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      The Year of Living Constitutionally: a man, a political plan … and a musket

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      Would you fly the Jolly Roger for Uncle Sam? AJ Jacobs tried to. For 12 months, the author and journalist became what he calls “the original originalist”, seeking to live the way the founders envisioned life under the US constitution.That life included the right to piracy on behalf of the US government. It sprang from a tradition predating the constitution, when the Continental Congress granted letters of marque and reprisal, allowing seamen to capture British ships. Noting this precedent, Jacobs brought an unconventional offer to Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, when the two met in a hotel lobby.“I said, ‘I’m following the constitution and would like to be granted a letter of marque and reprisal,’” Jacobs recalls. “He said, ‘Great, let’s make it happen.’ I explained to him what it was: basically legalized piracy. I would fight our enemies on my friend’s water-ski boat.”After that, Khanna “was a little more like, ‘Maybe this is not going to happen.’”Jacobs didn’t get his Captain Jack Sparrow moment. But he did get a book out of the experience, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning, which has received multiple votes of approval – including from Khanna.“He did like the idea of the book: trying to explain the origins of the constitution, what it really means, what it says.”In 2007, Jacobs published the results of a similar project, The Year of Living Biblically.“They have a similar status in our society,” he says, of the Bible and the constitution. “Some people see them as sacred and try to follow them in the original meaning as it was written.”Others look to adapt the texts for a modern era. For the constitution, this has evolved into a debate between originalists and living constitutionalists. Jacobs interviewed scholars across the spectrum.View image in fullscreen“This was my favorite part. They were super-generous with me.” Some were “people who were the most liberal and progressive and saw the constitution as having no intrinsic meaning, it could be molded like Play-Doh”. Others felt that “whatever the constitution meant then is what it means now. One guy refused to capitalize the S in ‘supreme court’. In the constitution” – as in the Guardian style guide – “the S is not capitalized … It was a wide range.”The originalists have been getting the better of things lately, including on the supreme court. And it was originalism – and the Guardian – that helped nudge Jacobs toward his book idea.After the 2022 supreme court decision Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade, removing the federal right to abortion, a Guardian editor asked Jacobs to cover an unexpected trend. It related not to abortion, which was suddenly up to the states, but to vasectomies, which a surprising number of American men were choosing to have.“I am the type of journalist who tries things out myself and writes about the effort,” Jacobs says. “I did not feel like getting a vasectomy. I did not know if I was the right person for that interesting storyline.”What he did feel like was exploring the originalist mindset. He came across a startling statistic: at least 60% of Americans, including himself at the time, had not read the constitution from beginning to end, despite it running just four to six pages. It was time to delve into “what it really says, what it really means, instead of getting it filtered from whatever media you happen to be partial to. Let’s read what it actually says.”When it came to the right to piracy, although Jacobs couldn’t sail the high seas he did receive an email from a Khanna staffer addressing him as “Captain Jacobs”. Then there was petitioning the government. Instead of the online approach, Jacobs brought a scroll somewhere near 200ft long into the office of Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon. Hundreds had signed the scroll. When Jacobs took some notes using his quill pen, it left ink on Wyden’s carpet. Jacobs added $50 to his taxes to foot the bill. (The subject of his petition was “Let’s have co-presidents”, a cause advocated by some founders, with Benjamin Franklin recommending 12 chief executives at once.)State laws came into the picture too. Free-speech advocates might be surprised by how much states policed what Americans said in the early republic. New York fined those who blasphemed or cursed 37 and a half cents. Jacobs did the same with his three sons, though they declined to come up with a half-cent.“It was not an easy year,” he says. “It was about as hard as The Year of Living Biblically.” That said, there were some differences. With the Bible, Jacobs “grew a huge beard. This did not involve as much facial hair.” But his appearance and lifestyle changed in other ways. He wore a tricorn hat, carried a musket, consumed an unusual amount of cloves, wrote with a quill, and woke up at the hour recommended by Franklin: 5am.View image in fullscreen“I tried to express second amendment rights the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I got a musket off ye olde internet and carried it around the Upper West Side where I live. A lot of people were crossing the street. People gave me a scowl.” When he brought it into a coffeeshop, a customer invited Jacobs to go ahead of him in line.“It’s sort of a good example of how this year went. At times, it was very strange, bizarre and awkward. But it was also, at the same time, incredibly enlightening and fascinating. I do think it gave real insight into how we should interpret the constitution.”He was particularly pleased with one custom: election cakes, meant to spur civic participation. Jacobs got volunteers representing all 50 states to bake election cakes last year. He plans to do it again.Although Jacobs appreciated the chance to adopt an 18th-century detachment from the near-constant news of today, he appreciates the progress America has made, saying: “It was terribly sexist and racist towards women, Black people and Indigenous people. I don’t want to go back to that.“Women’s rights were very constrained, especially married women, who were treated like children. They could not sign contracts. My wife owns a business. She signs several contracts a day.”Jacobs’s wife, Julie, let him take over contract-signing – then fired him after an hour.Jacobs also examined how 19th-century abolitionists saw the constitution. William Lloyd Garrison was so outraged by its stance on slavery that he advocated burning it – and did so. Frederick Douglass, who was formerly enslaved, had the same view but changed his mind and recommended Americans view the constitution as a promissory note.“Douglass says, ‘Let’s work to make America live up to the principles in the constitution.’ It becomes a very powerful way of looking at the constitution. Martin Luther King Jr talks about the constitution as a promissory note. Barack Obama gave a great speech that said the seeds of freedom were planted in the constitution … The solutions to the problems of the constitution are in the constitution itself.”
      The Year of Living Constitutionally is published in the US by Crown More

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      in US Politics

      Trump trial judge rebuked for donations to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020

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      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money campaign finance trial in New York has been cautioned by a state ethics panel over two small donations made to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020.The caution is likely to be seized on by Trump and his lawyers as evidence of his claims that the New York trial, now entering its fourth week, has been unfairly adjudicated by Judge Juan Merchan along partisan political lines.But the New York state commission on judicial conduct has not revealed who lodged the complaint against Merchan that stems from a $35 donation to the Democratic group ActBlue that included $15 earmarked for Biden for President and $10 each to Progressive Turnout Project and Stop Republicans.“Justice Merchan said the complaint, from more than a year ago, was dismissed in July with a caution,” spokesperson Al Baker of the state office of court administration said in response to an inquiry from Reuters.The commission considers that contributions violate the rules on prohibited political activity. In its 2024 annual report, the body said several dozen judges had apparently made prohibited contributions in the last few years, mostly to candidates for federal office.Judges are prohibited from contributing to any campaigns, including for federal office.“Like so much of the misconduct the commission encounters, making a prohibited political contribution is a self-inflicted mistake,” the commission wrote in the report.The commission has also received a complaint against the Manhattan judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the former president’s civil business fraud trial that resulted in a $454m fine earlier this year. That complaint, brought by Trump lawyers, has yet to be adjudicated.Under commission guidelines, proceedings are confidential unless there is a public censure or the judge makes them public.Trump has been highly critical of the justices in both cases. In the earlier trial he was censured for describing Judge Engoron’s law clerk of being Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend. In the current case, he has drawn attention to Judge Merchan’s daughter, who works as a Democratic political consultant.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to a motion for Merchan to step aside, which the judge denied, a separate advisory committee on judicial ethics said the contributions did not create an impression of bias or favoritism.Reports of the contributions come a day after the New York Times revealed that the wife of conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito had flown an inverted American flag outside the couple’s home in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Alito has said that his wife took that action because a Democratic neighbor had used a highly pejorative insult to describe her to her face. More

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      Red flag? Samuel Alito scandal casts further doubt on supreme court’s impartiality

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      With less than six months to go before America chooses its next president, the US supreme court finds itself in a profoundly unenviable position: not only has it been drawn into the thick of a volatile election, but swirling ethical scandals have cast doubt on its impartiality.The US supreme court’s discomfort worsened dramatically on Thursday night when the New York Times published a photograph of an upside-down American flag being flown outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of the hard-right justice Samuel Alito. The photo was taken on 17 January 2021, days after the insurrection at the US Capitol and days before Joe Biden’s inauguration.At the time, upside-down flags were proliferating as a symbol of Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. That one of the nine most powerful justices in the country – who has potential to wield enormous influence over the 2024 election – had a “stop the steal” icon flapping on his front lawn was, to put it mildly, incendiary.“There’s little doubt that the supreme court will play a large role in the 2024 election, and you have to now ask whether the flag incident will forever cloud the public’s view of its impartiality in those cases,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group advocating reform.The supreme court memorably handed the US presidency to George W Bush in its 2000 ruling Bush v Gore. Though no individual case so far this year has risen to that level, there is no doubt that the justices are deeply mired in the 2024 cycle.They have already decided that Trump cannot be ejected from the ballot for his role in the January 6 attack under the 14th amendment block on insurrectionists holding office. By the end of their term in June they are also set to rule on two other critical cases that go to the heart of Trump’s fitness to govern, and hence the presidential outcome.The first asks whether Trump has presidential immunity in the federal criminal prosecution over his “stop the steal” antics in 2020/21. The other, which could also determine whether he can be tried for his attempt to overturn the election, looks at whether January 6 rioters can be charged under the obstruction statute.All of that before we even get to the election itself, and the possibility of renewed trouble in November should there be close and contested counts in key battleground states. As one of the justices expressly warned in the 14th amendment case, further insurrections were not impossible.View image in fullscreen“I don’t know how much we can infer from the fact that we haven’t seen anything like this before [that] we’re not going to see something in the future,” the justice said. His identity? Samuel Alito.Until last Thursday, there had been plenty of talk about whether the supreme court was ethically equipped to tackle fundamental questions that could drastically change the course of November’s election. But most of it concerned Clarence Thomas.His wife, Ginni, is a hard-right activist who was an active participant in efforts to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Yet Thomas has consistently refused to recuse himself from supreme court cases relating to January 6, even ones which directly invoked Ginni.After Thursday, we now have not one but two of the conservative justices whose spouses have engaged in apparent pro-Trump political activity. In his self-defense, Alito told the New York Times: “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” putting it all down to a spat his wife, Martha-Ann, was having with neighbors who had defaced a Trump lawn sign.Some law scholars were prepared to give Alito the benefit of the doubt. Stephen Gillers, emeritus professor at New York University law school, said that he did not believe Alito knew the upside-down flag was flying, or that it was a coded message for “stop the steal”.“While Alito’s explanation for how it did happen is hard to believe, it is more credible than the view that he knowingly chose to fly the flag upside down knowing its import.”But there is no doubt that the optics of the flag are atrocious. As Gillers also noted: “It’s obviously so damaging to the court, whose reputation is already suffering.”The highest court has taken such a battering over its ethical standards – mostly relating to private jets, vacations and other material benefits rather than political activities – that it has been forced to adopt its first-ever ethical code. It says that a justice must recuse him or herself from a case where they have a “personal bias or prejudice”.That might involve their spouse being party to the proceeding or having an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding, the code states.Given what we now know about the behavior and convictions of both Ginni and Martha-Ann, it is arguable that there is at least a conversation to be had about whether Justices Thomas and Alito should disqualify themselves from any case relating to January 6. But there’s the rub.Under the new code, the supreme court polices itself on all ethical matters. Not only that – each individual justice polices him or herself, in effect sitting in judgment on themselves with even their eight colleagues having no say.Unsurprisingly, in the six months that the new code has been in existence very few justices have recused themselves. Where they have, only the liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson have publicly explained their decisions.It all points towards more storms ahead. It is now all but inevitable there will be calls for both Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves as election year proceeds.“The fact that two justices live in households with people who believe the 2020 election was stolen is astounding and disturbing,” Roth said. “Will they heed the calls for recusal? Probably not. Is there any way to force them? No.” More

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      in Elections

      Supreme court justice Samuel Alito faces criticism after Trump-supporting flag reportedly seen outside his home – live

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      Good morning, US politics blog readers. The New York Times reported yesterday that a flag used by supporters of Donald Trump’s baseless claim of fraud in his 2020 election loss flew outside Samuel Alito’s house shortly before Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. The supreme court justice, who said the flag was displayed by his wife amid a dispute with a neighbor, is a conservative stalwart on the court, and authored the decision that two years ago overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states the ban abortion. The reactions to the news have been predictably partisan, with Republican senator Tom Cotton accusing the Times of trying to “incite another mob”, Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz describing flying the flag as “not normal” and Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal saying the court’s credibility “is plummeting”.The story was the latest in a string of reports that have emerged over the past year and raised questions about the supreme court’s ethics. While these stories have generated plenty of outrage, none of the justices involved have suffered any consequences, and the conservatives remain dominant on the court, with six seats against the liberals’ three. The court is poised to soon rule on whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – a case that could have a major impact on his rematch with Joe Biden.Here’s what else is going on today:
      The House oversight committee late yesterday advanced a resolution to hold attorney general Merrick Garland in contempt for not releasing a recording of Biden’s interview with a special counsel, but only after a shouting match between lawmakers.
      Biden, who polls show has lost some of his support with Black voters, will speak at the National Museum of African American History and Culture at 11.45am ET, and then meet with leaders of Black fraternities and sororities together with Kamala Harris at 3.30pm.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes reporters’ questions at 1pm.
      The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, is calling on Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases concerning Donald Trump and the 2020 election after the New York Times reported that a flag supporting the ex-president’s false election fraud claims flew outside the supreme court justice’s residence.Here’s what Durbin had to say:
      Flying an upside-down American flag – a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement – clearly creates the appearance of bias. Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in US v Donald Trump, which the supreme court is currently considering.
      The court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust. This latest story is further proof that Congress needs to pass the SCERT Act to create an enforceable code of conduct for the supreme court. Supreme court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest.
      The Scert Act would require the supreme court to adopt a code of conduct and create a mechanism to investigate violations. While the court adopted an ethics code last year, it lacks any mechanism for enforcement.Republicans are vehemently against any new regulations on the supreme court, and have the votes to prevent the Scert Act from passing the Senate.In other news, the House oversight committee last night advanced a resolution to hold the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt after he refused to release audio of Joe Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated his possession of classified documents. But the vote only took place after a messy verbal clash between lawmakers at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:The two most famous sets of initials in US politics clashed in a chaotic House hearing on Thursday, as the progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, objected fiercely to an attack on another Democrat by the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, or MTG.The oversight committee hearing concerned Republican attempts to hold the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, in contempt, for refusing to release tapes of interviews between Joe Biden and the special counsel Robert Hur.Things went wrong when MTG made a partisan point, trying to tie Democrats to the judge in Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money case – which, by drawing a number of Republicans to the New York courtroom to support Trump, was responsible for the hearing starting late in the day.In answer to MTG, Jasmine Crockett of Texas said: “Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland … Do you know what we’re here for? You know we’re here about AG Garland?”In response to the New York Times’s reporting, Samuel Alito acknowledged that the flag was raised outside his house, but said it was due to a dispute with a neighbor:
      I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
      The Alitos live in Alexandria, Virginia, a pleasant city across the Potomac river from Washington DC, where some of their neighbors do not like them, the Times reports:
      In recent years, the quiet sanctuary of his street, with residents who are Republicans and Democrats, has tensed with conflict, neighbors said. Around the 2020 election, a family on the block displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive. It apparently offended Mrs. Alito and led to an escalating clash between her and the family, according to interviews.
      Some residents have also bridled at the noise and intrusion brought by protesters, who started showing up outside the Alito residence in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion. Other neighbors have joined the demonstrators, whose intent was “to bring the protest to their personal lives because the decisions affect our personal lives,” said Heather-Ann Irons, who came to the street to protest.
      The half-dozen neighbors who saw the flag, or knew of it, requested anonymity because they said they did not want to add to the contentiousness on the block and feared reprisal. Last Saturday, May 11, protesters returned to the street, waving flags of their own (“Don’t Tread on My Uterus”) and using a megaphone to broadcast expletives at Justice Alito, who was in Ohio giving a commencement address. Mrs. Alito appeared in a window, complaining to the Supreme Court security detail outside.
      As you can see in the below tweet from the New York Times, the flag flown outside the conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito’s house was simply an upside-down American flag:But as their story notes, flying the flag that way had, by early 2021, become a symbol of support for Donald Trump’s false claims that his loss in the November 2020 election had occurred due to fraud:
      Turning the American flag upside down is a symbol of emergency and distress, first used as a military S.O.S., historians said in interviews. In recent decades, it has increasingly been used as a political protest symbol — a controversial one, because the flag code and military tradition require the paramount symbol of the United States to be treated with respect.
      Over the years, upside-down flags have been displayed by both the right and the left as an outcry over a range of issues, including the Vietnam War, gun violence, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion and, in particular, election results. In 2012, Tea Party followers inverted flags at their homes to signal disgust at the re-election of President Barack Obama. Four years later, some liberals advised doing the same after Mr. Trump was elected.
      During Mr. Trump’s quest to win, and then subvert, the 2020 election, the gesture took off as never before, becoming “really established as a symbol of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign,” according to Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.
      A flood of social media posts exhorted Trump supporters to flip over their flags or purchase new ones to display upside down.
      “If Jan. 6 rolls around and Biden is confirmed by the Electoral College our nation is in distress!!” a poster wrote on Patriots.win, a forum for Trump supporters, garnering over a thousand “up” votes. “If you cannot go to the DC rally then you must do your duty and show your support for our president by flying the flag upside down!!!!”
      In an appearance on MSNBC this morning, Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator who serves on the judiciary committee, said the revelation that a pro-Trump flag flew outside Samuel Alito’s house further undermines the supreme court’s credibility.Polls indicate public approval of the supreme court has declined over the past two decades, which Blumenthal blames on the conflicts of interest that have developed among its conservative justices. He called on Chief Justice John Roberts to order Alito and Clarence Thomas, a fellow conservative whose wife was involved in efforts to stop Joe Biden from taking office, to recuse themselves:Blumenthal has been among the Democratic lawmakers that have pressured Roberts and the justices to tighten their ethics following reports of their connections with wealthy conservatives:The revelation that a flag used by supporters of Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims flew outside the house of Samuel Alito comes as the court is considering whether to give the ex-president immunity from the federal charges brought against him for his attempt to block Joe Biden from assuming office.In oral arguments in the case last month, the supreme court justice and other conservatives seemed partial to Trump’s claim that he should be immune from at least some of the charges, since they concern his conduct while acting in his official capacity as president. That raises the prospect of a decision that could have the net effect of further delaying his trial, potentially until after his November presidential election rematch against Biden.During the oral arguments, Alito, together with fellow conservative Brett Kavanaugh, seemed worried that future presidents could be affected by a denial of immunity to Trump. Here’s a recap of their viewpoint, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:
      Alito and Kavanaugh suggested they were particularly concerned about zealous prosecutors going after former presidents once they left office for “mistakes” if the supreme court decided that presidents had no immunity from criminal prosecution.
      “It’s not going to stop, it’s going to cycle back and be used against the current president and the next president and the next president after that,” Kavanaugh said.
      The government disputed that prosecutors could wantonly target former presidents, arguing there were checks and balances in the judicial system like the grand jury process.
      Alito was dismissive of the grand jury suggestion, bringing up the adage that a grand jury could indict a “ham sandwich”. When Dreeben said prosecutors don’t charge people who don’t deserve it, Alito responded: “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse too.”
      For more on the case, and how the supreme court’s decision could affect it, here’s our story from April:Good morning, US politics blog readers. The New York Times reported yesterday that a flag used by supporters of Donald Trump’s baseless claim of fraud in his 2020 election loss flew outside Samuel Alito’s house shortly before Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. The supreme court justice, who said the flag was displayed by his wife amid a dispute with a neighbor, is a conservative stalwart on the court, and authored the decision that two years ago overturned Roe v Wade and allowed states the ban abortion. The reactions to the news have been predictably partisan, with Republican senator Tom Cotton accusing the Times of trying to “incite another mob”, Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz describing flying the flag as “not normal” and Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal saying the court’s credibility “is plummeting”.The story was the latest in a string of reports that have emerged over the past year and raised questions about the supreme court’s ethics. While these stories have generated plenty of outrage, none of the justices involved have suffered any consequences, and the conservatives remain dominant on the court, with six seats against the liberals’ three. The court is poised to soon rule on whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – a case that could have a major impact on his rematch with Joe Biden.Here’s what else is going on today:
      The House oversight committee late yesterday advanced a resolution to hold attorney general Merrick Garland in contempt for not releasing a recording of Biden’s interview with a special counsel, but only after a shouting match between lawmakers.
      Biden, who polls show has lost some of his support with Black voters, will speak at the National Museum of African American History and Culture at 11.45am ET, and then meet with leaders of Black fraternities and sororities together with Kamala Harris at 3.30pm.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre takes reporters’ questions at 1pm. More

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      in US Politics

      Michael Cohen accused of lying over phone call at Trump hush-money trial

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      Donald Trump’s lawyer on Thursday attacked the core charge against the former president as he sought to undercut Michael Cohen, the former attorney whose $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels is at the heart of the criminal trial in New York.The defense, led by the Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, had Cohen admit that technically Daniels entered into a legal contract to sell the rights of her story about a sexual encounter with Trump, apparently in an attempt to justify labelling the repayments as legal expenses.During the hours-long cross-examination, the defense forced Cohen to concede that he had previously lied to protect Trump because it affected the stakes for him personally, and that he lied to the federal judge when he was prosecuted for tax evasion and false statements.As Cohen returned to the stand for the third day, Blanche suggested Cohen’s latest objective was to see Trump go to jail, seeding the possibility that he might have also lied about the extent of Trump’s involvement in the hush-money scheme with Daniels.Blanche also directly accused Cohen of lying in his trial testimony. Cohen said earlier in the week that when he called Trump’s then bodyguard Keith Schiller on 24 October 2016, it was to apprise Trump that he was moving forward with paying hush-money to Daniels.But relying on texts Cohen sent to Schiller complaining about prank calls from a 14-year-old, Blanche raised his voice to tell Cohen he must have phoned Schiller primarily about the prank calls and that he could not have had enough time in a one-minute 30-second call to tell Trump about the Daniels deal.“You can admit,” Blanche said, that you lied. “No sir, I can’t,” Cohen responded, sticking to his account.Trump was joined in court on Thursday by his son Eric Trump and the US representatives Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz. The trio appeared to be engaged in a dynamic conversation, at times smiling, laughing and whispering into each other’s ears shortly before Cohen took the stand.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of felony falsification of business records. Prosecutors must prove Trump authorized what he knew to be hush-money repayments to be falsely characterized as “legal expenses” in the Trump Organization’s records, with an intent to commit a second, election crime.The criminal case against Trump – the first against a US president – stems from his attempts to suppress negative stories about alleged sexual encounters he had with Daniels and others for fear that they could negatively affect his campaign just weeks before the 2016 election.Cohen has been a dramatic witness for the prosecution as he recounted how he used a home equity loan to raise $130,000, which he then wired to Daniels’s lawyer through a shell company he established. Cohen did so in the belief that Trump would reimburse him, he testified.In January 2017, Cohen previously recounted, he discussed with Trump and the former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about being repaid for the $130,000, an overdue bonus, and other expenses he incurred doing work that benefited the Trump 2016 campaign.Cohen produced 11 invoices seeking payment pursuant to a legal “retainer” that did not exist according to Cohen, that led to 11 checks being cut to Cohen and the Trump Organization recording 12 entries for “legal expense” on its general ledger – totaling 34 instances of alleged falsifications.Under New York law, prosecutors need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump either made or caused a false entry to be made in the business records of an enterprise. Cohen’s testimony provided the first direct evidence that Trump directed the nature of the reimbursement to be obscured.But Blanche relentlessly attacked Cohen’s credibility and motivations in recounting that story.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBlanche played clips from Cohen’s podcast Mea Culpa, including when Cohen said “thinking about Trump in Otisville prison makes me giddy with joy”. He also got Cohen to concede that he believed he played a large role in the indictment being brought against Trump – and bragged about it.The defense later dug into Cohen’s previous lies under oath and how he seemingly lied about details big and small. When Cohen testified to Congress in 2017 about a Trump real estate deal in Moscow, Blanche elicited, Cohen lied about how many times he spoke to Trump about the deal.And although Cohen told William Pauley, a US district court judge, in 2018 that he had not been induced to plead guilty to federal tax evasion and false statements charges, Blanche elicited, Cohen later said he felt he was cornered into pleading guilty so that his wife wouldn’t also be charged.“The reason you lied to a federal judge was because stakes affected you personally?” Blanche asked. “Yes,” Cohen replied, affirming that he told lies not just to protect Trump, as he has previously claimed, but for his personal benefit, when it suited him.In an apparent effort to undercut Cohen’s testimony on direct examination that Trump was responsible and involved in the effort to cover up the hush money to Daniels, Blanche elicited from Cohen that he had a track record of trying to shift blame for his own actions on to other people.“You’ve blamed … Your bank? Your accountant? You blamed federal prosecutors? The judge? President Trump?” Blanche asked. “Yes, sir,” replied Cohen to each of the questions.The cross-examination of Cohen is expected to conclude on Monday morning. The redirect-examination is unlikely to take longer than an hour, prosecutors told the judge. After Cohen is done, Trump’s lawyers may call Bradley Smith, an expert in federal elections law.Smith’s potential testimony is not likely to take particularly long, in large part because the judge imposed limits on expert testimony in a pre-trial ruling. Smith would only be able to testify about general definitions about federal campaign contributions.Whether Trump testifies in his own defense remains uncertain, even if Trump has suggested he wants to take the stand. Should Trump not testify, closing arguments in the case could come on Tuesday. But the judge still has to issue jury instructions, which means the jury might only start deliberating on Thursday. More

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      in US Politics

      Louisiana must use House map with second mostly Black district, US supreme court rules

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday ordered Louisiana to hold congressional elections in 2024 using a House map with a second mostly Black district, despite a lower-court ruling that called the map an illegal racial gerrymander.The order allows the use of a map that has majority Black populations in two of the state’s six congressional districts, potentially boosting Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the closely divided House of Representatives in the 2024 elections.The justices acted on emergency appeals filed by the state’s top Republican elected officials and Black voters who said they needed the high court’s intervention to avoid confusion as the elections approach. About a third of Louisiana is Black.Like much of the south, voting is racially polarized in Alabama so any majority-Black district is likely to favor Democrats. Republicans narrowly control the US House and are fighting for an advantage in every seat.It is the latest development in a long and twisted legal saga over Louisiana’s congressional districts.Louisiana lawmakers were forced to add a second majority-Black district last year after a federal judge said the map they drew violated the Voting Rights Act. The state approved a map, but then non-white voters challenged it in court, saying lawmakers relied too much on race when drawing it. Lower federal courts agreed the map should be struck down, and the state said it should not be required to use the map for this year’s elections.The supreme court’s order on Wednesday halts that argument and means the map with a second majority-Black district will be used for this year’s election. What happens after that is unclear.The supreme court has previously put court decisions handed down near elections on hold, invoking the need to give enough time to voters and elections officials to ensure orderly balloting. “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote two years ago in a similar case from Alabama. The court has never set a firm deadline for how close is too close.The court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all said they would not have granted the request to intervene. Only Jackson explained her reasoning.“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” she wrote in a brief dissent. “We have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson was objecting to what has come to be known as the Purcell principle – a novel idea adopted by the supreme court that they should not intervene in an election dispute when election day is near. The liberal justices and other critics have accused the court of using the principle to benefit Republicans.Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by federal courts in the past two years in a swirl of lawsuits that included a previous intervention by the supreme court. More

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      Arizona supreme court delays enforcement of 1864 abortion ban

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      The Arizona supreme court on Monday granted a motion to stay the enforcement of an 1864 law that bans almost all abortions, a win for reproductive rights activists in the swing state.The state’s highest court agreed to the Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes’s request for a 90-day delay of the near-total ban, further pushing back enforcement of the 1864 legislation after a repeal of the ban was passed earlier this month.The stay will last until 12 August. A separate court case on the legislation which granted an additional 45-day stay means the law cannot be enforced until 26 September, Mayes said in a statement.“I am grateful that the Arizona supreme court has stayed enforcement of the 1864 law and granted our motion to stay the mandate in this case for another 90 days,” she said.Mayes added that her office is weighing the “best legal course of action”, including a petition to the US supreme court.The latest decision comes two weeks after the Democratic Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, signed a law to repeal the ban.But the most recent repeal can only take place 90 days after the Arizona legislative session ends, possibly allowing for a small window when the ban could be enforced.Last year’s session ended on 31 July, NBC News reported. If lawmakers adhere to that timeline, the ban could be in effect for approximately a month, until late October.Hobbs has said that she will not prosecute any medical practitioners under the 1864 law.The Arizona supreme court rejected a motion from Planned Parenthood Arizona on Monday to hold off on enforcing the 1864 ban until the repeal takes effect.On the latest court ruling, the reproductive health organization vowed to continue fighting to “[ensure] all Arizonans can access the care they need in a safe, caring environment”, according to a statement.“We will not be intimidated or silenced by anti-abortion extremists, because our bodies and our autonomy are at stake.”In Arizona, abortion is currently banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The 1864 abortion law bans nearly all abortions, except to save a woman’s life. The US civil war-era law does not make exceptions for rape or incest.Residents of the swing state will probably vote on a referendum on abortion come November after a coalition of reproductive rights organizations collected enough signatures to get the issue on the 2024 ballot. More

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      Trump’s hush-money case has proven he’s a low-life. Can it prove he’s a criminal? | Margaret Sullivan

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      When you set out to explore Donald Trump’s personal life and business practices, you don’t expect to meet any paragons of virtue.Sleazy media figures who buy and “kill” damaging stories? Yes. An adult film actor ready to tell all to make a buck? Certainly. A parade of spokespeople and staffers who compromised their own integrity during his presidential administration? No doubt.A conman, philanderer and grifter himself, the ex-president always has surrounded himself with dicey characters. That’s how he rolls. So it’s hardly surprising that Michael Cohen, the star prosecution witness in the so-called “hush-money” case unfolding in New York City, fits right in.The former Trump lawyer and fixer pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign-finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud. He pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. He went to jail. And he was disbarred.That’s why it would be funny – if it weren’t so cringe-inducing – to hear the way Cohen is being praised by some commentators in the endless talk loop of cable-news trial coverage.“Michael’s one of the good guys,” was the assessment of CNN guest-talker Anthony Scaramucci, who memorably lasted less than two weeks as Trump’s communications director and who is now vehemently opposed to Trump winning a second term.I’m all for redemption, but I wouldn’t go that far. I certainly wouldn’t hold up Michael Cohen as an example of a great American.But, against the odds, Cohen’s testimony does ring true. (Not that one can hear it directly; unfortunately, the trial is not being televised or even recorded for audio only.)His words, and the description of his demeanor from those inside the courtroom, make a kind of consistent and logical sense. What’s more, much of it has been “pre-corroborated” by testimony and evidence earlier in the trial.We’ve heard from people such as David Pecker, who ran the National Enquirer, where he caused damaging stories to be given the “catch-and-kill” treatment to help Trump gain the presidency in 2016. We’ve seen supporting text messages and emails and documents.On the stand on Monday, Cohen didn’t spare himself. He admits he lied and falsified in protecting his boss. He even admitted to secretly recording Trump during a one-on-one meeting and, because the audio has gone public, we can hear the two of them hashing out one of their seedy arrangements; respectable lawyers don’t do that to or with their clients.And he certainly didn’t spare Trump, instead portraying him as the equivalent of a mob boss, as well as someone intimately involved with every decision in keeping his tawdry relationships secret as he sought the presidency in 2016.What the New York district attorney must prove, though, is criminality, not low-life behavior.Will a jury decide that Trump’s behavior amounted to criminal election interference? That will require a lot of connecting the dots – that Stormy Daniels not only was paid off to keep quiet about the time she claims to have had sex with Trump, but that the payment was then recorded falsely in a way that violates campaign finance law.If those dots are going to be connected, it’s Cohen who must connect them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt’s not an airtight case. Rather, it is “the least muscular and existentially threatening of the four criminal prosecutions Trump faces”, wrote the Trump biographer Tim O’Brien this week.But it’s likely to be the only case that’s going to come to trial before the election. For those who want a shred of accountability for Trump’s endless misdeeds, this is the one they’ve got. And, given that, Cohen is essential.Can jurors find him credible, given his checkered past? Even if they do, is it possible to make the leap to criminal violations of campaign-finance law? And could every one of them then agree to convict?That’s an Everest-high mountain to climb. Trump’s lawyers are sure to bombard Cohen with his foibles during cross-examination later this week.My take is that Michael Cohen is – finally – telling the truth. He’ll hold up well under the hostile questioning. Jurors will believe him and will buy most of his story, given his consistency and the corroborating evidence and earlier testimony.Finally, Michael Cohen will come off like an honest broker.As for a jury then connecting that credibility to criminal election-law interference? And then, unanimously, deciding to convict the former president?That’s a big stretch.I can believe Michael Cohen’s testimony, but – at least right now – I can’t believe in that outcome.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist More