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      Republicans attacking Bowman but backing Santos should ‘check values’, AOC says

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      Republicans calling for action against the New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in a congressional office building as a vote loomed on a deal to avoid a government shutdown should “check their own values”, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, citing the lack of action against a GOP New Yorker, George Santos, after he was indicted for fraud.“They are protecting someone who has lied to the American people, lied to the United States House of Representatives, lied to congressional investigators,” Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC, told CNN’s State of the Union.“But they’re filing a motion to expel a member who, in a moment of panic, was trying to escape a vestibule? Give me a break.”Santos won his seat last year but saw his resumé taken apart and his background extensively questioned before being indicted on charges of money laundering and fraud. In May, he pled not guilty. Republicans sidestepped an effort to expel him from Congress, saying legal processes should run their course.Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman is a prominent New York progressive. In a statement on Saturday, he denied trying to delay the process that stopped a government shutdown.He said: “As I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologise for any confusion this caused.“I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying to urgently get a vote, which I ultimately did.”Kevin McCarthy, the speaker under pressure from his own party over the deal with Democrats, likened Bowman’s behaviour to that of Donald Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on 6 January 2021, trying to overturn an election in a riot now linked to nine deaths.Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, said she was drafting a resolution to expel.Authorities were investigating. In Washington, falsely activating a fire alarm is a misdemeanour.Ocasio-Cortez told CNN: “I think there’s something to be said about, the government’s about to shut down, there’s a vote clock that’s going down, the exits that are normally open in that building were suddenly closed … Jamaal Bowman … he’s fully participating in saying there was a misunderstanding.“But what I do think is important to raise is the fact that Republicans like Nicole Malliotakis and others immediately moved to file motions to censure, motions to expel before there has even been conversations … to even see if there was a misunderstanding here.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“… What they did not do was to commit to the same when George Santos was actually found guilty after a thorough investigation of 13 federal charges.”Santos has reportedly negotiated with federal prosecutors, suggesting a plea deal might be on the cards. He has not been found guilty.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “He’s indicted on everything from wire fraud to actual lying to House investigators. And [Republicans] have been buddying up and giggling with him on the House floor.”Bowman, she said, “admits he’s embarrassed … he apologised. And they are protecting someone who has not only committed wire fraud, not only defrauded veterans, not only lied to congressional investigators, but is openly gloating about it.“[It] is absolutely humiliating to the Republican caucus. And I think that they should really check their own values.” More

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      Court rejects Trump effort to delay New York civil trial days after fraud ruling

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      An appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to delay a civil trial in a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, allowing the case to proceed days after a judge ruled the former president committed years of fraud and stripped him of some companies as punishment.The decision, by the state’s intermediate appellate court, clears the way for Judge Arthur Engoron to preside over a non-jury trial starting 2 October in Manhattan in the civil lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Trump is listed among dozens of possible witnesses, setting up a potential courtroom showdown with the judge. The fraud ruling on Tuesday threatens to upend his real estate empire and force him to give up prized New York properties such as Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate.Trump has denied wrongdoing, arguing that some of his assets are worth far more than what is listed on annual financial statements that Engoron said he used to secure loans and make deals. Trump has argued that the statements have disclaimers that absolve him of liability. His lawyers have said they would appeal.Messages seeking comment were left on Thursday with Trump’s lawyers and James’s office.In New York “these cases take many years to get to trial”, Trump wrote on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform that appeared to conflate several of his legal foes. “My Political Witch Hunt case is actually scheduled to start on Monday. Nobody can believe it? This is a ‘Railroading’ job, pushed hard by the Radical Left DOJ for purposing Election Interference. A very SAD time for New York State, and America!”Trump’s lawyers had sought the trial delay before Engoron’s ruling, alleging the judge abused his authority and hindered their preparations by failing to comply with a June appeals court order that he narrow the scope of the trial based on the statute of limitations.They filed a lawsuit against Engoron on 14 September under a provision of state law known as Article 78, which allows people to challenge some judicial authority, and asked that the trial be postponed until that matter was resolved.An appeals court judge, David Friedman, granted an interim stay of the trial while the full appeals court considered the lawsuit on an expedited basis. Thursday’s ruling lifted the stay, allowing the trial to proceed as scheduled.Engoron ruled on Tuesday that Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, defrauded banks, insurers and others with annual financial statements that massively overvalued his assets and exaggerated his wealth. Engoron ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. James alleges Trump boosted his net worth by as much as $3.6bn.After the ruling, Trump’s lawyers again urged the appeals court to delay the trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey argued in court papers that Engoron showed in his 35-page decision that he was intent on defying the appeals court by ignoring the statute of limitations issue. Engoron refused to dismiss any claims and based his fraud ruling partly on stale allegations that should have been thrown out, the Trump lawyer Clifford Robert said.Engoron’s fraud ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolved the key claim in James’s lawsuit, but six others remain. They include allegations of conspiracy, falsifying business records and insurance fraud. The judge will also decide on James’s request for $250m in penalties.James’s office argued Trump’s lawsuit against Engoron was a “brazen and meritless attempt” to usurp his authority and that any delay “would likely wreak havoc on the trial schedule” and could cause conflicts with Trump’s four pending criminal cases.The civil trial is the culmination of a years-long investigation by James’s office that saw Trump questioned under oath and millions of pages of documents change hands. Engoron has said it could take three months. More

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      Trump’s business empire could collapse ‘like falling dominoes’ after ruling

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      Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.According to Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, Trump is already effectively “out of business” in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron on Tuesday rescinded the licenses of the Trump Organization and other companies owned by Trump and his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.“Those companies will end up being liquidated … the judge has already determined that the fraud existed,” Cohen told CNN, hailing Engoron’s pretrial ruling in a civil case brought by Letitia James, the New York attorney general.On Wednesday morning, in a confrontational post on his Truth Social website that branded the judge a “political hack”, Trump said Engoron “must be stopped”.At a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Trump’s legal team asked Engoron if his ruling meant Trump’s assets and businesses must be sold, or if they could continue to operate under receivership.Engoron said he would address the issue at the non-jury trial beginning on 2 October, and extended to 30 days his original 10-day deadline for both parties to suggest names to act as receivers for the various companies.The lawyers have said they will appeal the rescinding of the licenses, the appointment of receivers, and Engoron’s assertion that Trump and executives lived in a “fantasy world” of routinely, repeatedly and illegally overvaluing property values and his personal net worth to gain favorable loan terms and reduced insurance premiums.But if the appeals are unsuccessful, the collapse of the Trump empire, upon which the former reality TV host staked his reputation as a successful business tycoon, could be imminent.It would probably start with the sale of Trump’s most prestigious real estate assets, experts say, including Trump Tower in New York, golf courses and resorts around the US, and possibly his prized Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, if it is determined to be a business operation instead of his primary residential home.In his post on Wednesday, Trump decried the judge’s $18m valuation of Mar-a-Lago, claiming it was worth “100 times more than he values it”.William Black, a white-collar criminologist, corporate fraud investigator and distinguished scholar in residence for financial regulation at the University of Minnesota law school, said: “In finance, once the dominoes start falling, it becomes basically impossible to save it.“These properties are even more damaged goods today because of the success in demonstrating they are massively overvalued. The most likely thing, if you get an honest agent or receiver, they’re going to sell the properties at a loss. And when you’ve got a whole bunch of properties, with the first one you just desperately need to get some action and that gets discounted the most.”Black, who helped expose congressional wrongdoing in the Lincoln Savings and Loans scandal of the 1980s, in which the financier Charles Keating inflated his company’s worth to bilk taxpayers for billions, called Engoron’s ruling “devastating”. He believes Trump insiders and employees would have incentive to come forward with more information if he loses his wealth and influence.“What we experienced in the Savings and Loan debacle, we would put in an honest manager and employees would start coming to that person over time and say, ‘You know, you really ought to look at this,’” Black said.“Trump is monumentally, stupidly greedy in that he isn’t actually paying for a number of key lieutenants in terms of their legal needs, and they’re facing financial collapse of their own, [such as] the Rudy Giulianis of this world. But a lot of folks can sink Trump.“Having this ability to control all these assets, even if they’re massively overvalued, meant hope springs eternal among the Trump folks that he can use that money and influence to help them, but if Trump instead ends up bereft of control over the overwhelming bulk of his assets, and has lots of liabilities, sugar daddy goes away.”Engoron’s independent court-appointed monitor for the Trump Organization, the retired federal judge Barbara Jones, reported last month she had identified inconsistency and incompleteness in financial disclosures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOthers also see the writing on the wall.“Donald Trump is no longer in business,” David Cay Johnston, author of the Trump-themed book The Big Cheat, wrote in DC Report.“Barring a highly unlikely reversal by an appeals court, Trump’s business assets eventually will be liquidated since he cannot operate them without a business license. The various properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices and certainly not for top dollar when liquidation begins, probably after all appeals are exhausted.“I give Trump’s chances of prevailing on appeal at somewhere between zero and nothing except perhaps on some minor procedural point, which you can be sure Trump will describe as complete vindication.”Joyce Vance, a retired US attorney and University of Alabama law school professor, called Engoron’s ruling “justice”.“This is New York’s corporate death penalty, applied to Trump because of years of misconduct,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Black said Trump’s downfall would be self-inflicted.“The key to these frauds is not genius, it’s audacity, but Trump never wanted to do it himself, he’s too lazy, right?” he said.“And now he doesn’t control the people who have to actually do the deals. So they’re now forced into thousands of discussions, first with this judge, now this receiver, and that can’t work.“You won’t be able to do the scams, and you won’t be able to do things quickly, either. That means a domino effect in credit failings and bankruptcies. As people start taking action against your properties, the liquidity you’re boasting isn’t going to be there and you’re going to get a bankruptcy.” More

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      Donald Trump committed fraud as he built his real estate empire, New York judge rules

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      Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, a New York judge ruled Tuesday in a strongly-worded rejection of the former president’s bid to throw out a civil lawsuit against him.Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and executives from his company, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.His ruling came in a civil lawsuit brought by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, days before the start of a non-jury trial that will hear accusations that Trump, and the Trump Organization, lied for a decade about asset values and his net worth to get better terms on bank loans and insurance.“The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business,” Engoron wrote.James has said Trump had effectively engaged in a “bait and switch” operation, inflating his net worth by as much as $2.23bn, and by one measure as much as $3.6bn, on annual financial statements given to banks and insurers.Assets whose values were inflated include Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his penthouse apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, and various office buildings and golf courses, James said in the lawsuit filed in September 2022.Trump’s legal team had previously asked Engoron to dismiss the case against him, arguing James lacked authority to file the lawsuit because there was no evidence the public was harmed by Trump’s actions, and that many of the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations.But the judge indicated last week he was not inclined to be sympathetic, rebuking Trump’s lawyers for making “frivolous arguments” and stating he was considering sanctions against them.Chris Kise, who is also representing Trump in a federal indictment in Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, argued: “What is happening here is what happens every day in complex business transactions”.Engoron was not swayed.“The fact that no one was hurt does not mean the case gets dismissed,” he said. In his ruling Tuesday, he granted a motion by James seeking sanctions against Trump’s legal team for repeatedly making arguments already rejected, fining five attorneys $7,500 each.Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing a criminal case over the fraudulent conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that could disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business in New York.Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’s lawsuit, although six others remain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe non-jury trial is scheduled to start on 2 October. James is seeking $250m in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York, his home state. The hearing could last into December, Engoron has said.The judge has penalized Trump before. In early 2022, the former president paid $110,000 in fines after failing to meet case deadlines.The case is one of several that Trump, the runaway leader in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, must navigate while appearing on the campaign trail. He faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments, for hush-money payments to an adult movie star, illegal retention of classified information, and election subversion at the federal and state levels.In civil court, he also faces a second defamation trial involving the writer E Jean Carroll, who said he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Found liable for defamation and sexual abuse, Trump has already been fined about $5m and adjudicated as a rapist.
      Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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      ‘It’s a liability’: New York Republicans face pressure – but will they lose 2024?

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      In Anthony D’Esposito’s New York congressional district, Democrats are licking their lips.The Republican won an unexpected election to the House of Representatives in 2022, styling himself as a moderate in a historically Democratic district that Joe Biden had easily won by 14 points two years earlier.But last week D’Esposito, along with other self-styled moderates, gave his tacit approval to the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, an inquiry championed by the far-right members of the Republican party.The inquiry, into Hunter Biden’s business affairs and unsubstantiated accusations of corruption by the president, has become a symbol of the vengeful, extremist politics of far-right Republican figures like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Sensing a chance, Democrats in D’Esposito’s Long Island district, just east of New York City, are now planning to tie him to his more rabid colleagues and win back the seat.“We’re certainly going to make it an issue and it’s a liability for him here,” said Jay Jacobs, the chair of the local Democratic party in Nassau county, which makes up much of the fourth congressional district, which D’Esposito represents.“Most informed, thinking people don’t believe that Joe Biden is some kind of criminal or has done anything that would warrant an impeachment inquiry, so when someone does this, and is in favor of it, they put themselves on the line with voters.“We saw this after Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial: the Republicans took a big hit. And we think the same will happen this time. People send their representatives to Washington to do a job and to run the country in a responsible way, and this is clearly irresponsible. So [D’Esposito] will suffer for it.”In the 2022 midterm elections 18 Republicans, including D’Esposito, won in congressional districts that had voted for Biden, as the Republican party secured a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.In Long Island, which experienced a curious swing to the Republicans in 2022, D’Esposito isn’t the only newly elected Republican at risk. Before those midterm elections three of the island’s four congressional districts were represented by Democrats. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden won convincingly in the same three districts.But in 2022, even as Democrats outperformed expectations around the country, this south-eastern part of New York state plumped for Republican candidates – including George Santos, who has since admitted inventing parts of his résumé and has been charged with fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Democrats attributed the swing, in part, to a popular Republican candidate for that year’s governor’s race, and the test in next year’s elections will be whether Republicans can hold on to those seats.Even before the launch of the impeachment inquiry, the 18 Republicans in Biden-won districts were already under pressure from an “Unrepresentatives” campaign launched by the progressive movement Indivisible. That campaign has seen Indivisible highlight how the supposed moderates have voted in line with the hard-right wing of the party.The new inquiry – which comes after eight months of Republican investigation into the president has failed to yield any evidence of wrongdoing – could add to that backlash. But Michael Dawidziak, a Republican political consultant based in Long Island, said Democrats might be putting too much hope in an impeachment-related backlash.“[Voters] are not going to be that upset about a Biden impeachment as opposed to, you know, crime and economy and the things that affect your quality of life,” Dawidziak said.The self-proclaimed more moderate members of the Republican party have largely sought to justify their support for the impeachment inquiry by characterizing it as an example of Congress applying checks and balances on the president.Mike Garcia, a California representative who like D’Esposito and Santos won in 2022 a previously Biden-supporting district, told the Hill he wanted to “seek clarity”, while Congressman Marc Molinaro, a New Yorker, said: “We want to be sure that we’re getting answers.”D’Esposito has offered similarly considered support.“I’ve spent my career as an NYPD detective and know the value of seeking the truth through finding the facts, and I am eager to find out exactly what the truth is behind the allegations surrounding President Biden and his family,” he said in a statement.But in Long Island, some Democratic voters fear that the Republican tightrope-walking might be successful. Casey Shields, who lives in Lynbrook, said that despite Biden carrying the district convincingly in 2020, it leans to the right.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Nassau county is a secret Republican stronghold, hence [D’Esposito’s] and Santos’ magic rise to power,” Shields, an accountant, said. “I can’t imagine many people who voted him in will be turned off by his desire to impeach Biden. His district is begging to be a red state.”Mary Russell, 67, said people who decide to vote for any Republican know what they are getting from the Donald Trump-dominated party.“I am not sure there is such a thing as a ‘moderate’ Republican,” Russell, who voted for D’Esposito’s opponent in 2022, said.“[D’Esposito] supporting the retaliatory impeachment inquiry to appease the hard-right members, confirms his inability or desire to stand for the majority of Long Islanders who know the inquiry to be a waste of time and money.”Despite that, Russell said she doubted that D’Esposito’s support for the impeachment inquiry would be a defining issue.“I wish it would have an impact, but I fear it will not, based on where the district leans. It’d also depend on who his challenger is.”In Garden City, in the north of D’Esposito’s district, Republican voters were adamant that the impeachment inquiry was justified.“Biden should be in prison. They should put him in jail, and his son, the whole administration,” said Anthony DeAngelis, an equities trader.Maria Bicocchio, 71, who voted for Trump and D’Esposito in 2020, was slightly more nuanced on whether the impeachment inquiry could prove to be a problem among people who voted for Biden in 2022 before switching to the Republican party in 2022.“It could be but then again, maybe they have woken up and decided they’re not so sure about Biden,” she said.There are indications that impeachment might not be a huge vote loser for Republicans. A Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday found that 48% of voters support the impeachment inquiry, with 42% opposed. Among independent voters, 47% said they were in favor of the inquiry, with 36% opposed. (A further 17% had no opinion.)Still, Democrats will hope that the inquiry can at least tarnish enough Republicans to help them win back the House next year.“Campaigns are all about informing the voters about how their incumbent elected representatives have been performing,” said Jacobs, the Nassau county Democrats chair.“D’Esposito wants to come across as a moderate because he knows this is a moderate district. But when it comes right down to it on issues like this, he’s a Maga Republican, he’s exactly what Donald Trump wants to have in the Congress. I think voters need to know that.” More

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      Climate activists block Federal Reserve bank, calling for end to fossil fuel funding

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      One day after the largest climate march since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of climate activists blockaded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to call for an end to funding for coal, oil and gas, with police making scores of arrests.“Fossil fuel companies … wouldn’t be able to operate without money, and that money is coming primarily from Wall Street,” Alicé Nascimento, environmental campaigns director at New York Communities for Change, said hours before she was arrested.The action came as world leaders began arriving in New York for the United National general assembly (UNGA) gathering and followed Sunday’s 75,000-person March to End Fossil Fuels, which focused on pushing Biden to urgently phase out fossil fuels. Monday’s civil disobedience had a different but compatible goal, said Renata Pumarol, an organizer with the campaign group Climate Defenders.“Today we want to make sure people know banks, big banks, are responsible for climate change, too,” she said. “And while marches are important, we think civil disobedience is, too, because it shows we’re willing to do whatever it takes to end fossil fuels, including putting ourselves on the line.”Monday’s action was organized by a coalition of local organizations including New York Communities for Change and Extinction Rebellion NYC, alongside national groups such as Climate Organizing Hub and 350.org. Demonstrators first gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park, in the financial district in lower Manhattan, which is partially owned by fossil fuel investor Goldman Sachs.The small concrete urban space was the base for the original Occupy Wall Street protests 12 years ago.On Monday, demonstrators then marched in the rain to the nearby New York Federal Reserve building, the largest of the network of 12 federal banks dotted around the country that make up the central bank of the United States.Protesters blockaded multiple entrances into the bank while singing, beating drums and holding up signs. Over 100 people were arrested, according to the New York City Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, with organizers estimating that roughly 150 arrests were made.“If you arrest one of us, one hundred more will come,” activists chanted.The protesters called attention to both public and private fossil fuel financing. Globally, government subsidies for coal, oil and gas reached a record high of $13m per minute in 2022 last year – equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education – according to the International Monetary Fund.Last year, the US also ranked 16th among the G20 countries on a scorecard by the independent economic research group Green Central Banking, which the researchers say indicates US financial regulators are falling behind their international peers on climate risk mitigation.Meanwhile, since the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, major private banks have provided some $3.2tn to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations, far outstripping the amount that global north governments have collectively spent on international climate finance, an analysis from ActionAid, the Washington DC-based non-profit, found this month. Another recent analysis from the Sierra Club environmental group found that major global banks have announced climate pledges but nonetheless financed coal energy across the US.Monday’s action came after a slew of global protests last week, some of which targeted financial institutions. In New York, dozens rallied outside of the headquarters for asset manager BlackRock and Citibank on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, to call attention to both firms’ investments in fossil fuels. And on Friday, protesters targeted the Museum of Modern Art over its relationship to fossil fuel investor KKR.Another protest is planned for Tuesday at New York City’s Bank of America offices, with additional actions throughout the week as the United Nations hosts its Climate Ambition Summit as part of the UNGA. More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells climate marchers to be ‘too big and too radical to ignore’ – live

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      From 1h agoThe crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit global network comprising 3.5 million climate activists, was one of the many organizations present at the march in New York City today.
      We are mobilizing around the summit to leverage national and international pressure to demand leaders change course.
      This is a critical moment for mass mobilization on fossil fuels that could ignite bigger and bolder climate action.
      Here is a tweet by Oil Change International of the various climate change marches that were staged around the world this week, including today’s rally in New York City.
      This is a big, beautiful climate movement & we’re calling on world leaders to #EndFossilFuels NOW. No more talk, we need action!
      Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, announced that she is working on a musical about the climate crisis.She and three cast members previewed a song from the show called Panic. “We want you to panic / We want you to act / You stole our future / And we want it, we want it back.”“Don’t let the cynics win. The cynics want us to think that this isn’t worth it. The cynics want us to believe that we can’t win. The cynics want us to believe that organizing doesn’t matter, that our political system doesn’t matter, that our economy doesn’t matter,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of cheering protestors.“We’re here to say that we organize out of hope, we organize out of commitment, we organize out of love, we organize out of the beauty of our future. We will not give up! We will not let go! We will not allow cynicism to to prevail! We will not allow our vision of a collaborative economy, of dignity for working people, of honoring the Black, brown, Indigenous, white working class! We will not give up and that is what we are here to do today!” she added.“The United States continues to be approving record number of fossil fuel leases and we must send a message, right here today – that has got to end!”Earlier this month, AOC spoke to the Guardian and said that “there’s a very real danger here,” in reference to the presidential 2024 elections and the climate crisis.The crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.Here are more images coming through the newswires from the march:World leaders have ‘forgotten’ responsibility to Mother EarthVeteran Indigenous organizer Tom Goldtooth, who is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, attended the march. “I’m here at the request of spiritual authorities within our Indigenous network,” he said.“They said that this United Nations secretary general’s summit on climate ambition has no spiritual soul to it – that the world leaders have forgotten what the responsibility is to understand the sacredness of Mother Earth.”He decried world leaders’ focus on technological solutions like geoengineering, as well as carbon offset markets, which studies show often do not result in lowered emissions.“We’re here to renew not only our relationship but humanity’s relationship to building sustainable communities based upon regenerative economy, living economy, not a fossil fuel economy,” he said.“The fight for the planet is not a personal issue, it’s a collective issue,” said Grant Miner, a graduate student representing the labor contingent with the Student Workers of Columbia University. “The economy that we have now is structured around killing the planet for profit.”“We’re asking Biden to divest fossil fuels,” said Sincere Cheong, who marched alongside thousands of other people. “The world is being destroyed and if we don’t cut back right now we won’t be able to limit the global warming to 1.5 degrees.”Tens of thousands of people in New York City have kicked off a week of demonstrations seeking to end the use of coal, oil and natural gas blamed for climate change.“This is an incredible moment,” said Jean Su of Center for Biological Diversity, who helped organize the mobilization.
      Tens of thousands of people are marching in the streets of New York because they want climate action, and they understand Biden’s expansion of fossil fuels is squandering our last chance to avoid climate catastrophe.
      Su said the action was the largest climate protest in the US since the start of the pandemic, with organizers estimating around 75,000 protestors taking to the streets in New York City.She added:
      This also shows the tremendous grit and fight of the people, especially youth and communities living at the frontlines of fossil fuel violence, to fight back and demand change for the future they have every right to lead.
      In addition to celebrities and lawmakers, kids from across the country as well as elderly people showed up at the protests, waving climate signs and chanting alongside event organizers.New York’s Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who previously championed the Green New Deal alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, is also expected to address the crowd later this afternoon.Sunday’s demonstration comes ahead of the the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, which the UN secretary general, António Guterres, says will focus on on bold new climate pledges.In its citations for its climate journalists of the year, Covering Climate Now said:
      Manka Behl of the Times of India was praised by judges for reports “from the frontlines of the crisis in one of the world’s most climate-important countries” and for her interviews with leaders.

      Damian Carrington of the Guardian was credited for science-based reporting that “explains that politics and corporate power, not a lack of green technologies, are what block climate progress”, and cited for leading a reporting team on investigating “carbon bombs” and super-emitting methane leaks.

      Amy Westervelt was described as a prolific, multiplatform reporter for Critical Frequency whose work exposes how fossil fuel companies continue to mislead the public and policymakers alike.
      “Every news outlet on earth can learn from the engaged, hard-hitting journalism that Manka, Damian and Amy bring to the climate story,” said Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now. “It’s reporting like this that arms the public with the power that knowledge gives.”The awards also recognized six Special Honors winners for “rigorous investigative reports, eye-opening exposes of climate injustice, and much-needed analyses of climate solutions”:Covering Climate Now, the global journalism collaboration, is announcing its media awards this week at a time when audiences need to know how and why “the planet is on fire” and what can be done, judges said.CCN’s three climate journalists of the year for 2023 are Damian Carrington of the Guardian, Manka Behl of the Times of India and Amy Westervelt, the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network.Naomi Klein, the international bestselling author, won in the commentary category, while Ishan Kukreti of the Indian non-profit Scroll.in won for long-form writing.Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration involving some 600 news outlets with a reach of more than 2 billion people, and its media awards program was launched three years ago to spread standards of excellence in climate journalism.This year’s winners were selected from a list of finalists from more than 1,100 entries from 29 countries, and chosen by more than 100 journalists.Children showed up in droves for the march to end fossil fuels.“We’re here today because our planet deserves a future,” Ida, 12, said.Gus, a six-year-old, travelled from Boston for the march with his mother, Laura. “We’re here to end fossil fuels … so we can stop climate change,” he said.Aviva, a seven-year-old Brooklynite who attended the march with her mom and sister, spoke into the megaphone. “Hey hey, ho,” she shouted, as the crowd responded: “Fossil fuels have got to go!”As the climate rally in New York City continues, climate activists in Germany sprayed orange paint on to Berlin’s popular Brandenburg Gate on Sunday in attempts to call on the German government to stop using fossil fuels.“The protest makes it clear: it is time for a political change,” the climate activist group the Last Generation said in a statement, the Associated Press reports.“Away from fossil fuels – towards fairness,” it added.The Associated Press reports that police have blocked the area around the historic gate and confirmed that they have detained 14 activists that are affiliated with the Last Generation.Mentions of gas stoves are emerging as a theme among the many signs protesters are holding up at the march to end fossil fuels.This April, New York became the first US state to ban gas stoves in new residential building construction as research emerged about its dangers for human health.At the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice.“We’re at our lunch counter moment for the 21st century,” he said.A native of Louisiana, he said he was excited to see demonstrators support environmental justice activists’ fight to end petrochemical buildout in the south-west US.“We need to end fossil fuels in all forms,” he said.Protesters chanted: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”Others sang Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”Here is video by the Guardian’s visual reporter Aliya Uteuova on the fossil fuels march in New York City this afternoon.The activists will be marching to the United Nations ahead of the UN Climate Ambition Summit that is set to take place in a few days.Veteran environmental activist Bill McKibben travelled to New York City to attend the march.“I think it’s a real restart moment after the pandemic for the big in-the-streets climate movement,” he said. “It’s good to see people get back out there.”The crowd, he said, reflected the diversity of New York City.“I’m glad to see there’s a lot of old people like me here,” said McKibben, who founded Third Act, an activist group aimed at elders. “We’ll be marching in the back because we’re slow!”Climate scientist Peter Kalmus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab also spoke at the press conference, saying that he has two kids in high school and that he’s “terrified for their future”.“I’m terrified for my future right now,” he added.“We are so clearly in a fucking climate emergency. Why won’t Biden declare it?” he said. More

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      Trump’s legal woes are part of his quasi-religious mythology of martyrdom | Sidney Blumenthal

      by

      On 16 or perhaps 17 July 2024, in Milwaukee, the Republican national convention will likely nominate as its presidential candidate a convicted criminal. When Donald Trump ascends the podium to accept the nomination for his third time he will probably have been found guilty months earlier of having staged an attempted coup to overthrow American democracy – “conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes”, in the words of special counsel Jack Smith.The US district court judge Tanya Chutkan has announced that she will set the trial date at the next hearing on Trump’s case on 28 August. Smith has sought a 2 January 2024 start date for a trial to last an estimated six weeks into mid-February. Trump’s attorneys have preposterously suggested a date in April 2026. If Judge Chutkan fixes the trial for any time before 1 June 2024, Trump will accept the Republican nomination after its verdict is rendered.And if the date is earlier than June, Republican primaries will be conducted at the same time as the trial. Day by day, the compounding of the doubled events will incite his followers to redouble their fervor and devotion. Rocket fuel will be pumped on to the fire of Trump’s campaign. While the closing statements are delivered to the jury, Republicans will, if the polls hold, have already voted overwhelmingly for Trump and reduced his opponents’ chances to ashes.The day of the first contest, the Iowa caucuses, 15 January, is also the day that his second defamation trial with E Jean Carroll begins. The judge in that case, in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, found in July that Trump had “raped” her. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted … makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that,” he said. So Trump will mount the stage at the convention, regardless of the legal verdict about the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, or any other verdict, as an adjudicated rapist.All told, so far, Trump faces 91 criminal counts in four jurisdictions. Three other elaborate trials will follow his January 6 case, if it is scheduled any time in January or February. His trial date in New York is tentatively on the calendar for 25 March 2024. In that case, he is charged by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg “for falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election. During the election, Trump and others employed a ‘catch and kill’ scheme to identify, purchase, and bury negative information about him and boost his electoral prospects. Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws.”But Bragg has suggested he would postpone this trial to allow the January 6 federal case to be first.Trump’s trial in the Mar-a-Lago presidential records case is on the calendar in Florida for 20 May 2024, where he is charged with the illegal and willful theft of national security documents and obstruction of justice.Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!Poor Mike Pence, who Trump chose as his running mate to balance his sinfulness with Christian virtue, benightedly still believes that truthfulness, righteousness and clean hands makes him the ideal evangelical avatar. He has positioned himself on the Republican issues as a scold of Trump’s fall from grace on abortion. Pence is in favor of a national ban, not leaving it to the states like Trump, as if issues matter. His humility as a godly servant leader, for years imitating every gesture of Trump’s, reached its abrupt end in his refusal to drink from Trump’s poisoned chalice.Yet Pence’s embrace of scripture in the form of the constitution has not beatified him to the evangelicals. There is no worldly subject that can grant him absolution from being perceived as Trump’s Judas. His steadfastness is scorned. His blamelessness is derided. “I’m glad they didn’t hang you,” a man said to Pence at the Iowa state fair. That man’s sentiment is the current definition of moderate Republicanism.The precise source of Trump’s permanent campaign of trials can be traced to before the election of 2016, when his inveterate dirty trickster Roger Stone coined the “Stop the Steal” slogan to claim Trump had been robbed by Senator Ted Cruz in the Colorado caucuses. That falsehood became Trump’s “Stop the Steal” con before the 2020 election, which metastasized into his coup and insurrection, and now the prosecutions. (Last week, a Danish film-maker who has produced a documentary about Stone released previously unseen video of him laying out the details of the fake electors scheme on 5 November 2020, two days after the election. It seems doubtful that Stone was the originator of the conspiracy. The idea was floated in February 2020 at a closed meeting to the rightwing Council on National Policy, whose president, Tom Fitton, later called on Trump to pardon Stone. Fitton sent Trump a memo on 31 October 2020, three days before the election, advising him to declare before the ballots were counted, “We had an election today – and I won.” Fitton has been identified by a number of news organizations as Unnamed Co-Conspirator Individual 1 in the Georgia indictment.)But Trump’s career in crime is an epic story that antedates his election fraud. The Georgia indictment charging him with operating a “criminal enterprise” is overdue by almost 50 years. His coup d’état is the coup de grâce. But the enormity of his conspiracy to overturn the election ultimately depended upon the weak reed of Pence, who proved surprisingly unpliable. Trump brought the lessons he learned in the demimonde of New York to Washington.He always wanted his Roy Cohn, his model lawyer and mouthpiece. His credentials were nonpareil. Cohn was born and bred in the clubhouse political culture of graft and favoritism, Joe McCarthy’s vicious counsel, returned to the city as its number one fixer, from the mob to the Catholic archdiocese, who had won his own acquittals in four criminal trials for bribery and conspiracy when the Trumps – father Fred, with his real-estate empire in the outer boroughs, and his son Donald, on the make in the Big Apple – hired him in 1974 to get them off the hook of a federal suit for housing discrimination against black tenants. On advice of counsel, Trump repeatedly perjured himself, Cohn dragged the case out, and the Trumps ignored Department of Justice decrees. Cohn claimed the case was created by “planted malcontents”. Trump, meanwhile, got his real-estate license, and Cohn would set him up with the mob to build Trump Tower.But Roy Cohn was only one part of what Trump required to operate. He also needed the prosecutors to lay off. He needed his Robert Morgenthau, scion of one of New York’s most distinguished families, personification of civic virtue, the US attorney for the southern district of New York for a dozen years and the district attorney of Manhattan for 35 years, “my friend, the late, GREAT, Robert Morgenthau”, as Trump called him after his death at 100. Morgenthau brought Trump on to the board of the Police Athletic Association, hosted a tribute dinner to him and accepted campaign contributions. He never opened a single investigation into Trump, and always felt there was nothing to see.Soon after Rudy Giuliani was appointed the US attorney for the southern district in 1983, Trump was bounced out of New York by the bankers. Trump’s profligacy and mismanagement crashed his monumental casino and hotel, the Taj Mahal in New Jersey, built with mob help, and he could not secure his loans. Giuliani was busy elsewhere, prosecuting the five families of the mafia, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) of 1970, the first time the act was applied in a major case. His pioneering use of the Rico statute made Giuliani’s reputation. Trump and Giuliani circled each other in a strange dance of outsized egos.Giuliani threw in with Trump late in the game, during the 2016 campaign, when he manipulated his network of FBI agents in and around the New York office to raise the pressure on director James Comey to reopen the already closed investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails because of the existence of a computer owned by her aide Huma Abedin and accessed by her husband Anthony Weiner. Comey succumbed. His public announcements were decisive in shifting marginal votes in swing states to Trump. (The FBI chief of counter-intelligence in the New York office at the time, Charles McGonigal, closely connected to Giuliani, pleaded guilty this week to money-laundering payments from a sanctioned Russian oligarch.)Trump’s next task for Giuliani was to troll through the back alleys of Ukraine seeking disinformation on Joe Biden to discredit him as the Democratic candidate in 2020. Giuliani’s efforts were an essential element in Trump’s scheme that prompted him to attempt extorting Volodymyr Zelensky into trading fabricated dirt on Biden for missiles desperately needed to defend Ukraine against Russia. Trump was impeached for the first time.Giuliani was the master of Rico. He knew better than anyone how the law worked and the mafia operated. The first he used to forge his image as a crime-fighter; the second he emulated on Trump’s behalf. So, the wielder of Rico was ensnared under Rico. He learned first-hand how the mafia did its business. He discovered how to organize a racket into an effective hierarchy. He learned the potential value of intimidating innocents. From this point of view, he saw the Republican party as a racket in the making, from the Republican National Committee to the Republican Association of Attorneys General to the state parties, all constituent families of a mafia, with Giuliani himself as the consigliere to the capo di tutti capi.“This criminal organization,” stated the Georgia indictment, “… constituted an ongoing organization whose members and associates functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise.” Giuliani was indicted on 13 counts, including racketeering, making false statements, harassment and intimidation of an election worker, and election fraud. The former prosecutor is the prosecuted. He is struggling to meet his attorney’s fees. He complains that he is owed $300,000 from Trump for non-payment for his counsel.The trials have become Trump’s engine for capturing his third Republican nomination. His celebrity has been transformed into a passion play of victimization. His problem is that the trials are not shows.
      Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More