns a boutique in Vegas’s arts district. But, she admitted, she had almost forgotten about it.This week’s elections aren’t exactly competitive, and will inevitably move Joe Biden and Donald Trump toward a rematch in November.But in an election year that will determine the future of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, the chances of meaningful climate action, the shape of the economy and perhaps even the fate of American democracy, voters here appeared particularly demoralised.Latinos make up one in five voters in the state, and in 2020 about 60% of Latino voters backed Joe Biden. It remains unclear, however, whether Democrats will be able to energise enough voters this year to replicate that feat.Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the last major Republican presidential contender whose name is not Donald Trump, joined the ranks of the objectors to the Senate’s immigration proposal:Perhaps the most telling part of her comments is right at the beginning, where she says “I don’t think you wait till an election to pass a border deal because we need to get something done immediately.” Republicans have demanded tighter border security for years, but now that a presidential election is nine months away, Haley appears to be suggesting that the party is wise to turn down the deal and hope that one of their own is elected in November.The Republican senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham has thanked James Lankford for his role in negotiating the border bill, and said he is looking forward to making the bill “stronger”.In a statement posted to social media, Graham said he is “open-minded” on steps on how to improve the bill, adding that “something this significant cannot be rushed and jammed through”. He added:
      I am hopeful that Senator Schumer will allow an open amendment process to occur. If not, then the bill will die because of process.
      Nikki Haley raised $16.5m in January, her biggest monthly fundraising total to date, her presidential campaign said on Monday.The former South Carolina governor and last major challenger to Donald Trump brought in 69,274 new donors and $11.7m from “grassroots supporters” last month, the campaign said.The influx of cash comes amid growing calls from fellow Republicans that she withdraw from the race in order for the party to unite around a single candidate.“While Donald Trump blows $50 million of his donors’ money on his legal cases, Nikki Haley has been focused on talking to voters and saving our country,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, reported by the Washington Post.
      Hundreds of thousands of Americans are supporting Nikki’s campaign because they don’t want two grumpy old men and all their chaos, confusion, and grievances. They want a strong, conservative leader who will save this country.
      Democratic presidential challenger Dean Phillips defended continuing his longshot campaign despite a disappointing third-place finish in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, saying it was “a mission of principle”.The Minnesota congressman’s remarks about remaining in the race for the Oval Office came Sunday during an appearance on MSNBC’s The Weekend. Another guest on the show asked Phillips “what the hell are you doing” and “what’s being served here” with his presidential run, especially after Biden captured 96% of the votes cast in the previous day’s South Carolina primary. Phillips collected less than 2% of the vote and finished behind Williamson, a self-help author.“So what does your path look like at this point and why?” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said to Phillips. Steele said Phillips, 55, was also prolonging narratives about the 81-year-old Biden’s age.“I know tradition dictates that you always protect the incumbent,” Phillips replied. But Phillips said challenging Biden was “a mission of principle”. He added:
      Someone’s got to do it.
      Phillips said he was also concerned that Biden’s unpopularity with the electorate could cost the Democrats the White House if he is nominated for another term in the fall.“We’re dumbfounded,” Phillips said.
      Yes, he’s got a commanding lead in the primaries – I get it. But look at the numbers. He is in a terrible position.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has urged Speaker Mike Johnson to take up the border bill to the House floor.“I’m confident – hopeful is the right word,” Schumer told MSNBC this morning when asked about the bill’s chances of passing in the Senate.
      This is hard. And our Republican senators – we need a bunch of them – are under a lot of pressure from right-wing Trump part of the party.
      He insisted that the bill would pass if it were brought to a vote. He addressed Johnson directly, urging him to “do the right thing.” He said:
      You know what the right thing to do is. You know we need to fix our border. You know that it has to be bipartisan. The bill that you passed didn’t get a single Democratic vote in the House or the Senate. How are you going to get anything done?
      A bill to enact hardline immigration policies and send aid to Israel and Ukraine’s militaries is not even 24 hours old, but is already facing opposition that appears insurmountable. The House’s Republican leaders called on the Senate to reject the measure, and said that even if the chamber passes the bill, they will not hold a vote on it. Back in the Senate, an increasing number of Republican lawmakers are coming out against the legislation. But the worst news of all for the nascent legislation may have arrived from GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who called it “horrendous”.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Joe Biden remains supportive of the immigration bill, saying, “doing nothing is not an option”.
      The special election to replace George Santos in a New York swing district could turn into a proxy battle over immigration reforms.
      James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican who was his party’s negotiator in the immigration talks, said voting down the proposal would amount to hypocrisy.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has called on Congress to pass the immigration policy compromise, noting that its passage is tied to approving aid to Ukraine and Israel:Joe Biden also supports the beleaguered bill. After its release on Sunday, he said:
      If you believe, as I do, that we must secure the border now, doing nothing is not an option. Working with my administration, the United States Senate has done the hard work it takes to reach a bipartisan agreement. Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border? I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to solve the problem. I’m ready to secure the border. And so are the American people. I know we have our divisions at home but we cannot let partisan politics get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation. I refuse to let that happen. In moments like these, we have to remember who we are. We’re the United States of America and there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together.I urge Congress to come together and swiftly pass this bipartisan agreement. Get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately. More

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      Nearly half of US wants Trump election subversion verdict before November, poll says

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      Nearly half of those in the US want to see Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case resolved before the former president runs for the White House again in November, according to a poll published on Monday.Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans do not think Trump will ever concede if he loses a second time to Joe Biden, said the survey, commissioned by CNN.The survey in question found that 48% of those polled believed it was “essential” for there to be a verdict before November’s election. Another 16% said that they would at least prefer to see one.CNN’s poll also showed that expectations Trump would concede if he loses have dropped from 37% to 25% since October – and more than three-quarters (78%) think the former president would try to pardon himself of federal charges stemming from his presidency if he wins another stint in the Oval Office.Trump has been performing strongly in polls as compared with Biden. A survey by NBC News released on Sunday found that Biden is beset by a deficit of 20 percentage points against Trump in his handling of the economy, despite signs that the US may have achieved an almost unique “soft-landing” after a government and consumer spending boom during the Covid-19 pandemic.The poll also found that fewer than three in 10 voters approve of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. And Biden lags Trump by 16 points on the perception of competence and effectiveness, a reversal from 2020.But the question of Trump’s legal quagmire hangs over Biden’s unfavorable polling. The former president is facing more than 90 criminal charges accusing him of trying to illegally nullify his defeat by Biden, illicitly retaining government secrets after leaving the White House and making illegal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump.If Trump is convicted of a felony, the poll found, a five-point lead for Trump flips to a two-point lead for Biden.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.On Friday, the US district judge Tanya Chutkan formally postponed the federal election interference case against Trump over which she is presiding. It was scheduled to begin in March, but that date has been pushed back while a Washington DC appeals court weighs arguments from the Trump legal team that he is immune from prosecution for actions taken while he was president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the DC appeals court rejects Trump’s appeal, it will probably advance to the US supreme court, meaning further trial delays.Public desire for a resolution to that case before the November election comes as recent polling by Bloomberg found majorities of voters in seven key swing states would be unwilling to vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime (53%) or sentenced to prison (55%) in one of the four cases against him overall.But, according to CNN, views of Trump’s efforts to stay in office despite his 2020 defeat in effect remain unchanged from the summer of 2022, with 45% of US adults saying he acted illegally, 32% unethically, and 23% that he did nothing wrong at all. More

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      in US Politics

      Potential Trump running mate JD Vance says he still questions results of 2020 election

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      JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is being floated as a potential Republican running mate to Donald Trump, said on Sunday that he still questions the results of the 2020 election and that the votes should not have been immediately certified.“Do I think there were problems in 2020? Yes, I do,” Vance told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, adding it was “ridiculous” to ask if he would have certified the results as Mike Pence had done and told the host he was “obsessed with talking about this”.In a contentious interview, the senator also suggested that Trump should ignore “illegitimate” US supreme court rulings.That remark came after Vance was questioned about a 2021 podcast during which he said he would advise Trump to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people” and ignore legal rulings against it.“We have a major problem here with administrators and bureaucrats in the government who don’t respond to the elected branches … If those people aren’t following the rules, then of course you’ve got to fire them, and of course the president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should,” Vance said.“The constitution says that the supreme court can make rulings … but if the supreme court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling,” added Vance, whose wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, has previously clerked for John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justices.Vance also argued that the civil claims and criminal cases against Trump were not legitimate efforts to prosecute the former president for wrongdoing, but “about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can’t beat him at the ballot box. And so, they’re trying to defeat him in court.”The interview ended badly, with the network cutting to a commercial break after Stephanopoulos told Vance he had made it “very clear” he believed a president can defy the supreme court.“No, no, George …” Vance said before the sound was cut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, was elected senator in 2022 after abandoning his past criticism of Trump, in which he had said the former president was “America’s Hitler”, “a total fraud” and “a moral disaster”.The reversal helped to secure Trump’s endorsement and his backing has not wavered since. He has described the legal claims against Trump, specifically E Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit that last week concluded with an $83m judgement against Trump, as “illustrative of what’s gone wrong in this country”. More

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      in Elections

      ‘The threat isn’t over’: the expert arguing to the supreme court Trump is an insurrectionist

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      When Jill Habig had an office down the hall from Kamala Harris in California, Barack Obama was US president, abortion was a constitutional right and January 6 was just another date on the calendar. A lot has happened since then.On Thursday Habig, now president of the non-profit Public Rights Project (PRP), hopes her arguments will persuade the supreme court that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who should be disqualified from the 2024 presidential election.Habig has filed an amicus brief on behalf of historians contending that section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which bars people who “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office, applies to Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.The brief gives the supreme court’s originalists, who believe the constitution should be interpreted as it would have been in the era it was written, a taste of their own medicine. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are self-declared originalists while Samuel Alito has described himself as a “practical originalist”.“Our goal was to bring an originalist historical perspective to the supreme court as it considered the meaning of section 3 of the 14th amendment,” Habig, a former special counsel to then California attorney general Harris, says by phone from Oakland. “The point we make with our historian colleagues is that the history of section 3 is actually very clear. It demonstrates that section 3 was intended to automatically disqualify insurrectionists.”The amicus brief, led by historians Jill Lepore of Harvard and David Blight of Yale, cites debates from the time in which senators made clear that their view that the provision that would not only apply for former Confederates but to the leaders of rebellions yet to come.View image in fullscreenHabig adds: “It was intended to apply not only to the civil war but also to future insurrections and it bars anyone who has betrayed an oath to uphold the constitution from becoming president of the United States.”The supreme court will hear arguments on a Colorado case in which Trump was stricken from the ballot; a decision in Maine is on hold. Other states have ruled in favor of keeping Trump on the ballot. The flurry of decisions have prompted debate over whether Trump can be fairly considered to have committed insurrection even though he has not been found guilty in a court of law – at least not yet.Habig, who founded the PRP in 2017, says yes. “It’s clear historically that there was no requirement of a conviction or even of charges, that the framers intended section 3 to be self-executing. The brief goes through a number of examples of people who had taken part in the secession and been on the Confederate side actually petitioning Congress for exceptions. There’s a lot of evidence that it was self-executing. There was no need for a particular conviction.”She adds: “The evidence that we have seen and heard and watched with our own eyes over the last few years has made it quite clear that President Trump lost an election in 2020 and has spent the months and years since then trying to overturn the results of that election in a variety of ways, including people marching to the Capitol and invading the Capitol.”Indeed, Blight has pointed out that the US Capitol was never breached during the civil war but was on January 6. Habig comments: “It’s difficult to argue with a straight face that these activities don’t qualify for section 3.”Still, there are plenty of Republicans, Democrats and neutrals who warn that the 14th amendment drive is politically counterproductive, fueling a Trumpian narrative that state institutions are out to stop him and that Joe Biden is the true threat to democracy. Let the people decide at the ballot box in November, they say.Habig counters: “It’s important to note that the American people did decide in 2020. We had a political process and then we had a president of the United States who attempted to overturn that political process. ”View image in fullscreenSpectacular as it was, the January 6 riot did not occur in a vacuum. Habig and her work at the PRP place it in a wider context of a growing movement to harass and threaten election officials and to interfere with the administration of elections. She perceives a direct line between Trump’s “big lie” and threats to democracy across the country today.“Regardless of this particular case, the threat isn’t over. It’s actually intensifying. We’re just seeing an array of efforts to rig the rules of the game against our democracy and it’s part of why we’re investing a lot of resources into protecting election officials this cycle, and to litigating and advancing voting rights and free and fair elections this year.”How did America get here? A turning point was the supreme court’s 5-4 decision in 2013 to strike down a formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, so that voters who are discriminated against now bear the burden of proving they are disenfranchised. Since then states have engaged in a barrage of gerrymandering – manipulating district boundaries so as to favor one party – and voter suppression.Habig reflects: “The gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the supreme court left states to themselves to rewrite the rules of the game in a variety of ways that disenfranchised voters and continued to rig maps against their systems and fair representation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’ve seen the supreme court take itself out of the game of protecting other fundamental rights like abortion and throw that back into the states. What that’s creating is a lot of volatility at the state and local level as officials try to rewrite the rules or pick up the pieces and protect their constituents’ rights. What we’re trying to do is help state and local officials across the country use the power that they have to fight back and advance civil rights in all the ways that they can.”The PRP is building a rapid response hub to provide legal support for 200 election officials to combat harassment and intimidation and targeting election deniers. It is pursuing litigation against gerrymandering, the disqualification of legitimate ballots and state officials who try to prevent voters weighing in on ballot measures to advance abortion rights.“This is an all out effort to make sure that we don’t have death by a thousand cuts for our democracy this year,” Hebig says. “We are potentially less likely to see one central threat like we did on January 6 or even in the 2020 election. We’ve seen some of the larger counties like Maricopa county, Arizona, Philadelphia, Detroit et cetera, who have been targets in the past, have more resources to fight back.“What we’re most concerned about is the soft underbelly of our democracy, which is the smaller, less-resourced jurisdictions that just don’t have all of the capacity they need to push back against this harassment and intimidation. Because of our decentralised system, election deniers who are intent on disrupting our elections and disrupting the outcome of our election don’t have to mount a huge effort in one place.“They can pick apart jurisdiction by jurisdiction, invalidate 250 ballots here, and a thousand ballots there and 500 there, challenge absentee ballots, disrupt targeted polling places and that in the aggregate can actually change election results, sow disillusionment and distrust in our system and have the same or even worse aggregate outcome in terms of undermining the integrity of our election. That’s what we’re mobilising to prevent.”There was no greater measure of America’s ailing democracy than the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the ruling that effectively made abortion legal nationwide, by supreme court justices appointed by presidents who lost the national popular vote. But since then, in a series of ballot measures in individual states, abortion rights have prevailed.Habig reflects: “Every single time that has been put to voters, abortion rights have won. As a result, we’re actually starting to see a lot of overlap between the reproductive rights fight and the democracy fight because this battle over abortion is fuelling additional efforts to break the rules and prevent voters from having a meaningful say in their rights. We’re mobilising on both fronts because the future of both is interconnected.”View image in fullscreenPRP says it has worked with local elected officials to provide legal guidance and filed dozens of amicus briefs in key reproductive rights cases, secured legal access to abortion for 6.5 million people. Habig explains: “We’re working with state and local officials to overturn criminal abortion bans at the state level.“We’re working to poke holes in existing criminal bans when there’s not a path to overturn them right away. Then we’re working to hold crisis pregnancy centers accountable for deception of women and patients; these are anti-abortion centers that masquerade as health clinics that provide comprehensive healthcare. We’re looking at this multi-pronged approach state by state and across the country.”Habig, a political strategist who was deputy campaign manager for Harris’s first Senate election campaign in 2016, has no doubt that democracy and abortion rights will play a big part in the November election.“I appreciate President Biden’s clarity on democracy and the constitution and his leadership on the issue. I do think it’s important for people to understand what democracy means and for their real lives. It can sound abstract sometimes and like an academic debate but bringing it down to the level of, do you have autonomy over your future and your community, do you have autonomy over your own body, is important for people.”She adds: “That’s why we’ve seen in cases when we’re talking about the fundamental right to vote, people get that. When we’re talking about their autonomy, they get it. When they’re talking about their dignity in the workplace, people get that and feel that on a visceral level. It’s important that we work to build a democracy that actually delivers so that people can feel the value of it in their daily lives.” More