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      US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on Trump

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      US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on TrumpThe ex-president’s supporters will no longer be able to avoid testifying before grand juries in Washington DC and Georgia A spate of major court rulings rejecting claims of executive privilege and other arguments by Donald Trump and his top allies are boosting investigations by the US justice department (DoJ) and a special Georgia grand jury into whether the former US president broke laws as he sought to overturn the 2020 election results.Justice department asks Pence to testify in Trump investigationRead moreFormer prosecutors say the upshot of these court rulings is that key Trump backers and ex-administration lawyers – such as ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows and legal adviser John Eastman – can no longer stave off testifying before grand juries in DC and Georgia. They are wanted for questioning about their knowledge of – or active roles in – Trump’s crusade to stop Joe Biden from taking office by leveling false charges of fraud.Due to a number of court decisions, Meadows, Eastman, Senator Lindsey Graham and others must testify before a special Georgia grand jury working with the Fulton county district attorney focused on the intense drive by Trump and top loyalists to pressure the Georgia secretary of state and other officials to thwart Biden’s victory there.Similarly, court rulings have meant that top Trump lawyers such as former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who opposed Trump’s zealous drive to overturn the 2020 election, had to testify without invoking executive privilege before a DC grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.On another legal front, some high level courts have ruled adversely for Trump regarding the hundreds of classified documents he took to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago when he left office, thus helping an inquiry into whether he broke laws by holding onto papers that should have been sent to the National Archives.“Trump’s multipronged efforts to keep former advisers from testifying or providing documents to federal and state grand juries, as well as the January 6 committee, has met with repeated failure as judge after judge has rejected his legal arguments,” ex-justice department prosecutor Michael Zeldin told the Guardian. “Obtaining this testimony is a critical step, perhaps the last step, before state and federal prosecutors determine whether the former president should be indicted … It allows prosecutors for the first time to question these witnesses about their direct conversations with the former president.”Other ex-justice lawyers agree that Trump’s legal plight has now grown due to the key court rulings.“Favorable rulings by judges on issues like executive privilege and the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege bode well for agencies investigating Trump,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan. “Legal challenges may create delay, but on the merits, with rare exception, judges are consistently ruling against him.”Although Trump has been irked by the spate of court rulings against him and his allies, experts point out that they have included decisions from typically conservative courts, as well as ones with more liberal leanings.Former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut, for instance, said that: “Just last month, the 11th circuit court of appeals, one of the country’s most conservative federal courts, delivered key rulings in both the Fulton county and DoJ Trump investigations.”Specifically, the court in separate rulings gave a green light to “DoJ criminal lawyers to review the seized, classified documents that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago, reversing renegade district court judge Aileen Cannon’s freeze-in-place order”, Aftergut said.In the other ruling, the court held that Graham “couldn’t hide behind the constitution’s ‘speech and debate’ clause to avoid testifying before the Atlanta grand jury”, Aftergut noted.“The speech and debate clause,” he pointed out, “only affords immunities from testifying about matters relating to congressional speeches and duties. That dog didn’t hunt here.”Soon after these rulings, the supreme court left both orders in place. “It’s enough to make an old prosecutor with stubborn faith in the courts proud,” Aftergut said.Separately, federal court judge David Carter, who issued a scathing decision earlier this year that implicated Trump and Eastman in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, last month ruled that Eastman had to turn over 33 documents to the House January 6 panel including a number that the judge ruled were exempt from attorney-client privilege because they involved a crime or an attempted crime.Ex-justice lawyers say that a number of the recent court rulings should prove helpful to the special counsel Jack Smith, who attorney general Merrick Garland recently tapped to oversee both DoJ’s investigation into Trump’s retention of sensitive documents post presidency and the inquiry into his efforts to stop Biden from taking office.True to form, Trump didn’t waste any time attacking the new special counsel.“I have been going through this for six years – for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it any more,” Trump told Fox News Digital in an interview the same day Smith was appointed. “And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this.” More

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      ‘They will bend the knee’: Lincoln project cofounder cautions against dismissing Trump

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      ‘They will bend the knee’: Lincoln project cofounder cautions against dismissing TrumpRick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist, suggests the ex-president still holds sway despite multiple crises Donald Trump, the former US president, is all washed up. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is poised to dethrone him. This is the view currently in vogue among many in Washington.Not so fast, argues Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group that shot to prominence with go-for-the-jugular advertisements before becoming mired in scandals of its own.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read more“The greatest danger in American politics is not recognising that there are great dangers,” Wilson, who lives in Florida, says in a phone interview. “The same people in 2015 and 2016 were confidently asserting Donald Trump could never, ever under any circumstances win the Republican nomination, and there were never any circumstances where Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton, and then he could never have almost a million people die because of his mishandling of Covid and on and on and on and on.“I know that the Republicans who right now are acting very bold and the donors who are acting very frisky – as Trump starts winning primaries, they will bend the knee, they will break, they will fall, they will all come back into line.”When Trump scheduled his announcement of a third run for the White House this month, he had hoped to ride a “red wave” of midterm election successes and sweep aside potential rivals within the Republican party. But the red wave ebbed and his anticlimactic campaign launch had the opposite effect.With Trump at arguably his weakest point since last year’s January 6 insurrection, senior Republicans are criticising his losing habit, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is ridiculing him and big money donors such as Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman are deserting what they perceive as a sinking ship.The new conventional wisdom – or wishful thinking – among numerous pundits is that, after surviving crisis after crisis, Trump has finally met his Waterloo. A slew of federal, state and congressional investigations and opinion polls showing DeSantis ahead or level lend credence to this view.Some have noted, however, that Trump maintains an iron grip on his base and, just as in 2016, that might be enough to win a Republican primary race in which the anti-Trump vote is split among several candidates.Wilson, 59, author of the books Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against The Devil: A Plot To Save America from Trump and Democrats From Themselves, says: “He controls a quarter, at the minimum, of the Republican base. Even if it’s 15% and he goes into Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he wins primaries because he has 15% going in, that’s the ballgame. It’s over. It’s done. Everybody else, it’s all over bar the crying.”He adds: “Right now they’re all talking so much shit: ‘I’m not going to get with Trump. I’m going to be with the hot new number, DeSantis.’ When DeSantis gets his ass handed to him, when he gets his clock cleaned in a debate or forum or just by Trump grinding away at him, eating him alive mentally for weeks on end, and suddenly Donald Trump’s numbers start posting up again, all the conservative thinkers who are right now like, ‘We will never vote for Trump again, we have integrity!’ will find themselves some excuse. ‘Well, you know, we don’t like Trump’s tweets, but otherwise it’s pure communism!’“It’s all bullshit, it’s all a fucking game, and that game is going to play out in a way that does not result in the outcome that the donor class thinks they’re going to get.”Wilson, who began his career on the 1988 presidential campaign of George HW Bush, worked as a consultant and political ad maker for numerous candidates and state parties. In December 2019 he and other Republican operatives founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee that assailed Trump with a punch-in-the-mouth brio eschewed by “when they go low, we go high” Democrats.Some of the co-founders have acknowledged their part in the Republican party’s descent into bloodsport, hypocrisy and extremism. Wilson told an audience at the group’s launch event: “We have, as the great political philosopher Liam Neeson once said, a particular set of skills. Skills that make us a nightmare for people like Donald Trump.”He produced slick advertisements that got under the president’s skin and helped make the Lincoln Project the best known of the so-called Never Trump groups, raising tens of millions of dollars.But its meteoric rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall. The group’s co-founder John Weaver was revealed to have sent sexually charged messages to multiple men, sometimes with offers of employment or advancement. There were allegations of opaque accounting and financial impropriety that Wilson and others adamantly deny. A glut of high-profile figures resigned.But the Lincoln Project has survived in slimmed down form and continued to wage war on Trump and Trumpism in the midterms. Paradoxically, its continued relevance partly depends on Trump’s own; without him, it loses the principal reason for its creation. It has already launched attacks on DeSantis as a “new ultra-Maga megastar” who poses his own threat to American democracy.Living in the Florida state capital, Tallahassee, Wilson is ideally placed to take stock of the governor, a former US navy lawyer and congressman whose own brand of conservative populism and “anti-wokeness” helped him win re-election by nearly 20 percentage points over the Democrat Charlie Crist.He says: “Ron DeSantis won an election in Florida against a three-time loser, a campaign that was run by the best Republican party in the country, and I mean that because I’m a guy who helped over many years elect many people in the great state of Florida. The quality of our operation here made it look easy.“Has Ron DeSantis been to the rodeo? Has he been out there in the fight? Has he actually faced up against a full campaign of the brutality and the cruelty that Donald Trump will level against him? He has not. It’s like he’s walked on to the field on to third base and thought he hit a grand slam home run. It’s easy for Republicans to win in Florida. It’s how it’s supposed to be: we built it that way. In a Republican primary against Trump, even Trump in a weakened state still has an innate feral sense of cruelty and cunning that Ron DeSantis does not have. How does Trump know that? He watched the debate.”Wilson is referring to a gubernatorial debate in which Crist asked his opponent to commit to another full four-year term in the governor’s mansion; like a rabbit caught in headlights, DeSantis, 44, struggled to answer directly.“It was nine seconds of the gears moving in his head and you could see the agony on his face, like ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Trump never has a doubt. He may be an asshole but he never has a doubt. Ron is over-intellectualising it and I’m telling you: this guy has a glass jaw.”This, Wilson predicts, will become apparent on the debate stage, a setting where Florida Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio struggled against Trump in 2016. “All of a sudden, all that donor money is going to go, ‘Oh, fuck,’ and then they’re going to call Ron’s people and go, ‘Hey, listen, we love Ron but we’re worried. We’re gonna have to sit this one out for a little while. Let’s see what it looks like in a month.’“And then a month will pass and all of a sudden Donald Trump is the nominee. That’s how it’s going to go and I don’t say this out of any joy; I say this because I’ve just been to this fucking party too many times now.”Wilson also suggests that DeSantis may lack the personal touch and knack for retail politics that is crucial in a Republican primary. A recent New Yorker magazine profile noted several people describing “his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids”.Wilson opines: “You’re telling me you’re going to send Ron DeSantis to New Hampshire where he has to go and sit in a diner with the Merrimack county GOP chairman and that 79-year-old codger is going to want to talk to Ron DeSantis about the gold standard or whatever and Ron DeSantis is going to sit there and get bored and restless and leave or be angry? I’m sorry. Sell me another fantasy of Ron DeSantis the perfect candidate.”TopicsRepublicansRon DeSantisDonald TrumpFloridaUS politicsHillary ClintonUS elections 2016featuresReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

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      Analysis‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Chris McGreal in Columbus, Ohio and David Smith in WashingtonAfter the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.“We fight the woke in the legislature,” DeSantis declared as his photogenic young family looked on against a stars and stripes backdrop. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”‘Ron DeSanctimonious’: angry Trump lashes out at Republican rival Read moreAs the jubilant crowd chanted “two more years!”, suggesting that DeSantis, not Trump, should run for US president in 2024, was this the moment that power slipped inexorably from one to the other – that the Republican crown passed from old king to young pretender?Some in the party are ready to declare it so. David Urban, a longtime Trump ally, told the Washington Post: “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”If such a shift has taken place, it did so gradually, then suddenly. Since he descended an escalator at his New York headquarters in June 2015, Trump has dominated and defined the Republican party, crushing rivals in the Republican primary then eking out a victory over Hillary Clinton to seize the White House.But the party of Trump suffered drubbings at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. And despite forecasts of a “red wave” in 2022, it fell short again. From Michigan to Pennsylvania, novice candidates endorsed by the former president proved they were unready for prime time and too extreme for a wary and weary electorate.Finally, some Republicans admitted what everyone else could see: Trump is an albatross around the party’s neck. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, once a vocal supporter, told the Fox Business channel: “The voters have spoken and they have said that they want a different leader. And a true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage. It is time to move on.”Rupert Murdoch already has, it seems. “Trumpty Dumpty”, boomed the front page of his tabloid the New York Post. “Trump is the Republican party’s biggest loser” was the verdict of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. A column on the Fox News website proclaimed: “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican party leader. Republicans are ready to move on without Donald Trump.”Indeed, if Trump was the big loser of the night, DeSantis was the big winner. His victory by nearly 20 percentage points was a personal vindication that appeared to put Florida, once the quintessential swing state, beyond Democrats’ reach for a generation.His stunning wins in big, majority Latino counties, including Miami-Dade and Osceola, set him up to make the case that, as a presidential candidate, he could repeat the formula in states such as as Arizona, Nevada and Texas. “We have rewritten the political map,” he told supporters.A DeSantis 2024 campaign would also promise generational change. At 44, the former navy lawyer and congressman would be similar in age to John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when they ran for the White House, a sharp contrast from 76-year-old Trump or Joe Biden, who is turning 80 this month.Crucially, DeSantis could sell himself as Trump 2.0, an upgrade committed to the same “America first” policy agenda, media sparring and liberal-baiting (he recently flew Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard) but without the liability of multiple federal, state and congressional investigations.He could also break from Trump over the coronavirus pandemic, contending that he kept Florida open while the then president was urging lockdowns. Tim Miller, former communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, said: “He would try to paint Trump as somebody that lost, is a loser and is costing the party. He’d probably criticise Trump for not being stronger on Covid and say he should have fired [Dr Anthony] Fauci.”DeSantis is especially popular with conservatives for taking the lead on “culture war” issues related to race and gender. Last year he got into a spat with the Walt Disney Company over his support of the controversial law, nicknamed “don’t say gay” by opponents, prohibiting the teaching of gender identity concepts to young children.But if you come at the king, you best not miss. Trump has spent months preparing to strangle the DeSantis campaign at birth. At a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last weekend, he casually rolled out a nickname, “Ron DeSanctimonious”, hoping to brand his opponent as he has so many before.On Tuesday, menacingly, he told Fox News: “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly. I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering – I know more about him than anybody – other than, perhaps, his wife.”And on Thursday, with DeSantis buzz reaching a crescendo, Trump lashed out in a lengthy and angry statement berating Fox News and other Murdoch-controlled media for going “all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious DeSantis”, whom he called “an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations”, as he again took credit for DeSantis’s 2018 win.“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” he wrote, comparing the race to his winning 2016 campaign. “We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Soon after, he invited reporters to a “Special Announcement” at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, presumably confirming that he is mounting a third consecutive bid for the White House. Some allies were quick to offer pre-endorsements, with Elise Stefanik, the Republican chair in the House of Representatives, declaring herself on team Trump.JD Vance, who won a Senate senate race in Ohio with Trump’s backing, did likewise. And at a rally for Vance in Dayton the night before the elections, many supporters sporting Make America Great Again hats and T-shirts were hoping for Trump to announce his candidacy there and then.But even within a crowd of enthusiastic fans there were those who had doubts. Mandy Young said: “I think Trump was a great president but I don’t think he can win again. He is too divisive. The independents who voted for him before won’t vote for him again because of all the investigations.“Also, I don’t like the way he called DeSantis ‘DeSanctimonious’. I think DeSantis would be a great president. It makes me think Trump doesn’t care about the Republican party winning, only himself. He should step back. He would still have a lot of influence as a respected godfather giving advice.”On election day, Jeffrey Weisman, a consistent Republican supporter because he says the party is better for the economy and his jewellery store business, voted at the biggest Greek Orthodox church in Columbus, Ohio.Weisman supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections but would prefer the former president stayed out of the next one. “I like DeSantis. Having Trump going out there as well I think will hurt DeSantis’s chances. So for that reason, I do not want Trump to run,” he said.The strengths and weaknesses of Trump’s influence were on display in Ohio’s election for US senator. The former president’s endorsement of Vance pulled the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy and venture capitalist from the back of the field in the Republican primaries and won him the nomination. But Trump’s backing then dragged down support for Vance in Tuesday’s general election, even if he won.Mark R Weaver, a Republican strategist in Columbus, who has worked on several hundred state and national campaigns, said that has implications for any challenge from DeSantis both in Ohio and across the country.“Trump’s ability to improve a candidate’s chances is weakening. He’s no longer able to guarantee or even predict someone he endorses is going to win. Whatever charm he had has worn off, certainly in the general elections. In the primaries, he can still be a big factor. In Ohio he was.”Weaver said that while Trump would still win a Republican contest for the presidential nomination against DeSantis if it were held today, that may not be true by the time the primaries actually begin in early 2024.He said: “I have noticed a slow descent of Donald Trump’s popularity amongst Republicans. I’ve noticed a rapid ascent of Ron DeSantis’s popularity.“If those two trajectories continue, Trump slowly getting weaker and people looking for better options, and DeSantis quickly getting stronger and having more people support him, the trajectory lines could cross right about March of 2024. That sounds like a crazy statement right now but if those trajectories cross, Ron DeSantis can beat Trump in the primaries in 2024.”Trump’s political obituary has been written by Republican elites countless times before only to prove wishful thinking. An Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about groping women’s private parts couldn’t do it. His half-hearted condemnation of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, couldn’t do it. His proposal that injecting bleach might cure coronavirus couldn’t do it. Even his incitement of a coup attempt at the US Capitol couldn’t do it. Can DeSantis do it by appealing to the bottom line: electability?Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “I’ve always said that the Republican party would not fully respond to offloading Trump until they lost enough elections. Political actors are single seekers in re-election, and once their power is threatened, that is usually where a course correction happens.“But they’ve gotten themselves into quite a quagmire with Donald Trump because he still has a solid 30%, at least, base of support, and that is large enough to still create headaches for the party if they try to offload him.”Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “They also do not have a formidable enough heir apparent. It is not Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is a paper tiger who was created and propped up by Donald Trump. He does not have the political talent, the charisma or the toughness to take on the onslaught coming his way from Trumpworld. It’s already beginning.”Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, agreed. “Trump would eat him alive,” he said. “Right now Trump is still the dominant player in the Republican party. Most of the base is still with him. DeSantis is utterly untested. He’s weird. He has zero charisma. He’s thin skinned. He can’t think on his feet. He’s never been tested and he’s easily offended. Trump will do and say anything.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Trump’s the king. If you try to slay the king and you don’t, your career is over. That’s a huge, huge risk a 44-year-old guy like DeSantis would be taking.”They are not alone in arguing that, while DeSantis is like Trump without the chaos, he is also Trump without the charisma. The former president’s rallies are rollicking, knockabout affairs that give his fans community, entertainment and laughs. DeSantis is said to be unskilled in retail politics and somewhat humourless.Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the communication and journalism department at Texas A&M University, said: “Donald Trump is an authoritarian PT Barnum. He’s able to keep our attention and curiosity. He’s got great comedic timing. He has a good sense of drama and Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that kind of easily translatable appeal for media audiences. His affect is flat. He’s not as entertaining.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he’s really entertaining. He’s good at keeping our attention and primarily he does that through outrage and things that are very negative for politics and political problem solving. But in terms of a matchup between those two, I would put money on Trump.”Trump has shown himself perfectly capable of going scorched earth and burning the whole party down. A ferociously nasty bareknuckle primary fight between him and DeSantis will have Democrats reaching for the popcorn. At a valedictory press conference at the White House, Biden seemed amused at the prospect. “It’ll be fun watching them take on each other,” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS elections 2024US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      US midterm elections 2022: Trump backlash grows as top Virginia Republican says ‘I could not support him’ – live

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      Virginia’s Republican lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears said she could not support Donald Trump if he again ran for the White House, telling Fox Business Network in an interview that the former president has become a “liability” for the GOP:“A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message… I could not support him.”—VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) comes out against Trump’s 2024 candidacy pic.twitter.com/0g1plfHJmu— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The comments are significant considering Sears did something last year that Trump hasn’t done in more than six: win an election. Voters in the Democratic-leaning state elected Sears as the running mate of Glenn Youngkin in his gubernatorial campaign, and she made history as the first woman and first person of color to serve as Virginia’s lieutenant governor.Her comments also underscore the tension among Republicans over Trump’s influence on the party, particularly since many candidates he backed did not fair well in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Voter turnout this year was the second highest of any midterm since 1940, according to the Washington Post, which analyzed AP and US Elections Project data. About 112.5m people – or about 47% of eligible voters – cast ballots in the midterms. In 2018, about 50% of eligible voters cast ballots, according to the Post.And according to researchers at Tufts University, about 27% of eligible voters 18-29 turned out:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This 2022 youth turnout is likely the second-highest youth turnout rate for a midterm election in the past 30 years, behind only the historic 31% turnout in 2018. Votes cast by young people made up 12% of all votes in this election, nearly matching the 13% youth share of the vote from the 2014 and 2018 midterms, according to National Election Pool surveys.Joe Biden just spoke in Washington to thank Democratic volunteers for their work in securing the party a better-than-expected night in Tuesday’s midterm elections.He noted that several Republicans who embraced baseless fraud claims about his own election win in 2020 ended up conceding their races without much drama:President Biden says none of the 2020 election deniers contested the results of the 2022 midterm elections when they lost:“Tuesday was a good day … for democracy, and it was a strong night for Democrats.” pic.twitter.com/NZlZwNsyIL— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      He also linked the surprising support many Democrats received to the party’s pledge to preserve abortion access:President Biden touts the overwhelming support for abortion rights during the 2022 midterms:“Women in America made their voices heard, man … Y’all showed up and beat the hell out of them.” pic.twitter.com/Kc2qZUAwu1— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      He closed by touting his own legislative accomplishments, including moves intended to lower the country’s fiscal deficit:President Biden: “I don’t wanna hear from Republicans calling Democrats big spenders. We’re the ones bringing down the deficit. They’re the ones that blew it up over four years.” pic.twitter.com/5N7j0ExfT0— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh is now taking over the blog, and will cover the rest of today’s elections and politics news.The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer isn’t banking on his party continuing to hold the chamber for another two years.Bloomberg Government reports that Schumer intends to prioritize confirming Joe Biden’s judges and other nominees before the year ends and the new Congress begins:🚨Scoop: Senate leader is preparing to pull the defense authorization bill off the floor and instead focus on federal nominees and judges and majority next year is still in limbo. Instead annual defense bill will materialize as an informal conference bill @business @BGOV #NDAA— Roxana Tiron (@rtiron) November 10, 2022
      Democrats still have a path to keeping the Senate majority, particularly if Mark Kelly in Arizona and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada win their races. Counting is ongoing in both.Even as some Republicans blame him for their party’s struggles in Tuesday’s election, Morning Consult has new data out that confirms he remains the most-liked man in the GOP, though perhaps not as popular as he once was:2024 National Republican Primary:Trump 48% (+22)DeSantis 26%.@MorningConsult, 1,691 RV, 11/2-7https://t.co/AdYWBaSMK0 pic.twitter.com/PZ1AJdcudQ— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) November 10, 2022
      Trump’s most recent popularity peak came in August, after his actions had received scrutiny from the January 6 committee and his resort searched by the FBI as part of its investigation into potentially unlawful retention of government secrets.It may not be until Saturday that the outcomes of Nevada’s razor-thin Senate and governor races are known, The Nevada Independent reports.That’s based on comments made at a press conference by Joe Gloria, registrar of Nevada’s most-populous county Clark, where Las Vegas is located. The outcome of the two races is expected to hinge on votes from its residents, who tend to lean Democratic:Gloria on today’s numbers:He notes that Clark reported results from about 14k mail ballots last night.He says there are still more than 50k ballots that must be counted in Clark.”Majority of mail should be counted in Clark County by Saturday.”— Sean Golonka (@s_golonka) November 10, 2022
      Yesterday, Gloria said Clark received 12.7k in mail on Wednesday, and in the afternoon, the county announced it received 56.9 from Election Day drop boxes.The 14k reported yesterday was apparently Monday drop off and Tues mail. But Gloria now says there are 50k uncounted.— Sean Golonka (@s_golonka) November 10, 2022
      Meanwhile, NBC News reports a Trump adviser says the former president still plans to announce another run for the White House on Tuesday:A senior Trump adviser just confirmed Tues announcement & said “The media, the corporate elites, and political establishment has all moved in unison against Donald Trump at their own peril. It’s like they want to recreate 2015-2016. Let them. We are doing it again. Buckle up”— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 10, 2022
      Invites for Trump’s announcement should go out today.— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 10, 2022
      Virginia’s Republican lieutenant-governor Winsome Sears said she could not support Donald Trump if he again ran for the White House, telling Fox Business Network in an interview that the former president has become a “liability” for the GOP:“A true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message… I could not support him.”—VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) comes out against Trump’s 2024 candidacy pic.twitter.com/0g1plfHJmu— The Recount (@therecount) November 10, 2022
      The comments are significant considering Sears did something last year that Trump hasn’t done in more than six: win an election. Voters in the Democratic-leaning state elected Sears as the running mate of Glenn Youngkin in his gubernatorial campaign, and she made history as the first woman and first person of color to serve as Virginia’s lieutenant governor.Her comments also underscore the tension among Republicans over Trump’s influence on the party, particularly since many candidates he backed did not fair well in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Montana has become the latest state where voters said no to further abortion restrictions by rejecting a law that was meant to stop the killing outside the womb of babies who survive a failed abortion – which is already illegal.The so-called “born alive” law would have allowed medical providers to face criminal charges if they don’t take “all medically appropriate and reasonable actions to preserve the life” of infants, according to the AP.The defeat puts Montana among the ranks of Republican-leaning states where voters have rejected attempts to further tighten down on abortion access following the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade in June.Here’s more on the failed law from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Health care professionals and other opponents argued the proposal could rob parents of precious time with infants born with incurable medical issues if doctors are forced to attempt treatment.
      “Today’s win sends a clear message to state leadership: Montanans demand our right to make private health care decisions for ourselves and our families with the help of our trusted medical teams — and without interference from politicians,” said a statement from Hillary-Anne Crosby, a spokesperson for an organization called Compassion for Montana Families that opposed the measure.
      The outcome comes after a series of wins for abortion rights supporters in states around the country where abortion was directly on the ballot during the midterm elections. Voters enshrined abortion protections into state constitutions in Michigan, California and Vermont. They also voted down an anti-abortion constitutional amendment in conservative Kentucky, just as voters did in Kansas in August.
      Supporters said the proposed Montana law was meant to prevent the killing of infants outside the womb in rare occurrence of a failed abortion, something that is already is illegal. Penalties for violating the proposed law would have included up to $50,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison.
      At least half of U.S. states have similar post-abortion born-alive laws in place, according to Americans United for Life, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that opposes abortion, aid in dying and infant stem cell research.
      “This initiative would have criminalized doctors, nurses and other health care workers for providing compassionate care for infants, and, in doing so, overridden the decision-making of Montana parents,” said a statement from Lauren Wilson of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.Adam Gabbatt has taken a look at the latest round in the long-running American political parlor game, ‘Has Rupert Murdoch Finally Dumped Trump?’:On election day, Donald Trump was clear about how his efforts to support Republican candidates should be seen.“Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit,” Trump told NewsNation. “If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”Unfortunately for Trump, he did not get what he hoped for. Instead the former president has seen conservative news outlets, the Rupert Murdoch-owned ones in particular, turn on him, in some cases with gleeful abandon.“Trumpty Dumpty” blared the front page of Thursday’s New York Post, the tabloid Murdoch has owned since 1976. Editors went so far as to mock up Trump as Humpty Dumpty, his enlarged orange head stuffed into a white shirt and a signature red tie.Next to the picture of Trump as an egg perching precariously on a brick wall, the text goaded: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?”The Post cover offered the most visceral insight into Murdoch’s thinking, and its contempt was far from an outlier in the mogul’s news empire.“Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser” was the verdict of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. A subheading added: “He has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.”The piece was just as scathing as the headline, running through nine races this November the paper said Trump had effectively tanked through his continued election denial, his various wars with more moderate Republican candidates and his general unpopularity nationwide.“Since his unlikely victory in 2016 against the widely disliked Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump has a perfect record of electoral defeat,” the editorial said.“The GOP was pounded in the 2018 midterms owing to his low approval rating. Mr Trump himself lost in 2020. He then sabotaged Georgia’s 2021 runoffs by blaming party leaders for not somehow overturning his defeat.”It added: “Now Mr Trump has botched the 2022 elections, and it could hand Democrats the Senate for two more years.”Has ‘Trumpty Dumpty’ taken a great fall from Rupert Murdoch’s grace?Read moreAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not happy about how Democrats performed in her state, New York, in the midterms – a series of House losses helping (probably) hand the chamber to Republicans, though Kathy Hochul, the governor, did fend off an unexpectedly strong challenge from her Trumpist opponent, Lee Zeldin.The New York City congresswoman popularly known as AOC told the Intercept: “New York, I think, is the glaring aberration in what we see in this map … what happened in New York really bucks a lot of the trends in what we saw nationwide.“… I think, in New York, the way that those campaigns were run were different than the way a lot of winning campaigns across the country were run. And I think the role of the state party had very strong national implications. If Democrats do not hang on to the House, I think that responsibility falls squarely in New York state.”Identifying key election themes in New York, Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think policing was a big one, I think the choice among certain Democrats to … amplify Republican narratives on crime and policing, running ads on it … validating these narratives actually ended up hurting them much more than a different approach. I think that what we saw in other races was that they were able to really effectively center either their narratives and the narratives that they wanted to run with, whether it was abortion rights, whether it was democracy, whether it was … other key and top priorities.“I think Democrats in New York, they did a couple of things. They ran ads around that were explicitly very anti-defund [the police], which only served to reinvoke the frame and only served to really reinforce what Republicans were saying. If we’re going to talk about public safety, you don’t talk about it in the frame of invoking defund or anti-defund, you really talk about it in the frame of what we’ve done on gun violence, what we’ve done to pass the first gun reform bill in 30 years. Our alternatives are actually effective, electorally, without having to lean into Republican narratives.“… And I think another prime mistake is that in New York state, [ex-governor Andrew] Cuomo may be gone, but … much of his infrastructure and much of the political machinery that he put in place is still there. And this is a machinery that is disorganised, it is sycophantic. It relies on lobbyists and big money. And it really undercuts the ability for there to be affirming grassroots and state-level organising across the state.“And so … you’re leaving a void for Republicans to walk into … it’s a testament to the corruption that has been allowed to continue in the New York state Democratic party.”Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri who may or may not run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 but definitely did run from Capitol rioters on 6 January 2021, even after raising a fist to the mob, thinks Republicans did not do as well as they might’ve done on Tuesday night because they didn’t run on his populist, not to say Trumpist, principles.He tweets, in a message at least partially counter to the emerging consensus that Republicans suffered (if probably winning the House and maybe winning the Senate can be called suffering) because voters wanted to rebuke their Trumpist drift:Washington Republicanism lost big Tuesday night. When your “agenda” is cave to Big Pharma on insulin, cave to Schumer on gun control & Green New Deal (“infrastructure”), and tease changes to Social Security and Medicare, you lose— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 10, 2022
      A refresher on how Hawley ran, as shown by the House January 6 committee, is here.Video of Josh Hawley running, meanwhile, is here:01:08 More

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      in Elections

      After Governor’s Win, DeSantis Grabs National Spotlight

      by

      The Florida governor’s victory was a result of his commanding campaign, relentless voter registration and turnout efforts, and Democrats’ utter collapse in the state.MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis steadfastly focused his re-election campaign on President Biden rather than on his Democratic opponent in Florida. But Mr. DeSantis’s runaway victory on Tuesday, while crushing to Democrats, felt more like a win over a different rival: former President Donald J. Trump.While candidates endorsed or handpicked by Mr. Trump stumbled nationally, Mr. DeSantis routed former Representative Charlie Crist by 19 percentage points, an astonishing result that Republicans in the state were still marveling over on Wednesday.“We had probably the best night you could have ever asked for,” said State Senator Joe Gruters of Sarasota, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.The party’s smashing success in Florida — among its brightest spots in a national midterm election with decidedly mixed outcomes — was a result of its relentless voter registration and turnout efforts there, Mr. DeSantis’s commanding campaign and Democrats’ utter collapse in a state in which they failed to effectively compete at all, leaving it to turn solidly red.Neither Mr. DeSantis nor any other Republicans who won statewide races made mention of how vastly they outperformed many of Mr. Trump’s preferred candidates elsewhere in the country. But their winning margins spoke for themselves. When Mr. Trump took Florida in 2020, his 3.3 percentage points over Mr. Biden seemed ample in a state that had swung back and forth between Republicans and Democrats for two decades.Mr. DeSantis’s runaway victory on Tuesday, while crushing to Democrats, felt more like a win over a different rival: Mr. Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesOn Tuesday, every Republican running for statewide office won by at least 16 points, leaving little doubt that Florida is Republican country — and that Mr. DeSantis’s political career has become supercharged.Who Will Control Congress? Here’s When We’ll Know.Card 1 of 4Much remains uncertain. More