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      ‘It’s nonsensical’: how Trump is making climate the latest culture war

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      When Donald Trump embarked upon a lengthy complaint at a recent rally about how long it takes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” due to his shower’s low water pressure, he highlighted the expanding assault he and Republicans are launching against even the most obscure environmental policies – a push that’s starting to influence voters.In his bid to return to the White House, Trump has branded Joe Biden’s attempt to advance electric cars in the US “lunacy”, claiming such vehicles do not work in the cold and that their supporters should “rot in hell”. He’s called offshore wind turbines “horrible”, falsely linking them to the death of whales, while promising to scrap incentives for both wind and electric cars.But the former US president and convicted felon, who has openly solicited donations from oil and gas executives in order to follow industry-friendly priorities if re-elected, has also spearheaded a much broader attack on a range of mundane rules and technologies that enable water and energy efficiency.At a June rally in Philadelphia, Trump claimed Americans are suffering from “no water in your faucets” when attempting to wash their hands or hair. “You turn on the water and it goes drip, drip,” he said. “You can’t get [the soap] off your hand. So you keep it running for about 10 times longer.” Trump complained it takes 45 minutes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” and that dishwashers don’t work because “they don’t want you to have any water”.Trump’s niche fixation is not new – while in office he complained about having to flush a toilet 10 times and that newer, energy-efficient lightbulbs made him look “orange”. His administration subsequently rolled back efficiency standards for toilets, showers and lightbulbs, rules that Biden subsequently restored.But Republicans in Congress are now following Trump’s lead, introducing a flurry of recent bills in the House of Representatives targeting energy efficiency standards for home appliances. The bills – with names such as the “Liberty in Laundry Act”, “Refrigerator Freedom Act” and the ‘Clothes Dryers Reliability Act’ – follow a conservative furore over a confected, baseless claim the Biden administration was banning gas stoves, which prompted further GOP legislation.“No government bureaucrat should ever scheme to take away Americans’ appliances in the name of a radical environmental agenda, yet that is exactly what we have seen under the Biden administration,” said Debbie Lasko, a Republican Congressman and sponsor of the ‘Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act’, which restricts new efficiency rules on appliances and passed the House in May. These bills have no chance of agreement in the Democratic-held senate.“We are seeing a lot of these advances, like clean cars and more efficient appliances, being swept up into the culture wars,” said Ed Maibach, an expert in public health and climate communication at George Mason University.“Most Americans’ instincts are that these are good things to have, but it’s clear that Donald Trump and others think there’s political gain in persuading people this isn’t the case. These voters are being fed a story by people they shouldn’t really trust.”There has been a sharp political divide over the climate crisis for several years in the US, with Trump calling global heating a “hoax” and dismissing its mounting devastation. “It basically means you’ll have a little more beachfront property,” the former president said of the impact of sea level rise last month.During last week’s presidential debate, Trump boasted, baselessly, he achieved the “best environmental numbers ever” when president and called the Paris climate accords a “ripoff” and a “disaster”. Biden rebuked his rival, saying he didn’t do a “damn thing” about the climate crisis.Despite this split, there has long been strong bipartisan support across all voters for renewables such as solar and wind, with most of the clean energy jobs and investment unleashed by Biden’s major climate bill flowing to rural, Republican districts. But this is beginning to weaken in the wake of Trump’s attacks, research by Maibach and colleagues has found.A new poll, released by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, underscored this trend – support for new solar farms has slumped to 78% across all Americans, down from 90% just four years ago. Backing for expanding wind power has dropped by a similar amount, while interest in buying an electric vehicle is significantly lower than a year ago, with just 29% of people saying they would consider an EV, down from 38% in 2023.This change is being driven by a drop in support among Republican voters, Maibach said, with clean energy and cars on track to become as contentious as global heating is now to many conservatives. “That support for clean energy has been there across Republicans and Democrats for a long time but it is starting to erode,” he said.“It’s a trend that has been developing for at least the past five years. There is a tug of war going on between what people’s instincts are telling them, and what voices in their trusted community are telling them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe wide-ranging blitz on anything seemingly green has been taken up by Republican-led state governments, too, most notably in Ron DeSantis’ Florida, which has erased references to climate change in state law, curbed offshore wind projects and banned lab-grown meat, which has been touted as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional meat.Meanwhile, rightwing media outlets have echoed Trump’s criticism of electric cars, with commentators on Fox News calling them a “religion” and even claiming, misleadingly, they are fatal in hot weather. “I think this proves that Joe Biden is trying to kill us all by trapping us in these electric vehicles,” Katie Pavlich, a Fox News host, said on The Five show last week.These attacks may be new but they follow a lengthy Republican tradition of distrusting experts – who in this case are clear that clean energy and electric cars are far healthier for people and the planet than their fossil fueled counterparts – according to Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.“There is a long history in the conservative movement of making fun of bureaucrats and experts making us do these nanny state things, like putting handrails on mountain paths or airbags in cars,” Brulle said.“The message is ‘all these pointy-headed bureaucrats are screwing up our lives’ and Trump is in a way tapping into an old, Reaganist tradition. He’s trying to breed a resentment, which speaks to people’s sense of powerlessness, about how elites are running our lives, making us drive these crappy cars and stopping us from buying an incandescent lightbulb.”Such a message resonates with Trump’s base but is likely a turn-off among undecided voters, Brulle said. Polling has found a clear majority of American voters want a presidential candidate who will do something about the climate crisis, although there is a clear partisan divide on the issue and global heating is considered by the public a low-ranked priority compared to other concerns, such as inflation and immigration.“I don’t think this stuff gets Trump much support among independents because it’s nonsensical what he’s saying,” Brulle said. “This is more about trying to mobilize his supporters. The common ground on climate change is already very small, and this just shrinks it further.” More

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      The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt | Rebecca Solnit

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      The violent attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, and all the ancillary attempts to steal the 2020 election, were a coup attempt led from the executive branch of the federal government with support from Republicans in the legislative branch. 1 July 2024 – this Thursday – was a more successful coup attempt orchestrated by six judges of the judicial branch.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in an opinion joined by justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, after the US supreme court’s conservative majority ruled that Donald Trump holds “absolute immunity” for “official acts” done while president. Part of what’s shocking about the state of the union right now is that an entire party and the US supreme court’s conservative majority have abandoned almost everything – the truth, the rule of law, their own legitimacy, their place in history and the fate of the nation – to serve one man.They could not have picked a more outrageous man to throw their weight and reputations behind – a psychotic clown who’s also an indicted felon found liable in civil court for sexual assault, barred from doing business in New York, a stealer of state secrets, a would-be thief of an election and the instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch of government and the constitutionally mandated transition of power after an election. A grifter who in 2016 won a minority victory in a corrupted election – his conviction earlier this year was on charges for one small part of that corruption. A man who has gloated about seizing dictatorial powers and never letting go and a worshiper of tyrants denounced by dozens of his former cabinet members and senior staffers.January 6 was an attack on the constitution and so was 1 July. That no one is above the law has been a pillar of this nation and a cherished value since the 18th century; to knock it down in the 21st destabilizes structures and values that have stood these two centuries and more. A president with total immunity poses obvious threats to the rule of law, the balance of powers and democracy itself, and if that president is the vindictive criminal on the Republican ticket the dangers are immediate and obvious.The day before this ruling Trump approvingly shared a post on his own social media platform calling for Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman, to be tried in a televised military tribunal – for boldly opposing his coup attempt and being one of the few members of their party to support his impeachment. She committed no crimes and the military has no jurisdiction over her, but under Trumpism there are no laws, just opportunities.The people I talked to and saw on social media were stunned, horrified, uncertain of what we do next. When the agency that is supposed to be the final authority on the rule of law becomes lawless, what do you do? There is much we can do, and much of it will be new kinds of campaigns with new goals, because we are in unprecedented territory.While a lot of elected officials seemed immobilized by this much-anticipated legal ruling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the representative, vowed to introduce legislation to impeach some supreme court justices – she didn’t say which ones, but it seems likely that Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas top her list. The Politicus newsletter notes that the senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, “has been one of the few members of Congress who has consistently sounded the alarm about Supreme Court corruption for years, and he isn’t letting the Senate’s limitations stop him from planning a massive investigation” of the supreme court.Of course this has been brewing for a long time. Before these decisions were handed down, journalists were reporting on the Alito household flying apparently pro-insurrection flags in open defiance of norms of judicial neutrality and on more illicit gifts Thomas had taken. Thomas’s wife was an eager participant in the January 6 coup attempt and all the back-room machinations around it; he and Alito were obliged by all norms and ethical principles to recuse themselves from Thursday’s decision, aptly titled Trump v United States, but of course did not.That was just part of the supreme court majority’s rampage this summer. As Nation legal correspondent Elie Mystal wrote a few days before, of the ruling that is devastating for environmental protection and science-based policy: “In the biggest judicial power grab since 1803, the Supreme Court today overruled Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 case that instructed the judiciary to defer to the president and the president’s experts in executive agencies when determining how best to enforce laws passed by Congress. In so doing, the court gave itself nearly unlimited power over the administrative state and its regulatory agencies. The US Constitution, flawed though it is, has already answered the question of who gets to decide how to enforce our laws. The Constitution says, quite clearly, that Congress passes laws and the president enforces them. The Supreme Court, constitutionally speaking, has no role.” Until now.Then came Monday’s bigger judicial power grab, because as another legal pundit, Asha Rangappa pointed out, in saying official presidential acts were above the law, the court “has made itself the ultimate umpire of what is ‘official’ or ‘not official,’ thereby giving itself power to determine which prosecutions are warranted and which aren’t. Basically, they’ve made themselves, not POTUS, the kings here.” Mystal tweeted, “I mean, at a core level, listening to us lawyers is of no more use here. We are beyond ‘law.’ We are beyond principles we studied or researched” while sharing her fellow law journalist Dahlia Lithwick’s declaration, “As an official representative of the legal commentariat I want to suggest that tonight’s a good news cycle to talk to the fascism and authoritarianism experts. This is their inning now…”We do have fascism and authoritarianism experts, who are often also scholars of civil society resistance and the ways dictatorial regimes can be resisted and toppled. And we do know that this is a time when civil society participation will be crucial. First of all to make sure a Democrat takes the White House in November; from that victory much can be restored. If Trump wins, the pieces of the coup will cohere into not the end of democracy in America but at least its kidnapping and torture by its enemies.There are remedies within the legislative process and the rule of law to some of this. But we will only get them with massive public participation. Civil society must press the case that this court is fatally illegitimate and Roberts, Alito and Thomas must resign. And we must press our legislators to act. Other countries have survived worse, and most of the countries to the south of the US have been through revolutions, coups, dictatorships and other dramas in the past century, as well as successful non-violent resistance and democratic triumphs.One thing is clear after this epochal supreme court decision: the fate of the country is in the hands of its people. Or rather two things are clear: the rightwing pursuit of increasingly outrageous minority rule is because they are increasingly a minority; the will of the people and the majority of votes are not on their side when it comes to everything from reproductive rights to climate action. Which is why they have to suppress votes, gerrymander districts, try to steal elections and now torch the constitution. In one way, this demonstrates their strength. In another, their weakness. It’s up to us to make that weakness matter more than that strength.
      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      Trump hush-money sentencing delayed until September – as it happened

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      Joe Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders after his disastrous debate performance last week.The meeting with governors is likely to be mostly virtual, according to Associated Press, and marks the strongest indication yet that Biden is attempting to reassure those in his own party that he is capable of continuing his reelection campaign.Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
      The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York postponed his sentencing to 18 September, agreeing to pause proceedings to weigh whether the supreme court’s recent ruling on immunity could imperil the conviction.
      The first congressional Democrat broke ranks and called on Joe Biden to withdraw his presidential candidacy following last week’s calamitous debate performance. Lloyd Doggett, a House member for Texas, became the first Democrat in the House of Representative to urge the president to step aside.
      Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said. The comments came after Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, admitted that questions over whether Biden’s debate performance were “an episode” or “a condition” were legitimate.
      Biden has invited Democratic governors to meet with him on Wednesday, as he attempts to shore up support among his party’s leaders.
      Biden will sit down for his first TV interview since his debate performance. The interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos will air on Friday.
      The former New York City mayor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, was disbarred in New York after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.
      People who have spent time with Joe Biden over recent months have said that the 81-year-old president’s lapses appear to have grown “more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome”, according to a New York Times report.Several current and former officials have noticed that Biden has increasingly appeared “confused or listless”, with recent moments of disorientation generating concern among advisers and allies, the report said. According to the report:
      Last week’s debate prompted some around him to express concern that the decline had accelerated lately. Several advisers and current and former administration officials who see Mr. Biden regularly but not every day or week said they were stunned by his debate performance because it was the worst they had ever seen him.
      The Democratic congressional candidate for Colorado, Adam Frisch, has called on Joe Biden to step aside.Frisch, who is running for Colorado’s 3rd congressional district, said in a statement on Tuesday that neither Biden nor Donald Trump is “fit for office”.“We need a President that can unite America to realize our nation’s unlimited potential,” Frisch said, adding:
      We deserve better. President Biden should do what’s best for the country and withdraw from the race.
      Joe Biden’s medical team said a cognitive test “is not warranted” and “not necessary”, the White House has said, after the president’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last week.The White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in a briefing with reporters today, said Biden had a cold and a “hoarse voice” during the debate, as she admitted “it was a bad night”.Asked if there was any consideration given to releasing a more robust set of medical records, Jean-Pierre replied:
      We have been transparent. We have released thorough reports from his medical team every year since he’s been in office.
      Asked about former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comments earlier today in which she said both Biden and Trump should provide the public with test results regarding physical and mental health, the White House spokesperson said:
      His medical team have said it is not warranted. In this case, we have put forward a thorough, transparent annual report on his health. They have said that is not warranted. It is not necessary.
      Here’s a look at the announcement by judge Juan Merchan in which he postpones Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case to 18 September, as shared by Law360’s Frank G. Runyeon.Merchan’s announcement comes after Manhattan prosecutors earlier today said they did not oppose a request by Trump’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing, originally set for 11 July.Trump’s lawyers asked to have the case re-evaluated, and the sentencing postponed, in light of the supreme court’s decision on Monday that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts undertaken in office.Judges typically grant motions when they are unopposed. The postponement marks an unexpected setback for prosecutors and for the prospect of criminal accountability for Trump before the 2024 election, given that the other cases are indefinitely delayed.Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money case has been postponed to September after the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, agreed to consider the possible impact of Monday’s supreme court ruling on presidential immunity.Trump became the first US president to be criminally convicted last month when a Manhattan jury found him guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an illicit hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The sentencing had previously been set for 11 July.The postponement sets the sentencing for 18 September, well after the Republican National Convention, where Trump will formally to accept the party’s presidential nomination.Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, has said that questions over Joe Biden’s ability to serve after his debate performance were “legitimate”.Pelosi, in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, backed Biden’s achievements and said the president “has a vision. He has knowledge. He has judgment. He has a strategic thinking and the rest.”But she conceded there was “mixed” feedback from Democratic donors about whether Biden was able to run for another term in office, adding that Donald Trump should be given the same scrutiny. She said:
      I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘is this an episode or is this a condition?’ And so when people ask that question, it’s legitimate, of both candidates.
      Julián Castro, the former housing secretary and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has suggested that Joe Biden should step aside, and that he believes there are stronger options out there for Democrats, including Kamala Harris.Castro, in an interview with MSNBC today, said:
      I believe that another Democrat would have a better shot at beating Trump and because, as Congressman Doggett said in his statement that it’s too risky to let Donald Trump walk into this in November, … I think the Democrats would do well to find a different candidate.
      Castro, who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, criticized Biden shortly after the president’s debate performance last week.“Tonight was completely predictable,” Castro told reporters after the debate. Biden “had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that”, he said, adding that the president had “seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump”.Joe Biden said in his remarks in Washington DC, moments ago that extreme weather is affecting everyone across the US “and beyond”.He noted the heat records that have been being “shattered” in the west and south-west in the early summer, in places such as Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, and said that extreme heat is the primary weather-related killer in the US.He also mentioned deadly Hurricane Beryl that’s roaring across the Caribbean right now as the earliest category 5 hurricane on record to brew out of the Atlantic.“Ignoring climate change is deadly, dangerous and irresponsible,” he said.The US president spelled out further action his administration plans to take in five areas: federal safety standards for excessive heat in the workplace; greater resilience to withstand flooding; more funding for communities to take action to protect against extreme weather; an Environmental Protection Agency report to be prepared showing “the continued impacts of climate change on the health of the American people” and a White House summit later this summer on the issue of extreme heat.Joe Biden has just given a straightforward, short speech on weather and climate at an event in Washington, DC.It’s not a press conference or anything where, so far, there has been any scope for journalists to question the US president, he is at the city’s emergency operations center, with the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser.And he did not make any reference in his remarks to the political heat he’s getting after his feeble debate performance last week that only topped off months of concern about his advanced age and ability to campaign for and execute the job of president for a second term.Reading from a teleprompter and sounding assertive, though with the odd verbal stumble, Biden spelled out initiatives his administration is taking to deal with extreme weather in the US, especially heat and flooding, that is exacerbated by the human-driven climate crisis.And he criticized “my predecessor and the MAGA Republicans” for undermining action on climate change and planning to undo Biden’s actions if Donald Trump regains the White House this November.“They still deny climate change even exists – they must be living in a hold somewhere – at the expense of the safety of their constituents,” Biden said, adding: “It’s not only outrageous, it’s also willfully stupid…dumb.” More

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      House Democrat pledges amendment to reverse Trump immunity ruling

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      A Democratic congressman is calling for a new constitutional amendment to reverse the supreme court’s ruling granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a decision that could hamstring the federal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Congressman Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, raised the idea on Monday, just hours after the supreme court issued its 6-3 decision, which fell along ideological lines.“I will introduce a constitutional amendment to reverse Scotus’s harmful decision and ensure that no president is above the law,” Morelle wrote on X. “This amendment will do what Scotus failed to do – prioritize our democracy.”But Morelle’s plan is highly unlikely to succeed. A constitutional amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate or by a constitutional convention, which may be called by two-thirds of state legislatures.With Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and a majority of state legislative chambers, that hurdle appears impossible to overcome. Republicans largely celebrated the court’s ruling as a win for the rule of law, despite legal experts’ warnings that the decision could set a dangerous precedent for future presidents.“Today’s ruling by the court is a victory for former president Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, said on Monday.Even if a two-thirds majority of Congress members did somehow come together to propose Morelle’s suggested amendment, it would need to be ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures to be added to the constitution. Given that Democrats control just 41% of state legislative chambers, ratification efforts would almost certainly prove futile.With few options to challenge the court’s ruling, Democrats seem intent on turning the immunity case into a campaign issue. As he addressed the court’s decision on Monday evening, Joe Biden called on Americans to prevent Trump from returning to the White House at a time when “he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases”.“Now the American people have to do what the court should have been willing to do and will not,” Biden said. “The American people have to render a judgement about Donald Trump’s behavior.” More

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      Republican congresswoman Victoria Spartz charged with weapons violation at Dulles

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      Republican US congresswoman Victoria Spartz has been charged with a weapons violation after she brought a gun to the Dulles international airport in Virginia on Friday, according to local authorities.Spartz, a Republican representing Indiana’s fifth congressional district, was traveling to Europe for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly when she was stopped and cited for carrying a pistol in her carry-on bag, Axios reported.It is illegal for passengers to have guns in their carry-on luggage, though they can be transported if checked. A metropolitan Washington airports authority spokesperson told local affiliate WISH TV that Spartz was charged in connection with the gun found in her bag and received a summons to appear in a Virginia court.In a statement to Axios, a representative for the Transportation Security Agency added that officers “detected a .380 caliber firearm during passenger security screening”. Officials confirmed that the handgun was not loaded.A representative for Spartz did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment but confirmed in a statement to the Washington Post that the congresswoman’s citation occurred.“Last Friday, Spartz accidentally carried an empty handgun in her suitcase with no magazine or bullets, which she did not realize was in the pocket of her suitcase, while going through security at Dulles airport,” the statement read.Spartz, who has served since 2021, garnered interest for voting “present” – rather than yes – multiple times during the contentious, lengthy House speaker election last year that was won by her fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy ended up being ousted from the speakership in October, becoming the first to ever be removed from the role.Spartz later declared she would not run for a third term but reversed her decision. She won her Republican primary and is favored to triumph in the November general election.Spartz is not the only Republican to be cited for carrying a firearm in relatively recent times.Former far-right Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina received a citation in 2022 after he brought a loaded gun through a security checkpoint at the Charlotte Douglas international airport.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCawthorn later pleaded guilty to a third-degree misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous weapon on city property, CNN reported.A year before that, Cawthorn brought an unloaded handgun and a loaded magazine in his carry-on bag while traveling through the Asheville regional airport. Cawthorn’s gun was returned to him by airport officials after his flight, CNN reported. More

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      Was Donald Trump, as president, a king? The US supreme court thinks so | Moira Donegan

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      Is the president a king? The US supreme court thinks so. On Monday, in its very last ruling of the term, the chief justice, John Roberts, writing for the court’s six conservatives, held in Trump v United States that Donald Trump has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all acts that can be interpreted as part of the official course of his “core” duties, and “presumptive” immunity for all other official acts.The move dramatically extends executive authority, insulates past and future presidents from prosecution for illegal or even treasonous actions they carry out while in office and renders the former president largely criminally immune for his role in the January 6 insurrection.The court said that Trump cannot be charged for some of his “official” actions in the lead-up to the insurrection, including his attempts to pressure Mike Pence and his efforts to weaponize the justice department to force some states to reverse their election results. Much of Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump has thereby been voided.What remains of the January 6 prosecution will now be remanded to a lower court, which will be tasked with determining what charges, if any, can proceed against Trump under the court’s new, unprecedented vision of executive immunity. That trial, if it ever happens, will not take place until long after this November’s elections, and will now likely not be able to address most of Trump’s efforts to assist in either the judicial or violent coup attempts.Richard Nixon’s status as a criminal and crook was once summarized by recounting his ominous declaration: “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” The court has now taken that vulgar absurdity and made it law.It is difficult to overstate the blow this decision will have to the integrity of our democratic system of government, or the depth of its insult to the principles of the separation of powers and the rule of law. In a ruling issued on stark partisan lines, the court’s conservatives elevated the president to a position that no person can hold in a republic: one with a sweeping entitlement to commit criminal acts for the sake of his own vulgar self-interest, without any fear of criminal legal repercussions. Criminal law no longer applies to the president; so long as he occupies the office, he exists in a permanent state of The Purge-like immunity, the ordinary rules of social and civic life suspended for him, able to use the trappings of power to flatter his vanity, reward his friends and punish his enemies as it suits him.This is one of the most consequential and frightening supreme court decisions of our lives. On the verge of an election in which Trump may well be restored to presidential power, the court has officially declared that he cannot be held accountable for abuses of that power in a criminal court.In its holding, the court’s majority made a flimsy distinction between the immunity they are granting to presidents for “core powers” and “official” acts – terms whose precise meanings they don’t define – and the criminal liability that Trump and other presidents still have for “unofficial” acts. But these distinctions are likely to collapse if any prosecutor, be it Smith or someone else, actually attempts to use them. That’s because the scope of the presidential office and its powers are so broad that its “core” powers are difficult to tell from its extraneous ones, and “official” and “unofficial” acts by the president are likely to prove ambiguous.The court also declares, needlessly, that conduct undertaken in the pursuit of “official” powers cannot be used in prosecutions of “unofficial” acts – another protection for presidential conduct that will hamstringing future prosecutions. The president, meanwhile, also retains the pardon power – meaning that he is entitled not only to commit crimes, but to secure impunity for his accomplices.In practice, Trump – and any subsequent president, should we ever get to have one – is now unaccountable to either legislative checks or criminal law. It is a development that has radically changed the nature of the office. The president is now less like a democratically accountable official than like a little emperor, endowed by the court with an all-encompassing right to wield power as he sees fit, much like the way that divine right used to bless the actions of kings. There is virtually nothing that he is not allowed to do.Preposterously, as if to mock the American public and their historical aspirations to freedom, the court claims that this new state of affairs was mandated by the framers – the very people who broke with their country and fought a war specifically so as to free themselves from this kind of unaccountable executive power.In her dissent, the justice Sonia Sotomayor listed some of the things that the president can now do without consequence, according to the majority. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune,” she writes. “Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Take a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune … The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a kind above the law.”Sotomayor’s dissent is among the most alarmed and mournful pieces of legal writing I have ever read. She concludes it: “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”There will be people who try to tell you that this ruling is not so bad. They will decry the “bed-wetting caucus”, or smugly declare themselves above “hysteria”. They will point to the majority’s evident concessions, to the president’s supposed liability for “unofficial” conduct – as if these false and pretextual possibility of accountability is anything like the real thing. It isn’t; don’t believe them. This decision is a seismic revision of the constitutional order, issued by a court packed with extremist Republicans who are anticipating a Trump victory in November.They know, as well as we do, that Trump aspires to usher in an era of corruption and autocracy. Today’s decision is an invitation for him to do just that.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Democrats warn of ‘dangerous precedent’ set by Trump ruling; Republican House speaker calls decision ‘common sense’ – as it happened

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      Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, has warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      No one, including the twice-impeached former president, should be above the law. The constitution is sacredly obligatory upon all. That’s what makes America special.
      The supreme court ruled on Monday that former presidents are entitled to some degree of immunity from criminal prosecution, a major victory for Donald Trump that guts the 2020 election subversion case against him and any prospect of a trial before November.Here’s a recap of what happened today:
      In a 6-3 decision, the court found that presidents were protected from prosecution for official actions that extended to the “outer perimeter” of his office, but could face charges for unofficial conduct.
      Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said a former president is entitled to “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority”.
      Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion, warned that a consequence of the ruling is that “the President is now a king above the law”. The decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law”, she added.
      Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and many Republicans.
      But Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy. “This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision was “an assault on American democracy”, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”.
      Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The supreme court’s decision to confer broad immunity to former presidents is likely to eviscerate numerous parts of the criminal prosecution against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court remanded the case back to the presiding US district judge, Tanya Chutkan, to apply a three-part test to decide which actions were protected – but Chief Justice John Roberts pre-emptively made clear that some were definitively out.On some of the closer calls, Roberts also gave suggestions on behalf of the majority conservative opinion, which could bear on Chutkan when she eventually weighs each allegation line by line and decides whether it can be introduced in any future trial.Most crucially for special counsel Jack Smith, his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official and struck from the case, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.Trump is accused of overseeing a sprawling effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election, including two counts of conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results, conspiring to defraud the government and conspiring to disenfranchise voters.The alleged illegal conduct came in five categories: Trump pressuring US justice department officials to open sham investigations into election fraud, Trump pressing his vice-president to return him to the White House, Trump trying to obstruct Congress from certifying the election, Trump giving a speech that led rioters to storm the US Capitol building, and Trump’s plot to recruit fake electors .Roberts undercut at least three of the five alleged categories in the opinion.Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, was also inspired by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in today’s immunity ruling.“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Mary Trump posted to X, quoting Sotomayor, accompanied by a link selling T-shirts inspired by the justice’s dissent.The supreme court has wrapped up its 2023-2024 term, issuing a string of blockbuster decisions with enormous implications for American democracy, individual and civil rights, and the basic functioning of the federal government.Once again, the conservative supermajority, with half its justices appointed by Donald Trump, was in the driver’s seat – strengthening the power of the presidency in its immunity ruling for Trump, and overturning precedent in a dramatic blow to the administrative state.There were crumbs of comfort for liberals, including a gun rights ruling related to domestic violence and a unanimous decision upholding access to a key abortion pill, but what the US public increasingly sees as an activist court majority continues in full swing.Read our full report on the supreme court’s biggest cases this term.Hillary Clinton, responding to the supreme court’s immunity ruling, said it will be up to the American people to hold Donald Trump accountable in the November election.Posting to X, Clinton said she agreed with Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion, in which she said that she had “fear for our democracy”.Former attorney general Eric Holder was also highly critical of the supreme court ruling, warning that American democracy has been “gravely wounded” as a result.Posting to X, Holder described the decision as “absurd and dangerous”.New York congressman Jerrold Nadler, a ranking member of the House judiciary committee, has described the supreme court’s immunity decision as “revolutionary”.The ruling is “far cry from the democracy envisioned by our founding fathers”, Nadler said in a statement.
      Once again, Donald Trump’s extremist rightwing court has come to his rescue, dramatically expanding the power of the presidency and removing any fear of prosecution for criminal acts committed using official power. If elected to a second term, this decision has set the stage for an unchecked dictatorship by the former president, who has already made clear his intentions to weaponize the presidency to seek revenge on his political opponents.
      Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, said it was “disgraceful” that justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito “brazenly” refused to recuse themselves from the Trump immunity case.The supreme court’s decision “threatens the rule of law”, Durbin wrote in a series of posts on X responding to the ruling.In May, Alito declined to recuse himself from cases related to Donald Trump and his 2020 election defeat following reports that flags used to support the “Stop the Steal” movement had been displayed at his homes.Calls for Thomas to recuse himself from the immunity case were also ignored, after critics cited past efforts by the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, to reverse the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor.Nancy Pelosi said the supreme court has “gone rogue” with today’s immunity ruling, saying it was “violating the foundational American principle that no one is above the law”.Posting to X, the former House speaker said:
      The former president’s claim of total presidential immunity is an insult to the vision of our founders, who declared independence from a King.
      House Republicans on Monday filed a lawsuit against the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, for the audio recording of Joe Biden’s interview with a special counsel in his classified documents case, asking the courts to enforce their subpoena and reject the White House’s effort to withhold the materials from Congress, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit filed by the House judiciary committee marks Republicans’ latest broadside against the justice department as partisan conflict over the rule of law animates the 2024 presidential campaign. The legal action comes weeks after the White House blocked Garland from releasing the audio recording to Congress by asserting executive privilege.Republicans in the House responded by voting to make Garland the third attorney general in US history to be held in contempt of Congress. But the justice department refused to take up the contempt referral, citing the agency’s “longstanding position and uniform practice” to not prosecute officials who don’t comply with subpoenas because of a president’s claim of executive privilege.The lawsuit states that House speaker Mike Johnson made a “last-ditch effort” last week to Garland to resolve the issue without taking legal action but the attorney general referred the Republicans to the White House, which rebuffed the “effort to find a solution to this impasse”.Garland has defended the justice department, saying officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to the committees about special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents investigation, including a transcript of Biden’s interview with him.Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, said on Monday she would use a new role as chair of the US-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) to step up her husband’s struggle against Russian president Vladimir Putin, Reuters reports.The New York-based HRF said in a statement on Monday it had appointed Navalnaya to succeed former world chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov as chair of the non-profit rights group, which provides humanitarian aid to Ukraine and runs campaigns against authoritarian leaders around the world.Navalnaya, who is located outside Russia and had two children with Navalny, accused Putin of having her husband murdered. The Kremlin denied the allegation.Navalnaya said after her husband’s death that she wanted to continue his work and has since met world leaders and suggested sanctions she believes would hasten the end of the current political system in Russia.Navalnaya, 47, said in the HRF statement:
      As someone who has personally witnessed the threat dictatorships pose to our loved ones and the world at large, I am deeply honored to take on the role of chair of the Human Rights Foundation.
      Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden sued conservative news outlet Fox News on Monday for publishing nude photos and videos of him in a fictionalized “mock trial” show focused on his foreign business dealings, Reuters reports.Hunter Biden alleges Fox violated New York state’s so-called revenge porn law, which makes it illegal to publish intimate images of a person without their consent. He is also suing for unjust enrichment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Fox aired The Trial of Hunter Biden: A Mock Trial for the American People on its Fox Nation streaming platform in October 2022 but later took it down under threat of a lawsuit by Biden’s attorneys.Fox News said in a statement:
      This entirely politically motivated lawsuit is devoid of merit.
      It only removed the program out of an abundance of caution, it said.Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The series depicted a fictional trial of Hunter Biden on illegal foreign lobbying and bribery charges, crimes he has never been indicted for.Americans are digesting the monumental supreme court decision this morning that’s dominating the news. And Trump sidekick Steve Bannon has reported to a prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month term for contempt of Congress. There’s no shortage of US politics happenings, so stay tuned.Here’s where things stand:
      Some prominent Democrats in the House have blasted the US supreme court ruling that US presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for “official” acts taken while in office. Progressive caucus chair and Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called it “another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court” while New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the decision is “an assault on American democracy”.
      And Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, warned that the supreme court’s immunity decision “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding that “the framers of the constitution … did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity”.
      But Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, welcomed the immunity decision. He said it was a victory for Donald Trump “and all future presidents” and, on the principle, added that the court “clearly stated that presidents are entitled to immunity for their official acts. This decision is based on the obviously unique power and position of the presidency, and comports with the constitution and common sense.”
      Donald Trump’s longtime rightwing ally Steve Bannon turned himself in to start a prison term. Bannon arrived at a federal prison in Connecticut to serve a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.
      The three liberal justices on the US supreme court, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all dissented from the majority opinion granting US presidents immunity for “official acts” while in office. Sotomayor wrote the dissent, saying: “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”
      Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform shortly after the court issued its decision on his immunity case, writing: “Big win for our constitution and democracy. Proud to be an American.”
      The US supreme court ruled that US presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from prosecution for “official acts”. The court held that a former president – in this case Donald Trump – has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers. The decision fell along party lines, with six conservative justices ruling against three liberal ones. But the court also ruled that former presidents are not entitled to immunity from prosecution for actions taken in a private capacity. It’s now down to interpretation which acts are which.
      Pramila Jayapal, the Democratic representative for Washington, has described the supreme court’s immunity ruling as a “bad decision”.Posting on X, she wrote:
      This is another horrible ruling from the MAGA Supreme Court that strips protections for people and empowers conservative special interests. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans hail Trump immunity ruling as Democrats warn ‘we will not have a democracy’

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      While Republicans applauded the supreme court’s decision to grant Donald Trump immunity for official acts undertaken as president, Democratic leaders expressed outrage over a ruling that legal experts warn could undermine the foundations of US democracy.The court’s six conservative justices ruled that presidents have “absolute immunity” for official acts but no immunity from unofficial acts. The distinction could hamper the federal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and makes it even less likely that the case will go to trial before election day in November.Trump celebrated the ruling as a “big win for our constitution and democracy” – a view echoed by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson.“Today’s ruling by the court is a victory for former President Trump and all future presidents, and another defeat for President Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice and Jack Smith,” Johnson said.“As President Trump has repeatedly said, the American people, not President Biden’s bureaucrats, will decide the November 5 election.”Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, weighed in as well. “Hyper-partisan prosecutors like Jack Smith cannot weaponize the rule of law to go after the administration’s chief political rival, and we hope that the left will stop its attacks on President Trump and uphold democratic norms,” Jordan said.Democrats, meanwhile, condemned the decision as a disgrace, describing it as an attack on the separation of powers and a black mark on the supreme court’s reputation.“This is a sad day for America and a sad day for our democracy,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader.“This disgraceful decision by the Maga supreme court – which is comprised of three justices appointed by Mr Trump himself – enables the former president to weaken our democracy by breaking the law. This decision undermines the credibility of the supreme court, and suggests that political influence trumps all in our courts today.”Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said the ruling “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of our nation”, adding: “The Framers of the constitution envisioned a democracy governed by the rule of law and the consent of the American people. They did not intend for our nation to be ruled by a king or monarch who could act with absolute impunity.”Legal experts voiced similar concerns about the ruling’s implications, highlighting liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning that the decision could enable a future president to claim immunity for blatantly illegal acts such as ordering the assassination of a political rival or organizing a military coup to stay in power.“Scotus’s immunity decision will in time rank as among the court’s worst decisions in its many year history,” Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “Any US president can now violate the law to remain in power as long as he cloaks it in the trappings of his office.”Joyce Alene, a law professor at the University of Alabama, concluded: “It’s up to American voters. We held Trump accountable at the polls in 2020 [and] must do it again in 2024. Because the supreme court won’t.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJoe Biden’s campaign team agreed that the ruling only heightened the stakes of the presidential race, and they urged voters to reject Trump in November to avoid a repeat of the violence seen on 6 January 2021.On a Biden campaign press call, the congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said the ruling underscored how Trump’s re-election would endanger Americans’ fundamental freedoms.“We’re talking about reproductive freedom, freedom to access the ballot box, freedom to love who you want, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to live the life you want to live,” Crockett said. “We can’t underestimate Donald Trump’s threat or his dark vision for our future.”Harry Dunn, a former US Capitol police officer who working during the January 6 insurrection, told reporters that the ruling amplified Trump’s status as “the single greatest threat to our democracy”.“We don’t need nine supreme court justices to tell me that Donald Trump was responsible for January 6,” Dunn said. “I was there. Those people that attacked us, they attacked us in his name on his orders.”Congressman Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who previously served as lead majority counsel in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, went even further by framing Trump’s re-election as “far and away the biggest threat since the civil war”.Goldman said: “If Joe Biden is not elected in November, we will not have a democracy that we have known for 250 years.” More