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      Top House Democrat demands answers on Trump dinner with oil executives – as it happened

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      The top Democrat on the House oversight committee is demanding answers after a report emerged that Donald Trump promised oil executives he would repeal regulations intended to lower climate emissions if they each contributed $1bn to his campaign.In a letter to the executives of nine major petroleum companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, Jamie Raskin cited a Washington Post article from last week that said Trump promised to rescind a Biden administration moratorium on permits for liquified natural gas exports and allow more drillings in the Alaskan Arctic and Gulf of Mexico, among other policies.In response, Raskin wrote in letters to nine oil industry executives:
      I write to request any information you may have about quid pro quo financial agreements related to US energy policy that were reportedly proposed at a recent campaign fundraising dinner with ex-president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club that you appear to have attended. Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.
      House speaker Mike Johnson traveled to New York to appear alongside Donald Trump at his ongoing business fraud trial, which Johnson called a “disgrace” in a press conference outside the courthouse. An array of other Republican politicians were also on the scene, all of whom have one thing in common: they are said to be potential running mates for Trump or, as the Democrats have dubbed them, “emotional support”. Back in Washington DC, the Republican-led House oversight committee released a report saying that attorney general Merrick Garland should be held in contempt for not handing over recordings of interviews with Joe Biden and his ghostwriter conducted by a special counsel. The committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin, was also busy, demanding answers from petroleum industry executives over Trump’s reported promise to roll back all sorts of environmental regulations if they each raise $1bn for his campaign.Here’s what else happened today:
      Johnson’s appearance in New York comes as the House GOP plans to shift into “campaign mode” before the 5 November election.
      Federal prosecutors asked a judge to send far-right strategist Steve Bannon to jail after an appeals court rejected overturning his conviction for contempt of Congress. Bannon has until Thursday to respond.
      Biden announced new tariffs against China, and took shots at Trump’s trade policies.
      Maryland is traditionally a Democratic stronghold, but this year’s Senate race is shaping up to be surprisingly competitive. The state’s voters are choosing their candidates in today’s primary.
      Why are Biden’s approval ratings so stubbornly low? Here’s what White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had to say, when asked at her briefing today.
      At her daily briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, and why they have not moved much for years.The question from a Fox News reporter came a day after the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College released polling showing the president trailing Donald Trump in five of six key swing states. Here’s what Jean-Pierre had to say:The reporter who posed the question, Peter Doocy, is the conservative network’s main man in the White House, and something of a thorn in its side. Two years ago, Biden appeared to insult Doocy by name, then later reportedly called him to “clear the air”:Earlier today, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson condemned the prosecution of Donald Trump outside the New York courthouse where Trump’s business fraud trial is taking place.That drew a strong rebuke from Democratic representative and Trump foe Jamie Raskin, who aired his grievances in a statement to the Daily Beast:Federal judge Carl J Nichols has given far-right strategist Steve Bannon until Thursday to respond to a request by justice department prosecutors that he report to jail to serve his four-month sentence after being convicted of contempt of Congress.Nichols’ order came after an appeals court rejected Bannon’s appeal of his July 2022 conviction for ignoring a subpoena and an order to appear for a deposition from the January 6 committee. Here’s more on that:The traditionally blue state of Maryland suddenly finds itself in an unfamiliar role: political battleground.Whoever wins the race for its open Senate seat, vacated by retiring Democrat Ben Cardin, could decide control of the chamber. On the Democratic side, representative David Trone is locked in a competitive primary with Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks. Whoever wins the primary will almost certainly face Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor whose high-profile clashes with Donald Trump made him a household name.The Democratic primary contest to succeed Trone features as many as a dozen candidates. The field is led by former Biden official April McClain Delaney and state delegate Joe Vogel.The Guardian caught up with Vogel shortly after he cast his ballot in Gaithersburg on Tuesday morning. At 27, Vogel is among a handful of gen Z candidates running for federal office this year.Vogel said he is appealing to voters of all ages by channeling his generation’s urgency to address the most pressing problems of our time.“The experience that I have is not only the experience as a legislator, but the lived experience of sitting in a classroom with the doors locked and the windows down in the dark in a school-shooting drill. I have the experience of fearing what the climate crisis is going to hold for our generation,” he said.“What we need are people with the lived experiences to bring urgency to all of these issues.”The sixth district, a seat that spans the diverse suburbs of Montgomery county to conservative western Maryland, is expected to remain in Democratic hands but is still the most competitive open House seat in the state.If elected, Vogel, born in Uruguay, would be the first Latino and first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress from Maryland.An election to watch is taking place today in Maryland, where Democratic voters will select a candidate to face off against Republican former governor Larry Hogan for its open Senate seat. The Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports on how the race in the heavily Democratic state has become surprisingly competitive:Republicans have a rare opportunity to flip a Senate seat in Maryland in November, and the outcome of that race could determine control of the upper chamber. The high stakes of the Maryland Senate election have put intense scrutiny on the state’s primaries this Tuesday.Maryland primary voters will cast ballots in the presidential race as well as congressional elections, and leaders of both parties will be closely watching the results of the Senate contests. The retirement of Senator Ben Cardin has created an opening for Republicans to potentially capture a seat in a reliably Democratic state, thanks to former governor Larry Hogan’s late entry into the race. A Hogan victory would mark the first time that a Republican has won a Maryland Senate election since 1980, and it could erase Democrats’ narrow majority in the chamber.Ten Democrats will compete for the party’s Senate nomination, but two candidates have become the clear frontrunners: Congressman Dave Trone and the Prince George’s county executive Angela Alsobrooks. The race has historic implications, as Alsobrooks would become the first Black person elected to represent Maryland in the Senate and just the third Black woman to ever serve in the chamber.The battery of tariff increases on China Joe Biden announced is a symbolic move intended to head off the possibility that Beijing one day steps up its exports of vehicles and other technologies to stimulate its economy. The policy is also not quite as different from that of the Trump administration as the White House would have you think, the Guardian’s Larry Elliott reports:The US president, Joe Biden, has announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of a package of measures designed to protect US manufacturers from cheap imports.In a move that is likely to inflame trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, the White House said it was imposing more stringent curbs on Chinese goods worth $18bn.Sources said the move followed a four-year review and was a preventive measure designed to stop cheap, subsidised Chinese goods flooding the US market and stifling the growth of the American green-technology sector.As well as a tariff increase from 25% to 100% on EVs, levies will rise from 7.5% to 25% on lithium batteries, from zero to 25% on critical minerals, from 25% to 50% on solar cells, and from 25% to 50% on semiconductors.Tariffs on steel, aluminium and personal protective equipment – which range from zero to 7.5% – will rise to 25%.Despite the risks of retaliation from Beijing, Biden said the increased levies were a proportionate response to China’s overcapacity in the EV sector. Sources said China was producing 30m EVs a year but could sell only 22m-23m domestically.Biden’s car tariffs are largely symbolic because Chinese EVs were virtually locked out of the US by tariffs imposed by Donald Trump during his presidency. However, lobby groups have suggested there is a future threat as Beijing seeks to use exports to compensate for the weakness of its domestic economy.Top Republicans traveled to New York to appear alongside Donald Trump at his ongoing business fraud trial, which House speaker Mike Johnson called a “disgrace”. Also on the scene were an array of politicians who share one thing in common: they are all said to be potential running mates for Trump, or, as the Democrats dubbed them “emotional support”. Back in Washington DC, the Republican-led House oversight committee released a report saying that attorney general Merrick Garland should be held in contempt for not handing over recordings of interviews conducted by a special counsel and Joe Biden. The committee’s top Democrat Jamie Raskin was also busy, demanding answers from petroleum industry executives over Trump’s reported promise to roll back all sorts of environmental regulations if they each raise $1bn for his campaign.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Johnson’s appearance in New York comes as the House GOP plans to shift into “campaign mode” as the 5 November election draws ever nearer.
      Federal prosecutors asked a judge to send far-right strategist Steve Bannon to jail after an appeals court rejected the appeal of his conviction for contempt of Congress.
      Biden announced new tariffs against China, and took shots at Trump’s own trade policies.
      The top Democrat on the House oversight committee is demanding answers after a report emerged that Donald Trump promised oil executives he would repeal regulations intended to lower climate emissions if they each contributed $1bn to his campaign.In a letter to the executives of nine major petroleum companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, Jamie Raskin cited a Washington Post article from last week that said Trump promised to rescind a Biden administration moratorium on permits for liquified natural gas exports and allow more drillings in the Alaskan Arctic and Gulf of Mexico, among other policies.In response, Raskin wrote in letters to nine oil industry executives:
      I write to request any information you may have about quid pro quo financial agreements related to US energy policy that were reportedly proposed at a recent campaign fundraising dinner with ex-president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club that you appear to have attended. Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.
      In a White House address where he announced his administration’s moves to counter Chinese industries, including by imposing a 100% tariff on electric car imports, Joe Biden took a number of shots at Donald Trump and his policies.“My administration is combining investments in America with tariffs that are strategic and targeted,” Biden said. “Compare that to what the prior administration did. My predecessor promised to increase American exports and boost manufacturing. But he did neither, he failed. He signed a trade deal with China. They’re supposed to buy $200bn more in American goods. Instead, China imports from America barely budged.”He also said that Trump has proposed “across-the-board tariffs on all imports from all countries if re-elected”, and accused the former president of wanting to drive up prices. “He simply doesn’t get it,” Biden said.Asked later by a reporter about Trump’s comments that China has been eating America’s lunch, Biden responded, “He’s been feeding them a long time.” More

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      Pressure on Democrats as Republicans look to flip Maryland Senate seat

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      Republicans have a rare opportunity to flip a Senate seat in Maryland in November, and the outcome of that race could determine control of the upper chamber. The high stakes of the Maryland Senate election have put intense scrutiny on the state’s primaries this Tuesday.Maryland primary voters will cast ballots in the presidential race as well as congressional elections, and leaders of both parties will be closely watching the results of the Senate contests. The retirement of Senator Ben Cardin has created an opening for Republicans to potentially capture a seat in a reliably Democratic state, thanks to former governor Larry Hogan’s late entry into the race. A Hogan victory would mark the first time that a Republican has won a Maryland Senate election since 1980, and it could erase Democrats’ narrow majority in the chamber.Ten Democrats will compete for the party’s Senate nomination, but two candidates have become the clear frontrunners: Congressman Dave Trone and the Prince George’s county executive Angela Alsobrooks. The race has historic implications, as Alsobrooks would become the first Black person elected to represent Maryland in the Senate and just the third Black woman to ever serve in the chamber.Alsobrooks’s victory is far from guaranteed, as polls have shown her running neck and neck with Trone in the primary. Trone, the owner of the beverage chain Total Wine & More, has used his personal fortune to boost his Senate campaign. According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, Trone has already loaned $61.8m to his campaign.Trone has pitched his ability to self-fund his campaign as a crucial asset for the general election, which has become unexpectedly competitive because of Hogan’s candidacy. Hogan, who is expected to easily win the Republican primary, presents a formidable threat to Democrats. When Hogan left office last year, a poll conducted for Gonzales Research & Media Services showed that 77% of Marylanders, including an astounding 81% of Democrats, approved of the governor’s job performance.Hogan’s candidacy will force Democrats to allocate resources to a Senate race that they had previously assumed would be an easy win in the general election. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 33 points in Maryland, but Hogan also won his 2018 re-election race by 12 points. Polls of potential general election match-ups have produced mixed results, but both parties will almost certainly have to spend heavily to compete in the state. The Cook Political Report currently rates the Maryland Senate race as “likely Democrat”.View image in fullscreenElsewhere in the state, the Democratic primary in Maryland’s third congressional district has turned increasingly contentious, after a Super Pac dropped millions of dollars into the race. Of the 22 Democratic contenders running to replace retiring congressman John Sarbanes, the former US Capitol police office Harry Dunn, who wrote a bestselling book about his experience protecting lawmakers during the January 6 insurrection, has the largest national profile. But polls show a close race between him and state senator Sarah Elfreth, who has won the backing of the pro-Israel Super Pac United Democracy Project.Dunn, a first-time candidate, has proven himself to be a prodigious fundraiser, bringing in $4.6m across the election cycle. In comparison, Elfeth’s campaign has raised just $1.5m, but she has received outside help from UDP, which is affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). UDP has spent at least $4.2m in support of Elfreth’s campaign, flooding the district with ads promoting her candidacy. Dunn has now turned UDP’s involvement in the race into a campaign issue, framing the “dark money spending” as corrosive to democratic principles.The race to succeed Trone in representing Maryland’s sixth congressional district has also attracted a crowded field of candidates. In the Democratic primary, the former Biden administration official April McClain Delaney and state delegate Joe Vogel have emerged as the frontrunners, while former state delegates Dan Cox and Neil Parrott are viewed as most likely to win the Republican nomination. Of Maryland’s eight congressional districts, the sixth is viewed as the most competitive for the general election, and Cook rates the seat as “likely Democrat”.Although Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations, Marylanders will still have a chance to weigh in on the presidential race on Tuesday. Biden’s name will appear on his party’s ballot alongside those of the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, but Maryland Democrats also have the option to choose “uncommitted to any presidential candidate”.Mirroring similar efforts in states like Michigan, pro-ceasefire advocates have urged Maryland voters to cast ballots for uncommitted to protest against Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza. The Listen to Maryland campaign hopes that at least 15% of Democratic ballots will be cast for uncommitted, and they have reached out to hundreds of thousands of voters leading up to Tuesday.In the Republican presidential primary, only the names of Trump and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley will appear on the ballot. Although Haley dropped out of the race in March, she has continued to win votes in the weeks since, which has been viewed as a potential warning sign for Trump heading into the general election. In the Indiana primary held last week, Haley secured nearly 22% of the Republican vote, and leaders of both parties will be watching for a similar result in Maryland. More

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      Kristi Noem banned by two more Native tribes in South Dakota

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered one of Donald Trump’s top vice-presidential contenders, has been banned from nearly one-fifth of the state after two more tribes voted to prohibit her from their lands.The move by the Yankton Sioux tribe and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe last week follows criticism from the governor who has – without evidence – accused tribal leaders of “personally benefiting” from drug cartels. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes banished Noem earlier this year.Noem has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks after the Guardian reported that the governor described killing a family dog and a goat in her new book.Noem also falsely claimed to have met the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un – in a passage she later said should not have been included in the book – and claimed to have cancelled a planned meeting with Emmanuel Macron, which the French government denied. The controversies appear to have weakened Noem’s chances of becoming the former president’s running mate.Her dispute with South Dakota tribes heightened after remarks she made at a forum in March, accusing tribal leaders who had been critical of her catering to drug cartels.“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say: ‘Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’”The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate said it had moved to ban Noem after she made statements that were “injurious to the parents of tribal children”, Kelo, a local TV station reported.In a statement announcing the ban in April, the Rosebud Sioux said the decision was based not only on Noem’s recent comments but an “ongoing strained relationship” with the governor, who took office in 2019.The tribe cited Noem’s support of the Keystone XL pipeline, her opposition to checkpoints on reservation borders established by the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux during the pandemic, and her support of the removal of “significant sections” of Native American history from state social-studies standards, among other issues.“Governor Noem claims she wants to establish meaningful relationships with tribes to provide solutions for systemic problems. However, her actions as governor show blatantly otherwise,” the tribe said in a statement.“Her disingenuous nature towards Native Americans to further her federal political ambitions is an attack on tribal sovereignty that the Rosebud Sioux tribe will not tolerate.”The tribe said it would acknowledge Noem only after she issues a public apology and presents a “plan of action” for supporting and empowering the Lakota people.In response to the wave of bans, Noem again repeated her claims about the tribes’ leadership. “Tribal leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said.Cal Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said that unlike previous disputes, Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit”. He said it is likely Noem does not mind the focus on this conflict rather than on other recent controversies.“I’m sure that Governor Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota, because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said. More

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      How the right is weaponizing pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US

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      Republicans have identified recent college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the core of an election campaign narrative of chaos that they hope can be used to sink Joe Biden’s presidency.The approach was bluntly crystallised by Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, in a recent television interview when he mocked the encampments that have sprung up in recent weeks as “little Gazas” and lambasted the president for a perceived failure to unequivocally denounce instances of antisemitism.“The Democrats have deep philosophical divisions on Israel,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week programme. “That’s why you see all those little Gazas out there on campuses where you see people chanting vile antisemitic slogans … For two weeks, Joe Biden refused to come out and denounce it. That is the 2024 election.”In fact, Biden did condemn antisemitism in a White House statement criticising the protests on 1 May, but also spoke out against Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice.Cotton’s comments followed weeks of turbulence on university campuses across the US that have seen riot police forcibly dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments in widely televised scenes reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s.His labelling of the encampments as “little Gazas” was denounced as dehumanising by some who lauded the protesters for drawing attention to the death toll of Israel’s continuing military offensive in Gaza. While relatively few Americans identify the war in Gaza as a vote-influencer, Republicans are seeking to capitalise on the vocal minority who are expressing discontent over it.The conservative activist Christopher Rufo spelt out the approach in a recent article on Substack.“This encampment escalation divides the Left, alienates influential supporters, and creates a sense of chaos that will move people against it,” he wrote. “The correct response … is to create the conditions for these protests to flourish in blue [Democratic-run] cities and campuses, while preventing them in red [Republican] cities and campuses.”GOP intent was signalled by the visits of delegations, including Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, to Columbia University – centre of the recent protests – and to George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC, where protesters spray-painted graffiti and draped a Palestinian flag on a statue of the US’s eponymous founding father.“It’s what the protests say about American political society and culture that the Republicans are trying to pick up on,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University.“Biden has tried to make this election a referendum on what happened during the Trump administration, with his focus being ‘we don’t want to go back to the chaos of the Trump years.’ That argument can be undercut if people are seeing chaos from college campuses on their TV screens – Republicans are trying to say it’s no more stable and calm under Biden than it was under Trump.”Republicans are also expanding congressional investigations into antisemitism allegations in the protests, an approach that has already reaped political dividends after the presidents of two elite colleges, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, were forced to resign following criticism of their testimony in previous hearings.Besides the House’s education and workforce committee – whose hearings led to the resignations, and which has now invited three more university heads to testify – three other GOP-led committees have announced proceedings to scrutinise the protests.The House energy and commerce committee is set to investigate universities for possible breaches of the Civil Rights Act, a supposed protection against discrimination, while the oversight committee has called hearings on Democratic-run Washington’s response to the GWU protests.Meanwhile, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House judiciary committee, has asked Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, if the visas of any foreign students have been revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.The message is clear: even as the imminent college summer recess ushers in a likely period of campus calm, Republicans will strive to keep the issue in the public eye.The historical template is 1968, when mass protests against the Vietnam war fed bitter Democratic divisions, fuelled violent clashes with police at the party’s convention in Chicago (coincidentally the venue of this year’s convention) and ultimately led to the GOP candidate Richard Nixon winning that year’s presidential election.“I think the Republicans can make an issue of this and I don’t think they need to do very much to be successful,” said Alvin Felzenberg, a veteran former Republican operative and historian who served in both Bush administrations.“Just like in 1968, there’s not a Republican in this play. The Democratic coalition seems under threat and possibly out of control. I see a lot of parallels, and I think the Trump campaign is paying a lot of attention to what Nixon did then.”The deciding factor of whether history repeats may be Biden, who Felzenberg says has given the impression of “being blown about by events” as he has sought a balance between supporting Israel and pacifying progressive, pro-Democratic voters alienated by the soaring Palestinian casualties in Gaza.With nearly six months until election day, Biden has time to assert control.Working in his favour is that the current unrest is so far less violent than in 1968, a year scarred by political assassinations and race riots. While police action to dismantle the recent protests produced negative headlines and more than 2,000 arrests, it resulted in no serious casualties – an outcome Felzenberg said Biden should have publicly celebrated.“Biden gave a speech last week that was the perfect opportunity for him to say the police did a great job – and he didn’t do it, which made it look like he wasn’t in charge and is scared of all the people on his own side yelling at him,” Felzenberg said. “If I were one of the people around Joe Biden, I would spend the next few months showing that he can lead.” More

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      Florida is a prime example of Trump’s vise grip on state Republican parties

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      In practical terms, Barron Trump’s truncated stint on the political stage as a Florida delegate to the Republican party’s national convention was little more than symbolic. His father Donald Trump’s third successive presidential campaign as the Republican nominee was all but certain anyway, and the names of those who will confirm it are essentially inconsequential.It did affirm to many analysts, however, how the former president has maneuvered to seize almost total control of the party’s state apparatus nationwide. Nowhere is that more apparent than Florida, where the capitulation was completed by the choice of delegates for July’s convention in Milwaukee.Even though 18-year-old Barron Trump has now stepped down, ostensibly after his mother, former first lady Melania Trump, discovered a pressing prior engagement, there will be plenty of other family members as representatives. Barron’s step-siblings Don Jr, Eric and Tiffany are named, along with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr’s fiancee.Tiffany’s husband, Michael Boulos, and an assorted slew of other notable Trump acolytes and loyalists, are also on the list.The parallels in Trump’s subjugation of the national Republican party, and the installation of Lara Trump, Eric’s wife, as its co-chair, are hard to miss – especially as it was Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who was once seen as a potential “Trump killer” in the party’s nomination race until, of course, Trump quickly vanquished him.“The big, sort of under-the-radar story in American politics over the last couple of years was the way Trump and his people had taken over state parties across the country,” said Dan Judy, a senior analyst for North Star Opinion Research, a Republican guidance and consultancy company based in Virginia.“Even early in the primary process, a year and a half ago when Ron DeSantis was riding high and leading a lot of the polls, I was always thinking: Trump has control of the state parties, he’s got his people in, and they are, for lack of a better word, going to attempt to rig the process in favor of Donald Trump.“If you look at it, that’s exactly what happened. A lot of state parties changed their rules to make their primaries winner-takes-all, which absolutely helped Trump, especially as it came down to a one-on-one with Nikki Haley. It was clear that she was going to have to win some of these things outright to get any delegates at all, and she couldn’t do it.“The fact that the Florida GOP has also been completely taken over by Trump folks is really indicative of a trend that has happened everywhere.”Judy pointed to how easily Trump took down DeSantis in the primary race, humiliating the governor he disparaged as “Meatball Ron” in his own state. DeSantis’s efforts to cajole Florida’s congressional delegation were ultimately futile, and he dropped out in January to avoid a spanking in the state’s March primary.“As high as he was riding after his huge re-election victory, just any hope that he would have had of continuing to be top dog in the Florida GOP went out the window when he failed to get any traction at all in the presidential race,” said Judy, who has worked for the winning campaigns of several Republican politicians, including DeSantis and the Florida senator Marco Rubio.“He’s not the kind of person who cultivates relationships, who builds relationships, who builds a party, an organization, and an apparatus. He’s just not that guy, and if you’re going around Florida looking for Ron DeSantis people, there are shockingly few of them.“But if Donald Trump is re-elected, there might be a place in the administration for him. If he wants to have a future in the current Republican party, he cannot be an enemy of Donald Trump, and you’re seeing him do the things that he needs to do to remain in good standing.”Those actions include a full-throated endorsement of the man who repeatedly demeaned and insulted him, and cozying up to him at a breakfast meeting near Miami last month, in which Trump claimed DeSantis pledged total fealty.In a similar vein, a succession of other senior state Republicans have fallen in line. Junior senator Rick Scott, a former Florida governor who faces a potentially tricky re-election battle in November, appeared last week alongside Trump to support him at his hush-money trial in Manhattan.And an elected member of the Florida cabinet, the chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, seemingly cannot do enough to champion the twice-impeached former president currently facing dozens of criminal charges in cases around the country.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPatronis, who was thwarted by DeSantis in January when he floated a bill to hand $5m of Florida taxpayers’ money to Trump for his legal bills, returned last week with an alternative proposal: he wrote to Trump announcing he was due $54,000 in “unclaimed property” that Patronis hoped he would use to fight “some very, very nasty people coming after you”.To observers of Florida politics, all of this, and particularly the surfeit of Trumps among the slate of delegates, is telling.“It does illustrate in pretty stark terms how effectively the former president has his hand on the state Republican party, and his influence on what goes on,” said Kevin Wagner, associate dean of Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F Schmidt college of arts and letters.“It’s not unexpected that the likely presidential nominee has significant influence in his home state, but even by that standard there’s a level of control over the party that’s pretty distinctive.“As a practical matter, the party is going to be united behind a former president, at least through an election year. And I think you’ll see that in the way that political leaders on the Republican side are behaving in Florida.”Wagner said voters were unlikely to care about Trump’s children carrying the state party’s flag in Milwaukee, with or without Barron Trump.“Among the Republican base that is very supportive of the former president, I don’t think any of this matters. In fact, they probably would approve,” he said.“Some Republicans might be bothered, but there’s no evidence in Florida right now that this is a particularly close race so it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot. The caveat is we are in May and the election’s in November.“But right now, I’d say that Donald Trump has a very strong position in the state of Florida, and that’s reflected by how political leaders in the state are responding to him, and also by the amount of deference that the party gives.” More

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      Trump praises fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter during rally speech

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      Donald Trump on Saturday praised fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter “as a wonderful man” before segueing into comments disparaging people who have immigrated into the US without permission.The former president’s remarks to political rally-goers in Wildwood, New Jersey, as he challenges Joe Biden’s re-election in November were a not-so-subtle rhetorical bridge exalting Anthony Hopkins’ cannibalistic Lecter in Silence of the Lambs as “late [and] great” while simultaneously condemning “people who are being released into our country that we don’t want”.Trump delivered his address to a crowd of about 80,000 supporters – according to one estimate from a Wildwood city spokesperson – under the shadow of the Great White roller coaster in the 1950s-kitsch seaside resort 90 miles (145km) south of Philadelphia. The crowd began thinning considerably as Trump spoke, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on X in a post that contained video of people leaving the site of the rally.The occasion served for Trump to renew his stated admiration for Lecter, as he’s done before, after the actor Mads Mikkelsen – who previously portrayed Lecter in a television series – once described Trump as “a fresh wind for some people”.Among other comments, Trump on Sunday also repeated exaggerations about having “been indicted more than the great Alphonse Capone”, the violent Prohibition-era Chicago mob boss.Trump since the spring of 2023 has grappled with four indictments attributing more than 80 criminal charges to him for attempts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election he lost to Biden, retaining classified materials after his presidency and hush-money payments to an adult film actor which prosecutors maintain were illicitly covered up.The trial over the hush money is set to enter its fourth week Monday.Yet Capone was indicted at least six times before his famous 1931 tax evasion conviction.Trump nonetheless used the occasion to call the charges against him “bullshit”, with spectators then chanting the word back at him.The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that the former president’s supporters had poured into Wildwood in “pickup trucks decked out in Trump flags” from up and down the east coast.According to the outlet, hundreds of people set up camp overnight on the boardwalk to get into the event.“The country is headed in the wrong direction,” Kelly Carter-Currier, a 62-year-old retired teacher from New Hampshire, told the Inquirer. “So, hopefully, people will get their shit together and vote the right person in. And if they don’t, I don’t know. World War III?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn the other hand, New Jersey Democrats dismissed the significance of the event.Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill said many of the Trump supporters expected would be from out of state. “Jersey is not going to be a welcoming place for Trump,” Sherrill said.Sherrill’s fellow New Jersey Democrat Andy Kim, a congressman running for the US Senate, said that generalized apathy toward government helped Trump’s support.“I hope people recognize that he is not somebody that has an agenda that’s going to lead to a better type of politics,” Kim said. More

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      French government says Kristi Noem lied about cancelling meeting with Macron

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      The French government has joined the chorus of detractors taking aim at South Dakota governor Kristi Noem’s political autobiography No Going Back, which many now see as having eliminated her chances of being Donald Trump’s vice-presidential selection.Days after Noem removed a passage claiming she had met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, officials at the Élysée Palace in Paris are questioning a passage that describes a cancelled meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.According to NBC News, Noem claims in her book that she cancelled a planned meeting between her and Macron in November after she accused him of making “pro-Hamas” comments.“While in Paris, I was slated to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron,” Noem wrote. “However, the day before we were to meet, he made what I considered a very pro-Hamas and anti-Israel comment to the press. So I decided to cancel.”Yet a French official told the outlet there is no record of a scheduled meeting with Noem – nor had they invited her.“Following his anti-Israel comments, she chose to cancel,” Noem spokesperson Ian Fury told NBC. Fury added that “the governor was invited to sit in President Macron’s box for the Armistice Day parade at Arc de Triomphe” – a ceremony that took place on 16 November.Fury said that Macron had not attended, though Associated Press news video suggests he did. Noem had been in Paris in November 2023 to speak at the Worldwide Freedom Initiative conference.While Noem does not describe what Macron’s comments were that she objected to, her office pointed to his remarks urging Israel to stop bombing Gaza while also acknowledging “the right of Israel to protect itself and react”.The Guardian has reached out to Noem’s office for clarification.Last week, Noem acknowledged that she “should not have put [an] anecdote in the book” in which she described meeting Kim Jong-un – and feeling underestimated by him – because that purported encounter with the North Korean dictator never happened.Nonetheless, she later insisted she had “met with many, many world leaders” and had “travelled around the world”.An excerpt from the book lists a number of world leaders whom Noem had met with while serving in Congress, including Chinese president Xi Jinping, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former UK prime minister Boris Johnson.Damaging embellishments are hardly unusual to the political class. Hillary Clinton came out on the wrong side of a fact-checking drama in 2008 when she was unsuccessfully running for the Democratic presidential nomination and claimed she arrived in Bosnia “under sniper fire” and had to run with her head down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Noem may have done more damage to her standing by repeating a 20-year-old story about shooting dead a working dog on her ranch. She explained that the 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, Cricket, did not point out game on animal hunts, killed a neighbor’s chickens, and acted aggressively toward her family.Noem also described shooting dead the family’s billy goat, which the governor said “loved to chase” her children and would “knock them down and butt them”, leaving them “terrified”.It took Noem two shots to kill off the goat, which also had a “wretched smell”, Noem wrote.Criticism has been heaped on Noem from both sides of the political spectrum over the dog, but less so the goat.It was reported last weekend that Noem left a political fundraiser lunch at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort early last weekend as the former president offered on-stage introductions of various contenders to be his running mate in November’s rematch with Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election.“She had a rough couple of days,” Trump told Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin last week. “I will say that.” More

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      The Never Trump Republicans who can’t bring themselves to back Biden

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      They have broken with Donald Trump. They have gone public with their concerns about the threat that he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But vote for Joe Biden? That is a bridge too far.A split has emerged in the “Never Trump” movement in the Republican party. There are some who denounce the former US president and contend that, in what is essentially a two-party system, there is a moral imperative to vote for his Democratic opponent in November.Then there are the Republicans who forcefully disparage Trump but stop short of endorsing Biden, suggesting that both choices are unpalatable, forcing them to consider another option such as writing in a different name on the ballot.This category includes Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who said in March he would not be backing his former boss but also made clear: “I would never vote for Joe Biden. I’m a Republican.”There is also Chris Christie, an ex-governor of New Jersey who ran against Trump in the Republican primary elections. He told a recent event at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics that he would never support Trump but nor could he bring himself to vote for the current president. “President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date,” Christie said.He was joined this week by Paul Ryan, a former speaker of the House of Representatives. He told Yahoo Finance: “Character is too important to me and it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he [Trump] just doesn’t have. Having said that, I really disagree with [Biden] on policy. I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.”While such dissent from Trump and his authoritarian ambitions is welcome, critics say, refusing to support his opponent because of policy differences draws a false equivalence between them. If a significant number of Republican voters do likewise, not voting or writing in a name such as “Ronald Reagan”, it could prove costly to Biden in a close election.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and Tea Party activist turned Trump foe, said: “I have zero respect for guys like Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan who come out and say. ‘I’m not gonna vote for Trump but I won’t vote for the only guy who can beat the guy who’s unfit.’ To me, that’s cowardly. What they’re doing is staying relevant as Republicans. They want to run again as Republicans.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Here’s the deal. If, as a Republican, you say I’m voting for Joe Biden because Trump is unfit, you end your career as a Republican. I did that five years ago. [Former congressman] Adam Kinzinger did that this past year. Then you end your relevance as a Republican. Guys like Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence don’t want to give that up. It’s purely a political decision.”Kinzinger broke from his party after the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and was later one of two Republicans, along with Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who joined the House committee to investigate the attack. He did not seek re-election in the 2022 midterms.Kinzinger said this week: “While I don’t agree with all of Joe Biden’s policies, he’s not out to get democracy so I intend to vote for him. Even if he was like Elizabeth Warren, a little further left, he would not be a threat to democracy, but he’s probably fairly moderate in Democratic terms lately. I certainly don’t think he’s as big of a threat as Trump is.”Despite 88 criminal charges against him, Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination in March. But his support remains soft around the edges. This week, two months after exiting the race, Nikki Haley secured more than 21% of the vote in Indiana’s primary election, held on a day when TV news was dominated by the Trump trial and adult film performer Stormy Daniels.Last month, in another sign of persistent discontent with Trump among the party faithful, Haley received nearly 17% of the primary vote in Pennsylvania. Biden has launched an advertising campaign to target Haley voters in predominantly suburban areas in swing states. A number of anti-Trump Republicans have been willing to aid the effort despite the risk of blowback from their own party.This week Geoff Duncan, a former lieutenant governor of Georgia who has spoken out against Trump’s election lies, endorsed the president and urged fellow Republicans do likewise. He wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper: “I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”The former Reagan administration official Bill Kristol has also made peace with casting his vote for Biden, describing him as a “conventional Democrat” and “better than I expected on some things, especially foreign policy”.But Kristol said he respects Pence, Ryan and Christie’s unwillingness to take the extra step by voting Democratic. “It’s not a crazy decision. It’s fair enough. They can’t abide Trump, they’re not going to vote for him, but it’s in a way not their responsibility that the other party hasn’t provided them with an acceptable alternative.”Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation, hopes that line of thinking will appeal to Republicans who backed Trump twice and might resent being told to defect to the Democrats. “As a practical matter, it’s worth it to get some of those voters just to not vote for Trump,” he said.Kinzinger, the ex-congressman, agreed: “For some people I do think there has to be permission to write-in somebody or vote against the two just because, if they’re never going to vote for Joe Biden, I’d much rather them just skip the ballot line. But those that can stomach it should certainly consider voting for Joe Biden.”View image in fullscreenThere are prominent figures still sitting on the fence. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, has not yet made clear whether he will back Biden. He told NBC’s Meet the Press last December: “If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that.”Cheney, who lost her seat in Congress to a Trump-backed rival, told the Washington Post newspaper in March that she was still undecided about whether to formally endorse Biden. She does intend to “educate” Americans about how dangerous Trump is in the lead-up to election day.But another group of Trump sceptics in the Republican party have gone in a different direction, portraying Biden as a “woke” radical outside the political mainstream and Trump as therefore the lesser or two evils.Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, eviscerated Trump after the January 6 insurrection; Trump routinely bashed McConnell as an “Old Crow” and hurled racist insults at his wife, Elaine Chao. Yet once Trump secured the Republican nomination in March, McConnell endorsed him for president.Bill Barr, a former attorney general who said last year that Trump “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”, has now declared that he wants to see Trump back inside it. He told CNN: “I think Trump would do less damage than Biden, and I think all this stuff about a threat to democracy – I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, backed Haley during the Republican primaries but now supports Trump in the general election. He explained in an interview with the Guardian: “Look, I worked hard for Trump not to be the nominee but he is the nominee of the party and, while I don’t care for Trump, I’ll take a Republican administration over this progressive, leftwing socialist administration any day of the week.”The governor said of Biden: “He’s created a culture here that America doesn’t want to see. A culture of not dealing with the border. A culture of lying about inflation – inflation is crushing families. Depending on how families feel their financial pressures in November will determine who wins the election.”To seasoned observers of the Republican party’s surrender to Trump, such sentiments come as little surprise. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “You cannot make the case credibly that you are concerned for the health of democracy and then lend your support and, more importantly, your vote to the architect of the undoing of democracy. You own that. You’re not just a bystander at this point; you are an accomplice.”Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, was also scathing in his verdict on those who announce they will not vote for Trump only to present Biden as equally intolerable.“Talk about a lack of intestinal fortitude. Anyone who wants to try to put Joe Biden on the same plane as Donald Trump should have their mental health checked because that is just an absurd false equivalency. This is a very black and white issue here. You’re either pro-democracy or you’re not. All the other issues that we disagree about – and there are many – don’t matter if we don’t have a functioning democracy.” More