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      ‘Time has run out’: UN fails to reach agreement to protect marine life

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      ‘Time has run out’: UN fails to reach agreement to protect marine lifeThis fifth round of discussions was meant to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would protect biodiversity in international waters The latest round of talks at the United Nations aimed at securing protections for marine life in international waters that cover half the planet ended without agreement Saturday.The fifth round of discussions, which began two weeks ago, were designed to establish a UN Ocean Treaty that would set rules for protecting biodiversity in two-thirds of the world’s oceanic areas that lie outside territorial waters.Time running out to protect world’s oceans, conservationists say as UN treaty talks stallRead moreBut UN members failed to agree on how to share benefits from marine life, establish protected areas, or to prevent human activity with life on the high seas.“Although we did make excellent progress, we still do need a little bit more time to progress towards the finish line,” UN oceans ambassador Rena Lee said, according to Agence France-Presse.Many hoped that the New York session, which began on 15 August, would ultimately produce an agreed treaty text on “the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction”.But environmental campaigners, who noted that discussions had been continuing on and off for 15 years, expressed disappointment and blamed wealthy countries, including the US, of being too slow to compromise.Among the issues holding up the treaty is agreement on a process for creating protected areas as well as environmental impact assessments.“While progress has been made, particularly on ocean sanctuaries, members of the High Ambition Coalition and countries like the USA have moved too slowly to find compromises, despite their commitments,” said Laura Meller of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign.Meller said that some groups, like the Pacific islands and the Caribbean group, had pushed to complete the agreement. But countries in the global north had only started working to reach compromises in the final days of negotiations, she said.“Time has run out,” Meller added. “Further delay means ocean destruction. We are sad and disappointed. While countries continue to talk, the oceans and all those who rely on them will suffer.”Greenpeace had warned Thursday that treaty talks were on the brink of failure because of the greed of countries in the High Ambition Coalition and others such as the US and Canada. At issue, the group said, was prioritizing hypothetical future profits from Marine Genetics Resources over protecting the oceans.Meller also said that Russia had blocked negotiations, refusing to engage in the treaty process and in attempts at compromise with the European Union “on a wide range of issues”.Monica Medina, the assistant US secretary of state, said her country remained committed to the goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. “We cannot let the tides and currents push us back,” Medina said. “We must keep going.”Unless the UN general assembly schedules a special emergency session to conclude negotiations, talks will not automatically resume until next year.If the body fails to do so, Greenpeace warned that “it will be challenging to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 – the 30×30 target that scientists say is the minimum needed to give the oceans space to recover”.The failure to reach an agreement comes after world leaders at the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon in July vowed to do everything in their power to save the seas. But despite uplifting calls to action in the closing statement, no clear commitments emerged.“While it’s disappointing that the treaty wasn’t finalized during the past two weeks of negotiations, we remain encouraged by the progress that was made,” said Liz Karan of the NGO Pew Charitable Trusts of the latest round of talks.Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed reporting.TopicsUnited NationsOceansNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Duo plead guilty to plot to sell Biden daughter’s stolen diary to Project Veritas

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      Duo plead guilty to plot to sell Biden daughter’s stolen diary to Project VeritasAimee Harris stole items from Ashley Biden’s room and conspired Robert Kurlander to sell them to activist group, prosecutors say Two people have pleaded guilty in a scheme to peddle a diary and other items belonging to Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said Thursday.The two, both from Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams’s office said.While authorities did not identify Biden, the type of property stolen or the organization that paid, the details of the investigation have been public for months.“Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pled guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property involving the theft of personal belongings of an immediate family member of a then former government official who was a candidate for national political office,” the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York announced in a statement on Thursday.Ashley Biden stored the diary, tax records, a digital device with family photos and a cellphone in September 2020 in a Delray Beach, Florida, home where one of the defendants was living at the time, prosecutors said in a release.According to case interviews and documents reviewed by the New York Times, Biden left her belongings in the home of a friend at that time and planned to collect them later that year. The friend, who also knew Harris, allowed Harris to also stay at the home as she was embroiled in a custody dispute and was facing financial struggles.Prosecutors said Harris stole the items and got in touch with the other defendant, a man who contacted Project Veritas, which asked for photos of the material and then paid for the two to bring it to New York.According to Williams, the pair sold the property for “$40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so. Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”Trump applauds far-right provocateurs during ‘social media summit’Read moreProject Veritas has said it received the diary from “tipsters” who said it had been abandoned in a room. The activist group, which identifies itself as a news organization, said it turned the journal over to law enforcement and never did anything illegal.According to the group and its founder, James O’Keefe, Project Veritas “was not involved in any theft of property and that all of Project Veritas’s information on how the confidential sources found the property came from the sources themselves”.When asked earlier this year by New York magazine whether he had a right to publish the diary’s details, O’Keefe replied: “Someone can provide information to me – a third party – and I have a first amendment right to publish that.”Project Veritas is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.In efforts to verify the diary’s authenticity, a Project Veritas operative attempted to deceive Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary did actually belong to her.According to Biden’s lawyers, the group then contacted them in efforts to land an interview with her father prior to the election. Biden’s lawyers, who then reached out to federal prosecutors, accused the group of its “extortionate effort to secure an interview”.Both Harris and Kurlander, who were released from custody after the court hearing, apologized for their actions. “I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” said Harris, according to the New York Times.“I know what I did was wrong and awful and I apologize,” said Kurlander.The pair pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. The count carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. They also each agreed to forfeit $20,000, according to the attorney’s office.Associated Press contributed to this articleTopicsUS crimeJoe BidenFloridaNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans thought they had midterms in the bag. Voters just rejected them again | Lloyd Green

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      Republicans thought they had midterms in the bag. Voters just rejected them againLloyd GreenTuesday’s special election in New York state was more evidence that voters are furious about Republican attacks on abortion rights – and going to the polls to boost Democrats Abortion and Donald Trump will both appear on November’s ballot. On Tuesday, Pat Ryan, a Democrat and a decorated Iraq war veteran, upset Republican Marc Molinaro in a special congressional election in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. Ryan won 52-48 after pre-election polls had painted him as the clear underdog.“This is a huge victory for Dems in a bellwether, Biden +1.5 district,” according to Dave Wasserman, the doyen of congressional-race watchers, with the key words being “huge” and “bellwether”. Said differently, Republican efforts to convert the contest into a referendum on the Democrats and inflation failed.On the campaign trail Ryan made abortion a central issue. “Choice is [on] the ballot, but we won’t go back,” he posted to Facebook hours before the polls opened. “Freedom is under attack, but it’s ours to defend.”Usually, midterms spell disaster for the “in” party that controls the White House. From the looks of things, 2022 may be different.There is a clear backlash against the US supreme court’s evisceration of the rights to privacy and personal autonomy. At the same time, nonstop reports of Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents, and possible obstruction of justice charges against the 45th president, cloud his party’s future.The end of Roe v Wade is not the blessing Republicans had assumed it would be. Looking back, the defeat of Kansas’s anti-abortion referendum was not a one-off event.For the court’s majority, it appears that being “right” was more important than being smart. Ginni Thomas’s husband and four of his colleagues could have upheld Mississippi’s abortion law without demolishing a half-century of precedent.Chief Justice Robert’s concurrence made that reality crystal clear. Yet around the country, Republican candidates still appear hellbent on doubling-down.Tudor Dixon, Michigan’s Republican candidate for governor, spoke of the upside of a 14-year-old rape victim carrying the child to term. “The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” Dixon told an interviewer.Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s order that barred a parentless 16-year-old from ending her pregnancy. The unnamed mother-to-be had failed to demonstrate that she was “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy”.On the other hand, the learned judges and the Republican state legislature believed her to be sufficiently adult to deliver and raise a child.And then there is Texas. Later this week, physicians who perform abortions stand to face life in prison and fines of at least $100,000. Under Texas’s current law, abortions are banned after six weeks, and the state’s statute contains no exceptions for rape or incest.Heading into the fall, Democrats will also be bolstered by Joe Biden’s slowly rising approval numbers, tamer inflation figures, and the emergence of democracy’s precarity as a campaign issue. According to a recent NBC poll, the threat to US democracy has overtaken the cost of living as the No 1 issue for voters.Or, in the words of Congressman-elect Ryan, “Our democracy is fragile, but we will fight for it.”Adding to Republican woes is the poor performance of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in pre-election trial heats. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia, they all lag.By the numbers, forecasters give the Democrats better than a three-in-five chance of continuing to control the upper chamber and leaving their imprimatur on Biden judicial nominations. These days, even Senator Mitch McConnell concedes that the odds of him again becoming majority leader are iffy: “Flipping the Senate … It’s a 50/50 proposition … I think the outcome is likely to be very, very close either way.”He also reminded Republicans that running for Senate is not the same thing as running for a House seat albeit with a louder and larger microphone. “Senate races are statewide,” McConnell observed. “They’re just different in nature from individual congressional districts.”Apparently, Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, has not yet noticed. First, he burned-through a pile of campaign cash. Now, he has been spotted vacationing on a luxury yacht off the coast of Italy while Americans struggle.On Monday, Scott tweeted: “Another week of President Biden vacationing in Delaware vs. working at the White House.” Cluelessness is not just the province of Justices Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh.
      Lloyd Green served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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      New York primaries: Nadler beats Maloney in bitter Democratic fight

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      New York primaries: Nadler beats Maloney in bitter Democratic fightHouse judiciary chair declared the winner over House oversight chair in heavyweight bout as gerrymandered map causes upheaval In an unpleasant end to a bitter New York Democratic primary on Tuesday, allies of two powerful House committee chairs traded nasty barbs – before one saw a long career in Congress brought to an untimely end.Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight committee, said her opponent in New York’s 12th district, Jerrold Nadler, was “half-dead”, possibly senile and unlikely to finish his next term in Washington, CNN reported. Allies of Nadler, the judiciary chair, called Maloney “kooky” and “not entirely sober”.Florida: Charlie Crist wins Democratic primary to challenge Ron DeSantisRead moreIn the end, Nadler’s political career remained wholly alive. With nearly 90% of results in when the race was called, he had taken 56% of the vote to 24% for Maloney. A third candidate, Suraj Patel, brought up the rear.Speaking before the vote, Nadler told CNN: “It’s obviously not true that I’m half-dead, it’s obviously not true that I’m senile … Let them flail away.”In his victory speech, Nadler said he and Maloney “have spent much of our adult lives working together to better both New York and our nation. I speak for everyone in this room tonight when I thank her for her decades of service to our city.”Nadler and Maloney, both septuagenarians with 30-year Washington careers, were forced into their undignified fight to stay in Congress by redistricting, after the New York supreme court said Democrats gerrymandered the map.Nadler, 75, was first elected in 1992. As chair of the House judiciary committee, he led both impeachments of Donald Trump. He was buoyed in the last weeks of the primary campaign by endorsements from the New York Times and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader.He said he would go back to Congress “with a mandate to fight for the causes so many of us know to be right”, including abortion access and climate change.Maloney, 76, also first elected in 1992, is the first woman to chair the House oversight committee. Known for her advocacy for 9/11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center, she once wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala.On Tuesday, Maloney said women in politics still face misogyny, something she said she experienced herself in her primary campaign.“I’m really saddened that we no longer have a woman representing Manhattan in Congress,” Maloney said. “It has been a great, great honor and a joy and a privilege to work for you.”Among other New York Democratic contests teed up by district changes, Sean Patrick Maloney, a senior party figure, saw off Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive backed by the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by a comfortable margin, 67% to 33% at the point the race was called.Elsewhere, Daniel Goldman, lead counsel in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, beat Mondaire Jones, one of the first two gay Black men in Congress, and Yuh-Line Niou, another progressive candidate, in a tightly fought race.In the Republican primaries, Carl Paladino – a far-right former candidate for governor who has praised Hitler, made racist remarks about Barack and Michelle Obama and said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed – established an early lead over his opponent in a Buffalo-area seat before being reeled in and defeated by Nick Langworthy, chair of the state party.There was also a key special election for Congress, in which Pat Ryan, the Democrat, established an early lead over Marc Molinaro, his Republican challenger in the 19th district. Molinaro made up ground as the night went on – before the race was called for Ryan, 51% to 49%.Ryan will only sit in Congress until the end of the year, as both men will fight other seats in November. But observers were watching closely for clues as to voter intentions less than three months before the midterms.Republicans are favoured to retake the House, as opposition parties often do in the first midterms of a presidential term. But the win for Ryan will be seized upon by national Democratic leaders hoping that recent domestic legislative successes and the excesses of the conservative-dominated supreme court, particularly on abortion, could tilt the midterms contests their way.The New York seat fell vacant when Antonio Delgado, a Democrat, resigned from Congress to become lieutenant governor to Kathy Hochul. Republicans targeted the district as a possible flip, with heavy campaign spending.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022New YorkDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump reportedly kept hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago – as it happened

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      Despite rules requiring outgoing presidents to turn their materials over to the National Archives, the US government has retrieved more than 300 classified documents from Donald Trump since he left office, beginning with an initial 150 recovered in January, The New York Times reports.The initial release of documents alarmed the justice department, which feared that the former president may have retained secrets that should have been sent to the government after his departure from the White House. It also laid the groundwork for the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month, where they turned up even more sensitive materials.Since he left the White House, the report says government record keepers have been concerned about the whereabouts of the several documents from the Trump administration, including a note Barack Obama left his successor, and letters from North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un. Those concerns eventually grew into the national security investigation that led to the FBI’s search. Here’s more from Times’ report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.
      The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
      Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
      The highly sensitive nature of some of the material in the boxes prompted archives officials to refer the matter to the Justice Department, which within months had convened a grand jury investigation.
      Aides to Mr. Trump turned over a few dozen additional sensitive documents during a visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justice Department officials in early June. At the conclusion of the search this month, officials left with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information.New details emerged about the federal government’s alarm over the trove of documents Donald Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago, which allegedly included secret materials that were supposed to be in the custody of the National Archives. Meanwhile, voters in New York and Florida are casting ballots in primary elections, which will set the stage for showdowns in the November midterms.Here’s a rundown of today’s events:
      Two men were found guilty for plotting to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
      The Republican senator in charge of winning the party a majority in Congress’ upper chamber went on vacation even as GOP candidates appeared to be struggling in key races nationwide.
      The January 6 committee interviewed Trump’s former national security adviser, according to a report.
      In Colorado, a Republican state senator left the party for the Democrats, saying he couldn’t abide by its stance on climate change or its embrace of 2020 election denial.
      He may be a rival of Trump but fellow Republican and Florida governor Ron DeSantis joined in on attacking the FBI for searching the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. He also released an advertisement attacking the news media.
      The Internal Revenue Service is launching a safety review after Republicans attacked the agency during their campaign to derail the Biden administration’s plan for lowering healthcare costs and carbon emissions, the Washington Post reports.The plan, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act and signed into law earlier this month after winning passage in the Democrat-controlled Congress, also allocates $80bn to the IRS over the next 10 years. The tax authority has complained of underfunding, but Republicans seized on the infusion of money to claim that armed agents would soon be going through Americans’ bank accounts. In reality, it’s not yet clear how the funds will be used, and only a minority of the IRS’s employees carry weapons, chiefly those involved in criminal investigations.“We see what’s out there in terms of social media. Our workforce is concerned about their safety,” IRS commissioner Charles Rettig told the Post in an interview. “The comments being made are extremely disrespectful to the agency, to the employees and to the country.” Union officials in the story also say employees are worried about their safety amid the rightwing attacks.Here’s more from the Post’s report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In a letter to employees sent Tuesday, he wrote that the agency would conduct risk assessments for each of the IRS’s 600 facilities, and evaluate whether to increase security patrols along building exteriors, boost designations for restricted areas, examine security around entrances and assess exterior lighting. It will be the agency’s first such review since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 people.
      “For me this is personal,” Rettig wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post. “I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work. And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience. You go above and beyond every single day, and I am honored to work with each of you.”Armed … auditors? The IRS becomes the latest target of GOP misinformationRead moreThe United States will as soon as Wednesday unveil $3bn in additional military aid for Ukraine intended to help it withstand a longer conflict with Russia, the Associated Press reports.The funds will bring Washington’s total military assistance to the country to $10.6bn since Biden took office, and pay for new weaponry that Ukraine will take longer to get to the battlefield.Here’s more from the AP:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Unlike most previous packages, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments, most of them done under Presidential Drawdown Authority, have focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel that the Pentagon already has in stock that can be shipped in short order.
      In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for potential future defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the United States intends to keep up its support, regardless of the day-to-day back and forth of the conflict, the officials said.
      NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the more extended focus Tuesday as he reaffirmed the alliance’s support for the conflict-torn country.
      “Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term, so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a virtual conference about Crimea, organized by Ukraine.Florida senator Rick Scott is the man charged with leading the Republican party’s campaign to win a majority in the chamber, but Axios is reporting today that he’s on vacation in Italy amid mounting signs that GOP candidates are struggling in key races nationwide.That news of the senator’s whereabouts leaked shows just how upset GOP lawmakers are with Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The party’s candidates are struggling in states where they shouldn’t. Consider the situation in Ohio, which has increasingly trended towards the GOP in recent years but where a Republican Super Pac just spent $28m to support JD Vance’s flagging Senate campaign.The Senate’s Republican leader Mitch McConnell has also taken to repeating that if he has a majority in the chamber next year, he expects it will be slim – not exactly a sign of confidence in the party’s chances.“If House Republicans coast to victory while Senate Republicans fail to pick up the one seat necessary to win a majority, Scott is poised to be the GOP’s fall guy. It would be a rare setback for the Florida politician, who has beaten long odds before and boasts an undefeated record in his own campaigns,” as Axios puts it.Last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis traveled to Ohio to campaign for JD Vance, the Republican candidate for the state’s open Senate seat. Journalists obviously wanted to attend, but there was a catch. In fact, there was more than one.The organizers of the event, Trump-aligned Turning Point Action, put in place a host of restrictions affecting who reporters could talk to and where they could do it. They also required them to share any video shot during the event for promotional use.Normally, the Cleveland Plain Dealer would send its reporters to this sort of event, but in a strongly worded editorial, the newspaper’s editor Chris Quinn pointed to the rules and said none of his reporters would attend. He also warned voters about what DeSantis and Vance’s apparent acceptance of these restrictions said about their approach to press freedom:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate in 2024, scheduled a trip to Ohio Friday to stump for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and our reporters were not there because of ridiculous restrictions that DeSantis and Vance placed on anyone covering the event.
      The worst of the rules was one prohibiting reporters from interviewing attendees not first approved by the organizers of the event for DeSantis and Vance. When we cover events, we talk to anyone we wish. It’s America, after all, the land of free speech. At least that’s America as it exists today. Maybe not the America that would exist under DeSantis and Vance.
      Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime. A wannabe U.S. Senator, and maybe a wannabe president.
      Another over-the-top rule was one reserving the right to receive copies of any video shot of the event for promotional use. That’s never okay. News agencies are independent of the political process. We do not provide our work product to anyone for promotional use. To do so would put us in league with people we cover, destroying our credibility.
      Yet another of the rules reserved the right to know in what manner any footage of the event would be used. We are news people. We use footage on news platforms. But this rule set up a situation in which reporters could be grilled on their intentions.
      I’m scratching my head over one other rule, one that prohibited reporters from entering the hotel rooms of any attendees of the event. If someone invites a reporter into a hotel room for an interview, what’s the harm?
      Anyway, we didn’t accept the limitations, because they end up skewing the facts. If we can speak only with attendees chosen by the candidate, we don’t get a true accounting of what people thought of the event. You get spin from the most ardent supporters.The January 6 committee hasn’t held a hearing in a month and Congress is on recess, but NBC News has details of what their investigators are up to.The panel has interviewed Robert O’Brien, Donald Trump’s national security adviser for the final part of his term, including when the Capitol was attacked:SCOOP: The Jan 6 committee interviewed former national security adviser Robert O’Brien TODAY, 2 sources familiar with the panel’s work confirmed to @NBCNewsThe interview was scheduled for 11:00AM remotely W/ @alivitali— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) August 23, 2022
      The January 6 committee has said it will resume public hearings in September.Speaking of Ron DeSantis, Gloria Oladipo reports that the Florida governor has released a new advertisement attacking the news media:Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday released a campaign advertisement drawing on the movie franchise Top Gun to attack the news media.The ad is the latest stunt by DeSantis to promote far-right talking points before Tuesday’s statewide primary and a possible future run for the Oval Office in 2024.In the parody, posted to Twitter, DeSantis wears a bomber jacket similar to outfits worn by the Top Gun star Tom Cruise in the franchise’s two films and discusses “taking on the corporate media” in an airbase.“The rules of engagement are as follows: number one – don’t fire unless fired upon, but when they fire, you fire back with overwhelming force,” DeSantis says in the video. “Number two – never ever back down from a fight. Number three – don’t accept their narrative.”Florida governor Ron DeSantis attacks media in ‘Top Gun’ campaign adRead moreWhen they choose their governorship candidate, Florida Democrats will find a familiar name on their ballots: Charlie Crist. A former Republican governor turned Democrat who is now a House representative, he could become the party’s choice to take on Ron DeSantis. Crist spoke with the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland ahead of the vote:Charlie Crist exuded a smooth confidence as he bounded into the room, a conference hall at a teachers union building in downtown Tampa, Florida, earlier this month.He may be facing a primary election to be the Democratic candidate in the next gubernatorial election, but Crist’s focus seems already set on the general in November – and the far-right Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, he hopes to unseat.“He’s the most arrogant governor I’ve ever seen in my life,” Crist said to the assembled teachers who nodded in agreement. “It is shocking, it really is. Enough is enough.”As primary voters in the state cast their ballots today, polls forecast that Crist, a Florida political mainstay, is likely to win by a substantial margin against his closest Democratic opponent, the state’s agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried.‘He’s a wannabe dictator’: Democrat has DeSantis in his sights in Florida primaryRead moreDemocratic voters in part of New York City today will be asked to choose a House representative from two ageing lawmakers who have become fierce rivals, as well as a young challenger.CNN has published a well-done look at the contenders in the district representing Manhattan’s upper east and west sides. Carolyn Maloney is the chair of the House oversight committee but, as the network found out, apparently doesn’t appreciate oversight from reporters:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Maloney has dodged questions about her comments and her aides have refused to give almost any information about her whereabouts in the closing days of the campaign, arguing that she changes her mind too much to keep track of her. When a CNN reporter tracked her down on Monday at a campaign stop on the Upper West Side to ask her about her comments, she began running down the sidewalk to a waiting car, while one of her daughters repeatedly positioned herself with her hands and legs out in an attempt to block any further questions.Maloney has lately been in the news for comments suggesting Joe Biden won’t run for a second term. The lawmaker has also leveled several attacks against Jerry Nadler, chair of the House judiciary committee, who is seen as her chief rival for the seat:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Maloney has told people privately that Nadler is “half dead” and insinuated he won’t be healthy enough to finish another term if he wins, and people associated with her campaign have suggested that Nadler secretly briefly lost consciousness at a campaign stop last week. (His campaign has said that rather than losing consciousness, he tripped on a subway grate.) She’s also urged voters to read a New York Post editorial that called Nadler “senile” and questioned his grip on reality.She didn’t want to answer questions about that, either:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}When asked why she called Nadler “half dead,” Maloney closed the door of the car and waved goodbye. An hour earlier, finishing her only announced campaign stop of the day before the primary, she also closed the door when another reporter asked if she thinks Nadler is senile.CNN reports that, for a New Yorker, Nadler is running a remarkably low-key campaign:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Nadler has not been seen much lately – he had a single public event on Monday, his first since Saturday morning, which is a remarkably sparse schedule for a dense urban district where standing on a street corner can mean meeting dozens of voters in just a few minutes. He’s developed some trouble walking over the years due to arthritis, and he’s been spotted appearing to fall asleep. Commentators noted his lethargic performance at one of the candidate debates.
      On Monday, Nadler stood in suspenders in front of the famous Fairway supermarket, in the heart of the Upper West Side, handing out campaign flyers and somewhat sheepishly trying to get shoppers’ attention, saying, “Hi, I’m Congressman Nadler,” to each.The third Democrat in the race is Suraj Patel, who has twice challenged Maloney unsuccessfully, and at 38 years old, presents quite a contrast to the two sitting representatives, who are both in their 70s. Here’s what he has to say:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}“The time is different. People feel like the status quo in Washington is broken. And what I’ve learned over the course of the race is people feel like the status quo in New York is broken,” Patel said Sunday afternoon, sipping a beer at a standing table in the Chelsea neighborhood between a full day of campaign stops. “It’s given us the license to both be the serious campaign with policy positions for the future, but also to be the light at the end of the tunnel.”Whitmer responds to guilty verdicts in kidnap plotMichigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has responded to the guilty verdicts for two men now convicted of a kidnapping plot against her.She said: “I ran for office because I love my fellow Michiganders and my home state with all my heart. I always will. I will not let extremists get in the way of the work we do. They will never break my unwavering faith in the goodness and decency of our people.”And added: “Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed. But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics.”Kristi Noem in ethics fightSouth Dakota governor Kristi Noem is often touted as a rising star of the Republican party as a staunch Trumpist who governs her huge and rural state with a firm rightwing hand.But she has some serious ethics issues to deal with, the Associated Press reports.The AP says: “A South Dakota ethics board on Monday said it found sufficient information that Gov. Kristi Noem may have “engaged in misconduct” when she intervened in her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser license, and it referred a separate complaint over her state airplane use to the state’s attorney general for investigation.”In a possibly worrying development for Noem (a close ally of Trump sometimes touted as his potential running mate if a 2024 bid emerges) the agency adds: “The three retired judges on the Government Accountability Board determined that “appropriate action” could be taken against Noem for her role in her daughter’s appraiser licensure, though it didn’t specify the action.”More details follow: “The AP first reported that the governor took a hands-on role in a state agency soon after it had moved to deny her daughter’s application for an appraiser license in 2020. Noem had called a meeting with her daughter, the labor secretary and the then-director of the appraiser certification program where a plan was discussed to give the governor’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, another chance to show she could meet federal standards in her appraiser work.”Trump portrait at Smithsonian funded by own PacPolitico reports that Donald Trump’s presidential portrait at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC will be mostly funded by his own Super Pac – a situation unique in the annals of the institution.The news website says:“The $650,000 donation last month from the Save America PAC – an organization controlled by Trump himself – was unprecedented, as no other political action committee has funded a presidential portrait in the past, Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St Thomas said.”It adds:“The Smithsonian has been raising money for commissions of outgoing presidential portraits since George H.W. Bush’s portrait. All presidential portraits in the National Portrait Gallery were paid for by private money through the museum, St Thomas said.”Student loan announcement now imminentAn announcement on forgiving some student loan debt appears to be set for Wednesday, according to the Washington Post political team.Earlier the paper had reported there was a White House “feud” over the issue, saying: “The White House’s close allies are feuding over whether the administration should cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for millions of American borrowers.”It added: “Internal White House discussions have centered on temporarily extending that pause and simultaneously canceling $10,000 per borrower for those below an income threshold, but the president has not yet communicated a decision, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. Another person familiar with the talks said $10,000 is among the options being considered.”But according to a tweet from WashPo reporter Jeff Stein, Biden has now made his mind up. Stein says: “UPDATE: President Biden’s long-awaited student loan announcement IS coming tomorrow, ppl tell me & @DaniDougPost Parameters TBD but WH has been looking at $10K in cancelation per borrower under $125K/yr”New details emerged about the federal government’s alarm over the trove of documents Donald Trump apparently kept at Mar-a-Lago, which allegedly included secret materials that were supposed to be in the custody of the National Archives. Meanwhile, voters in New York and Florida are casting ballots in primary elections that will set the stage for general election showdowns in the November midterms.Here’s a rundown of the day’s events:
      Two men were found guilty for plotting to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
      In Colorado, a Republican state senator left the party for the Democrats, saying he couldn’t abide by its stance on climate change or its embrace of 2020 election denial.
      He may be a rival of Trump but fellow Republican and Florida governor Ron DeSantis joined in on attacking the FBI for searching the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
      Ron DeSantis may be a possible contender against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, but that hasn’t stopped him from joining in on criticizing the FBI for its search of Mar-a-Lago.He was on Fox News claiming that the bureau has become politicized, but declined to say whether he’d spoken to Trump recently:Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) baselessly attacks the FBI as the “enforcement arm of one particular faction of our country” after the lawful search of Mar-a-Lago:“I haven’t read the motion in terms of what was going on, but clearly federal agencies … have been weaponized.” pic.twitter.com/jsP1Ot2MZF— The Recount (@therecount) August 23, 2022
      A jury has found two men guilty of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, according to the Associated Press.Here’s more from their report:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The jury also found Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. guilty of conspiring to obtain a weapon of mass destruction, namely a bomb to blow up a bridge and stymie police if the kidnapping could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.
      Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge.
      It was the second trial for the pair after a jury in April couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. Two other men were acquitted and two more pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors.
      The result was a victory for the government following the shocking mixed outcome last spring.
      “You can’t just strap on an AR-15 and body armor and go snatch the governor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told jurors.
      “But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”
      The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent summer 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.
      The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group.
      Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed.
      Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men.
      Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and government. More

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      Republican says comment Garland should be executed was ‘facetious’

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      Republican says comment Garland should be executed was ‘facetious’Carl Paladino, a Republican candidate for Congress in New York, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler A Republican candidate for Congress in New York said he was “being facetious” when, in the same interview, he said the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, should be executed for authorising the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home.The candidate, Carl Paladino, recently caused controversy when he praised Adolf Hitler, as “the kind of leader we need today”.Paladino made his remark about the attorney general in an interview with the far-right site Breitbart. Paladino said: “So we have a couple of unelected people who are running our government, in an administration of people like Garland, who should be not only impeached, he probably should be executed.“The guy is just lost. He’s a lost soul. He’s trying to get an image, and his image, his methodology is just terrible. To raid the home of a former president is just – people are scratching their heads and they’re saying, ‘What is wrong with this guy?’”Asked to explain his “executed” remark, Paladino said: “I’m just being facetious. The man should be removed from office.”The FBI and Department of Justice have faced violent threats since agents searched Mar-a-Lago for classified White House records, under the Espionage Act.In Ohio, a man who said on social media federal agents should be killed was shot dead after trying to get inside an FBI office with a semiautomatic rifle.Paladino, a real-estate developer, has courted controversy before.As the Republican nominee for governor of New York in 2010, he was criticised for forwarding emails containing racist jokes and pornography.He also said children were being “brainwashed” to make them think being gay was equivalent to being heterosexual.In 2016, he told a newspaper he hoped Barack Obama would die from mad cow disease and said Michelle Obama should “return to being a male” and be sent to live with a gorilla in a cave.The following year, Paladino was removed from Buffalo’s school board. He contended the Obama comments were the reason for his removal.This year, Paladino shared a Facebook post suggesting a racist mass shooting in Buffalo was part of a conspiracy to take away guns. The same month, he apologised for saying Hitler was “the kind of leader we need today”, supposedly because of his ability to rally crowds.In a close primary fight with Nick Langworthy, a state Republican politician, Paladino has been endorsed by Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the US House and a prominent Trump supporter.When Paladino praised Hitler, Stefanik said she “condemn[ed] any statement, but don’t take it out of context”.The justice department did not immediately comment on Paladino’s remarks about Garland.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansUS CongressMerrick GarlandNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump declines to answer questions in New York business investigation

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      Trump declines to answer questions in New York business investigationEx-president pleads the fifth two days after the FBI raided his Florida home, seeking classified documents Donald Trump declined to answer questions under oath on Wednesday in New York state’s civil investigation into his business dealings, pleading the fifth two days after the FBI raided his Florida home in a criminal case, seeking classified documents taken from the White House.The former US president’s decision to exercise his fifth amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination was delivered during a closed-door deposition in Manhattan, where the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, is examining the Trump family real estate empire.“I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States constitution,” Trump said in a statement as he prepared to appear before James.Trump’s deposition, which took place in lower Manhattan, appears to have lasted several hours. The former president departed 28 Liberty Street at 3.20pm in a black Secret Service SUV and peered out of the rear window as his motorcade crawled out of an underground garage and drove past onlookers.After Trump’s deposition concluded, one of Trump’s lawyers, Ronald Fischetti, confirmed that over the course of four hours, including several breaks, the former president had answered just one question – to state his name – and offered a statement calling the inquiry “the greatest witch hunt in the history of country”.According to the New York Times, Trump accused the attorney general of having “openly campaigned on a policy of destroying me”.Beyond that, from 9.30am to around 3pm, Trump had repeated the words “same answer” to every question about “valuations and golf clubs and all that stuff”, Fischetti told the Times.The attorney added that Trump’s decision to take the fifth had been made shortly before the interview started. “He absolutely wanted to testify and it took some very strong persuasion by me and some others to convince him,” Fischetti added.The high-stakes legal meeting came as pressure from senior Republicans mounted on the US Department of Justice, in the entirely separate case, to reveal details of the federal search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in exclusive Palm Beach on Monday.The FBI search, the Guardian has reported, was authorized to seek presidential and classified records that the justice department believes the one-term former Republican president unlawfully retained after his time in the White House was up.However news of the search triggered outrage from Republican leaders, demanding that Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, swiftly explain the department’s actions. On Tuesday, Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, expressed “deep concern”, adding on Twitter: “No former president of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history.”Senate minority leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell called for a “thorough and immediate explanation”.“Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately,” McConnell said in a statement.Meanwhile, the Palm Beach county state attorney, Dave Aronberg, a Democrat, rejected the characterization of the search as a “raid”, telling MSNBC​ that was “a gross exaggeration”.“This was a very orderly, smooth search of a home conducted by plain clothes FBI agents, escorted by Secret Service agents,​” Aronberg said.​FBI searched Trump’s home seeking classified presidential records – sourcesRead moreTrump’s lawyers have a copy of the warrant issued for the search and a list of what the FBI seized, Politico reported.Back in New York, before Trump’s deposition session on Wednesday, he slammed the legal encounter in a brash post on his Truth Social social media platform, his alternative after he was banned from Twitter.“In New York City tonight. Seeing racist NYS Attorney General tomorrow, for a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in US history!” Trump wrote, repeating an insult he has repeatedly thrown at James, who is Black and the first woman of color ever to hold statewide elected office in New York.“My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides,” Trump also posted, adding: “Banana Republic!”The case involves allegations that Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, misstated the value of assets including some of his golf courses and skyscrapers, misleading lenders and tax authorities.At the heart of the case are claims that Trump has for decades falsely inflated his fortune – a dance that involves publicity, maximizing access to bank loans and minimizing tax obligations. “I look better if I’m worth $10bn than if I’m worth $4bn,” he once said. In his book, The Art of the Deal, he chose to describe his business style as “truthful hyperbole”.In May, James’s office said that the investigation was nearing its conclusion and that investigators had amassed substantial evidence that could support legal action, such as a lawsuit, against Trump, his company or both. The attorney general’s office said Trump’s deposition was one of the few remaining pieces to be collected.Two of Trump’s adult children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, are believed to have testified in the investigation in recent days. Trump’s testimony was initially scheduled for last month but was delayed after the 14 July death of his ex-wife, Ivana Trump.Trump has denied the allegations, explaining that seeking the best valuations is a common practice in the real estate industry. While James has explored suing Trump or his company, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been pursuing a parallel, criminal, investigation. However, it ran into problems after a new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, raised questions internally about the viability of the case, and its lead prosecutors resigned.Bragg has said the investigation is continuing.Commenting further on his refusal to answer questions on Wednesday, Trump’s statement continued: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question … When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded politically motivated witch hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors and the fake news media, you have no choice.”As vociferous as Trump has been in defending himself in written statements and on stage at political rallies, legal experts said answering questions in a deposition was risky because anything he said could be used against him in Bragg’s investigation.The fifth amendment protects people from being compelled to be a witness against themselves in a criminal case.When the state investigation wraps up, James could seek financial penalties against Trump or his company, or even a ban on their involvement in certain types of businesses – as happened in a previous legal clash with James when, in 2019, the-then president was fined $2m for misuse of charitable assets and barred from running a charity in the future.The Associated Press contributed reporting
      This article was amended on 10 August 2022. An earlier version stated that Donald Trump gave onlookers a thumbs-up after his deposition; it was before the deposition.
      TopicsDonald TrumpNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump says he invoked fifth amendment in New York attorney general’s investigation: ‘I declined to answer’ – as it happened

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      In a lengthy statement, Donald Trump has announced he refused to answer questions during a deposition today as part of New York attorney general Letitia James’s investigation into his real estate dealings.The statement is full of attacks on James, but closes with the former president declaring he has lost faith in the justice system – at least under his Democratic rival, president Joe Biden:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I once asked, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice. If there was any question in my mind, the raid of my home, Mar-a-Lago, on Monday by the FBI, just two days prior to this deposition, wiped out any uncertainty. I have absolutely no choice because the current Administration and many prosecutors in this Country have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.
      Accordingly, under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution.Trump to face sworn deposition in New York lawsuit as legal troubles mountRead moreBe they at Mar-a-Lago or the New York attorney general’s office, former president Donald Trump’s legal issues were a major story today, as was an alleged Iranian plot to kill John Bolton, one of Tehran’s biggest enemies in Washington.Here’s a recap of the day’s events:
      Donald Trump invoked the fifth amendment against self incrimination when he sat for a deposition at the office of state attorney general Letitia James this morning, in her civil case relating to the former president’s real estate business.
      National security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Iran against any attacks targeting Americans following allegations that it plotted to kill Bolton, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration and noted Iran hawk.
      Data showing inflation flatlining in July prompted Joe Biden to say the figures were a sign that the world’s largest economy was healthy and poised to see prices moderate in the months to come.
      House speaker Nancy Pelosi said her visit to Taiwan was meant as a show of solidarity and not to fundamentally change Washington’s relationship with the island.
      Politico reports some new developments in the FBI’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, specifically efforts to get access to the search warrant, which hasn’t been released.Both rightwing group Judicial Watch and the Times Union newspaper serving the Albany, New York areas have filed motions to unseal the warrant:JUST IN: Judicial Watch motion to unseal the (possible) sealed search warrant for Mar-a-Lago has hit the docket.https://t.co/JORzlrE7rl pic.twitter.com/DT3XF5fNPs— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 10, 2022
      BREAKING: Magistrate Judge Reinhart is asking for DOJ to respond to Judicial Watch’s unsealing request for (what I presume is) the Mar-a-Lago warrant by COB on Aug. 15. pic.twitter.com/Y4uJV3TGoz— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 10, 2022
      The Albany Times-Union has also made a motion to unseal the search warrant, and Magistrate Reinhart has said DOJ can file a consolidated response to all unsealing motions: https://t.co/vdCBCdPwpG— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 10, 2022
      And the Times-Union has made an identical motion to unseal a second sealed search-warrant case that was also docketed on Friday. It’s unclear which of the two is the Mar-a-Lago warrant.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 10, 2022
      Meanwhile, FBI director Christopher Wray isn’t saying much about the matter, according to ABC:Speaking for the first time since the FBI searched Former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters in Omaha, NB he couldn’t get into the details. “Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate that’s not something I can talk about,” he said.— Luke Barr (@LukeLBarr) August 10, 2022
      Voters in four more states went to the polls last night to choose candidates in primary elections – and to also offer a glimpse into how Americans are thinking as the November midterms draw ever nearer.Multiple pollsters now see the Democrats’ prospects improving thanks to voters rallying around reproductive rights following the supreme court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and Republicans opting for more extreme, Trump-friendly candidates to stand in the upcoming general election. Nate Cohn of The New York Times puts it this way:The GOP holds MN-1 in last night’s special election, but only by a modest 4 point margin (Trump+10 district; R+3 in last House race)The signs of a Democratic rebound post-Dobbs are starting to pile up https://t.co/9XJZGnxPqT— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 10, 2022
      There haven’t been many other special/non-primary election results since Dobbs, but MN-01 isn’t exactly alone. NE-01 was also a strong showing for Democrats. There’s also the KS abortion referendum, if you count it.We’ll get more data, including NY-19, over the next few weeks.— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 10, 2022
      Democrats have also trended upward on the generic congressional ballot, where they’ve reached parity with the GOPNo way to know if it lasts until November, but the focus on abortion/Jan 6 hasn’t ebbed–yet. At the same time, the news on inflation has improved for Ds— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 10, 2022
      Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight sees things like this:Here’s something I think about. Let’s say Democrats somehow do hold the House this year. It’s not likely, but it’s also not impossible (~20% chance per 538 model). In 20 years, will people have a hard time explaining why it happened?I think no, they won’t. https://t.co/IiuAg9cVWO— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 10, 2022
      The last time POTUS’s party gained seats in the House were 1998 and 2002. These are generally attributed to Lewinsky and 9/11, respectively.If Ds hold the House in 2022, people will attribute it to Roe being overturned and overall GOP radicalization including Jan. 6.— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 10, 2022
      Is Dobbs + Jan. 6 a “special circumstance” equal in magnitude to 9/11? That’s a very apples-to-oranges comparison but I’d tend to say no; people forget how profoundly 9/11 changed public opinion. But is it comparable to Lewinsky? Certainly. It’s bigger, I’d think.— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 10, 2022
      Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter sums it up:This much is clear from Kansas and the #NE01/#MN01 House specials: there’s still time for things to snap back before November, but we’re no longer living in a political environment as pro-GOP as November 2021.— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 10, 2022
      To be sure, Democrats appear to be deep under water in the polls when it comes to control of the House, FiveThirtyEight says. Faring even worse is Joe Biden himself, whose approval rate has slid and slid and slid for months, with signs of stabilization coming only recently.The House of Representatives has taken the first steps to passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s marquee spending proposal that is intended to lower health care costs and fight climate change.The Senate approved the legislation over the weekend with Democratic votes alone after pulling an all-nighter Saturday. While the House isn’t expected to vote on the bill till Friday, the chamber’s rules committee convened today to move it towards consideration by the full chamber.With Democrats thought to be on the cusp of losing control of the House in the November midterm elections, the bill could be one of the last major pieces of legislation passed in Biden’s first term. It was also intended to be much more ambitious, but provisions to lower housing costs and provide more aid and social services to poor Americans were stripped out in the lengthy negotiations that preceded its passage in the Senate.The Washington Post reports that Democrats are now making something of a long-shot pitch to voters: re-elect us in September and we will try again to pass those programs that didn’t make it into the Inflation Reduction Act. As Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer put it to the paper: “If we win, we’re going to have to do a reconciliation bill that will take care of a lot of the things that we couldn’t do”.Monkeypox cases are increasing across the United States, and as Wilfred Chan reports, the campaign against the disease is caught up in rightwing campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights:The conservative campaign against LGBTQ+ rights has found a new fixation for its hatred: monkeypox. On TV, rightwing commentators openly mock monkeypox victims – the vast majority of whom are men who have sex with men – and blame them for getting the disease. On social media, rightwing users trade memes about how the “cure” to monkeypox is straight marriage while casting doubt on monkeypox vaccines’ efficacy.This aggressive stigmatization of monkeypox – reminiscent of the homophobic response to HIV/Aids in the 1980s – poses a serious challenge to public health advocates and community leaders trying to have honest conversations about the disease with the gay and bisexual men who are most at risk during the current outbreak. Should public messaging highlight the fact that monkeypox is primarily affecting men who have sex with men? And should public health bodies urge gay men to change their sexual practices?The simultaneous threats of homophobia and monkeypox require making a difficult choice about which to tackle first, says the writer and veteran Aids activist Mark S King, a 61-year-old gay man.Rightwing media embraces Aids-era homophobia in monkeypox coverageRead moreFederal prosecutors in Michigan today began laying out their case against two men accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, saying that conversations about their plan went beyond just idle talk, Reuters reports.Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr face kidnapping and weapons conspiracy charges for the second time after a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan declared a mistrial last April.The men – alleged members of the Three Percenters, a self-styled militia group – are accused of plotting to abduct Whitmer from her vacation home and stage a “trial” for her for treason. Two other defendants were found not guilty in the men’s first trial.The mistrial was a setback for federal prosecutors in one of the highest-profile cases in years involving militias. The second trial will give them another opportunity.In his opening statement on Wednesday, a prosecutor said the men determined where the governor, performed reconnaissance on her summer cottage and gathered the equipment they needed, such as body armor and ammunition, to carry out their plan, according to a local TV station..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This wasn*t just talk. You will see these defendants and others took specific steps, planning and training,” Chris O’Connor, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, told the jury, local Fox affiliate WXMI reported.Attorneys for Fox and Croft revived their arguments from the first trial saying that there was no conspiracy.Christopher Gibbons, who represents Fox, described the accused as “big talkers” whose comments should not be taken seriously, according to NBC-affiliate WOOD-TV.If convicted on the conspiracy charges, the men face the possibility of life in prison.The two men on trial are among 13 men who were arrested in October 2020 and charged with state or federal crimes in the alleged kidnapping conspiracy. Seven of them are facing charges in state court.It’s been a sparky morning in US political news, mainly relating to the man Joe Biden refers to as “that guy”. The president has now jetted off on vacation but we’ll bring you all the developments as they happen.Here’s where things stand.
      Donald Trump invoked the fifth amendment against self incrimination (with an eye to a parallel criminal case in New York) during a deposition at the office of state attorney general Letitia James this morning, in her civil case relating to the former president’s real estate business.
      National security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Iran against any attacks targeting Americans following allegations that it plotted to kill John Bolton, a noted foe of Tehran who served in the Trump administration.
      The justice department announced charges against a Tehran-based member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards for attempting to hire someone in the United States to kill John Bolton, a national security adviser under Donald Trump.
      Data showing inflation flatlining in July prompted Joe Biden to say the figures were a sign that the world’s largest economy was healthy and poised to see prices moderate in the months to come.
      Here is the president and family heading to South Carolina for a break..⁦@POTUS⁩ and fam off to South Carolina for vacation pic.twitter.com/LFEEU9a4BD— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) August 10, 2022
      There’s also this.Did you ever have to take the 5th? Nope? Me neither. pic.twitter.com/LJNOoEA060— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) August 10, 2022
      Following her visit to Taiwan that has sent tensions with China soaring, Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference that the trip’s goal was not to change Washington’s relationship with Taipei, but rather express solidarity.“We will not allow China to isolate Taiwan”, Pelosi said. “They have kept Taiwan from participating in the World Health Organization, other things were Taiwan can make a very valued contribution. And they may keep them from going there, but they’re not keeping us from going to Taiwan.”She noted Taiwan’s status as a democracy in contrast with authoritarian China, which considers the island a breakaway province and has vowed to reunify with it, even by force. Beijing warned Pelosi against going and responded to her trip by announcing military drills around Taiwan – steps the Democratic lawmaker said China did not take when a delegation of senators visited the island earlier this year.“So in any event, we’re very proud of our delegation”, she said.National security adviser Jake Sullivan has warned Iran against any attacks targeting Americans following allegations that it plotted to kill John Bolton, a noted foe of Tehran who served in the Trump administration.“We have said this before and we will say it again: the Biden Administration will not waiver in protecting and defending all Americans against threats of violence and terrorism. Should Iran attack any of our citizens, to include those who continue to serve the United States or those who formerly served, Iran will face severe consequences. We will continue to bring to bear the full resources of the U.S. Government to protect Americans,” Sullivan said in a statement.Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, presided over Washington’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal, and has advocated for bombing the country. The assassination plot alleged by the justice department earlier today appeared to be in retaliation for the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was killed on Trump’s orders.US charges Iranian man over alleged plot to kill ex-Trump aide John BoltonRead moreFormer national security adviser John Bolton has released a statement thanking the justice department for exposing the assassination plot against him.I wish to thank the Justice Dept for initiating the criminal proceeding unsealed today; the FBI for its diligence in discovering and tracking the Iranian regime’s criminal threat to American citizens; and the Secret Service for providing protection against Tehran’s efforts. pic.twitter.com/QDjkX6gUWM— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) August 10, 2022
      He also takes a stab at the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which the United States pulled out of in 2018, during Bolton’s time in Donald Trump’s White House. The Biden administration along with its allies are in the midst of uncertain and lengthy negotiations with Tehran to revitalize the deal.EU team submit ‘final text’ at talks to salvage 2015 Iran nuclear dealRead moreDespite his apparently mounting legal troubles, Trump has continued to have success in getting his preferred candidates through primaries, as yesterday’s elections show:Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a member of the select progressive group in the House of Representative dubbed the Squad, eked out a closer-than-expected Democratic primary victory on Tuesday night against a centrist challenger who questioned the incumbent’s support for the “defund the police” movement.The evening went far smoother for another progressive, Becca Balint, who won the Democratic House primary in Vermont – positioning her to become the first woman representing the state in Congress.But Tim Michels, backed by Donald Trump, was projected to win the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin, a day after the FBI searched the former US president’s home in Florida reportedly seeking classified documents.Progressive Ilhan Omar wins closer-than-expected House primary in MinnesotaRead moreMore details are emerging about the FBI’s search on Monday of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, including that agents were looking for papers that the former president may have unlawfully taken from the White House. Hugo Lowell reports:Federal investigators searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Monday bearing a warrant that broadly sought presidential and classified records that the justice department believed the former president unlawfully retained, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The criminal nature of the search warrant executed by FBI agents, as described by the sources, suggested the investigation surrounding Trump is firmly a criminal probe that comes with potentially far-reaching political and legal ramifications for the former president.And the extraordinary search, the sources said, came after the justice department grew concerned – as a result of discussions with Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks – that presidential and classified materials were being unlawfully and improperly kept at the Mar-a-Lago resort.The unprecedented raid of a former president’s home by FBI agents was the culmination of an extended battle between Trump and his open contempt for the Presidential Records Act of 1978 requiring the preservation of official documents, and officials charged with enforcing that law.FBI searched Trump’s home seeking classified presidential records – sourcesRead moreNo matter how he does it, a judge in Georgia yesterday ordered Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani to appear in person before an Atlanta special grand jury looking into attempts to tamper with the state’s election results in 2020.According to The New York Times, Giuliani has claimed his health doesn’t allow him to fly to the state – an argument a judge wasn’t buying.“John Madden drove all over the country in his big bus, from stadium to stadium. So one thing we need to explore is whether Mr. Giuliani could get here without jeopardizing his recovery and his health. On a train, on a bus or Uber, or whatever it would be,” Robert C.I. McBurney, a superior court judge in Fulton County, said.Giuliani has been tentatively ordered to appear on August 17.Giuliani ordered to go before grand jury in Trump election meddling caseRead more More